“What did they want?” Bonnie asked.
“They wanted me to talk to Dylan. I guess they think he can influence the state athletic association and convince them to reinstate the school’s lacrosse program, but according to Dylan, he can’t. Oh, and did you know he’s arrested Bobby Yancy?”
The four of them spoke at once. “We—"
Henrietta said in a sharp, distinct voice. “Let me talk. We decided I’m the best communicator in the group.”
Bonnie mumbled under her breath. “That ain’t how it happened. You won the coin toss.”
“Same thing.” She continued. “We know. Billy Ray here told us. Said they got them all kinds of evidence.”
“Not really, at least not the kind I think will hold up in court, and besides, there is evidence that could be used against other people, too.” That got me thinking. “Hey do any of you know anyone in Bobby Yancy’s family?”
They all shook their heads.
“Well, I’m going to do some digging then.”
“About what? I like to dig,” Bonnie said.
“I’m a digger, too,” Old Man Goodson said.
“Best digger in town right here,” Billy Ray said.
“A lady doesn’t dig, but I might could do some investigating using my ladylike ways,” Henrietta said.
“Honey, your ladylike ways dried up and died years ago,” Bonnie said.
Billy Ray laughed, but he stopped when Henrietta’s eyes burned with the stare only the devil could duplicate. Even I was afraid to laugh.
“Well, I’ve got to get ready for work, and Bo here definitely needs a good walk.” I did my best to deflect the situation before it got heated and poor Billy Ray spent the rest of his life in the dog house. “How about y’all just spend your day taking care of yourselves? I appreciate you wanting to help me, but I am under strict orders by the county sheriff to mind my own business,” I lied, “and I’m sure that order would extend itself to you if he finds out you’re nosing around his investigation.”
Bonnie stood up and balanced herself against my table, since clearly, her foot really was bothering her. “But we don’t want those mean mommas getting their claws into you.”
“And I appreciate that, but look at you. You’re a hot mess, and I am going to need you sooner rather than later. So, I’m sure of it, so you go and get that foot taken care of, you hear? Now all of you, you go and take care of your own, and you let me worry about what I’ve got to worry about, and I’ll let you know what I find out. I’ll handle Dylan, and trust me, I’ve handled a mean girl or two in my past, so I can handle these mean mommas no problem. I promise.”
And I meant that.
They begrudgingly left, but not before assuring me they’d be there the minute I needed them, and I didn’t doubt that for a hot minute.
* * *
First on my list of things to do was dig a little into Bobby Yancy’s family. I needed to find out if he had any connection into the medical field. The easiest way to do that, of course, was to ask him, but that was also the quickest way to screw up Dylan’s investigation, and also the fastest way to mess up my relationship, so instead, I hit Millie’s Café after dropping Bo off to play with his friends.
Little did I know, I wouldn’t have to go all the way to Millie’s for information. The morning front desk employee at doggy day care answered my questions without me having to ask.
“Can you believe they arrested Mr. Yancy for that murder? Well, of course, you probably knew it was happening, what with you datin’ the sheriff and all. Why, I’m just a wreck from the news. I live next door to Bobby Jr.’s cousins. Practically grew up with the family. It’s a shame. Mr. Yancy is one of the nicest men I know. Don’t think he’d hurt a flea.”
Funny, he didn’t seem all that nice to me, but I didn’t say that to her. “I am pretty surprised actually that they arrested him. I didn’t know you knew the family.”
“Sure do. My daddy used to play cards with Mr. Yancy and his brother-in-law. I guess that’s what they are since their last names are different, and Bobby Jr. calls my neighbors aunt and uncle.”
“Probably so then.”
“And I know Emma Sue and Mrs. Yancy are for sure sisters because they work at the post office together, or they used to till Emma Sue got a job at the flower shop. She’s got a way with flowers, she does. Can grow them better than anyone I seen, and plus, she’s super good at putting them in vases and such.”
“Do you know if any of them worked in the medical field?”
