The Guilty Page 6

  feet high on both sides of the pebbled drive that curved in several stretches before straightening as one approached the house.

  THE WILLOWS.

  Robie saw that name on the mailbox.

  And then below that the name ROBIE was painted in neat white letters. He could envision his perfectionist father painting every one of them using a ruler to get the spacing exactly right.

  He turned his rental down the drive bracketed by the majestic longleaf pines that had canopies enormous enough to block out the sun.

  As he turned into the straightaway he could see it.

  Willow Hall was a majestic antebellum mansion built when James Monroe was president of the United States. Six columns supported the high, long front porch as well as the upper porch. That same architectural feature ran down both sides of the manor and also on the back verandah. Chimney brick stacks rose from the slate roof, and black shutters bracketed the five front windows, three up and two down with the lower ones on either side of the front door.

  Parked in the circle in front of the mansion was a dark blue late-model Volvo station wagon with a booster seat in the back.

  Robie stopped his car and climbed out.

  A few moments later a woman about Robie’s age rushed out of the house, a small boy on her right hip. She wore high heels and nearly tripped going down the plank front steps before regaining her balance. She was tall, and though probably normally lean, still carried some of the baby weight in her torso. Her swirl of blonde hair just touched her clavicle. She had sunglasses on and a large bag slung over her left shoulder. She fumbled in the bag for her car keys.

  “You need some help?” he asked.

  She froze and looked over at him. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  She had found her keys and he could see that she gripped them so that one was protruding between her fingers, as a weapon. His father had probably taught her that, because he had showed Robie how to do the very same thing.

  Her speech and lack of an accent told him that she was not native to Cantrell, and probably not even Mississippi.

  He looked over her shoulder at the house. “This place brings back memories.”

  “Why?”

  “I dated a girl who lived here once. Laura Barksdale.”

  She used her free hand to nudge her sunglasses down a bit to get a better look at him.

  Robie was not as tall as his father, but the two did resemble each other. Everyone had always said the son took after the father.

  His personality more closely tracked his mother. At least he thought so.

  “Who are you?” she said again, but Robie could tell in her look that she had noticed the resemblance to his father.

  “Will Robie,” he said. “Who are you?”

  “Well, I guess technically I’m your stepmother, Victoria.”

  Robie took a step forward and looked at the child who hadn’t said a word, but was staring at Robie with one of his fingers in his mouth. As he gazed at the boy Robie saw features that were very familiar. He saw his father. He saw himself. And he also saw some of the woman in the little face.

  “Yours?” he asked, indicating the child, though he thought the answer plain enough.

  “Yes, and your father’s, which means he’s your stepbrother.”

  “Technically,” added Robie. “How old is he?”

  “Ty is two, but he’ll turn three in just a couple of months.”

  Robie stiffened a bit. “Ty?”

  “His full name is Tyler. But we call him Ty.”

  Robie flinched again. Tyler was his middle name.

  She noted this apparently, because she said, “Will Tyler Robie. That’s your full name.”

  “Did my father tell you that?”

  She suddenly looked uncertain. “No…I saw it somewhere.”

  So Dad never talked about me. Robie was not surprised by this. But he named his son Tyler.

  It wasn’t a family name. His mother, he’d learned, had named him Will, after her beloved uncle. But Robie’s father had selected the middle name. He told his son it was the name of a man he’d served with in Vietnam. He said he’d been the toughest sonofabitch he’d ever known. He later told his son he wanted him to be just as tough. Robie had obviously failed at that. At least in his father’s eyes.

  “We didn’t know you were coming here,” she said, interrupting Robie’s thoughts.

  “That’s because I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “You know about your father, then?”

  “I went over to the jail and waited. Apparently, he didn’t want to see me. Is that where you’re going? The jail?”

  “I’ve already been this morning. I’m taking Tyler to the doctor and I’m running late.” She looked uncertain again. “You look like your father, but can I see something to prove you are who you say?”

  He took out his driver’s license and showed it to her.

  He said, “My dad has a scar on his back. Shrapnel wound from Vietnam. It’s in the shape of a backwards J. He has one gold tooth in the back, bottom row. And he’d take two fingers of Glenlivet over a beer any day.”

  She smiled. “He got the scar fixed with plastic surgery and the gold tooth with a synthetic implant. But he’d still take the scotch over the beer.”

  “Good to know.”

  Victoria glanced over her shoulder. “Look, you’re welcome to stay here until I get back. Priscilla is our housekeeper. She can see to you if you’re hungry or anything.”

