Breaking Matthew Read online

  But it was also infectious. By the time I met Mr. Oliver out in the lobby, I was downright optimistic that Ruby was going to be all right. We’d show everyone the truth, and she’d be fine.

  After shaking hands again, Mr. Oliver and I walked over to the sheriff’s desk, where he sat reading the day’s newspaper. Mr. Oliver cleared his throat. “Excuse me Sheriff, but I need to take a look at the evidence in Miss Ruby’s case for a while. Mind bringing it up here?”

  Sheriff Peterson dropped his feet to the floor with a thud. “Sure thing.” Then he headed through a door behind him.

  I turned to Mr. Oliver with my newfound optimism. “So what else can I do to help you?”

  He sighed and took out his handkerchief, once again wiping his brow. Seemed like he sure was hot all the time. Or maybe just nervous. “I’d sure be grateful if you get Ruby to open up with me. I’ve tried to explain to her that she has to be upfront about what happened in that barn, and I’m not convinced yet that she’s told me everything.”

  I couldn’t argue with him there. I too had my suspicions she wasn’t telling everything. Lots of things still didn’t add up. Like how she could have come away with minor injuries from a man almost triple her size. He’d nearly beaten her to death a few years back.

  “I need some more information to better understand her,” Mr. Oliver continued. “Whenever I speak with her, she’s very careful about her words, only saying exactly what she wants me to know. No more, no less. It’s like she’s already made up her mind to go to prison. Something’s off. I was hoping you could help me figure it out. Maybe get her to tell us the whole story.”

  He broke off as Sheriff Peterson returned with a box and set it on the desk. “That’s everything we got. It can’t leave this office though, you hear?”

  Mr. Oliver waved him away. “I got it.” He picked up the box and took it over to a table near the back corner of the room, yanking on the chain for the solitary light bulb hanging over the table. As he whipped out a pad of paper and a pen, he glanced up at me. “Let’s see what we got here, son. Mind writing down some notes as we look through it?”

  “Not at all.” I took the pad and pen and took a seat in a chair at the table. “I’m ready when you are.”

  He pulled out a bag with a blood-soaked shirt inside. “Chester’s shirt. Ripped where the knife must have gone through.”

  I wrote that down. “How does this help Ruby? I don’t think there’s any question that she stabbed Chester, and I think that’s all you’ll get from the evidence.”

  “You never know,” Mr. Oliver said, placing the shirt back in the box. “Plus, this will give us a better idea of how Mr. Garrett might go after her.” Next he pulled out an envelope with pictures of the scene after deputies had arrived. “Let’s have a look here.” He spread the photos out on the table. “See anything that jumps out at you?”

  “Not right away.” I scanned the scene for anything to tell me something Ruby might have left out. It was apparent a struggle had taken place over a wide area of the barn. Footprints over the top of one another, smears of blood in the dirt, blood on a stack of hay bales. The struggle must have taken several minutes. How had she fended Chester off for so long?

  I picked up the photo of the body and looked closer at it. Chester lay on his back, with smears of blood across his chest. Had Ruby tried to heal him? That might explain why so much blood was on her hands. She’d only said she’d tried to help him. But how had she gotten blood on her face and in her hair? From her hands or his? Maybe none of that mattered.

  I realized I had no idea what to look for. I was useless. Mr. Oliver studied the pictures as well, pointing out the extended area of the struggle, as I had noticed. I wrote down his observations. He wondered the same thing I had. How had Ruby come away with barely a scratch on her, yet covered in blood?

  Frowning, I picked up another photo of the body, this time from a different angle. The knife lay on the ground a few feet away from the body. Something about it tickled my mind. I knew that knife.

  “Is the knife in that box?” I asked.

  Mr. Oliver looked over the edge and reached inside. “Sure is.” He pulled out a knife with a small wooden handle, still smeared with Chester’s blood.

  I pulled it out and examined it close up, turning it over and over in my hand. I definitely knew this knife. “Where did Ruby say the knife came from again?”