“You mean my neighbors, the Barrett family? Not that I know of, but I don’t think so. Mr. Barrett does something in Alpharetta. Wears a uniform, but I don’t know what. Maybe a plumber or something. I don’t know. I don’t pay much attention. I just know what Emma Sue does ‘cause my momma talks about it all the time, and I seen her flowers and all.”
A man walked in with one of those big poodles, and it jumped up on me and put its paws on my shoulders. It swiped it’s tongue across my face, and I was pretty sure I’d have a drool line from my chin to my forehead, plus, I smelled wet dog food. Blech.
“Bella, down,” the man said.
The dog was taller and stronger than me and had pushed me into the front of the counter.
“Bella, down.”
Bella needed a little bit of training. I pushed her off with my knee. She backed away. I guided her down with my hands pressed firmly into her shoulders. “Down, Bella. Sit.”
She sat.
I hovered my palm just above her eyes. “Stay.”
She stayed.
The man watched in amazement. “How’d you do that?”
I kept my hand there, pretty shocked myself, and afraid if I spoke the spell would be broken. So, I whispered instead. “I have absolutely no idea.” I patted Bella on the head. “Good girl,” I said, and the spell did break. She bounded off toward the half door to the doggy rooms and barked to be let in, not even saying goodbye to her daddy. The front desk girl walked back with her.
I decided to make a trip to the jail. Dylan would expect that from me. I wouldn’t ask Bobby Yancy about any medical professionals in his family, at least not directly, but maybe if I hinted to it, he’d tell me something. Or at least I hoped he’d tell me something.
The thing I loved best about Bramblett County was that even though it wasn’t small, I could get anywhere in fifteen minutes, except the jail, which I made it to in seven, without speeding.
Dylan ran a budget increase campaign recently to update the temporary cells at the jail and won, and for the past year, they’d been unavailable for, as he’d called it, transient storage. I hated that term, but he thought it was funny. Law enforcement humor, he’d called it. Typically, I’d visited suspects in the long term units, but Bobby Yancy was the first suspect I’d visited in the short term unit.
If my boyfriend didn’t win his reelection, he’d have a shot at a career in business office decorating, because he’d done a stellar job on the new design. Instead of a steely gray paint job, he’d used a muted whitish yellow, and I hoped to remind myself to remember to get the name of the exact color. Whatever it was, it had a calming effect on me, and I assumed he’d done some kind of research and discovered that was the intent of the color, but when I thought about it further, I realized it was probably dumb luck on his part. I doubted guys gave decorating that much thought, especially for suspected criminals.
He’d also updated the visitor’s lounge for the area, used the same color on the walls, and even put window treatments up. The creamy beige solid curtains didn’t hide the metal bars covering the glass windows, but they did add a homey touch, and it was nice to see Dylan trying to make the room more inviting. I even smelled vanilla air freshener. My boyfriend had a softer side at work. What a sweetie.
A deputy escorted Bobby Yancy into the room, his legs cuffed together with a long chain, and his hands the same. My heart sank. I didn’t know if he was a murderer or not, but I didn’t think he deserved that.
He eyed me up and down. “I thought I’d see you soon enough.”
I wondered why he wasn’t behind a glass wall like the other times I’d come to visit suspected killers. “I’m not exactly sure, but I felt like I should come.”
He sat down and the deputy cuffed one of his legs to the leg of the table with another cuff, and removed the other from his leg. He did the same with his hands, allowing one to remain free, though I wasn’t quite sure why. If Yancy wanted, he could swat at me, or grab something and swing it at me. I eyed the area surrounding me and realized there wasn’t anything within his reach. Score one for Dylan. He obviously knew his stuff.
“I’ll be over there if you need me.” The deputy said, pointing to the corner of the visitor’s lounge, near the large, black steel door he’d entered with his prisoner.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I figured you’d show up eventually. I know about you. You like to stick your nose into other people’s business. It’s your thing.”
“You have a knack for insulting people, don’t you?”