  “That’s okay. I would like to take a look around. I have someplace to be at five, but after that I’d like to meet with you if that’s okay.”

  “Where have you been all this time, Will?” she blurted out.

  He didn’t answer right away. “Living my life.”

  She looked down at the pebbled drive. “I guess you’re surprised he has a wife and young child.”

  “No, not really. He was obviously living his life, too.”

  “He never said what happened between you two.”

  “I would imagine not. He’s a private person.”

  “I have to go, but I’ll call Priscilla from the car and let her know you’ll be around. And after your five o’clock thing, why don’t you come back here for dinner?”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I never do anything I don’t want to do, you’ll see that about me soon enough. Say seven thirty? I’m not from around here, but I can cook a damn good southern meal if I choose to.”

  Robie nodded. “Okay, I’ll see you then.” He looked at Tyler. “You said you’re taking him to the doctor. Is he okay? He doesn’t look sick.”

  “Ty has some…challenges,” she said, gently pressing down a cowlick on the boy’s head and giving the spot a kiss. Then she strapped her son in the booster, climbed into the driver’s seat, and kicked up some pebbles as she sped off.

  Robie watched them go for a bit and then walked the grounds of the Willows. He remembered the place as being meticulously maintained, because the Barksdales had come from money and Henry Barksdale had worked hard at maintaining his ancestral home.

  Robie’s father had obviously kept the grounds in excellent condition. A few features had been added, like a swimming pool, a stone pavilion, and a fenced-in kitchen garden.

  Whether the Barksdales had done this after Robie left Cantrell, or his father had, or some owner in between, he didn’t know. He still couldn’t understand how his father had come to own such a place. Even in Cantrell, where the cost of land and living were preposterously low, this place would not come cheap to own or maintain.

  He stood at a spot near a stacked rock wall at the rear of the property. He took in a lungful of air, and the briny smells from the nearby Gulf filled his nostrils. Growing up here he hadn’t thought there was any other kind of air.

  It had been at this spot that Laura Barksdale and he had made their plans. He had already reached his full height and his shoulders were broad and his muscles hard from year-round sports
. In addition to football, Robie had played basketball and run track. You could do that back then, especially in a small town like this where there weren’t enough young men to fill the various teams.

  Laura was a brunette who wore her hair short. She was slender and of average height. They both had been popular in high school, he for his athletics and good looks, and she for her intelligence, kindness, and beauty, and in spite of her prestigious family, which some at Cantrell High held against her. She had been nice to everyone, but Robie had always felt there was something she was not telling him. He caught it in a look, in something she said. Sometimes, simply in her silence. But then she would push away whatever seemed to be bothering her and come back to him. He had asked her many times to confide in him. But she would only smile, shake her head, and say that she had told him everything. And then they would kiss and the teenage Robie would forget about everything else.

  Yes, they had made plans for their future. Together. Only they would never come to pass.

  As he finished his exploration of the rear grounds and headed back toward the house, he caught a glimpse of a face at one of the upstairs windows before it was gone.

  The face was lined and the skin the same color as Deputy Taggert’s eyes.

  Priscilla.

  Chapter

  11

  ROBIE STEPPED UP onto the porch and knocked on the door. The heat of the day was bearing down on him; it was a humid heat, unlike the desert kind he’d recently been in. He’d take dry over wet. The humidity just sucked everything right out of you. He remembered how his mother would take a bath in the morning and then again in the afternoon for that very reason.

  He heard feet coming down the set of grand stairs he remembered that flared out at the bottom, and that he also remembered were set right in the center of the substantial foyer.

  The door opened and there was the face he had glimpsed a minute ago. Priscilla was in her early sixties, about five feet four inches tall, thickset, with straight graying black hair tied back in a severe bun. She had on a maid’s outfit, and her feet were encased in worn, soft-soled shoes, the kind that nurses wore, only black.

  “You Will Robie?” she said immediately, almost fiercely.

  “I am.”

  “I’m Priscilla. I take care’a your daddy’s home.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you. Ms. Victoria said you was around. Liked to knock me over when she said so.”

  “How long have you been helping my father?”

  “Four years now.”

  “Do you mind if I come in and look around a bit?”

  She opened the door wider and moved aside, shutting the door after he entered the foyer.

  She stared up at him. “You handsome, like your daddy. Though not as big. But you not too scrawny. You look like you can take care’a yourself.”

