Half Past Dead

by Meryl Sawyer

  “Well, after lunch, he’d take a little snooze. I usually radioed a deputy in the field with any problem. Yes, indeedy, if you woke Sheriff Parker, he was like a rabid dog. But Cloris demanded I put him on. He bellowed at me, but when I said Cloris Howard wanted to speak to him, he immediately took the call.”

  “Have any idea what was said?”

  Again, Nora studied him and hesitated before saying, “I listened in.” She shook a bony finger at him. “Now mind you, I don’t usually do that, but I had a hunch. That woman’s been carrying on with Judge Kincaid for years. I thought she was doing his dirty work for him.”

  Justin hadn’t heard a thing about this. “Really? How did you know?”

  “It’s a well-kept secret because of the judge’s political ambitions, but my sister used to be the judge’s secretary until she died of cancer.”

  “You never told anyone?”

  “Sheriff, I’m an old maid with no relatives. This job is my only way of supporting myself. The sheriff was a good buddy of the judge. One word from him and I’da been fired.”

  “I’ll keep the info to myself,” Justin assured her, “but the judge couldn’t persuade me to fire anyone, least of all you.”

  She arched one brow skeptically. “There’s talk in town that you’ll be gone before long. Buck Mason is after you. Yes, indeedy, that man can hold a grudge like nobody I’ve ever known.”

  “I’ll watch my back,” he replied, then realized he’d been sidetracked by news of the affair. “What did Cloris say when the sheriff came on the phone?”

  “I don’t rightly recall her words exactly, but I do know she didn’t say there had been a robbery. She said something like they had a situation or a problem. But her voice didn’t sound stressed the way you’d expect in a robbery.”

  Justin considered the information for a moment, then asked, “Did the sheriff go to the bank?”

  “Flew out the door like Satan himself was on his tail. It was strange, I’m telling ya. I’ve been here a mighty long time. I never knew the sheriff to work a case himself. The deputies did everything.”

  David had also said that he’d found the sheriff’s actions weird. “Did you happen to see the evidence the sheriff must have collected?”

  “He had the girl’s fingerprint from inside the bank vault. She wasn’t authorized to enter the vault. Cloris and Elmer missed the money, knew it had to be an inside job, and they looked around and saw cash sticking out of Kat’s purse in the employee’s lunchroom.”

  “Sounds like an illegal search.”

  “The prosecutor didn’t think so. Apparently, the money was clearly visible and that made it okay.”

  “What do you think?”

  Nora’s eyes narrowed. “Except for the print in the vault, I thought Kat could have been framed. It seemed just a little too…convenient. The judge huffed all around town that our funds wouldn’t be safe if criminals weren’t prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

  Pompous ass. The judge took every opportunity to grab the spotlight and further his political career.

  “There were quite a few of us who thought if Kat’s family had stood behind her and hired a competent attorney, she could have beat the charges.”

  “Who do you think did it?”

  Nora lifted her scrawny shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “Who knows? Maybe one of the other tellers. Cloris or Elmer, more likely.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  JUSTIN STRODE into the Mercury National Bank and asked to speak to Cloris Howard. The stunned teller—barely out of high school—took one look at him and scurried to the back of the building where the executive offices were. Obviously, word had gotten around and they knew he was the law in Twin Oaks. Just goes to show you what being an authority figure could accomplish.

  He gazed around the bank, thinking little had changed since Kat had worked here. The tellers’ stations were up front behind old-fashioned grills installed back in Bonnie and Clyde’s heyday. A desk for the loan officer separated the tellers from the executive area where Cloris Howard, the president, and Elmer Bitner, the vice president, had offices hidden from view. The vault was there as well, its sturdy brass wheel partially visible from the tellers’ area.

  Why had it been left open that day?

  Kat would have had to walk right by the tellers and the loan officer to enter the vault. Surely someone would have noticed. But according to the articles in the Trib, no one had seen Kat going into the vault.

