What put us on the fringes, you ask? I was telepathic; Tara’s parents were embarrassing, abusive, poor, and public in their drunkenness; and JB was as dumb as a stump.
Yet here we were in our later twenties, reasonably happy human beings. JB and Tara had married and very recently produced twins. I had a good job and a life that was more exciting than I wanted it to be.
JB and Tara had been surprised—amazed—when they had discovered they were going to be parents, and even more startled to find they were having twins. Many children had grown up in this little house—it was around eighty years old—but modern families want more space. Though cozy and comfortable for two, the house began to creak at the seams after Robbie and Sara—Robert Thornton du Rone and Sara Sookie du Rone—were born, but buying a larger place wasn’t a possibility. That they owned this snug bungalow on Magnolia Street was something of a miracle.
Tara had gotten the house years before when Tara’s Togs started making some money. After careful consideration, she’d chosen the old Summerlin place, a bungalow built in the late twenties or early thirties. I’d always loved Magnolia Street, lined with houses from that same era, shaded by huge trees and enhanced with bright flower beds.
Tara’s one-floor house had two bedrooms (one large and one tiny), one bathroom, a kitchen, a living room, a dining room, and a sunroom. The sunroom, which faced the front of the house and lay through an arch to the right of the living room, was becoming the babies’ room because it was actually much larger than the second bedroom. And the closet that served that bedroom backed onto the sunroom.
After a summit meeting the week before, attended by me; my boss, Sam Merlotte; and Tara’s babysitter, Quiana Wong, Tara and JB had made a plan. With our help, they’d knock out the wall at the back of the little bedroom’s closet, which was between that room and the sunroom. Then we’d block in the closet from the bedroom side so the opening would be on the sunroom side. We’d frame that opening and hang louvered doors. The sunroom would become the new baby bedroom, and it would have a closet and shelves on the walls for storage. We’d paint the sunroom and the little bedroom. And the job would be done. Just a little home improvement project, but it would make a big difference.
The very next day, Tara had gone to Sew Right in Shreveport to pick out material, and she’d begun making new curtains to cover the bank of windows that flooded the sunroom with light.
Sam had agreed to perform the wall removal, but he was pretty anxious. “I know it can be done,” he said, “but I’ve never tried to do it.” JB and Tara had assured him they had the utmost faith in him, and with some tips from all-purpose handyman Terry Bellefleur, Sam had assembled the tools he’d need.
Tara, Quiana, the twins, and I had assembled in the sunroom to watch for the exciting moment when Sam cut through the old wall. We could hear a lot of cutting and sawing and general whamming going on, along with the occasional curse. JB was dragging the bits of drywall outside as Sam removed them.
It was kind of exciting in a low-key way.
Then I heard Sam say, “Huh. Look at that, JB.”
“What is that?” JB sounded surprised and taken aback.
“This piece of board has been cut out and replaced.”
“[Mumble mumble mumble] . . . electric wires?”
“No, shouldn’t be. It’s kind of an amateur [mumble mumble] . . . Here, I can open it. Let me slide this screwdriver in . . .”
Even from our side of the wall, I could hear the creak as Sam pried the panel out from between the studs. But then there was silence.
Unable to contain my curiosity, I left the sunroom and zoomed through the living room to round the wall into the current nursery. Sam was all the way in the closet, and JB was standing at his shoulder. Both were looking at whatever Sam had uncovered.
“It’s a hammer,” Sam said quietly.
“Can I see?” I said, and Sam turned and held the hammer out to me.
I took it automatically, but I was sorry when I understood what I was holding. It was a hammer, all right. And it was covered with dark stains.
Sam said, “It smells like old blood.”
“This must be the hammer that killed Isaiah Wechsler,” JB said, as if that were the first thing that would pop into anyone’s mind.
“Isaiah Wechsler?” Sam said. He hadn’t grown up in Bon Temps like the rest of us.
“Let’s go sit in the living room, and I’ll tell you about it,” I said. The little room suddenly felt hostile and confined, and I wanted to leave it.
