Tales from Mulberry Rock

By Sylvia Nickels

Most folks in Mulberry Rock mind their own business. Well, most of the time. But when one week in late spring word began circulating that Frannie Komer was found in flagrante delicto, intoxicated, with a young, and dead, naked male next to her you could hardly blame anyone for their interest. In a tiny burg like Mulberry Rock news travels through town faster than a buck with a rack of ten antlers on the first day of deer season chased by a dozen guys in orange vests. And it was especially scandalous since it involved Frannie. I've lived here all of my sixty years and nothing in my memory compares to it.
She's a quiet unassuming young woman, started working at the library right after she was graduated from Rockwater County High four years ago. Frannie was three when Terrie Sue, her mother, shook off the dust of Mulberry Rock. Gonna be a California Girl, she said. If Frannie or her dad, Doug, a long-distance truck driver, ever saw or heard from her nobody knew. Doug's mama looked after Frannie until she broke a hip and had to go to a nursing home when Frannie was fourteen.
Frannie babysat with most of the children in town all through high school and even after she got the library job. No parent had the slightest reservation in leaving even an infant in her care. And the head librarian in her annual report to the council always gave Frannie high performance marks.
So the shock waves through the community were stronger than three years ago when Burton Hall killed his wife, Sadie, in a drunken rage. For more than twenty years I've been one of High Sheriff Rob Sharop's two constables and privy to about all the shady goings-on in the county. Probably was the subject of some gossip myself when I thought Doug and I might have something going for us after Terrie Sue left him.
Three years ago I was serving a jury summons nearby the day Burton shot Sadie and was one of the first on the gruesome scene. Burton's shotgun succeeded where his fists and boots had failed, not for want of trying. I tried to comfort Sadie in her last minutes on this earth.
Rockwater County is mostly rural, covers at most thirty-five square miles, with only three small communities and the county seat, Mulberry Rock, so a hot bed of crime the county is not. The last murder in Mulberry Rock before Burton grabbed his shotgun and dispatched Sadie to the hereafter was at least ten years ago. And that one didn't involve any locals. Well, it did involve Kat Mayfield Holder, my cousin, but only because the two salesmen were staying at her rooming house on Broad Street. They got into an argument and one bashed the other on the head with Kat's best living room lamp. I don't think the blood all over her rug bothered Kat as much as the broken lamp. Casper Holder, her late husband from over at Hilldale, bought it at a yard sale over there when he was visiting his brother.
Thursday morning Maisie Sharop, Rob's secretary, grabbed my arm and pulled me into her office when I went by to pick up the divorce petition I had to serve on Lula Wetherly. Maisie's Rob's niece, but no nepotism there. Nobody else wanted the job because she also has to fill in for Cora Jennings's breaks and lunch. Cora being the day dispatcher. Rob and his deputies take turns handling dispatch at night.
"Harrie, have you heard about it?"
I could see she was busting her girdle to be the first one to tell me. So I let her. "Heard about what?"
"You don't know about the man in Frannie Komer's bedroom?"
I stopped trying to spot Lula's name on the petitions Maisie had lined up on her desk. "What?"
"He was naked, too. Can you imagine little Miss Frannie with a naked man in her bed? She's had us all fooled."
"He was in her bed?" I pried her fingers from my arm before they left permanent blue indentations. "Frannie's over twenty-one."
 "Well, Zeke didn't exactly say he was in her bed. But where else, if he was buck naked?"
"Why would Zeke be involved? Was she raped? Did she report it?"
"Raped? I didn't hear anything about rape. I heard Frannie had all her clothes on. Did Zeke tell you that?"
"Lord, Maisie. You're telling the story. I have not talked to Zeke."
"If you haven't talked to Zeke, where have you been all night?"
Maisie's the town's gossip queen, though there are plenty of contenders. I tried to deflect her inquisition. "I caught a movie in Stillwater. Turned my phone off."
