Читать книгу Murder in Mayberry - Jack Branson - Страница 19
ОглавлениеDriving home from the police station, Iva Ray recounted the meeting with Hargis.
“He didn’t say much,” observed Iva Ray. “Just that they were doing all they could to find Ann’s murderer and that they’d keep us informed.”
“They’re playing big-city cop,” observed Jack, still reacting to being left out of the meeting. “They figured they were supposed to call a meeting.”
“They want us all to walk through the house tomorrow morning, looking for anything that’s out of place,” said Iva Ray. “Then they’ll turn the house over to the family.”
We spent the afternoon talking to the scores of visitors who stopped by Iva Ray’s, people we hadn’t seen in nearly twenty years. After a while, we felt as though we were holding an open house, filled with laughter and food, instead of grieving that someone we loved had been murdered.
Earl stopped by later that evening. Though the temperature was barely above zero, he’d been out running. Jack teased him again about staying fit for his younger girlfriend. The two men were laughing and enjoying each other’s company so much that I relaxed for a while, too.
With just thirteen years difference in age, Earl and Jack had been close all of Jack’s life. Years ago, Earl stayed with Jack’s family in Texas while he attended college. Jack’s mom was a schoolteacher, so Earl took Jack to school on his first day of first grade. When I’d planned a party for Jack’s fiftieth birthday three years earlier, Earl drove down to Georgia to be part of the surprise. They didn’t see enough of each other and I knew they wanted, for a few moments tonight, to forget about the nightmare that had brought them together.
They denied the occasion as long as they could. But eventually the conversation turned to the murder.
“The police asked me to find out who’d seen Ann at church Sunday night,” Earl offered.
“So what’d you find out?” asked Jack.
“Lots of people remembered seeing her.”
“What was she wearing?” asked Jack. Earl shrugged his shoulders.
“Mother,” asked Jack. “Do you know what Anna Mae was wearing?”
“No,” said Iva Ray, “but I know who sat behind her.”
“Do you have their number?” asked Jack as he reached for the phone.
After a short conversation, Jack told us: “She wore a black cape with a leopard skin collar and a black pantsuit under it.”
“The cape we gave her for Christmas,” I gasped. Then, unexpectedly, I began to cry. I’m still not certain why this news upset me so much.
Iva Ray moved closer to me. “She loved that cape,” she told me softly. “I saw her in it a lot the past few weeks.”
“Ann sat alone in church,” Jack filled us in on more of his phone conversation. “Close to the back. The family sat behind her but didn’t notice anything unusual. Church let out about seven and she walked back across the street.”
“Do you think she’d just gotten home when she was murdered? Could the killer have been waiting for her inside the house?” I asked.
“Nah,” said Earl. “She was wearing some old clothes when she was killed. A pair of stretch pants and a sweater. She wouldn’t have worn them to church.”
No use arguing with Earl, I thought, but I knew Ann might have worn the old clothes. In fact, she’d have enjoyed throwing the glamorous full-length cape over comfy clothes, putting on one of her many wigs, loading her hands with diamonds, slipping into dress shoes, and walking confidently into the church, with only Ann herself knowing that the cape was a facade.
We’d once sat with Ann at church on a Sunday evening when she was elegantly dressed. She opened her expensive handbag to show me her secret. It was empty. Just a matching prop.
“Was she wearing a wig when she was killed?” I asked Earl.
“Yeah,” said Earl. “She had a wig on.”
If she’d had time to change clothes, she would have taken her wig off, too. And that late at night, she would have changed into sleep attire instead of pants and a sweater.
It was our opinion Ann hadn’t been home long before she was murdered.
