Free Cold Morning by Ed Ifkovic Page A

resignation the rest of her body communicated. She stood there, silent, one hand moved to her stringy hair and tucking a loose strand under the old-fashioned cloth hat with bunched-up roses. For a moment she shivered, her chin dipping into her chest.
    Then, surprisingly, that same hand slowly reached out and grasped my forearm. Though I wore my fur coat, insulated against the cold day, her touch was electric, a bolt that made me gasp.
    â€œYes?”
    â€œI’m Cora Lee Thomas.” A strangled whisper escaped her throat. “Cody Lee’s ma.” She pointed back to the jail, her fleshless fingertips suspended in the air.
    I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.
    â€œThey won’t let me see my boy until Sheriff Curtiss returns. I been waiting all morning.”
    â€œThat’s unconscionable.”
    She squinted at me. “Don’t know what that’s about, but they promised me.”
    â€œYou wanted to talk to me?”
    She nodded. “I heard you in there.” Again, she pointed back to the jail.
    â€œI’m sorry, Mrs. Thomas. I know I spoke against your son, but…”
    She broke in, heated. “No, no, don’t. You done what you got to do, Miss Ferber. And”—she actually smiled and I noticed a missing tooth that made her look frail—“it was what everyone tells them. Cody Lee and that Annabel woman was like hateful cats tucked under a blanket in a straw basket. Sooner or later the claws come out.”
    â€œAnd yet they saw each other.”
    She scoffed. “Strange words, them ones. ‘Saw each other.’ My Cody is a foolish boy—man, of course—but one long given to boyish infatuations. All his life, and him thirty-five next Tuesday. A girl looks at him and he…like melts. This Annabel, she…” One of the reporters monitoring the jail stepped closer, peering at the two of us. A passing car backfired, and someone applauded. Another reporter joined the first, watching me, perhaps hoping for any tidbit of Lindbergh fodder.
    â€œBuy you a cup of coffee at the drug store?” she asked in a low voice.
    She pointed to Maynard’s Drug Store a few storefronts over. I nodded.
    Inside, the soda fountain counter was packed, a few folks swiveling on the stools checking us out. Reporters, mainly, because I recognized one from a Milwaukee news syndicate. He glanced at me, recognizing me, and then at Cora Lee Thomas, whom he didn’t. His eyes drifted down her shabby coat, her withered face. He turned away. Cora Lee strode to the back of the drug store, chose a marble-topped ice-cream parlor table by the kitchen door, lost in the shadow from the brick wall, and sat down with her back to the customers. I slid into a chair opposite her. We said nothing as I ordered two coffees, mine with whipped cream, the waitress never removing the pencil tucked into her hair, just nodding and walking away. “Black,” Cora Lee yelled after the waitress. “But real hot, please.”
    â€œTell me what you want,” I began.
    A long sigh that broke at the end. “No one believes my Cody Lee is innocent.”
    A heartbeat. “And you think I do?”
    She smiled thinly. “Yes.”
    â€œBut why?”
    She shrugged. “I heard you talk of Annabel in there. You didn’t like her.”
    â€œBut that doesn’t mean I don’t believe your son killed her. There are hundreds of people I dislike, some I actually despise, but I don’t believe they should be murdered.” I smiled. “Tempting as it sometimes is for me.”
    She shook her head back and forth. “You showed up there. The jail. Something bothered you.” She drew her lips into a razor-thin line. “He was with me that night, Miss Ferber. And the sheriff won’t believe me.” She locked eyes with mine. “You will.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œYou’re not a fool.”
    â€œTell