"Cora stayed over last night until Karl could get here, he was stuck in a traffic backup on I-59 coming from Ft. Payne. So Cora got the 911 call about ten-thirty last night. When did you get back from Stillwater?" She was like a terrier after a bone, not about to let go of the subject.
"You didn't say why Zeke's involved. Was the guy sick?"
"Drunk. And cut up. Frannie's not talking so nobody knows what happened during the time after she left Wednesday prayer meeting about nine-thirty and ten-thirty when she called for the EMTs."
"I guess Rob'll sort it all out. Is this Lula's petition? I better get going."
"See anybody you knew in Stillwater?" She called as I went through the door. I pretended not to hear.
I wasn't about to tell Maisie I'd been at the movie with Ben Holder. That he followed me home and hadn't left until after breakfast. My cousin Kat tried to get closer to his brother a few months after Casper was killed when a train hit his car at the railroad crossing in Hilldale. Maybe she thought it would help her cope with Casper's loss. But she wasn't Ben's type and nothing came of it. I didn't want talk about Ben and me to cause her pain and then us not work out.
Twenty five years ago an unsuspected brain aneurysum ended the life of my husband of only five years. Only one other man had tempted me to try again. I was long over Doug Komer, who'd only wanted solace after Terrie Sue left him. I wondered with how many others, in Mulberry Rock and elsewhere, had he taken comfort? Then a week or so ago I delivered a traffic summons to one of Ben Holder's Stillwater Hardware Store employees and Ben and I got to talking over coffee afterward. Last night was our first date. And maybe last, I hadn't decided for sure yet.
I drove out to Lula's farmhouse and delivered the divorce court petition. She said she just wanted it to be finished so she could move to Texas and start over. Her sister was sure she could find a job in Austin.
I swung by the County General Hospital when I got back to Mulberry Rock. Maisie hadn't called to tell me about any other summons or petition needing delivery. My brother, Zeke, would be on duty in the ER, as he was most every day. He had no life other than his work and didn't seem to want any. We'd had that in common for most of our lives. After my young husband died and then Doug Komer's rejection I'd decided law enforcement was all I needed. I was probably a fool to even think about getting involved with Ben Holder.
I waited while Zeke finished instructing a young woman on caring for her son's sprained ankle. The kid was already testing his weight on it and clearly anxious to leave, probably so he could show off the wrapped limb to his friends.
They walked toward the waiting room. The mother tried to support her son on the side with the sprained ankle, but he jerked away. Zeke leaned on the ER cubicle opening and crossed his arms. "Knew you'd show up before the morning was over."
"So who is he?"
"Just some kid who jumped off a slide and hurt his ankle." He pretended not to know who I was asking about.
"The boy, man, whoever, from Frannie's house, as you well know." I pretended to slap him on the side of his head.
"Oh. Him. Don't know. He's not talking and neither is Frannie. Got him in a cubicle trying to sober him up."
"What did Frannie tell the EMTs?" I frowned, looked around. "Where is she?"
"With him. Rob and his crew are trying to find out if he drove into town."
"Or walked? Hardly. Twenty miles to Stillwater, fifteen to Hilldale."
Zeke pretended to slap my head. "Ya think, Sis? Could have hitchhiked."
"And how in the world did he wind up at Frannie's house?" I wondered aloud. "Maisie said he was naked?"
"Wearing skivvies. Superman."
"What?"
"Superman skivvies."
I looked at him. He was serious. "So a teenager?"
"Yep. Eighteen. Nineteen."
"Too young for Frannie. There has to be another reason."
"If they ever decide to talk, maybe we'll find out what it is."
An older model Chevy convertible with a ragged top pulled into the ambulance bay outside and Rob pushed off the cubicle wall. "Better see what's going on and clear the bay."
A young man jumped from the driver's side door and ran around to the passenger side. He helped a very pregnant and equally young redhead from the car. Rob grabbed a wheel chair and pushed it through the automatic glass doors. I smiled as they passed on their way to the elevator, patted Tod Johnson on the shoulder. "Hang in there, Tod, Sandy. You'll be good parents."