The living room was pretty crowded with five adults and two babies. Tara was nursing Sara, a shawl thrown discreetly across her shoulder. Quiana was holding baby Robbie, rocking him to keep him content until his turn came.
“Back in the early thirties, Jacob and Sarah Jane Wechsler lived next door,” Tara told Sam. “In the house Andy and Halleigh Bellefleur live in now. The Summerlins, Daisy and Hiram, built this house. The Wechslers had a son, Isaiah, who was about fifteen. The Summerlins had two sons, one a little older than Isaiah, and one younger, I think thirteen. You would have thought the boys would be friends, but for some reason Isaiah, a big bull of a boy, got into a fight with the older Summerlin boy, whose name was . . .” She paused, looking doubtful.
“Albert,” I said. “Albert was a year older than Isaiah Wechsler, a husky kid with red hair and freckles, Gran told me. Albert’s little brother was Carter, and he was thirteen, I think. He was quiet, lots of curly red hair.”
“Surely your grandmother didn’t remember this,” Sam said. He’d been doing math in his head.
“No, she was too young when it all happened. But her mom knew both families. The fight and the estrangement caused a town scandal because the Wechslers and the Summerlins couldn’t get Isaiah and Albert to shake hands and make up. The boys wouldn’t tell anyone what the fight was about.”
Tara reached under the shawl to detach Sara, extricated her, and began burping her. Sara was a champion burper. I could feel the sadness in Tara’s thoughts. I figured the old story was rousing memories of her contentious family. “Anyway,” I said with energy, “the two Summerlin boys slept in the room in there.” I pointed to the wall Sam had just breached. “The parents had the bigger bedroom, and there was a baby; they kept the baby in with them. In the house across the driveway, Isaiah Wechsler slept in a bedroom whose window faced this house.” I pointed to the sunroom’s north window. “I think Andy and Halleigh use it as a den now. One summer night, two weeks after the big fight between Isaiah and Albert, someone went through Isaiah’s open window and killed him in his sleep. Beat him to death.”
“Ugh.” Sam looked a little sick, and I knew he was thinking of the dark-stained hammer.
Quiana’s slanting dark eyes were squinted almost shut with distress, disgust, some unpleasant emotion. She left the room with Sara to change her after handing Robbie to Tara.
I said, “The poor Wechslers found him in the morning in the bed, all bloody, and they sent for the police. There was one policeman in Bon Temps then, and he came right away. Back then, that meant within an hour.”
“You won’t believe who the policeman was, Sam,” Tara said. “It was a man named Fuller Compton, one of Bill’s descendants.”
I didn’t want to start talking about Bill, who was an ex of mine. I hastened on with the sad story. “The Wechslers told Fuller Compton that the Summerlins had killed their son. What could Fuller do but go next door? Of course, the Summerlins denied it, said their son Albert had been sleeping and hadn’t left the house. Fuller didn’t see anything bloody, and Carter Summerlin told the policeman that his brother had been in the bed the whole night.”
“No CSI then,” JB said wisely.
“That’s just sad,” Quiana said, returning with Sara, who was waving her arms in a sleepy way.
“So nothing happened? No one was arrested?” Sam asked.
; “Well, I think Fuller arrested a vagrant and held him for a while in the jail, but there wasn’t any evidence against him, and Fuller finally let him go. The Summerlins sent Carter out of town the next week to stay with relatives. He was so young. They must have wanted to protect him from the backlash. Albert Summerlin was regarded with lots of suspicion by the whole town, but there wasn’t any evidence against him. And afterward, Albert never showed signs of a hot temper. He kept on going to church. People began speaking to Daisy and Hiram and Albert again. Albert never got into another fight.” I shook my head. “People were sure the Wechslers would move, but they said they weren’t gonna. They were going to stay and be a reminder to the Summerlins every day of their lives.”
“Are there Wechslers still here in Bon Temps?” Sam asked.
