going to show her, isn’t even written up in proper true crime book fashion yet. It’s still in the form in which I heard it from the black people I interviewed who used to work for my parents. One of them was Rachel Anderson. Another was her fiancé, Hubert Templeton. Both of them were important members of Hostel. I also talked to an old woman who used to cook for my mother and a part-time housecleaner who was there that night, but both of them were already too old to remember much, or perhaps they didn’t want to. Rachel’s memory was a little better—she confirmed most of the story that James told me, the parts she had reason to know, like bringing him food, and feeling a little scared of him.
But it was Hubert who claimed to recall almost everything. While Deb is dealing with journalists who have seen the tabloid story and who have my home phone—fobbing them off for now, but promising that I’ll call them—I pull out the remaining pages in their original rough form, and privately read them through again.
B ETRAYAL
By Marie Lightfoot
—•—
CHAPTER FIVE
“ R achel told me your daddy got a telephone call kinda early that night,” Hubert Templeton says. “She said he said hello and then he just listened. When he hung up, he started hollerin’ for your mother. They was all dressed to go to some party at Miss Eulalie and Mister Clayton’s house that night, but they changed their minds about all that. They went into a room to talk private, and when they come out, your mama was pale as a ghost, Rachel told me. Your mama grabbed up Rachel and said, we got to get the baby dressed, and your daddy, he called me on the phone to ask me to get over there quick as possible in my car. So that’s what I did.”
I ask him, “What did my father tell you?”
“He said it was better if I didn’t know.”
“He didn’t give you any explanation?”
Hubert shakes his head, no. “You got to understand, we was used to jumpin’ into action without no explanation. That’s how Hostel was. Quick action, your daddy allus said, quick response. Move, he allus said, before anybody knows you’re gone. Somebody would give us a name and alocation and we’d go hurryin’ off to pick that person up. Take ’em to a safe place like your mama and daddy’s house. So when he said, come on over, I just did what he said, and I didn’t think nothing about it, not until I saw this time was different.”
“My heart is breaking.”
Michael Folletino supposedly said that to his wife when he took the baby from her arms. There were three people, not counting Lyda, who were there to hear him say it, although only one of them remembers it like that and the other two kind of doubt it. But whether he actually said those words, or not, apparently they all saw the truth of it in his face. They say he looked shattered. He appeared to be a man who was desperately going through the motions of trying to save himself and everyone he loved, but who had already lost all hope that he could manage to do that. The witnesses—one maid, one cook, one yardman, all black—saw and heard how Lyda, herself, refused to give in to that despair until Michael and the baby were out of her sight, driving away in their car. Then, supposedly, Lyda leaned her face against the back of the front door and wept hard and deep.
“It has all gone wrong,” she is alleged to have said.
One of the witnesses claims that Lyda also said “my baby,” and another witness thinks she said “we can’t escape from this.”
But memory is short and time is long, so who knows if that is true?
When Hubert drove up, Michael and the baby went off with him.
“We took you to a black motel and rented a room and left you in it.”
Hubert, former Hostel member, former employee andfriend of my parents, isn’t glad to meet me, and he’s even less happy to tell me what he remembers of the night my parents vanished. Apparently, he used to love them, but no more.
He explains
But it was Hubert who claimed to recall almost everything. While Deb is dealing with journalists who have seen the tabloid story and who have my home phone—fobbing them off for now, but promising that I’ll call them—I pull out the remaining pages in their original rough form, and privately read them through again.
B ETRAYAL
By Marie Lightfoot
—•—
CHAPTER FIVE
“ R achel told me your daddy got a telephone call kinda early that night,” Hubert Templeton says. “She said he said hello and then he just listened. When he hung up, he started hollerin’ for your mother. They was all dressed to go to some party at Miss Eulalie and Mister Clayton’s house that night, but they changed their minds about all that. They went into a room to talk private, and when they come out, your mama was pale as a ghost, Rachel told me. Your mama grabbed up Rachel and said, we got to get the baby dressed, and your daddy, he called me on the phone to ask me to get over there quick as possible in my car. So that’s what I did.”
I ask him, “What did my father tell you?”
“He said it was better if I didn’t know.”
“He didn’t give you any explanation?”
Hubert shakes his head, no. “You got to understand, we was used to jumpin’ into action without no explanation. That’s how Hostel was. Quick action, your daddy allus said, quick response. Move, he allus said, before anybody knows you’re gone. Somebody would give us a name and alocation and we’d go hurryin’ off to pick that person up. Take ’em to a safe place like your mama and daddy’s house. So when he said, come on over, I just did what he said, and I didn’t think nothing about it, not until I saw this time was different.”
“My heart is breaking.”
Michael Folletino supposedly said that to his wife when he took the baby from her arms. There were three people, not counting Lyda, who were there to hear him say it, although only one of them remembers it like that and the other two kind of doubt it. But whether he actually said those words, or not, apparently they all saw the truth of it in his face. They say he looked shattered. He appeared to be a man who was desperately going through the motions of trying to save himself and everyone he loved, but who had already lost all hope that he could manage to do that. The witnesses—one maid, one cook, one yardman, all black—saw and heard how Lyda, herself, refused to give in to that despair until Michael and the baby were out of her sight, driving away in their car. Then, supposedly, Lyda leaned her face against the back of the front door and wept hard and deep.
“It has all gone wrong,” she is alleged to have said.
One of the witnesses claims that Lyda also said “my baby,” and another witness thinks she said “we can’t escape from this.”
But memory is short and time is long, so who knows if that is true?
When Hubert drove up, Michael and the baby went off with him.
“We took you to a black motel and rented a room and left you in it.”
Hubert, former Hostel member, former employee andfriend of my parents, isn’t glad to meet me, and he’s even less happy to tell me what he remembers of the night my parents vanished. Apparently, he used to love them, but no more.
He explains
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