“I tell the truth, that’s what I do.”
I had set my bag on the table, but I scooped it up and stood. I didn’t need, nor deserve to be treated like that, especially when I’d come to try and help a man I wasn’t even sure was innocent, and definitely didn’t feel deserved my help. I had a feeling talking to him would be like talking to a brick wall anyway. “That’s fine. I’ll take my desire to help elsewhere then, Mr. Yancy. Good luck.” I walked toward the door, fully ready to leave because Bobby Yancy was saltier than a cracker in my meemaw’s chicken noodle soup, and I didn’t need that.
“Now, hold your horses. You don’t need to be leaving just yet.”
I stopped walking, but I didn’t turn around, nor did I say anything. I wanted to, but I abided by Momma’s number one rule, if you don’t have anything nice to say, zip it. As hard as it was, I zipped it tight as I could by keeping my lips pressed together because I did not want to have to atone for what might come out of my mouth at that moment later, when the good Lord came calling. Trust me, it was ugly to the bone.
He kept his mouth shut too, so I stood there and waited. Finally, after what felt like an eternity but was probably just a few seconds, I turned around and gave him the good Southern woman stare; think Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. The kind a Southern man knew meant he was in for a serious what-for if he didn’t do what he was supposed to do, and do it right quick. All Southern women were born with the ability to give the good Southern woman stare. It was our God given gift, and we used it whenever we felt the need, which, for most Southern women, was on a daily basis. Lord help the people we loved.
His eyes darted from me to the deputy standing at the door to the visitor’s room, and then back to me again. “I’m sorry.” He stared at the table and wiped something off of it with his one free hand.
I walked back to the table and sat, but I kept my things on my lap. “Exactly what are you sorry for?”
“For being rude and not treating you like a lady.” He didn’t make eye contact, and I figured it was because he was afraid.
“Which time?”
He lifted his eyes to mine. “All of them.”
I set my bag on the table. “Well, you should be. I’m sure your momma taught you better than that, and I know for a fact you’re a nice man, because I’ve been told that by people in town, so it must be true. Most people in Bramblett don’t lie.” I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms over my chest. “But I have to say, you sure don’t act like it to me.”
“I didn’t kill your friend. I didn’t like him, that’s true, but I didn’t kill him. I’ll tell you though, there’s a lot of other people in town that wouldn’t a cared a bit to see your buddy dead.”
I settled in for what I expected might be a long conversation. “Care to elaborate on that?”
“Take Coach Longley for starters. you might could check into him. Those two were at odds all the time. Couldn’t agree on nothing. I heard them arguing about the team from day one, and I heard Longley threaten Trammell, too. Your boyfriend check into that?” He straightened his shoulders. “I’m guessin’ he didn’t, did he? Too busy blaming the guy that’s been framed.”
Interesting that he thought he’d been framed, but then again, what else would he have said? “What do you mean Coach Longley threatened Carter?”
“I hear a lot of things around the halls. See and hear things others don’t. You know what I’m saying?”
I thought I did, but I asked him to clarify anyway.
“No one pays the janitor no mind. We’re invisible.”
“What exactly did you hear or see between Mr. Longley and Mr. Trammell?”
He shifted in his seat, and when he did, he grimaced. I empathized with him, but there wasn’t anything I could do on my end.
“Heard Longley say Trammell didn’t deserve the job, that the job should be his. That he’d do what he had to do to prove that, too.”
“That doesn’t exactly sound like a threat.”
“That’s not the threatening part. The threatening part was when he said he’d rather see him dead than coachin’ his boys.”
My stomach tensed. “You heard Coach Longley say that?”
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you tell that to the sheriff?”
He nodded again.
“And what did Dy—he say?” I tried not to refer to Dylan in the personal sense when I talked about him in a professional way. I thought it took away from his credibility, and I definitely didn’t want that to happen given his re-election concerns of late.