“Cathy Wechsler is about seventy, and she lives in a little house over close to Clarice,” JB said. “She’s nice. She’s the widow of the last Wechsler.”
“What happened to Albert?” Quiana asked. “And the baby?”
“Not much,” I said. “The older Summerlins passed away. Carter decided not to come back. The baby died of scarlet fever. Albert married and had kids. Raised them here in this house. Tara bought the house from Bucky Summerlin, right, Tara?”
“Yep,” she said. She was patting Robbie on the back now. Robbie was goggling around at everyone with that goofy baby look. Sara was asleep in Quiana’s arms, and I checked on the nanny automatically. Her thoughts were all about the baby, and I relaxed. Though I’d checked out Quiana thoroughly when Tara had told me she was thinking of hiring her, I still felt I didn’t know her well.
If JB, Tara, and I had been considered odd ducks, Quiana had received a double whammy of misfit mojo. Her mother had been half Chinese, half African-American. Her dad, Coop Woods, had been all redneck. When Quiana was sixteen, they’d both been killed when their car stalled on the train tracks one night. Alcohol had been involved. There’d been rumors that Coop had planned a murder-suicide. Now Quiana was eighteen, staying with whatever relative would have her. I felt sorry for her precarious situation . . . and I knew there was something different about the girl. I’d given Tara the green light to hire her, though, because whatever her quirk was, it was not malignant.
Now Sam said, “You think we ought to call the police? After all, there’s a detective right next door.”
I noticed none of us hopped in to say, Yes, that’s the ticket.
Sure, the hammer had stains, and Sam’s nose was telling him the stains were old blood.
Sure, the hammer had been concealed in the wall.
Sure, a murder had taken place next door. But there might not be any connection.
Right.
“I don’t think we have to,” Tara said, and JB nodded, relieved. It was their say as the homeowners, I figured. I looked at the hammer as it lay on an old newspaper on the coffee table. Hammers hadn’t changed much over the decades. The handle was worn, and when I picked it up and turned it over, I saw that the writing on it read FIRESTONE SUPREME. With the dark stains on it, the tool looked remarkably ugly in the sunny room. It could never be just a tool again.
Tara picked it up by folding the paper around it, and she carried it out of the room.
Tara’s action jogged us all into motion. We split in different directions to go to work: JB to the fitness club, where he cleaned and trained; Sam and I to Merlotte’s Bar; and Tara to check on her assistant, McKenna, who was running the store while Tara was on maternity leave. As I called good-bye, Quiana was putting the twins down for their nap on Tara and JB’s bed since the babies’ room was full of dust.
• • •
I FORCED MYSELF to go to Tara’s by nine in the morning the next day. I had to fight a deep reluctance. For the first time, the pretty little house with its neat front yard seemed gloomy. Even the sky was overcast. I tapped on the front door, opened it, and called, “Woo-hoo! I’m here!”
Quiana was already at work folding laundry, but her full mouth was turned down in a sullen pout and she only nodded when I spoke to her. JB was nowhere in sight. Of course, he could be at the fitness club already, but normally he worked in the afternoon and evening. Tara, too, didn’t show her face.
Sam trailed in right on my heels, and we got mugs of coffee in the kitchen. Quiana didn’t respond to our attempts at conversation, and she fixed a bottle for one of the twins in silence. Tara was having to supplement, apparently.
JB emerged from the bedroom looking groggy. My old friend was usually the most cheerful guy around, but this morning he had circles under his eyes and looked five years older. “Babies cried all night,” he said wearily. “I don’t know what got into them. They’re in the bed with Tara right now.” He downed his coffee in record time. Gradually he began to perk up, and when we set our mugs in the sink, we all looked a little brighter.
I began to worry. This was a funny kind of day—in an ominous way.
Sam and JB went back into the little bedroom to finish cutting out the doorway. I climbed a folding stool to mount some brackets for shelving, which would be right above where the changing table would be placed. The tracks for the adjustable brackets were already up. (I had learned how to use an electric drill to mount them, and I was justly proud of myself.) I began counting holes on the tracks so the brackets would be even.