  The only damning evidence had been the discovery of the money in her possession. And the fingerprint. She could have been framed, he decided. It would be hard to prove. None of the tellers working at the time were still at the bank. One was now a dealer at the Lucky Seven and the others had moved out of state. They could be traced but it would take time and resources Justin didn’t have.

  He’d have to rely on gut instinct and his service on the force in New Orleans to help him. If something hinky had gone on, he trusted himself to sniff out any inconsistency.

  Seconds later Cloris Howard appeared, her ring-decked hand extended. Justin remembered what Nora had told him about Cloris’s affair with the judge. Old history—or current news?

  Cloris was a slim, elegant older woman with a flawless peaches-and-cream complexion. Her hair was probably gray but she had it colored a glossy, natural-looking blond. She was still striking, but when she’d been younger, Cloris must have been a knockout.

  Why hadn’t she ever married? She came from one of “the” families, and she’d inherited her father’s banking business after making her way through a fancy boarding school, then Vanderbilt. He supposed Turner Kincaid had married May Ellen before Cloris had returned to town.

  “Justin!” she said as if greeting a close friend. “You’re back in town.”

  He smiled to himself. He’d been a hero during his days at Harrington High School. Sure ’nuf. People around here didn’t forget a football star.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Kaitlin Wells has returned on a work furlough for good behavior.”

  “So I heard.” Cloris shook her head in disgust. “Don’t let her near the bank.”

  Justin manufactured a smile. “Isn’t up to me, ma’am.”

  “I’m afraid of her.”

  Justin found that hard to believe. “Why?”

  Cloris hesitated. “Kat’s sneaky. She worked here for years without anyone suspecting what she was doing.”

  Justin waited for her to elaborate. Cloris motioned for him to follow her into the president’s office. Once inside, the heavy oak door shut on an office eerily like Turner Kincaid’s, she continued, “We’d been missing small amounts of money—fifty to one hundred dollars—for some time.”

  “Couldn’t you isolate it by the tellers’ end-of-day reports?”

  Cloris shrugged dismissively. “Yes, but this is a small bank in a very small town. At the end of the day, the tellers are in a rush to close out their drawers and leave. They balance, then stack their hundred-dollar bills in one pile, their fifties, their twenties and so on in the appropriate places. Later, we would discover we were short.”

  “You didn’t try checking each teller?”

  “Of course we did.” Her tone was filled with righteous indignation. “There’s no one but Elmer and me.” She tried for a smile but failed. “When there was a shortage, we checked out the tellers for weeks. Nothing. We decided honest mistakes were happening. We can’t pay a lot so our tellers aren’t always the sharpest.”

  “Did you suspect Kat Wells?”

  Cloris shook her head. “No. Kat was too honest—or so we thought. Unfortunately, she had everyone fooled.”

  Justin imagined the plump young woman from the Trib photograph. Nothing like the Kat Wells he knew.

  “Why so many questions, Sheriff?” Cloris’s eyes were shrewd. He sensed her suspicion of him, and he had the distinct impression she didn’t like being questioned.

  “I’m responsible for keeping track of t
he Wells woman,” he said, telling a half truth. “I wasn’t in town when the crime happened. I’m just filling in the blanks.”

  “You’ll need to speak to Elmer Bitner,” she replied evenly, as if there could be no question about what to do next. “He saw the money in Kat’s purse the day of the robbery.”

  Justin thanked her, thinking she’d been a little too cool, a little too smooth. Something about her nicked at his brain. Or okay, could be that Nora had alerted him to something he’d never have suspected otherwise.

  Cloris was very feminine in a Southern way, but there was a good reason such women were called steel magnolias. His mother had been one—all purpose and determination hidden behind a soft veneer. Even when he’d made enough money, she hadn’t allowed him to support her. Despite Cloris’s femininity, she probably had bigger balls than most men.

