F Is for Fugitive

at her wine with an odd cast to her mouth, as if she'd been asked to down a glass of liniment.
    "I take it you're not crazy about Chardonnay," I remarked.
    She smiled apologetically. "I don't drink very often. Bailey's the only one who ever developed a taste for it."
    I thought I'd have to pump her for background information, but she surprised me by volunteering a quick family time line. The Fowlers, she said, had never been enthusiastic about alcohol. She claimed this was a function of her mother's diabetes, but to me it seemed in perfect keeping with the dour fundamentalist mentality that pervaded the place.
    According to Ann, Royce had been born and raised in Tennessee and the dark strains of his Scots heritage had rendered him joyless, taciturn, and wary of excess. He'd been nineteen at the height of the Depression, migrating west on a succession of boxcars. He'd heard there was work in the oilfields in California, where the rigs were springing up like a metallic forest just south of Los Angeles. He'd met Oribelle, en route, at a dime-a-dip dinner at a Baptist church in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She was eighteen, soured by disease, resigned to a life of scriptures and insulin dependency. She was working in her father's feed store, and the most she could look forward to was the annual trip to the mule market in Fort Smith.
    Royce had appeared at the church that Wednesday night, having hopped off a freight in search of a hot meal. Ann said Ori still talked of her first sight of him, standing in the door, a broad-shouldered youth with hair the color of hemp. Oribelle introduced herself as he went through the supper line, piling his plate high with macaroni and cheese, which was her specialty. By the end of the evening, she'd heard his entire life story and she invited him home with her afterward. He slept in the barn, taking all his meals with the family. He remained a guest of the Baileys for two weeks, during which she was in such a fever pitch of hormones that she'd twice gone into ketoacidosis and had had to be briefly hospitalized. Her parents took this as evidence that Royce's influence was wicked. They talked to her long and hard about her giving him up, but nothing would dissuade her from the course she had set. She was determined to marry Royce. When her father opposed the courtship, she took all the money set aside for secretarial school and ran off with him. That was in 1932.
    "It's odd for me to picture either one of them caught up in high passion," I said.
    She smiled. "Me too: I should show you a photo. She was actually quite beautiful. Of course, I wasn't born until six years later – 1938 – and Bailey came along five years after me. Whatever heat they felt was burned out by then, but the bond is still strong. The irony is, we all thought she'd die long before him, and now it looks like he'll go first."
    "What's actually wrong with him?"
    "Pancreatic cancer. They're saying six months."
    "Which he knows?"
    "Oh yes. It's one of the reasons he's so thrilled about Bailey's showing up. He talks about heartbreak but he doesn't mean a word of it."
    "What about you? How do you feel?
    "Relieved, I guess. Even if he goes back to prison, I'll have someone to help me get through the next few months. The responsibility's been crushing ever since he disappeared."
    "How's your mother handling this?"
    "Badly. She's what they call a 'brittle' diabetic, which means she's always been in fragile health. Any kind of emotional upset is hard on her. Stress. I guess it gets to all of us one way or another, myself included. Ever since Pop was diagnosed as terminal, my life's been hell."
    "You mentioned you were on a leave of absence from work,"
    "I had no choice. Someone has to be here twenty-four hours a day. We can't afford professional care, so I'm 'it.' "
    "Rough."
    "I shouldn't complain. I'm sure there are people out there who have it worse."
    I shifted the subject. "You have any theories about who killed the Timberlake girl?"
    Ann shook her head. "I wish I did. She was a student at the high school, as well as Bailey's girl."
    "She spent a lot of time here?"
    "A fair amount. Less while Bailey was off in jail."
    "And you're convinced he had nothing to do with her death?"
    "I don't know what to believe," she said flatly. "I don't want to think he did it. On the other hand, I've never liked the idea that the killer could still be around someplace."
    "He won't like it either, now that Bailey's back in custody. Somebody must