"Oohhhhh...." Sandy grabbed her protruding stomach.
"Uh, yeah, thanks, Miz Bridgerman." Tod said over his shoulder. He held the elevator door with one hand and patted his wife's shoulder with the other.
I waved to DeeDee, the clerk behind the intake desk, and left the hospital.

* * *

I came in the side door of the Sheriff's office about eleven o'clock after leaving Zeke at the hospital. A woman leaned on the ledge of the window separating Maisie's desk from the lobby.
"I have to talk to the Sheriff. My son could be in trouble."
Maisie replied in the tone I recognized as one she used when she had already said the same thing several times to a person. "Ma'am, I'm sorry. The Sheriff is not in, he's assisting an officer on a call. If you will fill out the form and have a seat, I'll let you know if he comes in."
The woman looked down at the paper she held, opened her mouth to say something else, but Maisie spoke first. "Just fill out the form, please, Ma'am."
After another few seconds the woman's shoulders slumped and she walked to the row of plastic chairs lined up against the wall. She pulled a pen from her large shoulder bag and started reading the form.
Maisie buzzed me in and I handed her the receipt for service of Lula's petition. "Missing son? How old?" I nodded toward the lobby. "She's not local."
"Seventeen." Maisie stamped the receipt and shoved it into a drawer almost full of other papers. She hated filing almost as much as she hated computers. "Alabama. Ft. Payne. Thinks her son might have come to Mulberry Rock."
"From Ft. Payne? Whatever for?" Folks didn't usually come to Mulberry Rock, GA. Leaving Mulberry Rock for Ft. Payne was more likely.
Maisie shrugged. "Said she'd tell the Sheriff." She picked up her nail file, one of those new glass ones all the catalogs that filled our mailboxes were touting.
"Did she show you his picture?" I looked through the glass at the woman. She had stopped writing, seemed to be thinking what to put down next.
"Said she'd show it to the Sheriff." Maisie didn't seem to have made a connection between the unknown young male Zeke was treating in the ER and this out-of-town woman looking for her son. Maybe there wasn't any.
* * *
I'd just pulled into my driveway when my cell phone began playing Dolly Parton's "9 to 5." Maisie.
"Harrie, he's her son!" Maisie voice screeched through the receiver. Why it didn't puncture something in the phone as well as my eardrum was beyond me. I moved it an inch or so from my ear.
"Who is whose son?" I could hear a 'whooshing' noise as backdrop to Maisie's screech. "Where are you?"
"That woman's son. You know, the one who was here in the office."
"From Ft. Payne?"
"Yes. I had to run to the post office so I could call you."
That explained the whooshing sound, she was in her car and she always drove with the windows down.
"OK. Who is her son, Maisie?"
"The boy in Frannie's bedroom. That's in the hospital."
I was remembering the woman in the Sheriff's office lobby. Why had she and her son come here? We were so far off the beaten path you had to really want to visit Mulberry Rock to find it. As the crow flies, over the mountains of north Georgia and Alabama, we're no more than twenty-five miles or so from a major north/south artery, Interstate 59/ US Highway 11. But almost fifty miles of hairpin curves down mountain roads led to it before a driver could continue southwest  to Ft. Payne, AL or southeast to Rome, GA or north to hook up with Interstate 24.
"Harrie? Are you there?" Maisie must have arrived at the post office. I heard what sounded like the slam of a car door.
"Still here, Maisie. How do you know? That he's her son?"
"Rob got back to the office and she showed him the boy's picture."
In spite of her love of gossip sometimes you had to drag information from Maisie in bits and pieces. "Well, what's their name?"
"Fillers. She works at a restaurant in Ft. Payne. He's in high school."
"So why did he come to Mulberry Rock?"
"Rob took her into his office. I couldn't hear what she told him. All I know is what's on the missing person report she turned in."
But that didn't keep her from holding me on the phone while I unlocked my door and dropped my pocketbook on the hall table. She finally gave up trying to guess what the Fillers mother and son were doing in Mulberry Rock and hung up. Before I could drop the phone in its holder it rang again to the tune of "Sheriff of Boone County." Rob. What now?
