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  Emma laughed. “Mother,” she said, “you don’t know the half of it.”

  Granny shook her head sadly. “You are obviously not feeling yourself today, Emma.”

  “I’m not feeling anyone else,” Emma replied.

  Helen snickered before she remembered herself and slapped a hand over her mouth.

  “We’re leaving, Helen,” Granny announced. “Thank you for the tea, Wilhelmina.”

  “You’re welcome, Granny.” As I didn’t want to delay her departure, I didn’t remind her that I’d never actually gotten around to giving her any tea. “Please, do call me Bil.”

  Helen resumed her humming. I hoped she would trip over the hole in the porch again—this time, she could dig around for her own shoe while I just stood there and laughed at her. Granny hobbled along in pained silence, a martyr to her bunions. The performance was wasted on my mother, who remained seated at the table and simply called “bye-bye” after us.

  “Let me help you over the gap,” I said, taking Granny’s hand. I needn’t have bothered—she sprang through the doorway like a circus dog. I turned to Helen and smiled politely.

  “Bye, Mildew.”

  She stopped humming and glared at me. “Don’t call me Mildew. No one calls me that.”

  “You must have misheard me. Watch the hole. We don’t want to trip, do we?”

  She stepped through the door. Then she stopped and turned her head so quickly that her lips nearly brushed against my ear. In a low voice she said, “Get your rotten porch fixed, dyke.”

  I stood for a moment, dumbfounded. By the time I mustered up a response, Helen was down the front steps and out in the yard.

  “Fuck you, Mildew!” I had meant to speak quietly, but it turned into a shout. Granny stopped dead in her tracks and swayed unsteadily.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  Helen stepped forward and took Granny’s arm. “That was Wilhelmina,” I heard her say. “I think she said ‘bless you.’”

  I walked back to the kitchen and sat down, propping my feet up on the chair next to me. Emma was smoking a cigarette, using a saucer as an ashtray.

  “Was that you I heard swearing at Mildew Merwin?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Some explanation seemed to be expected. “She said something that made me mad.”

  My mother chose to accept this at face value. “Nothing like her cousin, is she? Despite the family resemblance.”

  “No, she isn’t.” How would it feel to be your beautiful cousin’s freaky doppelganger? I could almost have felt sorry for Helen, but then Sylvie wasn’t just any beautiful cousin; she was a beautiful lesbian cousin. Helen’s vicious “dyke” was still ringing in my ears.

  “Pretty is as pretty does,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Sorry, I was just thinking out loud.”

  Chapter 6

  Sam ended his exile half an hour after Granny and Helen left.

  “Where’s Hugh?” he asked.

  Emma looked out the window. “I don’t know. He seems to have given up on the barbecue.”

  “There was nothing wrong with the barbecue,” I said. “He snuck around the front of the house and went back to bed. He’s never awake on a Saturday.”

  Sam sat down at the table and picked up my mother’s saucer, now full of cigarette butts. “What’s up with this? You starting a cancer factory?”

  “Don’t blame her,” I said. “I’ve taken up smoking. Those are all mine.”

  “Trying to lose weight?”

  “Bite my ass, baby brother. I am the picture of physical fitness. Can’t you tell the difference between muscle and fat?”

  “Sounds like I struck a nerve.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “So sorry,” he laughed. “I didn’t know you were beefing up.”

  “Beefing . . . I’m not . . .”

  “Stop sputtering, Bil,” Emma interrupted. “You are beefing up, or buffing up, or whatever you weightlifters call it. You spend more time in the gym than Arnold Stallone.”

  “I’m not at the gym today,” I said, casting an eye on Sam, “and it’s Sylvester Stallone. Arnold is a Schwarzenegger.”

  “Who cares?” my mother said. “What do you want for lunch?”

  “Are you cooking?”

  “I am. How about fried chicken and biscuits?”

  Sam’s favorite. Emma opened the freezer door and rummaged around. “There’s a package of chicken breasts in here. If you’ll keep me company, I’ll thaw them out.”

