Chapter Eight
Francis was there with the Rolls when we walked out the front door of the club into the bright afternoon sunlight. It was very quiet out there in the country, but with the heat at its worst the crickets were making an awful din. The car was cool and comfortable inside, though, and we rode back to Aunt Millie’s house in style.
Francis walked Aunt Millie into her house because it was time for her nap, and Lester said goodbye and headed across the quiet street to his own house. I followed a moment later and pulled my grandmother’s Chevy across into Millie’s driveway to spare her the trouble of walking, and I cranked the air conditioning all the way up and put the windows down. The heat didn’t help her breathing any. As I pulled out, she told me: “Millie said to stop over to the bakery before we go home. She called over there and told them to set some cookies and doughnuts and things aside for you, baby.”
I smiled and headed for the Oak Street Bakery.
The bakery was set back from Oak Street with a patch of grass in front of it and well©manicured shrubs and flowering bushes guarding its entrance. In front of it was a low brick building with glass entrance doors; in back was the bakery itself and the shipping dock. I walked in and saw the stairs leading up to the offices on the right and the glass door to the sales area on the left. I went in to my left and stood with three other people who were waiting to place their orders. The air in there was so cold that I rubbed my arms with my hands and shivered a bit.
When it was my turn, I asked the woman behind the counter if she had a package for Mrs. Lovett. She smiled and found two boxes of delicacies that had been tied up with red and white string and then tied together, one on top of the other.
“You enjoy these now, you hear?” she said, smiling. I was curious about Raymond Mackenzie but it was too busy in there and she hurried on to help the next customer.
I went out to the car, which was idling with the air conditioning on, and drove my grandmother home. “Does Lester III still work there?” I asked her, recalling that he used to fill the jelly doughnuts with jelly when he was younger.
“I believe he does,” she replied. “He’s up in the office now, though, since he’s out of school.” Lester III had graduated from SMU with a degree in business and had gone straight into the family store.
“I think it’s time I paid him a visit,” I said. “I’ll take you home and then come back. Do you think he’s there now?”
“I don’t see why he wouldn’t be,” she replied.
I took her home and helped her get inside and comfortable. She was in her dressing gown and in bed, ready to watch a TV game show, when I left. The heat had not abated and it was over a hundred, but I took my car this time, rolling down all of the windows for some natural air conditioning.
At the bakery, I parked on the far side of the entrance, not wanting my big yellow Chevy to attract too much attention. I was still in my slacks from the visit to the country club, so I hoped to fit in among the casual executives upstairs in the bakery offices.
At the top of the stairs was another set of glass doors, and inside them was a waiting room with two sofas, a table with magazines stacked neatly on top, and a desk with a young woman sitting behind it.
She was about twenty-five and looked high maintenance. Her blond hair was teased out and pulled back with a bow. Her green eyes sparkled through a hint of mascara, her full lips were colored a reddish-brown, and her royal blue blouse looked like it was made of silk and hugged her body in all the right places, though since she was sitting down I couldn’t quite see all the right places that I wanted to see.
“Can I help you?” She looked at me and smiled. My thoughts were not where they should be just then and I paused a moment. She brushed a wisp of hair back from the side of her face where it had fallen.
I recovered my composure. “Yes,” I said. “Is Mr. Macaboo here?”
“Which one?” she asked.
“The third,” I replied.
“Who shall I say is calling?” she asked me. I told her, and added that we were cousins. She spoke into her telephone and told me to have a seat. She went back to reading a magazine and I tried not to stare.
A minute later, Lester III came bounding through the door from the back office, full of life and enthusiasm.
“Carey Lovett! What brings you here? I haven’t seen you in a lot of years!”
I stood and we shook hands. Lester III was as tall as I but stockier. He had been a second-string football player with the Ransom High School football team, the Lions, when I was a boy, and I still had an autographed photo of him catching a football tucked away in a drawer somewhere.
“I’m down here visiting for awhile,” I told him. “I’m staying with Mary.”
“How is she?” he asked, and I told him. “Do you want to see the bakery? I can give you the grand tour.”
