As it was, we didn’t have to worry about Miz Suze Campbell gettin’ away that day, ’cause she up and asked Granpap Ed if he had a room to rent. Well, Grandpap Ed, he shot Mam a look, and whatever he saw there musta overcome his fear of havin’ a possible murderer on the premises ’cause he agreed to let her have one of the unused rooms upstairs.
She’s been here a week, and doesn’t go out much. The sheriff, he came by and talked to her a long time, but the word that got around was that he couldn’t get anything outa her, and didn’t have no evidence to do anything. We all kinda thought, well, it’d be mighty strange if she was the murderer, since she wanted to stick around. And Mam, she’s been takin’ her meals up to her, and, to most folks’ surprise, seems to like her. Grandpap Ed, he’s still kinda wary-like.
So on this early December day, we were all just kinda loafin’ around, feelin’, at least if most folks were like me, pretty bored and uneasy at the same time. Somethin’ needed to happen.
And happen it did! Miz Suze, she happened to be comin’ downstairs into the store just about the time one of the ornery Turner boys who owns the now defunct mines was comin’ in the door. He took one look at her, and turned his sorry self around and high-tailed it back out the door quicker than a wink, but she was on him like stink on poop (pardon the expression). We could hear a big ruckus commencin’ on the front porch, and all of us nearly busted a gut crowdin’ together at the door to see what was happenin.’
Well, furniture was a’flyin’ through the air, and we all dove for cover, includin’ the Turner boy. That Suze, she was on a rampage, and the air was blue with some of the language she was usin.’ He was kinda cringin’ on the floor in front of her, tryin’ to protect his head from the blows she was rainin’ on him with that knapsack of hers, and she was callin’ him every name in the book.
As it turns out, what we came to find out from our eavesdroppin’ (although we couldn’t help but hear by a long shot) was that Suze was thinkin’ she was married to that sorry son-of-a-gun, and that letter she’d been waitin for? — well, it was evidently from her lawyer, stayin’ she wasn’t, ’cause, as we all knew, that Turner boy, he’s already been married and has a kid. And she was lettin’ him know in no uncertain terms that she was not pleased to find herself hitched to a bigamist, especially seein’ as how she was with child herself (I think Mam either knew or suspected, and that’s why she was kinda sympathetic-like to Suze).
It was a regular mellerdrama, and relieved our minds from bein’ so worried and down and all about the mines closin’ and havin’ no work. And as nobody sided with that Turner guy, Suze was gettin’ a lot of attention for her plight of bein’ married to a bigamist. Although I gotta say, she really didn’t need it, our sympathy, I mean. She was one heckuva woman. By week’s end, she had got a bundle from the Turner lawyer, and as a last favor to Mam for bein’ so nice to her, she had extracted a promise from that lawyer to get each laid-off man a nice bonus.
Now while that wasn’t gonna solve the problem, it did relieve a lot of minds and hearts, leastwise for a little while. And although Mam, she begged Miz Suze to stay, she wouldn’t do it — she had a promise from somebody out in Texas about teachin’ school, and maybe, she said, she’d even get a husband if she had to. Me, I’m bettin’ on Miz Suze.
With that chapter kinda closed, our minds turned back to the murder. And the silver . . .