  “We’re going to see Elmer.” In less than a minute, Cloris had whisked him down the hall into Elmer’s smaller oak-paneled office. She introduced Justin, then left. Why such a rush to get rid of him?

  Bitner was shorter and pudgier than he remembered, but he still had a full head of brown hair just beginning to go gray at the temples. Justin recalled his mother trying to purchase a run-down shack on the outskirts of the north side. Her income as a laundress/seamstress hadn’t merited a second glance from the bankers. Never mind that his mother paid cash and didn’t have a credit card to run up her debt. Bitner had been a loan officer back then, and he’d wanted no part of Justin’s mother.

  Elmer had just been doing his job. He was one of those men who always did his job. He didn’t overreach and he didn’t fall short. He merely did what was expected of him. Near as Justin could tell, Bitner had been born again and spent his free time at church.

  Bitner’s doughy handshake was slightly clammy. “Kat Wells is back.” The words reflected the man’s disappointment with the penal system. “What next?”

  Justin lowered his broad frame into one of the two spindly French chairs Bitner had in front of his desk. “It shouldn’t be any problem. She’s working at the Trib.”

  Bitner snorted. “We’re thinking about hiring extra security.”

  Justin struggled to hold back a laugh. Kat a threat? Not on your life. “Why?”

  “She turned this bank upside down. We’re finally back on track and we’re staying on track.”

  “You know, I wasn’t around when the money disappeared. Do you have any idea how Kat got into the vault without anyone seeing her?”

  “It wouldn’t have been difficult. The vault isn’t usually open, but we’d opened it to secure a very large deposit from Whitney’s Feed and Seed.” Bitner rolled his shoulders as if he had a kink in his neck. “The break room is down the hall beyond the vault. People wouldn’t have thought it strange that she was going in that direction.”

  “Who opened the vault for the large deposit?”

  Bitner cocked one shaggy brow. “I did. As God as my witness, I should have closed it. But the gall-darned wheel was sticking. I knew we had another deposit coming in, so I left it ajar.”

  Justin wondered if Bitner was being honest, but without proof, he couldn’t call him on anything. On his way out, he checked the bank’s floor plan. It seemed impossible for Kat to have slipped into the vault without someone noticing, but Bitner could be right. If people went by the vault to the break room all the time, it might not attract attention.

  “THERE’S A PHONE CALL for you. A man,” Connie said with a frown as Kat was rewriting a PTA story Travis had phoned in. Her heart lurched in her chest. Maybe it was Justin, calling with the DNA results.

  She didn’t know what she was going to say to him after last night. This morning she’d discussed the situation with Lola Rae, who advised taking it slowly. Men were notorious hound dogs who liked to hook up, have sex, then split. They didn’t commit easily, and Lola Rae should know. She had been trying to get Gary Don Willingham to the altar for two years.

  Kat had nodded, thinking about the man. She hadn’t liked him particularly and thought Lola Rae was lucky Gary Don refused to marry her.

  What she needed to do was get her life in order before she became involved with a man. First she wanted to visit her mother. No matter what Tori said—and no doubt Tori was right—Kat had to see her mother.

  She picked up the telephone. “Hello. This is Kaitlin Wells.”

  “Kat, remember me?”

  Elmer. She would have known that voice anywhere. As vice president of the bank, Elmer supervised the tellers. He never lost an opportunity to tell the girls their souls would be saved if they attended services at Trinity Baptist Church.

  “Yes, Elmer, what can I do for you?”

  “Shh! Don’t say my name.”

  She didn’t trust the creep after he’d claimed to have found the money in her purse. “Why not? What’s going on?”

  “I need to talk to you—in private.”

  “I can’t imagine what we could have to discuss.”

  “It’s about the money you took.”