“I’d like that,” I replied, and we headed out of the reception area and down the stairs. He led me through the sales room and behind the counter, and we went into the back where the ovens and kitchens were.
“I’ve been playing amateur detective, you know,” I told him as he showed me how the doughnuts and cakes were made. “I’ve been following the story of the girl who was shot at the Juneteenth parade.”
Lester looked at me a bit strangely, though I didn’t think much of it at the time. We headed back to the loading docks, where I saw several black men jump up when they saw us. They had been sitting on the edge of the truck dock talking, but as we walked in one grabbed a broom and two others began to stack boxes.
“Why would you be interested in something like that?” Lester asked me. “I’d think you could find better things to occupy your time in Ransom.”
I looked at him for a few seconds and he held his grin. I looked out at the open parking lot beyond the doors of the loading dock and spoke, looking back at him as I did.
“Lester,” I began, “my family comes from Texas, but I’ve lived up north all my life. I have to tell you that things are different. A person gets killed, you want to know something about it. This girl, Lulabelle, was shot on the main street of downtown Ransom in broad daylight, and as far as I can tell, nobody much cares.” I looked at him, and his grin had faded.
“Now you listen to me boy,” he said to me in a low voice. “We have a police force here and they can handle it. Don’t you think you’re a little out of your league meddling in police business? It’s only a nigger.”
I looked around at the black men working on the dock, some less than a dozen feet away. None looked up. “It may be only a nigger, Lester,” I said, “but still something should be done.” I was thinking about Sally Ann and her bracelet.
Lester looked at me like I was some new kind of doughnut and he couldn’t find the hole for the jelly. Then he laughed and the tension broke.
“Okay, you convinced me. Go ahead and play detective. I don’t care. How will you find anything anyway?”
“I was thinking I’d start by asking you about Raymond.”
“Her brother?”
“Yeah. I heard he disappeared.”
Lester looked out at the parking lot. “Raymond wasn’t the best worker we ever had here, Carey.”
I waited for more.
“About a week ago he didn’t show up for work. It wasn’t the first time. I heard he ran with a bad crowd of niggers and I just figured he got drunk and went off for awhile.” He hesitated for a moment. “I didn’t fire him, you know.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“If I fired a nigger every time one didn’t show up for work, I’d have no one left to load the trucks.” We both laughed.
“Have you heard from him?”
“Not a word. And that’s all I know about that.” He kicked a pecan with the tip of his boot and it went skittering across the dock and over the edge, into the parking lot.
“Are we done?” he asked me, and I nodded and smiled.
“Thanks for the tour, Lester. I didn’t mean to . . .”
“Don’t worry about it. I like detective shows, too, Carey, and I didn’t mean to get red with you.”
“Can I go out this way?” I asked, gesturing toward the edge of the dock.
“Sure,” he said. “Go right ahead.” We shook hands
and he walked off back to the office.
I walked over to the edge of the dock and headed down the concrete stairs to the parking lot outside. As I turned the corner, a young black man surprised me by stepping away from the side of the building and blocking my path.
“Can I help you?” I asked, without smiling.
“T’aint me you can help,” he said, his accent heavy and his voice deep. “It’s yo’self.” Then he hit me hard in the stomach. My wind was gone, and he hit me again, in the mouth. I went down.
“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled at him.
“Shut up,” he told me. “Shut you white mouth.” He kicked me in the side and I rolled into the grass. “Don’t you come messin’ ‘round here asking more questions about Raymond, you hear?”
I struggled to my feet. “But I was . . .”
He grabbed my face, pinching my cheeks between his strong, black fingers. “No more. Get me? And if you do, your grandmother might get hurt, real bad. And don’t go tellin’ anyone about this, either.”
I was able to mutter an “okay” and he let me go. He pulled a bandanna out of his hip pocket and wiped sweat off his face. He walked around the corner of the building toward the dock and out of sight.
I leaned against the side of the building for a few minutes, catching my breath and wondering what was going
on. When I felt able, I walked back to the front of the bakery and got in my car.
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