Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,123

be able to see was a detailed drawing of one of the Williams family’s mules on the easel. But Karl didn’t so much as glance at the mural. I didn’t want to let him inside the warehouse, but he stepped past me, glanced around my studio space, then stood squarely in front of me.

“Where is your hammer, Anna?” he asked.

I played dumb, desperately trying to buy time. Finally I said, “I don’t have a hammer.”

Karl pointed out that I’d had one back when he was helping us stretch the canvas. He looked past me at Jesse. “Do you remember that, Jesse Williams?” he asked. “And Pauline told me she stopped by yesterday and she didn’t see one, so I was wondering what happened to it?”

I was stunned, torn between my anger at Pauline and my desperate scrambling to find a way around Karl’s question. I could say that the hammer he saw that day hadn’t been mine. That Peter had brought one with him. But then I’d be getting Peter in trouble.

Then Karl told us that a bloody hammer had been found in the woods near Martin Drapple’s motorcycle. “Just wondering if it might have been yours,” he asked.

I was breathing hard and fast. Surely he noticed. I tried to figure out what an innocent person would say at that moment.

I asked him if that’s what he thought killed Martin. The hammer.

“No, a person killed him with the hammer,” Karl said. “And I know you had a hammer you can’t seem to produce.”

I said maybe someone else might have brought a hammer the day we worked on stretching the canvas. Karl had brought tools, himself.

Karl gave me a look I can only describe as disgusted and said he’d just wanted to give me a chance to show him my hammer. “I see you can’t do that,” he said. He touched the brim of his hat and wished Jesse and me a good day. Then he was gone.

Jesse and I turned to stare at one another.

I asked him where the hammer is, and he said he threw it in the woods by the Mill Village. He spoke quietly, one hand clutching the back of his chair. “I throwed it hard,” he said, “way out into a mess o’ cat claw and creeper and poison ivy.” He demonstrated the pitch he used to send the hammer flying into the brush. He didn’t think anyone could possibly have found it. Maybe Karl was lying? he suggested. Maybe he was trying to trick me in some way?

I don’t know what to make of it all. I knotted my hands together, trying to think. I remembered Jesse’d had the wherewithal to put on a pair of the work gloves when he got rid of Martin and the hammer and the motorcycle. My fingerprints would be on the hammer, but not his. That gives me a strange sense of peace. I don’t know what they would do to me, but if they found Jesse guilty of murdering a white man, I am sure that would be the end of him.

I sat down with this journal and began to recount what just happened. Writing has a way of calming me, but Jesse is angry and keeps interrupting me.

“What’re you doing?” he asked. “You supposed to fix that motorcycle!”

I promised him that I would. I looked over at the mural, at my distinctive, prideful signature in the lower right-hand corner. I wonder if I’ll ever get a chance to see the mural hanging in the post office? What will they do with it if I am locked away in jail?

Later on Friday

Everything changed just minutes after I wrote about Karl’s visit this morning. My whole life changed.

I was mixing some of the paint I’d need to cover the motorcycle and restore the ladies’ dresses when Peter burst into the warehouse. His face was red, his pale hair plastered to his forehead with sweat.

“The cops are coming to arrest you!” he said breathlessly, his eyes on me. He said that two policemen came to his house and asked him if I kept a hammer in the warehouse and he’d said yes, not knowing he was getting me in trouble. He glanced at Jesse. He said the police think both of us killed Martin. He was bent over, trying to catch his breath. “You need to run!” he said.

Run where? I stood up, my heart pounding, thinking, my baby will be born in jail. And they will kill Jesse. I