  My mother put the chicken into the microwave. I looked over at Sam, who was studying the tabletop. The circles under his eyes had darkened even more, and they were now topped by greenish-yellow crescents. His nose was swollen, and he had a scab on one nostril.

  “You look like living hell. Once and for all, was it Francie?”

  “Yeah.”

  Confirmation at last. Emma stood at the counter with her back to us. She said nothing, though I knew she was listening intently. She dumped two cups of flour into a ceramic mixing bowl, spraying white dust all over herself and the floor.

  “Strong girl,” I observed.

  Sam looked up at me, and I wondered what he was going to do. It’s often hard to read his mood. I can sometimes tell what he’s thinking, but never what he’s feeling. I waited. A slow, lazy smile lifted the corners of his mouth. He tilted his head to one side and regarded me.

  “She’s built like a fucking linebacker.”

  “No Girl Scouts for you, Sam,” I said lightly. “You seem to prefer those sumo wrestlers. So, why did she black your eyes?”

  He shrugged. “I said something that pissed her off.”

  If I’d pursued this line of questioning, we might have been in the kitchen for hours listening to he-said, she-said. Instead, I decided to be blunt. “Well, we know she hit you. Did you hit her back?”

  He shook his head. “No. She hit me, and I shoved her.” I must have winced because he explained, “No, I mean shoved her off me. There wasn’t any other way—she was all over me, hitting me in my face and on my arms.”

  “And?” Emma tossed an ungodly amount of shortening into a cast-iron frying pan. She sat it on the front burner, turned on the heat, and took a step toward us. I gave her a warning look. If she interrupted Sam now, he’d never finish.

  “It was after I’d shoved her off that she gave me these,” he said, pointing at his eyes. “Then her mother called the cops.”

  Emma’s jaw dropped. “Her mother was there while you two were tearing the place up?”

  “What do you mean there? Her mother started it.” Sam snorted. “She called me . . .” He hesitated. “It doesn’t matter. She was drunk.”

  “Drunk my fanny,” Emma gestured impatiently. “What did she call you?”

  Sam closed his eyes and sighed heavily. “She called me a nigger.”

  “White trash,” my mother observed.

  “So,” Sam continued, “I called her a fucking c—”

  “Don’t say it,” I said quickly. My father hates swearing. Fuck is pretty bad in his book, but cunt he cannot abide. To my knowledge, no one had ever uttered that word in our house, not even Emma. It didn’t matter that he was all the way down the hall and asleep in his bedroom with the door shut, there was still a chance that he might hear it and fly into a million pieces.

  “I called her something,” Sam went on. “Then Francie got pissed off at me. I don’t know what her problem is—she calls her mother all sorts of shit. To her face, too.” He shot me a look out of the corner of his eye. I guessed there was more to the story than he cared to tell. Crystal Stokes was as bad as her daughter. Possibly worse.

  “Well, it’s certainly a fine mess now,” Emma said, returning to her biscuit dough and rolling it out with unnecessary violence. “Do you really have to troll among Cowslip’s trailer trash to find yourself a date?”

  Sam’s face lost its laconic look. “Shut up, Emma,” he said.

  As my mother stepped away from the s
tove to embark on a full-scale battle, I noticed twelve-inch flames leaping up behind her.

  “Hey!”

  “What?” Emma and Sam spoke in unison.

  “The frying pan’s on fire.”

  Black smoke rose and spread out on the ceiling while my mother stood frozen, staring at it. I jumped up, pushed her out of the way, and smothered the flames with a pan lid.

  “Way to go, Julia Child. What is the matter with you?”

  “I was distracted.”

  “No kidding.” I sat back down at the table. Sam was laughing now. I shook my head at him for a moment, and then I joined in.

  “Another great day at the fucking Waltons,” Emma said. Sam and I laughed harder. My mother leaned against the counter, one foot crossed over the other. Only her fingers tapping on the Formica gave her away. “Can we please get back to the business at hand? Where were we before I set fire to the kitchen?”

  “You were making unfortunate remarks about people who live in mobile homes.”

