Liar's Bench Read Free

ruling this a suicide.”
    I stiffened. “Suicide? No. No way! Everything was just fine when I visited her Thursday. . . .” I ran my hand over my face to swab off the sorrow left trailing down my cheeks. “I don’t believe for one minute Mama took her life!”
    Daddy shook his head and studied his secretary as she crossed the street toward his courthouse office. “Me neither, baby.” Weary, he pulled himself up. “I’m so glad you got to see her yesterday. . . . Right now I’m fixin’ to head on over to Ella’s to talk with the sheriff and the coroner. I’ll take you on home first.”
    I stood to face him. “No, I have to see her. I’m going with you.” I planted my feet firmly in front of his.
    He cleared his throat, ready to lend argument and put his foot down with me.
    I crossed my arms. “I’m old enough to go with you. I’m seventeen now—an adult.”
    Daddy cocked his head and shoved his hands deep inside his pockets. “You sure ’bout this?”
    My throat locked up, forcing out a croaked, “Yes.” With a shaky hand, I grabbed the back of Liar’s Bench, leaving one more lie to soak in and feed.

2
    The Better Liar
    B y the time we reached Mama’s, I was having second thoughts. Despite it being one of the hottest days of the year in Kentucky, a cold shiver slid over my body. I peered upward to distance myself from the crime scene before me and watched the choreographed movements of a flock of birds veer, then turn in an unpredictable fashion, erratically stippling the summer skies. Their puzzling flight was punctuated by the intermittent cries coming from inside my mama’s house, those of my seven-month-old baby half sister, Genevieve.
    Daddy flexed his jaw and I saw his soft gray eyes darken to cavern-cold. “Daddy . . . Mama wouldn’t kill herself. And that one trooper said she did it in front of baby Genevieve. . . .”
    â€œShush, baby.” He squinted his eyes to keep out the broiling sun, intent on the exchange of conversation nearby.
    We watched Sheriff Allen, aptly nicknamed “Jingles.” It was a well-known Peckinpaw fact that you could hear him coming long before you saw the glint of his spit-polished gold badge.
    Jingles unsnapped his official oversized jail key ring from his utility belt and pulled off another ring that held his rabbit’s foot, a metal horse-head bottle opener from the Dixie Brewing company, and his lucky Indian head penny, then ducked into his car to place a set of keys in the ignition. He grabbed his clipboard and jingled his way back and forth across my mama’s front yard, pausing to talk to the different officials scattered around. He stopped a few feet from us and tapped his clipboard’s pages with a pen.
    The sheriff sneaked a peek at me, then shuffled a little farther away so that he was partially hidden behind a police cruiser. But not far enough away that I couldn’t hear.
    I listened in horror as Jingles explained to the state trooper standing beside him. “I’m not gonna call it yet, Herb.... And nobody’s gonna put much stock in the neighbor’s statement, him being touched and all.... Hell, it does look suspicious, what with how many times Ella showed up for her shift wearing sunglasses to hide Whitlock’s marks.”
    â€œAnd with him stoned out of his mind on LSD and God-knows-what-else, he could’ve done this,” the state trooper chimed in. “And then there’s her suitcase—out and half-filled. Looks to me like she had enough of living with him, not just in simply living.”
    Suitcase? I tried to remember if I’d seen one when I was visiting her yesterday.
    Jingles shook his head. As his voice softened, his words slowed and slid easily away. “Some days that gal would jus’ sit at that desk of hers an’ refuse to take off those sunglasses, all the whiles,