I punched the answer key. "Rob?"
"Get on the State network and get me any information they have on a Trula or Matt Fillers. Better query Alabama and Tennessee, too. And the Feds, while you're at it." Rob wasn't one to waste time on preliminary chit chat. Unlike his niece.
I scrabbled a pen from my bag and wrote the names on my hand. "Am I looking for anything in particular?"
"Yeah. Does she have a son, if so, how old, name, et cetera."
"Did she know why he came to Mulberry Rock?"
"She finally admitted he thinks he has relatives here. Get back to me as soon-"
I interrupted because I knew he was about to disconnect. "Relatives? Named Fillers? I never heard of any here."
"Nobody has. Call me if you find something."
"Anything else?"
The screen on my phone said 'call ended', typical Rob.
I pulled open the louvered door of my home office, a converted walk-in closet and booted up my computer. I stumbled across my first computer, a Commodore 64, in a Radio Shack years ago on a visit to Birmingham. No graphic interface, user worked with the DOS operating system, 64K ROM, no software to speak of, but I fell in love.
When the Georgia state government went digital, neither Maisie or any one of Rob's three deputies wanted anything to do with computers. So Rob got me set up as his IT person and when he needed something looked up he called me. His daughter was majoring in Information Technology at U-T Chattanooga so she'd probably take over when she graduated next year. I had mixed feelings about being replaced by a twenty-two-year old, but there was little I could do about it.
After navigating all the Security pages the only info I found for Trula Fillers was that she owned a house and car in Ft. Payne, on which she was up-to-date with taxes, and a year-old unpaid parking ticket. Nothing on a Matt Fillers. Signing out of the State network, I went to another database a PI friend had hooked me up with and entered both names. Trula Fillers was listed as having a son, now eighteen years old, but there was no birth record in the database for him. No drivers license either. Figured. With no birth certificate he'd have trouble getting a license. What was the story here? I leaned back in my chair to think about where to look next.
I dialed Rob's number. After two rings he answered. "What do you have, Harrie?"
"Not much." I gave it to him.
"So. Is this kid she's looking for her son or not?"
"Don't know. Did you take his fingerprints at the hospital?"
"You connect the dots or Maisie tell you? Never mind. No. He was too drunk to give consent and Frannie won't press charges."
"Well, you've got cause now. The missing person report. Strange young man in town."
"Sure. But if he's never done anything to get his prints in AFIS it won't do any good."
"She showed you his picture. Are you gonna let her see him?"
"On my way to meet her at the hospital now. Something's fishy. Keep looking, Harrie." He was gone again.
I sat and stared at the computer screen a few more minutes when a rumble in my midsection reminded me I hadn't taken time for lunch. I set a fresh pot of coffee going and heated a can of vegetable soup. Crumbling oat grain crackers in the hot soup I considered the fact that birth records showed no son for Trula Fillers, eighteen years old or any age. If not her son, who was the young man she was looking for? He was the person in Frannie's house, sure. But what was the connection between Frannie, Trula Fillers and her supposed son, Matt Fillers?
Something tickled the back of my mind. For some odd reason it felt related to Sadie Hall's death. What could the final moments of a murdered woman have to do with this incident? She'd tried to say something, her lifeblood pouring from her mouth, words bubbling through it. "Tell my boy..."
I tried to shush her. "Save your strength, Sadie, honey."
She took hold of my wrist with surprising strength. Tried again. "...love him. Loved duh - " Her hand fell away and her eyes closed. I'd thought, we all thought, that she meant me to tell her sons she loved them. But why didn't she say, "Tell them...?" Or "Tell my boys..." What was the other thing she tried to say? Why had Burton shot her anyway? He would never give a reason so the county prosecutor went with 'drunken rage.' Burton's now a guest of the state down in Atlanta. I've heard his now-grown sons refuse to go down to visit him even when he got pneumonia and nearly died a couple years ago.
