Carnal Innocence

bent to lift an unopened bucket of paint and turned it back and forth in his broad hands.
    “He accused you of stealing.”
    “He said I took some rope from his place. But I never took nothing wasn’t mine in my life.”
    “And there’ve been hard feelings between you since.”
    Toby continued to shift the can. Caroline could hear the paint slop gently inside. “We ain’t been what you’d call neighborly.”
    Burns took a pad out of his pocket. “Sheriff Truesdale has a report of a cross-burning on your lawn some six months ago. According to your statement, you believedAustin Hatinger and his son, Vernon, were responsible.”
    Something cold and hard flashed into Toby’s eyes. “I couldn’t prove it. I couldn’t prove it when I came out of Larsson’s one evening and found the tires on my truck slashed, either. And Vernon Hatinger was standing across the street paring his fingernails with his pocket knife and grinning. Even when Vernon says to me I should be glad it was my tires this time and not my face, I couldn’t prove anything. So I just said what I thought. Hatinger didn’t like his boy being seen with mine.”
    “There was an altercation between you and Austin Hatinger a few weeks later, in the hardware store, where he threatened to harm your son if you didn’t keep him away from Cy. Is that true?”
    “He come in while I was buying some three-penny nails. He said some things.”
    “Do you recall what things?”
    Toby’s jaw set. “He said, ‘Nigger, keep your little black bastard away from what’s mine or I’ll peel the skin off him.’ I said if he touched my boy, I’d kill him.”
    The quiet, dispassionate way Toby said it sent a chill racing up Caroline’s spine.
    “He said some more things, quoting scripture and talking trash about how us ‘coons’ forgot where was our place. Then he picked up a hammer. We got to fighting there in the store, and somebody took off for the sheriff, I guess, cause he come hauling ass and broke it up.”
    “And did you say to Hatinger something along the lines of …” He consulted his pad again. “‘You’d be better off worrying about how often that girl of yours is spreading her legs than about Cy fishing with my Jim’?”
    “I mighta.”
    “And the girl you were referring to was the now-deceased Edda Lou Hatinger?”
    Slowly, Toby set down the paint can. “He was saying things about my family. Shouting filth about my Jim and my little Lucy and my wife. Not a week before that Vernon stopped my wife on the street and told her she’d best keep a closer eye on her boy before he got himself a broken arm or leg. A man don’t have to take that from nobody.”
    “And so you brought up Miss Hatinger’s sexual habits.”
    Toby’s skin heated with anger. “I was mad. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve brought in his kin since it was him that riled me.”
    “But I’m curious how you happen to be acquainted with the deceased’s sexual habits.”
    “Everybody knows it didn’t take much to get her on her back.” He looked at Caroline with mute apology.
    “And do you have personal knowledge of that?”
    Now the fury flashed, bright as a sword in his eyes. Frightened by it, Caroline stepped forward to lay a warning hand on his arm.
    “I took vows to a woman fifteen years ago,” Toby said, clenching his fists. “I’ve been faithful to her.”
    “Well, Mr. March, I have a witness who claims you visited Edda Lou Hatinger three or four times in her room at the Innocence Boarding House.”
    “That’s a shit-faced lie. I never been in her room— not when she was there.”
    “But you were in her room?”
    Toby began to feel something very much like a noose tighten around his throat. “Mrs. Koons hired me on to do some work there. I retrimmed the windows in all the rooms. Did some painting, too.”
    “And when you did your work in Edda Lou’s room, you were alone?”
    “That’s right.”
    “You were never in the room with her?”
    Toby stared at Burns for a slow five seconds. “When she came in, I went out,” he said simply. “Now I gotta get my work done and see to my boy.”
    When Toby stepped off the porch and around the side, Caroline realized she was trembling. “That was horrible.”
    “I’m sorry, Caroline.” Burns put his pad away. “Questioning suspects can be difficult.”
    “You don’t believe he killed that girl because of the hateful things her father did.” Though she wanted to shout it, she forced herself to speak