Free The Do-Right by Lisa Sandlin Page A

diamond she’d set on his counter, and he would learn her face.
    Delpha’s hand moved. She rolled the pouch until she could grasp it and lifted it out over the dice, all the time her fingertips were squeezing the loose-weave burlap for stones. Felt none. When she got a close look, her breath freed itself in a rush. She sat back on her heels. A damn tobacco pouch. Somebody hiding their smokes in a secret place. That’s all it was.
    She loosened its yellow drawstring, stirred her finger around inside, sniffed again. Its faint odor spoke of age, this was old leaves, and not tobacco exactly—she guessed dried hemp. Wild hemp grew in the Big Thicket, but this had to be the kind made reefers. Explained the hiding. She’d known a woman in Gatesville serving seven years for it, and five kids at home.
    Little orange paper glued to the pouch held the rolling papers. RizLa+. Lacroix Fils. 24 papers. Some left. The loose scrap back there—she plucked it out—yep, it was a rolling paper too.
    With handwriting on it.
    Don’t smoke all this without me sunshine .
    Sweet. Mrs. Jessie smoking reefer. With her husband, Mr. Sunshine Speir the stockbroker. The thought tickled Delpha.
    Moselle, the day nurse, bored out of her mind?
    Smart money would be on Ida. The scorepad, the dice, the pouch, Ida must have known about this compartment, maybe fixed it up herself. Forgot about it. Shorted out the brain cells that remembered this hidey-hole.
    But wait, what Ida said about her mother. Went away with a morphine-fiend. If the couple liked morphine, mighthave liked reefer too. And sunshine —sweet on each other, sweet on hemp, not enough sweetness for their baby daughter.
    All happened back in the shadows of the long ago. Shame that shadows were so damn long.
    Delpha fitted the sunshine paper in with the others in the orange placket and replaced the items in the drawer. Wiped off the wood piece, tapped it in, closed up the drawer. She straightened and leaned over the vanity table. Who’d care if she touched the prickly-glass atomizer. Be more naturelle if she had—she squeezed its bulb. She expected it to be dry, but a burst of flower petals picked sixty years ago bloomed out, rich, oily, diffusing over the stale room. Delpha sprayed her wrists, then rubbed them together, sprayed a blast toward Mrs. Speir, bless her old heart, curled like a shrimp drying on a plate.
    She dropped the handkerchief in her purse, then snatched up the rubber gloves, which she stowed away under the kitchen sink, and left.

VIII VIII
    PHELAN MADE THE rounds of the motels, looking for the black Seville. Nothing the first few nights, but he felt useful, employed, and he kept circling, following the list Miss Wade had typed up, starting with the ones closest to Elliott’s office. Beaumont, smack on I-10 between Houston and New Orleans, had a shitload of motels. Tonight he’d found three black Sevilles but not with the right plate. On the whole, he preferred cruising the tourist courts where people had their doors propped open, some standing outside swapping cigarettes, beer and conversation, ice machines doing a steady business. The pricier the place, the quieter, except for kids hooting in the swimming pools.
    He got a burger at the Pig Stand, grease soaking through the crinkly white paper. Lined his lap with napkins and ate. Made a pit stop at a 7-11, came out keys in one hand, large coffee in the other, package of dessert Twinkies clamped in his teeth.
    Two empty spaces over, a pudgy teenager jawing into the passenger window of a Dodge Coronet bellowed, “You know what. Just forget it, Diane.” He straightened, then bent into the window again and shoved the girl’s head. She pitched toward the steering wheel.
    Phelan detoured over and booted the guy in the ass, at the price of jogging hot coffee over his left hand. Dropped theTwinkies into his key hand and said, “Cut that shit out. Mean little turd.