  “She said Chester had it.” He gave me a curious look. “Why?”

  I turned it again and looked at the end, where initials had once been etched into it. Only part of the “G” remained. I knew exactly where this knife had come from, and it wasn’t Chester Calhoun. I knew whose knife it was, ’cause I’d been there the day she’d given it away as a Christmas gift. The knife with her father’s initials on it. And I knew now exactly why she was so careful about what she was saying, and why she had no real injuries.

  Ruby didn’t kill Chester.

  Samuel did.

  Chapter Eleven

  Matthew

  I debated with myself over confronting Ruby with what I suspected, but in the end I had to know the truth. When I walked up to her cell, she was sitting on her cot with her daddy’s Bible open on her lap. She looked up at me with a smile that made me pause. She had lied. Ruby. The girl who never lied.

  She’d been terrible at it, and I’d always known in my heart she wasn’t telling the whole truth. But had I suspected that she was actually lying? Something inside me shifted. She wasn’t the perfect angel I’d created in my mind, someone I could never relate to. She was human. She was fallible. And I loved her.

  I loved her.

  Ruby tilted her head and looked at me curiously. “I thought you’d gone home for the day.”

  “I was helping Mr. Oliver with your case. I told him I’d help out. We were looking through all the evidence.”

  “Oh.” She pushed the Bible onto her cot and walked over to where I was standing. “Are you all right?”

  My stomach tightened. I had to look away. I glanced around the jail, and it dawned on me that Emmitt Hyde had never returned to his cell after going to the hospital. “Where’s Mr. Hyde?”

  “His bond was paid, so they released him.”

  “How did he come up with the money?”

  She shrugged and averted her gaze.

  “Ruby?”

  She grinned at me, her eyes glowing with joy. “Don’t be mad, okay?”

  “Ruby, you didn’t—”

  “But it was a miracle! I had to! Did you know his bond, after the fees and everything, came out to exactly seventy-nine dollars and fifty-seven cents?”

  I dropped my head, knowing I shouldn’t be surprised in the least. “That money was for you!”

  “It was the Lord’s money all along. Not mine.”

  She was more frustrating than I could bear. But I realized there was nothing I could do to get the money back, and that we had a much bigger issue to deal with, so I decided not to argue about the money anymore. “Okay, fine. I understand. But we need to discuss something else right now.”

  I walked toward the corner of her cell furthest away from the door out to the lobby and motioned for her to follow me. Her mouth tipped into a grin. “What is going on with you?”

  I steeled myself for the fight I knew was coming. “Was Samuel in the barn with you?”

  The color drained from her face. “Wh—No. Why would you ask that?”

  I lowered my voice to barely above a whisper. “I saw the knife, Ruby. The one you gave him for Christmas.” She stared at me with unblinking eyes. “He was there. Did he kill Chester? Just tell me the truth.”

  She dropped her gaze to the floor, but said nothing. I couldn’t stand just waiting for her to say something. I was about to bust wide open.

  “Ruby. Please. Just tell me the truth about what happened in the barn. You can trust me.”

  She raised her eyes back to mine, and I could see they were filled with fear. “All right,” she whispered. �
��But please, you have to promise you won’t say anything to anyone.”

  “Ruby—”

  “Promise!” she said. “Or I won’t tell you anything, and on top of that, I will never speak to you again!”

  I reached through the bars with my palms up. “Give me your hands.” She hesitated, but then placed her hands on mine, and I gently gripped them. “I promise. I won’t say anything.”

  Her shoulders shook as she took a breath. “I was out for a walk after Emma Rae delivered her baby, and I saw Chester talking with James and Mr. Calhoun. I was overcome with fear; I could barely move. Eventually I managed to turn around and go to the other side of the barn to calm down and to pray. And I had this awful feeling that Samuel was around somewhere. So I tried to find him so I could get him to leave.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “He’s all turned around about being half Calhoun. He’s been hanging around the Calhoun property, picking cotton, trying to work out where he fits into everything. So I went looking for him to see if he was there. You know how Chester used to beat him?”