  Robie was gazing around at the rooms bleeding off the entrance hall. The furnishings were tasteful, solid, everything situated just so. His father’s doing, most certainly. But he could see a bit of Victoria, perhaps, in the fresh-cut flowers and colorful drapes and throw pillows. And the artwork that ranged from simple to substantial carried a whimsical feel that he just didn’t see his Marine father possessing.

  His gaze dropped to Priscilla. “Can you tell me what happened? Why my father’s in jail for killing Sherman Clancy?”

  “I just made a pitcher’a tea. You want some?”

  “Is it sweet tea?”

  She looked at him funny. “Is there any other kind?”

  She led him into the large, sunny kitchen with blackened beams across the ceiling. Priscilla poured out two glasses of sweet tea, and they sat at a round cedar table in front of a bay window overlooking the rear grounds.

  Robie took a sip of his drink and couldn’t keep his face from puckering as the truckload of sugar walloped his taste buds.

  Priscilla took a long drink of her tea and smacked her lips before saying slyly, “You been gone from Mississippi a long time?”

  “Yes, I have,” said Robie, putting the glass down.

  “Sherman Clancy,” said Priscilla, watching him closely.

  Robie leaned in a bit and met her gaze directly. “I’d appreciate all that you can tell me.”

  “Sherman Clancy wasn’t a good man. But truth is, I ain’t see him as no killer, neither.”

  “Why not?”

  She took another gulp of tea. “You want something to eat?”

  “No, I’m good.” He watched her expectantly.

  “Clancy was in with those casino boys. Those junkyard dogs drain every cent from you and laugh all the way to the bank while they givin’ you another watered-down glass of whiskey cost ’em ten cents and they sell for ten dollahs.”

  “But he wasn’t a killer?”

  “What he mostly was, was fat and drunk. Doubt he’d have the energy or what you need upstairs to kill nobody and then get away with it.”

  “And Janet Chisum?”

  “Didn’t know her. Her family ain’t here too long. Seem nice ’nuff. Saw ’em drivin’ to church on Sundays. That’s all they got to keep ’em now. God’s love. He’ll see those poor folks through this, yes he will. When I lost my baby, God was with me all the way.”

  Robie’s mind went back to the tragic image of Sasha toppling dead to the floor. “How’d your child die?” he asked a moment later.

  “Was livin’ up near Hattiesburg back then. Big old rattler done got my Earl when he was just a little boy. Went over to the county hospital but the man there said there was nothin’ they could do and I’d best take him over the clinic near where we lived. So’s I took him there, but they told me the county hospital was the only place ’round got the serum for the rattler. Earl died in my arms in the car on the way back to the county hospital. I walked into that place holdin’ my dead son and you know what that same man done told me?”

  “What?”

  “That he ain’t remember me comin’ in. That I must’ve made some mistake. That I must not be right in the head. And that I needed to take my boy’s body outta there right that very second, ’cause it was upsettin’ his staff.” She shook her head. “Upsettin’ his staff? Hear them words till I breathe my last.”

  “Why wouldn’t they treat your son?”

  She glanced up at him. “What planet you livin’ on? White hospital, black boy. You from Mississippi. You forget how it is down here? And this was over forty years back.”

  “You could’ve taken the hospital and the man to court. Hell, had him tried for criminal negligence or something.”

  “Oh, thank you for tellin’ me, Mr. Will Robie,” she replied in feigned astonishment. “You mean all I got to do was get me a lawyer and go to court and then they got to get to work on savin’ my baby? Why ain’t I think’a that? Oh, but he was already dead.”

  “The point is the man should have been punished for what he did.”

  “Oh, he was. You ain’t let me get to that part. He died sudden like just a few weeks later.”

  “How?”

  “Somebody done shot him.”

  “Who?”

  “My husband, Carl. That why I ain’t got no more husband. They executed him over at the state penitentiary. I was there watchin’ him when he went. Had a smile on his face.”

  “I’m sorry, Priscilla. None of that should have happened.”

  Priscilla finished her tea and said, “Water under the bridge. Can’t do nothin’ ’bout it now ’cept pray to God the next life is better’n this one. So they say your daddy done killed Sherman Clancy, but I don’t believe that for one little minute.”

  “How was Clancy killed?”

  Priscilla pointed to her neck. “Slit from ear to ear. Newspaper say it was a knife like the military use.”

  “And my dad was in the Marines.”

  “Well, lots of folks down here served in the military. And lots of folks got them knives like that.”

  “Where was he found?”

  “In his ca
r, down by the Pearl. He got himself one’a them Bentley cars. Only one hereabouts, I can tell you that. ’Bout a half mile from his house. Lonely old swamp road. Hell, what other kind’a swamp road is