“And there you have it, a solid brace,” I said with some satisfaction. They were mounted too high for the twins to be tempted to climb on them, when they got bigger. They were designed to hold things Tara would need when she was changing the babies, and on the higher shelves would be the knickknacks people had given her: a china baby shoe with a plant in it, a cute picture frame with a photo of the twins, their baby books.
“Good job, Sook,” Sam said behind me.
I jumped, and he laughed. “You were thinking too hard to hear me come through the new closet door,” he said. “I tried to walk heavy.”
“You are evil,” I said, climbing down. “I don’t think I’ll work for you anymore.”
“Don’t tell me that,” he said. “What would I do without you?”
I grinned at him. “I expect you’d find a way to carry on. This economy, there are plenty of women who need a job, even working for a slave driver like you.”
He snorted. “You mean a pushover like me. Besides, you have your own financial interest in the bar now. Where are the shelves? I can hand ’em to you.”
“JB cut them yesterday, and he was going to paint them when he got in from work last night.”
Sam shrugged. “Haven’t seen ’em.”
“Tara,” I called. “You up yet?”
“Yeah,” she called. I followed her voice to the current baby room. Tara was changing Robbie. She was smiling down at the baby, but she looked haggard.
“He wants to know where his sis is,” Tara said, freely interpreting Robbie’s googly stare. “I think JB’s got Sara.”
“I’ll track ’em down,” I offered. I stepped into the kitchen, where Quiana was at the stove cooking . . . spaghetti sauce, from the smell. “You seen JB and Sara?” I asked. She was thinking that she didn’t like the idea that someone could read her thoughts. I could hardly blame her for that. I didn’t like the fact that I could, either. I sensed more strongly than ever that there was something different about Quiana, something that chimed in with my own peculiarity. It wasn’t the time to tax her with it, though.
“They went outside,” she murmured, her bony little figure hunched over the stove like a junior witch’s. I crossed behind her to go out the back door.
“JB?” At first glance the fenced-in yard with its minute patio and lone water oak looked empty.
The shelf boards were there, and they were painted, which I was glad to see. But where was JB? And more important, where was baby Sara?
“JB!” I called again. “Where are you?” Maybe because of the high fence, th
ere was not a bit of breeze in the backyard. The lawn furniture sat dusty and baking on the bricks. It was hot enough to make my skin prickle. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, inhaling the scents of town: asphalt, cooking, vehicles, dogs. I searched for a living brain in the area and had just found two when a subdued voice said, “Here.”
I circled the water oak close to the west corner of the yard to find JB sitting on the ground. I closed my eyes in relief when I saw that he was holding Sara, who was making those cute little baby noises and waving her arms.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, trying to sound gentle and relaxed.
JB had let his hair grow, and he pulled it back with a ponytail holder. If you had to compare him to a movie star—yes, he was that handsome—he was pretty much in the fair-haired Jason Lewis mold. Physically. “There’s something angry and sad in the house,” he said, sounding way more serious and troubled than I’d ever heard him. “When we opened the wall and touched the hammer, it got out.”
If I hadn’t had such a strange life, I might have laughed. I might have tried to convince JB it was his imagination. But my friend was anything but imaginative, and he’d never shown a taste for the dark side before. JB had always been sunny, optimistic, and generally along for the ride.
“So, when did you . . . notice this?” I said.
Sam had approached us quietly. Now he knelt by JB. With a finger, he stroked the line of Sara’s plump little cheek.
“I noticed it last night,” JB said. “It was walking around the house.”
“Did Tara see it, too?” Sam asked. He didn’t look directly at JB. The sun set his strawberry-blond hair on fire as he knelt in the yard.
“No, she didn’t.” JB shook his head. “But I know it’s there. Don’t tell me I’m making it up or that I’m dreaming or something. That’s bullshit.”
“I believe you,” I said.
“I believe you, too,” Sam said.