  “Mind your own business, Bil.”

  “I wish you’d mind yours, Emma,” Sam said. Now that we’d abandoned the subject of Francie, his tone was easy again.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, jailbird,” my mother said. Her tone, however, was light. “If I didn’t mind your business, who would? Next time, maybe I’ll just let you sit in the pokey. Bil here thinks you like being incarcerated.”

  Sam didn’t take the bait. He looked at me and rolled his eyes until only the whites were showing. He was clearly in an expansive mood. If I could just keep Emma reined in, I could ask Sylvie’s questions. She might not want to see me once she learned that my brother was a suspect, but I could always hope.

  Trying to make my voice sound as disinterested as possible, I said, “So, what’s it like in jail? Is there really a toilet just sitting out there in the open?”

  “Yeah. You have to go with everybody watching.”

  “Gross.”

  “No kidding. It’s worse when someone else has to go. Then you’re the watcher.”

  “You could look away.”

  “Not if they’re making all kinds of noise. That guy who died spent ages barfing.”

  My mother joined us at the table. “Did he? Tell us exactly what happened.”

  “You know what happened. He died.”

  “I don’t know what happened,” she insisted. “I wasn’t there. How long was he in with you? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? An hour?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t look at the clock.”

  “When did he start throwing up?” I asked. “Had he already been in the cell for a while, or was it right away?”

  “No,” Sam said thoughtfully, “it wasn’t right away. At first, he was just lying on the bed, holding his stomach. I thought he was drunk or something. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

  “Why not?” my mother asked angrily. “The man died.”

  “Because I was watching television. And I didn’t know he was going to die.”

  My mother opened her mouth to speak again, but I interrupted. “Did you recognize him, Sam? I don’t mean did you know he was Burt Wood. I mean was he someone you’d seen before, walking around town or something?”

  Emma gave me an inscrutable look. My brother sighed heavily.

  “What difference does it make?”

  I shrugged. “It might make a lot. If he was sick when he got there, we can prove you didn’t do it. If you’d never seen him before, why would you give him your stash?”

  “He didn’t have a stash,” Emma snapped. “Where would he have gotten one, out of thin air?”

  “Out of my ass, actually,” Sam said. “That’s what the cops think, anyway. I don’t know if the guy was sick before they arrested him or not. I guess he must have been.”

  “Ha!” Emma cried. “Then how could you have given him something?”

  Sam didn’t answer. “It’s his word against theirs,” I said. “We’re in the same boat they are. We’re all waiting for the autopsy results. In the meantime,” I turned back to Sam, “what was this guy wearing?”

  He stared at me blankly.

  “I’m serious,” I continued. “Was he wearing something distinctive? Glow in the dark socks, a fish-shaped necktie? Maybe he was seen somewhere before his arrest, accepting a Ziploc baggie full of drugs from someone. Preferably someone other than you.”

  Sam thought for a moment. “Jeans,” he said. “Brown boots. Black turtleneck.”

  “Jacket?”

  “They don’t let you wear coats in the cell. No coats, belts, neckties, or shirts with buttons. You might use those things to hang yourself.”

  I tried to picture someone hanging himself with a jacket. He’d need long sleeves and a lot of determination. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go with Lieutenant Young and DA Campbell’s theory. You were arrested at Safeway. You had a six-pack under your shirt and a stash up your ass. As we saw on the security tape, this impeded your walking. You got to jail, dropped your trousers, pulled out the stash, and gave it to Wood. Skipping the question of why for the moment, it seems to me that we have a problem of logistics. The toilet’s in the middle of the floor. Were there other people around?”

  “No witnesses, if that’s what you mean. It was just him and me. When he fell over, I had to yell for five minutes to get a jailer to come check on him.”

  “Sam,” I said, an ugly suspicion taking shape in my mind, “do the cops have any physical evidence for this theory? I mean, did they do a body search on you or anything like that?”

  He shook his head. “They just searched my clothes. Lieutenant Young thinks the drugs were in a condom. I got them out, gave them to the guy, and then flushed the rubber down the toilet.”