  I nodded.

  “I just wanted to protect him.”

  Her eyes welled up, so I let her have a moment to gather her thoughts again. “Then what happened? Did you find him?”

  “I came back to the barn, and I saw Chester go inside. I wanted to get away from there, so I was going to run down to James’s house, but that would take me past the barn. So I froze. I couldn’t move. That was when I saw Samuel. He was about fifty feet away from me, and he was watching Chester go into the barn with the most awful look on his face. I just knew he was going to go in there and stir up something with Chester. I ran over to him and tried to talk to him. And I finally got him to listen to me. He said he’d go on home.”

  “But he didn’t, did he?” I asked.

  “He was walking away from the barn when Chester came out and called him over to move some feed out of the barn for the animals. He didn’t recognize Samuel at first, but when he did…You should have seen the look that came over Chester. It was like pure evil. He was happy to see Samuel.”

  I squeezed her hands, knowing she must have been so frightened in that moment. I’d tangled with Chester myself, and I knew for certain there was nothing but evil in that man.

  “He hadn’t seen me because I was still off to the side of the barn, and he only had eyes for Samuel at that point. He made Samuel go into the barn and start moving feed sacks around. I crept in after them and stayed in the shadows.”

  “Ruby, why? Why didn’t you go get help?”

  “Help from who?” she said. “Who would care if Chester was mistreating a colored boy? I was his only help. And I had no idea what to do. So I hung back in the shadows under the loft and prayed Samuel wouldn’t lose his head.”

  “All right,” I said. “Go on.”

  “Chester started saying awful things to Samuel about his mother, calling her terrible names. Then he said something about how he’d be so happy to run into her again ’cause she was so feisty. Oh, Matthew, Samuel just lost it. He went after Chester and they started brawling all over the barn. Samuel held his own for a little while. I think Chester was trying to beat him to death, but Samuel kept on fighting.

  “But then Samuel pulled out his knife, and Chester just laughed at him. He said he was a dead man for sure now, that he’d be strung up in a tree before the end of the day.”

  She pulled her hands out of mine and hugged her waist. “Matthew, I knew he was right. The moment Samuel stood up for himself, he was a dead man. And I had to do something. So I ran out from under the loft and jumped on Chester’s back. I told Samuel to run for it.”

  “Did he?” I asked.

  “No. Chester flung me off and said he was going to kill me just as soon as he was through with Samuel. Then he kicked me in the ribs.”

  I winced and tried to imagine that monster hurting her again. I had to tell myself he’d finally gotten what he deserved.

  “But then Samuel came at Chester again, and this time they were fighting over the knife. They fell against the hay, and Chester hollered real loud. He started cursing and stumbling around. That was when I realized he had the knife in his chest. He pulled it out, and blood shot out of him. He screamed at both of us that he was going to kill us.”

  She closed her eyes. “I tried to help him. I prayed for God to let me heal him. I ran over to him and put my hands on his chest and started praying whatever words I could. But it didn’t work. And he grabbed me by my hair and told me to keep my sorcery to myself. Then he slapped me away. I couldn’t get near him. I couldn’t stop the blood.”

  I was amazed. “Ruby Graves, I think you’re the only person in the world who’d try to save a man who was trying to kill her.”

  She shook her head. “I couldn’t, though. And I didn’t know what to do. I told Samuel to get out of there. That he needed to get out of town. I told him not to say anything to anybody. That Chester had attacked me, and I’d defended myself.”

  I leaned back against the wall and tried to think clearly about what all this meant. “Ruby, I know you had good intentions, and you want to protect Samuel, but you have to tell the truth about this.”

  “I knew you were going to say that,” she said. “But you know as well as I do what’ll happen to Samuel as soon as I tell the truth. There won’t be a trial for him. No one will be interested in the truth. They’ll just see the color of his skin and condemn him. I can’t let that happen.”

  “So you’d rather risk going to jail for murder? Do you understand what that means?”

  She met my gaze. “Yes.”

