Refuge Cove (New Americana 2)

“Then get to work. There’s plenty of it waiting for you in here.” Pearl steered him into the kitchen, disarming the standoff before it happened. Emma moved back to her place at the door. There’d be customers coming soon, and this wasn’t her battle to fight.

Mother and daughter faced each other across the table. “Well, I see you ain’t changed,” Lillian said. “You’re as bossy as ever.”

“Stay away from my son!” Marlena snapped. “I mean it, Mother. I don’t want you near him.”

The defiance went out of Lillian. Her shoulders sagged. “I ain’t here about your son,” she said. “I’m here to beg for your help. For Ezra. You know he can’t be locked up in that jail. He’ll die. Please, Marlena. Ezra never hurt you like Boone did. He was always kind. And he’s your own flesh and blood.”

Marlena sighed. “What is it you need me to do?”

“Just go with me to talk to the police, and to his lawyer, if he’s got one. They won’t listen to an old woman like me. But they will if you’re there to back me up. That’s all I’m askin’.”

Marlena sighed. “Oh, all right. Let me make some calls first.”

Pearl stepped up. “We’ve got customers coming in. I’ll let you two into the dining room. You can talk and make calls in there. I’ll have Emma bring you something to drink. More coffee, Lillian?”

“Yes, and you can bring that pie for me to finish.”

“Just coffee for me,” Marlena said.

Pearl opened the unused dining room and they took a table near the door. Emma eavesdropped shamelessly while she served them, finding excuses to wipe the tables and straighten the chairs nearby. Marlena usually treated her as if she were invisible. Today that was an advantage.

A call to the police station got Marlena the phone number of Robert Falconi, Ezra’s court-appointed lawyer. She called him, and they talked for a few minutes while Lillian finished her pie and ice cream. After Marlena had ended the call, she turned to her mother.

“We’re going to see the lawyer in a few minutes,” she said. “He’s going to ask you some questions. He told me what they’d be. I want you to be ready. No surprises. So let’s practice. Pretend I’m him, asking you. First, did Ezra know where the trailer was?”

“We both knew,” Lillian said. “It was Boone’s private place. He didn’t want us snoopin’ around there, so we stayed away.”

“Did Ezra ever go there alone?” Marlena asked.

Lillian shook her head. “The trailer and the homestead are about twenty miles apart. You know that Ezra couldn’t ever learn to drive. When we go to town or anywhere else, I always take him. That’s how I know he couldn’t have gone to Boone’s trailer and killed that poor woman.”

“Could he have walked that far?”

“He’s got bad knees. Rheumatism. I think it came on young from him bein’ so big.”

“All right, another question. When the state troopers were at the trailer site, Ezra was seen running away after he shot a search dog. How do you explain that?”

Lillian sighed and sipped the coffee Emma had poured to refill her cup. “Boone came by the day before. He said the lawmen would be nosin’ around his property, and there was things he didn’t want them to find. Lord, I was thinkin’ maybe drugs, not a body. Anyway, he said that if they had a dog, Ezra was supposed to shoot it. I drove us there and waited in the truck while Ezra went in through the trees. He cried after he had to shoot that dog.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, Mr. Falconi mentioned that the dog was all right.”

“Thank goodness. Ezra will be glad for that.”

“Do you and Ezra always do what Boone tells you to?”

“Boone was born mean, and he’s growed up meaner. You know that, Marlena. It don’t pay to rile him. It’s easier to just do like he says.”

“So if Ezra didn’t kill that woman and bury her, who do you think did it?”

Lillian didn’t answer. She was quietly weeping.

* * *

Emma was clearing the table in the dining room after the two women left, putting the cups and saucers on a tray, when David wandered in. He stood for a moment, watching her. “Sorry, I guess that’s my job you’re doing,” he said.

“Don’t worry, it’s almost done.” Emma sprayed the table, wiped it clean, and looked up at him. “Are you all right, David?”

He shrugged, looking vaguely troubled. “I guess so. I was just thinking, a few weeks ago everything was normal. I was starting school, hanging out with my friends, wanting a car, and needing a job to pay for it. Then I came here to work, and it’s like my whole life’s gone a little crazy.”