Alex Cross's Trial (Alex Cross 15)

ABRAHAM HANDED ME a huge slice of chess pie. It was a southern funeral favorite because it could be made quickly, using ingredients most people kept on hand—milk, eggs, sugar, butter.

Abraham’s house was overflowing with dishes and platters and baskets of food, and mourners eating as much as they could.

A question swam into my mind. How did Scooter Willems know Moody? I distinctly recalled him calling her by name, as if they were old friends. Were they? And how could that be?

I excused myself and threaded my way through the crowded little parlor, through the overpopulated kitchen, out the back door. I saw Moody sitting in the yard on an old tree stump, glaring at the ground.

“Moody,” I said.

She did not acknowledge me.

I reached out to touch her shoulder. “Moody.”

She pushed my hand away. “Don’t put your white hand on my black shoulder,” she said.

I drew back and put my hands in my pockets.

“Do you know Scooter Willems?” I asked.

She lifted her head and looked at me. “Who?”

“’Scooter Willems. That photographer from outside the church.”

“I never seen that man in my life. He ain’t nothin’ but a buzzard, pickin’ the meat off of dead people’s bones.”

“If you’ve never seen him, how did he know your name?”

“I don’t know.”

Moody looked into my eyes. For the first time since we’d met, she didn’t look the least bit feisty or defiant. She looked downtrodden. Defeated. The heartbreak of Hiram’s death had drained all the anger from her.

I put my hand on her shoulder again. This time she reached up and patted my hand.

“I’ve been going to funerals since I was a baby,” she said. “This one is different. Ain’t no ‘peaceable joy’ around here.”

“What do you mean?”

“We used to burying the old folks,” she said. “You know—after they lived a whole life. After they married and had their own kids, maybe even their grandkids. But lately, all these funerals for the young ones. And Hiram… I mean, Hiram…”

Moody began to cry.

“He weren’t nothing but a baby himself,” she said.

I felt tears coming to my own eyes.

“Here.” I thrust the pie under her nose. “Eat some of this. You need to eat.”

It was useless advice, I knew, but it was what I remembered my father saying to people at funerals. Eat, eat… Now I understood why he’d said it: he just couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Moody took the plate from my hand.

Chapter 66

MOODY WAS RIGHT. No “peaceable joy” came into Abraham Cross’s house that day.

The bottle of moonshine was gradually consumed. The ham was whittled away until nothing but a knuckly bone was left on the plate. The pies shrank, shrank some more, then disappeared entirely. The afternoon lingered and finally turned into nighttime, with ten thousand cicadas singing in the dark.

I shook hands with Abraham. Moody gave me a quick little hug. I made my way through the remaining mourners, out the front door.