  I couldn’t bear it. I gripped the bars and rattled them in my hands. “You are so infuriating sometimes! No one in their right mind would do this, Ruby.”

  “I have to.”

  “Why?” I yelled.

  She hugged her waist again. “Because he’s my friend. And he doesn’t deserve to die.”

  My throat ached as I looked into her eyes. “Neither do you.”

  I was a mess when I left the jail that evening. I walked up and down the streets of Cullman trying to figure out what to do with what Ruby had told me. Should I tell Mr. Oliver? Or maybe Sheriff Peterson? Ruby would never forgive me this time if I betrayed her. I’d promised to keep my mouth shut. But how could I stand by and let her go to prison for murder?

  I tried to focus on positive thoughts. Maybe she’d be able to convince a jury she’d killed Chester in self-defense. It was plausible. She’d have to become a much better liar in the next week. But if she stuck to her story, and if we could show that Chester had attacked her once before, she might just stand a chance.

  But what if the jury didn’t buy it? Even Mr. Oliver knew Ruby wasn’t telling the whole truth, and if they thought she was lying…Every time I thought of Ruby going off to prison—or worse, the electric chair—my whole body felt like it was on fire. I couldn’t lose her again.

  That thought brought me around to what I’d been avoiding all afternoon. I knew now I loved Ruby, and I was going to have to deal with that. I wasn’t sure how. I was engaged to Vanessa, after all. I loved her too, and she deserved to be treated right. Besides, did I really have a future with Ruby? That seemed impossible. Sure, she’d loved me at one time when she was a child, but she’d changed so much. She was completely devoted to her calling. I doubted she’d ever love me again after I’d rejected her.

  After walking around for nearly two hours, I realized I was no closer to answers than I’d been when I started. I leaned back against a building and closed my eyes to pray.

  Lord, what would You have me do? Speak to me the way You speak to Ruby. Show me how to hear You and to trust You.

  I opened my eyes and waited. Nothing came. I didn’t hear a thing. But I did see something. I was standing across the street from Father’s office. Maybe I couldn’t figure out everything, but I could definitely work on one thing. I could figure out a way to get my money back.

  By that time it was
nearly dark, so I waited in a restaurant down the street until I knew both Father and Era were gone for the night. Then I made my way back. Father locked the store up tight every night, but the small door that opened to the stairs leading up to his office was never locked. So I was able to walk right into the reception area where Era sat.

  I figured his office door would be locked, and I was right. But I was fairly certain Era had an extra key hidden somewhere. I searched as best I could without disturbing how she had things arranged in her desk. I came up empty.

  I switched on the light to see better; then I sat behind her desk and looked all around the room. If I were Era, where would I put an extra key to Father’s office? There was a plant in the window, so I checked underneath it. Nothing.

  Then I noticed a small picture near the back of her desk, almost hidden behind a stack of papers. It was a young man in army uniform. I’d heard from Mother once that Era had been engaged to a soldier, but he was killed accidentally while training. I figured that had to be him.

  I ran my hand along the back of the picture and felt a bump. When I pulled the back off, there was a key. I couldn’t believe it. I’d actually found it.

  I hurried over to Father’s door and unlocked it, heading straight for his desk. I sat in his chair and ran through the same exercise again. If I were Father, where would I stash a little over four thousand dollars? I pulled the drawers out with no luck, checked the pictures of Mother and my siblings, dug through a plant near his window. Nothing.

  Dropping my head into my hands, I wished I were a better investigator. I knew for certain that was not my calling in life. I decided it was unlikely the money was in his office, but I wondered if maybe there was a clue to its whereabouts. Maybe a receipt from the bank or something. If Father could waltz up and withdraw my money, maybe I could return the favor. So I started paying closer attention to papers in his desk.

  I was careful to keep them in order and replace them as I’d found them. Most were purchase orders, receipts, and transactions from estate sales. I recognized all the names from my years working for him. I found his ledger book and took a quick look through it to see if he’d made any deposits that equaled what he’d taken from me. But everything seemed in perfect order.