Was the motive for Sadie's murder actually years in the past? Something even Mulberry Rock gossip didn't know about?
The first time Burton's abuse nearly killed Sadie was when their sons were about six and seven years old. He beat and stomped her so bad she was hospitalized. The talk was she'd actually left him when she was released and gone to live with her sister in Alabama. If I remembered right she was gone about six months. Burton bragged down at the pool hall that she'd begged to come back and out of the goodness of his heart he let her. He kept her on a tight leash but a year or so after she returned Sadie went back to Alabama for a brief visit. Of course, she paid for it when she came back. Burton very nearly choked her to death.
Why was all this past tragedy coming back to me? Why had Sadie gone away and then returned after six months? Was there a reason other than the obvious one that she feared for her sons, left alone with a cruel father? What about her hospital records from that time? Might they shed some light on the puzzle? Zeke could look at them. Would he?
As soon as I walked through the emergency room entrance I heard a woman's loud sobbing. Trula Fillers sat in the far corner, both hands holding a white cloth to her face, shoulders heaving. Sheriff Rob Sharop stood nearby, hands jammed in uniform pockets, looking helpless. When he saw me he jerked his right hand out and motioned me over. When I got within a few steps of them he met me.
"Your brother left me alone with her. He should be helping her."
"Rob, I saw an ambulance out there. He was probably needed. What's going on anyway?"
"Her son won't talk to her, won't even see her. Said for her to go back to Ft. Payne."
"Cold. Why?"
Rob shrugged. "Frannie's back there with him, but she's not talking either."
I put a hand on Rob's arm and pulled him further away from the sobbing woman. "Do you remember the first time Burton Hall very nearly killed Sadie? Put her in the hospital? You'd just got home from the hospital yourself after your hunting blind collapsed and nearly killed you."
"Damn, Harrie. Why are you dragging up ancient history? Don't we have enough trouble right now?"
"They might be connected. Do you remember?"
"Hell, yes. Everybody wanted to lynch Burton. I was still in that upper body cast, could hardly keep a lid on it." Rob looked past my shoulder and his eyes narrowed. "'Bout time you came back, Zeke. Can't you give her a tranquilizer or something?"
"I need to talk to her." Zeke had a patient file in his hand. The cover looked  wrinkled, like it had been around a while. I caught his eye and he nodded. "After I talk to her maybe you'll get some light on the situation, Rob."
Rob and I walked to the other side of the room and watched as Zeke sat down and began to talk to Mrs. Fillers. At first her sobs increased and she shook her head hard. Then she took a deep breath and began listening to Zeke just as the door to the ER slammed open. A man walked over to the intake desk and demanded to see his daughter. Doug Komer. He must have got home from his run early. Or somebody called him.
Born and raised in Mulberry Rock, DeeDee knew him. "Why do you think your daughter is here, Mr. Komer?"
"Don't give me that, DeeDee. At the shop they couldn't wait to tell me about last night. Where is she?" Doug didn't wait for an answer. He wheeled away from the desk and started for the triage area. But he found his way blocked by Rob and Zeke.
A shrill scream bounced off the ER walls and Trula Fillers tear-stained face was suddenly inches from Doug Komer's face. They were about the same height. "You're the reason my sister's dead. Why are you here?"
"To get my daughter." Doug roared. "Who the hell are you?"
Zeke put his arm around Trula Fillers's shoulder to draw her back and Rob clamped a hand on Doug Komer's arm. All at once the waiting room seemed full of people. DeeDee rushed around her desk. Carl, the evening CNA on duty, Frannie Komer and Matt Fillers, a thick bandage wrapped around his bare chest, came running through the triage area. Everybody was talking at once.
"Quiet, everybody." Rob's calm voice cut through the bedlam. "Zeke? Somewhere we can talk?"
Zeke led us down a short hall and into the small chapel that the hospital provided for patients and family to pray or meditate or whatever. We spread out on the five short pews, uneasiness on every face, including mine if it mirrored my feelings. Rob nudged Doug onto the front pew and Zeke put Trula Fillers in the back. Frannie, Matt and I were apparently the buffers, in the middle pew.