“Said my fingerprints were all over that needle, and I said course they were. I’d probably touched a hundred of those things in my job, and that one could have been months old. I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t wear gloves, and sometimes I do. I swept under the bleachers, but maybe it got lost under there, or it might have been one of the things I’d tried to pick up, but slipped away from me and I’d gotten distracted, so I just forgot about it, is all. Doesn’t mean I killed a man with it.”
I wasn’t a trained professional, but even so, I knew there were all kinds of holes in his story, and I suspected Dylan knew it, too. That said, there was also enough circumstance to the situation that he could have been telling the truth, or at least I thought that might be the case. I really had no idea. “Mr. Yancy, with all due respect, you had an altercation with Mr. Trammell in front of what, a hundred people, where you threatened to kill him, so forgive me, but your story sounds shady at best.”
“But it ain’t no lie.” He ran his one hand through his graying hair. “I love my kid, and I want a better life for him than I got, but I know killing a man ain’t the way to go about getting it for him. Did I cross the line the other night?” He nodded. “I did, yeah, but a man does that sometimes, ‘specially when his kid screws up and has to be the example when everybody else’s kid’s been doing the same thing and hasn’t had to suffer for it. You tell me how that’s fair.”
“I never said it was, but things aren’t always fair, Mr. Yancy.”
He pounded his fist on the table, and the sheriff’s deputy headed our direction. “It’s alright. I’m good,” Yancy said. He then directed his whispered comments toward me. “You think I don’t know that? Course I know that, but you got to understand, there’s a certain—” he paused. “What’s the word I’m looking for? It’s like a popularity thing. You know, the popular crowd gets first dibs at stuff, they’re the higher level of stuff first, and it happens with the parents too, and my kid, because of his parents, he’s low on the totem pole.”
It’s actually high with respect to totem poles, but that was a cultural history lesson for another time. “I think you mean hierarchy?”
“Yeah, that’s it. We ain’t high up on the hierarchy level in the lacrosse program even though my son is the best on the team, so no matter what we do, my kid don’t get no preferential treatment. The parents with th
e money, they get all the rewards, all the special treatment. That’s just how it works, you know what I’m saying?”
I couldn’t see Carter Trammell behaving that way. He cared about the team as a whole, and about the success of the team. I sincerely doubted he was the kind to pick and choose favorites, but I couldn’t be certain. Besides, he hadn’t been around long enough to have that kind of opinion. He hadn’t even officially coached the team yet, so, how could he? I made that point to Yancy, but he didn’t agree.
“The booster club had the man’s ear, or something else, that’s for sure. I saw him with that Ginnie Slappey all the time, whispering to each other. She was always in his office, always had her hand on his shoulder, all touchy-feely like. You ask me, there was a little of that hanky-panky goin’ on between the two of them. Of course I heard her say she was grateful he was going to let her son start. He’s the X attack position, the same as my son, so that’s when I figured out my Bobby wouldn’t be starting. He needs that play time to show the recruiters his skills for the scholarships, otherwise he may not get into a good college.”
I found it hard to believe Carter Trammell would have an affair with a married woman. Then again, Ginnie Slappey hadn’t been wearing her wedding ring as of late. “Where does your son want to go to college?”
“He wants to go to Duke, but with his grades, that’s a pipe dream. The only way he could is if he got a lacrosse scholarship, and the school worked with him to keep him in the program academically speaking, I mean.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, I just don’t see Carter having any kind of relationship with someone like Ginnie Slappey, so I suspect it wasn’t what you think. And also, I spoke to Carter personally about the team, and his primary goal was to push the kids to succeed academically first and then athletically. Education was extremely important to Carter.”
“Sure didn’t act like that.”
“Maybe you saw things though tainted glasses?”
“I don’t wear glasses.”
I wanted to laugh because he didn’t get my idiom. “I understand, but I think you misunderstood his intentions.” I redirected our conversation. “Given your access to information, what do you think happened to Coach Trammell?”
Lily Sprayberry Realtor Box Set Page 40
