Six Cats A Slayin'

“When Billy was about eight—did I tell you Billy was the oldest? I meant to. Well, Jack Albritton went out hunting one day with one of the little ones, a boy going on four years old. When Jack got back that evening, he didn’t have the boy with him. Claimed he lost sight of the boy in the woods, and even though he searched and called for him for hours, he never found him.” She shivered suddenly. “In those days there were still bears and panthers in the woods. I remember my mama telling me how they would hear the panthers scream at night, and she and her sister would get under the bed and hide.” Her hands were shaking a little as she grasped her mug and brought it to her mouth.

“Sounds pretty terrifying,” I said.

Melba nodded. “Jack’s daddy said a bear or a panther must have gotten the boy, but they never found any trace of him. Wasn’t long, though, before Jack came home with a new rifle and some new clothes for himself and his wife. The kids got new things, too. Jack claimed he’d done something to help a man with money, and the man was so grateful that he gave Jack a big reward. I guess they had no choice but to believe him, because he swore up and down it was true.

“The family didn’t move to Athena until some years later, around when Billy was ready to start high school. Billy’s mama wanted him to have an education so he could do better than she and his daddy had done. His daddy got a job as a mechanic, plus a timber company bought their land. The Norwoods’ land, too.

“This would have been about six years after the little boy disappeared. Mrs. Norwood said one day when she was shopping, she came across a woman and a boy about nine or ten—he was a little on the small side, she said. Anyway, the boy looked kind of familiar, Mrs. Norwood thought, but she couldn’t place him right off. She didn’t know the woman’s name, although she found out later on. Turned out it was Mrs. Halbert.”

Melba must have noticed my perplexed expression. I had no idea who Mrs. Halbert was.

“She was Deirdre Thompson’s mama,” Melba said. “Deirdre was a Halbert.”

“Okay.” I had an idea where this rambling tale was leading, but I had a piece of the puzzle Melba didn’t. I waited for her to continue and finish the story.

“Everybody knows that Mr. and Mrs. Halbert had only one biological child, and that was Deirdre. But about six years before Mrs. Norwood saw Mrs. Halbert with this boy, they came back from a trip—or so they said—and had a boy with them. Claimed he was the son of friends of theirs who’d died suddenly. The Halberts had adopted him. Named him Ronnie.”

I didn’t remember Ronnie Halbert at all, but I knew Melba would enlighten me.

“Mrs. Norwood saw Mrs. Halbert and Ronnie a couple times more, and it finally hit her why he looked familiar. She thought he looked a little like Mrs. Albritton, Billy’s mama. Billy and his sister took after Jack in looks.”

I finally couldn’t resist a question. “Did Mrs. Norwood talk to Mrs. Albritton about this?”

“She couldn’t,” Melba said. “Mrs. Albritton had died about a year before that, not long after Jack had moved him and his kids to Athena, along with his parents and some of his youngest brothers and sisters.

“Mrs. Norwood didn’t care much for Jack, she told me. Thought he was a pretty rough character. She wasn’t about to go up to him and ask him if Ronnie Halbert was really his little boy. He would have denied it, of course, but Mrs. Norwood has always believed that Ronnie Halbert was Jack Albritton’s little boy, Jerry.”

The name clinched it for me. She really had been Gerry Albritton all along, although somewhere along the way Jerry had become Geraldine—after being Ronnie Halbert for a number of years. Was this the key to her murder? I thought it had to be. Deirdre Thompson, in my mind, suddenly moved to the number one spot on the list of suspects.

“Tell me about Ronnie Halbert,” I said. “I don’t remember anybody by that name. He had to be around eight to ten years older than you and me.”

“Close to ten, I think,” Melba replied. “I remember seeing him around town. He always dressed nice and had his own car. Mr. Halbert spoiled him rotten. He and Mrs. Halbert couldn’t have any more kids, and he wanted a son more than anything. So Ronnie got anything he wanted. Ronnie was good-looking, and he had girls running after him all the time.”

“Sounds like he was on the wild side,” I said.

Melba nodded. “Yes, but he never got arrested for anything. Mr. Halbert paid people off, I always heard. One day, though, as the story goes, he had a big fight with Mr. Halbert. He ran off and never came back. People said he went into the army or the navy, but nobody knew for sure. Killed his daddy. Mr. Halbert grieved himself to death.”

“That’s a really sad story,” I said, and I meant it. So much unhappiness, and Gerry had been at the center of it, but not by choice.