"Mrs. Fillers. I think the story has to come out now. Do you want to tell it or shall I?" Zeke asked softly.
With a last swipe at her eyes with the white handkerchief, Trula Fillers straightened her shoulders. "I will. It's time Doug Komer knows what he did."
Doug stopped trying to get Frannie to look at him. "What I-? Rob, Zeke, what's she talking about?"
"Nineteen years ago, after years of beatings from her devil of a husband, my sister fell for a man whose wife had just left him. He was sad and hurt, and they comforted each other. That man was you, Doug Komer. After a few months her husband found out and nearly stomped her to death. While she was in the hospital the doctor found she was pregnant." Trula stopped and almost broke down again but swallowed and continued. "Of course, the doctor told her husband and warned him that he most certainly would kill her if he continued abusing her. Burton Hall," she spat the name, "sent her to live with me and told her she had to give the baby up for adoption. Sadie couldn't do it. She asked me to raise the baby."
Trula looked beseechingly at the boy. "And I did, Matt. I love you as much as if I gave birth to you. She loved you, too. Enough to give you up to keep you safe. She knew Burton would kill you. She longed to see you, hold you. When you were a year old, she couldn't stay away, came down to see you. He nearly killed her again. And she didn't dare tell Doug about you, Burton would have found out." She stopped and wiped her eyes again.
Doug had a stunned look on his face, turning sideways on the pew to look from Trula to Matt and back again. "You're saying Sadie had my baby?"
"Yeah, 'Dad'. Me. I wanted to see the s.o.b. who never acknowledged his son." The sarcasm in Matt's voice was diluted when a half sob broke through.
"I never knew. While she was gone she wrote me that it was over. She loved Burton and was going back to him."
Trula leaned over the back of the pew in front of her and pointed a finger at Doug. "Are you that stupid? Loved him? Loved a man who beat her nearly every day? And finally killed her when he found the picture I sent her when Matt made Eagle Scout."
Accusations weren't going to get us anywhere so I asked a question. "How did you find out, Matt?"
He tore his gaze from Doug and looked at me. "She wrote me letters, asked Mom - Aunt Trula to keep them until I was older. I found them."
It was pretty much what I'd figured had happened. "She named your father in the letters."
He nodded. "I hitchhiked to Mulberry Rock. No one was home so I broke in, found his Jack Daniels. I was real tired. After a few drinks I decided to take the bottle and go to bed so I took my clothes off. I woke up with Frannie poundin' on me with a big umbrella, the bottle of Jack broke and I got cut. The blood scared her and she called 911. She came to the hospital with me and I laid it all on her." He touched her arm. "I'm sorry."
Frannie grabbed his hand and brought it to her cheek. "You're my brother. I had to know."
At last I knew what Sadie had been trying to say to me. And whose name she struggled to say with her last breath. "It was you two she wanted me to tell."
Matt looked blank. "Who wanted you to tell what?"
"Sadie. Your mother. As she was dying, she asked me to tell her boy she'd always loved him."
His face crumpled and he collapsed on Frannie's shoulder, his shoulders jerked with great gulping sobs.
I took a deep breath and turned to Doug. "And she said - 'Loved Duh...' But she didn't get the name out. I never knew who until now."
Silence suddenly descended on the little chapel. If Sadie's final words were of love for Doug, who were we to judge him?
* * *
Matt went back to Ft. Payne with his mother/aunt. In a couple of months he'll finish his senior year of high school. He's visited Frannie and Doug several times. He's met his two half-brothers. One invited Matt to live with him and his family in Birmingham and attend college after graduation. Matt is thinking about it. Life in Mulberry Rock goes on, Frannie still works at the library, Maisie is still the Sheriff's secretary and I'm still his IT person. His daughter finished college and decided to seek her fortune in Silicon Valley, California. Maybe she'll run into Frannie's Mama, Terrie Sue, out there.