  The light dawned. I looked at Emma. “You know what this is about, don’t you? They’re trying to cover up criminal negligence. The sheriff’s department has shit in its white hat, Ma. Remember what Donny said yesterday about being understaffed? There weren’t enough guys on duty to man the jail. They’re trying to deflect attention onto Sam. He’s going to be their fall guy, the big, bad drug dealer.”

  “You mean the big, bad, brown drug dealer,” she said. “This town is whiter than Barbara Bush’s ass. If the cops want to know who’s passing out dope, they should arrest some of those rich, white farmer boys who’re always hanging around Lilac Trailer Court.”

  My brother flinched at the mention of Francie’s home turf, an action that was not lost on my mother. Before she could launch into another anti-bimbo diatribe, I said, “What we need to know now is just how Wood died. What did the vomit look like?”

  “It looked like a Jackson Pollock painting,” Emma observed sarcastically, cutting off whatever Sam had been about to say. “What is the matter with you?”

  “This is not a stupid question,” I insisted. “I was wondering if he threw up food or blood or what. It doesn’t have to be drugs that killed him. Maybe he ate something that made him sick—raw meat, or shell-fish.” I turned to my brother. “Was he spitting up pieces of shrimp?”

  “No,” Sam said irritably. “Do you think I got down on my hands and knees and poked at it with a stick? Most of it hit the toilet. What landed on the floor looked like that stuff Jed yaks up in the flower bed.”

  My mother was nodding slowly now, a thoughtful look on her face. “You think it might have been food poisoning, Bil?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Hmm. That’s usually accompanied by other symptoms, like cramps and swelling. Did his stomach look swollen to you, Sam?”

  My brother covered his face with his hands. “I didn’t look at his stomach. I didn’t take a magnifying glass to his vomit. When he started throwing up, I spent all my time trying to get the guards to come and do something about it. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Calm down. What do suppose Young and Campbell think you gave him? No one dies from eating pot.”

  Sam thought for a minute. “Acid,” he said. “Maybe mushrooms. The guy w
as tripping.” He ran his hands up and down his arms and shivered. Then he stopped. He crossed his arms, grabbing a biceps in each hand. “Spiders, he said something about spiders. He kept trying to brush them off, but there was nothing there. It freaked me out.”

  “Do food-poisoning victims hallucinate?” I asked my mother.

  “I don’t know,” she said, “I don’t think so.” She gave my brother a piercing look. “What do you know about acid and mushrooms? What’s floating around Lilac Trailer Court these days?”

  Sam didn’t answer her, choosing instead to scratch at the flaking varnish on the table with his fingernail. We were clearly heading for another standoff.

  “This autopsy is taking too long,” I said. “I don’t care if the lab is backlogged; they ought to know what killed him by now. How many tests can they run?”

  My mother, who was staring intently at my brother, made no sign that she’d heard me. Sam looked at her and then stood up.

  “I’m going to my room to lie down,” he said. “Could you bring me a couple of biscuits?”

  Emma leaned back in her chair and lit a cigarette. “Sure.”

  As soon as he was out of earshot, I said, “What was that all about?”

  She shrugged. “He’s tired. You know how he is after chemo.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Something happened just then, something weird.” I took the cigarette out of her mouth and held it hostage. “Tell me.”

  Emma blew the hair out of her eyes. “When they arrested your brother yesterday,” she said, “they asked him to take a urine test.”

  “Oh my god.” I gave her back her cigarette. “Did he do it?”

  She nodded. “He told me this morning that he’s been drinking some kind of clean tea. It’s supposed to cover up any traces of THC.”

  “He doesn’t really believe that.”

  “He does.” She smiled sadly. “Between the assault charge and the shoplifting, I’m sure they could have made him take the test. He thought he was being really clever by agreeing to it voluntarily. Even if he is telling the truth, Bil, it might not matter. If anything in his urine matches something in Wood’s blood or his stomach contents, your brother is in big trouble.”