He moved back to his desk, that careful funeral director’s walk that suggested he’d learned long ago how to move through rooms without disturbing the grief that lived in them.
“Then one day I left school early—told the teacher I was sick so I could skip the afternoon. It was spring, nice weather, and I wanted to go to the beach with some friends.” A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “Mama was at work cleaning houses, wasn’t supposed to be home until after 5. So I figured I could get away with it, be back before she knew I’d skipped.”
He paused, and the smile disappeared.
“Our house was small—just a few rooms in the part of town people didn’t talk about much. You know the area, down past the fish processing plant where the paint peels off the houses and the yards are more weeds than grass. The kind of neighborhood where people minded their own business because everyone had something they didn’t want looked at too closely.” He paused. “You could hear everything through those thin walls. When I came in the back door, I heard voices coming from Mama’s bedroom. The door was open just a crack. I saw them.” His voice had gone flat, emotionless, the way people sound when they’re describing something they’ve spent years trying not to think about. “I was ten years old and I saw more than a ten-year-old should see, and I knew—even then, even without understanding what I was looking at—I knew it was wrong.”
The office felt too quiet, too still, like the air had stopped moving.
“I left,” Michael continued. “Went outside, sat on the back steps for maybe twenty minutes until I heard Reverend Pickering’s car leave. Then I came back in and Mama was in the kitchen making dinner like nothing had happened. She smiled at me, asked how my day had gone. And I never said a word about it. Not to her, not to anyone.”
I could see it so clearly—a little boy carrying that knowledge like a stone in his pocket, too heavy to hold but impossible to put down.
“After that, I paid more attention. Noticed things. The way people at church would whisper when Mama walked by. The way other mothers would pull their kids away from me at Sunday school, like whatever sin Mama was committing might be contagious. The way Mama would get dressed up on certain evenings, put on perfume, tell me she had to run errands even though the stores were closed.”
“She wasn’t hiding it,” I said softly, understanding. This was the Ruby Bailey from the case file—the one who sang in the choir every Sunday with Pickering watching her, who didn’t care what people thought, who wore the affair like armor.
“No,” Michael agreed. “She wasn’t. I think that’s what made Elder Crenshaw so angry. A few weeks before she died, I woke up one night and heard her on the phone. She was in the kitchen talking to someone, and her voice was different. Not scared exactly. More like…defiant. Angry.”
“What did she say?” Dash asked.
“She said something like, ‘You can threaten me all you want, but I’m not going anywhere. George and I have every right to be together.’” Michael’s eyes were distant. “And then she got quiet, listening. Then she said, ‘You think I care what the congregation thinks? They’re a bunch of hypocrites anyway. At least I’m honest about what I’m doing.’”
That sounded more like the Ruby Bailey I’d been piecing together—bold, unashamed, almost reckless in her refusal to hide.
“Did she say who she was talking to?” I asked.
“I assumed it was Elder Crenshaw, based on what happened next. A few days later, I was playing in the yard after school when I saw him pull up. He didn’t come to the door—just sat in his car at the curb. Mama went out to talk to him. I couldn’t hear what they said, but I could see Mama’s body language. She had her arms crossed, chin up, that look she got when she was being stubborn.”
Michael stared at the photograph of his mother. “Elder Crenshaw was pointing his finger at her, jabbing it toward her face. She didn’t back down. Just stood there taking it. Then he drove off and Mama came back inside. She saw me watching and told me to stay away from Elder Crenshaw, that he was a mean old man who liked to stick his nose where it didn’t belong.”
“And then?” Dash prompted.
“About a week later, I heard her on the phone with Reverend Pickering. It was late, maybe ten o’clock. I’d gotten up to get water.” Michael’s voice went quieter. “She was pacing in the kitchen, and I heard her say ‘I know where you’re getting the money, George. Don’t think I haven’t figured it out.’ She was quiet for a minute, then she said, ‘We need to talk about this in person. Not here. Not at the church. Somewhere private.’”
The funeral home’s air-conditioning hummed steadily, a counterpoint to the silence.
“That was the last time I heard her voice,” Michael said. “She left Friday evening, told me to heat up the casserole in the fridge for dinner, that she’d be home late. She kissed the top of my head and walked out the door.” His hands were shaking now. “The next morning, the police came to tell me she was dead.”
The mockingbird called again outside, its song unchanged, cheerful, oblivious. Life going on while we sat here excavating death.
“Is Elder Crenshaw still alive?” Dash asked, making a note.
“I think so,” Michael said. “He’d be in his eighties now. Last I heard, he moved to one of those retirement communities on the mainland after his wife died. Sea Pines or Oak Grove or one of those places with pleasant in the name that’s supposed to make you forget you’re waiting to die.”
Beside me, Chowder shifted, his bow tie slightly askew, his expression thoughtful in that way French bulldogs sometimes get when they’re processing something important. Or possibly gas. With Chowder, it was hard to tell.
“Did your mother ever mention anyone else who worried her?” Dash pressed gently, still watching Michael with that focused attention that missed nothing.
“Not that I can think of,” he said.
“Did you tell the police any of this?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. I could see it in the guilt that lived in his eyes.
“I was ten years old,” Michael said. “The detectives who interviewed me were scary—these big men in uniforms with guns on their hips and voices that sounded like they were used to people doing what they said. They kept asking if Mama had been happy, if she’d been sad, if there had been arguments at home. They’d already decided what they thought happened—scandalous affair, crime of passion, maybe my dad did it, maybe it was a mugging gone wrong.”
He stood abruptly, pacing to the window again like he couldn’t bear to sit still under the weight of memory. “I tried to tell them about Elder Crenshaw, about the phone call I’d heard, but they weren’t really listening. They were just checking boxes, going through motions, waiting to move on to whatever case was next.”
“And Sheriff Milton?” Dash asked, and something in his voice had gone hard, cold, like steel left out in winter.
