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“And what?”
“I don’t know if I want to say.”
“Please, Mrs. Robinson, we really need to be told everything. We don’t know what might help Jerome and his wife,” said DuBose.
“Well, Mr. Leslie, when he gets riled sometimes at Miss Anne, he... he might hit her ’round some.” She looked down and seemed frightened at having disclosed this.
DuBose and Jack exchanged glances. “You saw this?” she asked.
“They don’t know I did, but I did, yeah.”
“And what did Mrs. Randolph do?” asked DuBose.
“She calm him down. She real good at that. Then Miss Anne go on upstairs and fix herself up and Mr. Leslie go get himself a drink.”
“Did he drink a lot?” asked DuBose.
“More’n he should,” she said candidly.
“Well, I think that’s all for now,” said Jack, standing.
However, DuBose remained seated. “Mrs. Robinson, when Jack asked you if the Randolphs seemed normal that day, you seemed to hesitate for a moment. Is there something you were thinking about?”
Robinson fidgeted with her hands for a few moments. “It was durin’ lunch that day. Mr. Leslie, he just seemed mad ’bout somethin’. Fumin’, so to speak.”
“Do you know what about?”
“No, but he had a real sour look on his face.”
“And Mrs. Randolph?”
“She looked... worried.”
“Well, thank you for telling us, Mrs. Robinson,” said DuBose. “And were you allowed to use the bathroom at the Randolphs’?”
“Oh no, ma’am. But I’m only there for five hours. So’s I just hold it. And there’s some bushes behind the bus stop where I can do my business.”
DuBose squeezed her hand. “Thank you for speaking with us.”
“I hope... I hope Jerome will be okay and all. He never killed nobody.”
“Now we just have to prove it,” said DuBose.
CHAPTER 40
SO THAT MIGHT EXPLAIN ANNE Randolph’s old injuries that Herman Till told us about,” said DuBose after they left Robinson’s home. “They probably resulted from her husband beating her.”
“So Leslie Randolph was not the nice guy everyone thought he was.”
“So where to now?” she asked.
“Tyler Dobbs, the gardener.”
As they were walking back to Jack’s car a sheriff’s patrol car slowed to a stop and two men got out and headed toward them. Jack whispered to DuBose, “The deputies who arrested and then beat up Jerome.”
“What in the world are you doing in this part of the county?” said Jack as the pair approached. “You aren’t following us now, are you?”
Gene Taliaferro eyed DuBose and then glanced at Jack. “I heard ’bout this gal, but I didn’t believe it till I seen it with my own two eyes.”