  Oh, my God! This must be the call she’d been told to expect. She had always wondered if Elmer had planted the money and lied to cover up his own crime. Or perhaps he’d been protecting Cloris. She’d never been able to decide what had happened. The only thing she knew for certain was that she’d never entered the vault, so her fingerprint couldn’t have been found there.

  “When do you want to meet?” she asked, justifiably proud of her calm voice.

  “Tonight at nine. There’s a picnic bench near the Lucky Seven’s dock. Meet me there. And don’t tell anyone. I can’t be seen with you.”

  Kat agreed and hung up. She considered calling Justin, but what would she tell him? No one was supposed to know she was undercover. She glanced around the city room. Connie was bent over her computer. David was out taking Max for a walk.

  She pulled out her cell phone and called Special Agent Wilson, who answered on the first ring. She quietly explained what was happening.

  “Meet him, but be sure to record the conversation.”

  “Right.” He’d given her a miniature recorder that looked like a woman’s powder compact.

  “And take your cell phone. Do you have the undercover agent’s number on speed dial?”

  “Yes, and I keep the battery charged.”

  “Good. I’ll alert the agent that you’re meeting Bitner at nine. If there’s trouble, call immediately. The agent will be close enough to help you should it become necessary.”

  KAT MANAGED to get through the day and return to her small studio. She hadn’t heard from Justin, but she didn’t call him, assuming the DNA hadn’t come in yet. It was miserably hot in her apartment. She was too nervous to eat. She checked the recorder twice and made certain the speed dial on her cell phone had the correct number.

  What did Elmer want with her?

  She had two hours before the meeting. Enough time to drop in on her mother. She decided that if Tori’s car was there, she’d visit another time. She didn’t want to confront both of them together.

  THE MODEST ROW of town homes where her mother lived was a lot nicer than the small bungalow where Tori and Kat had grown up. Loretta Wells had purchased the condo before Kat’s father was cold in the grave. She’d been so proud of it. Kat had always suspected her mother bought it with the college fund her father had left, but Kat had been too dependent, too unsure of herself to question Loretta.

  A tidal wave of memories washed over her as she pulled into the drive. She’d lived in the small condo until she was arrested for theft. They would watch television in the evening, but they didn’t talk much. Every other night, Tori would call, and her mother’s stone tablet of a face would light up. Kat always experienced a humiliating, deflated feeling, as if she were less than nothing to her mother.

  It was almost dark, and Kat saw the lights were on in the living room. The television was visible from the path up to the house. A quivery feeling settled into the pit of her stomach as she knocked on the scree
n door.

  “Come in,” a feeble, barely audible voice called.

  Kat stepped into the room. It took a second for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Oh, Lordy. The once robust woman had been reduced to bare bones. Her skin, wrinkled as a ball of tissue paper, alarmed Kat with its chalky pallor. Her mother’s silky hair must have fallen out during chemotherapy and was growing back in coarse gray sprouts.

  “You,” she rasped. She crossed her arms over her stomach as if holding herself together and coughed, a rattling sound like pennies in a soup can.

  Kat had planned to lash out, to punish Loretta at last, but she was too shaken by her mother’s appearance. It had been years—miserable, lonely years—since she’d last seen this woman. Her mother. Despite her betrayal and all the revenge scenes Kat had imagined in prison, she couldn’t go there. Not now.

  “I’m out for good behavior.” Kat ventured closer, thinking the condo smelled strange. Death, she realized. Her mother was literally decaying. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “I’m…not much…for talking…these days.”

  The aching pain in Kat’s chest made breathing difficult, talking nearly impossible. Finally, she managed to say, “We may not have another chance.”

  Her mother rolled sideways, then pushed herself up from the sofa with great effort. “I’ll get…us some…lemonade.”

  Her mother had a thing for lemonade. She made it from concentrate and didn’t add enough water. It was always too sweet. “Let me do it.”

  Her mother waved her aside with a spindly arm. “Nah. I need…to get up…once in awhile. ’Sides, I’ve had…rats. You don’t…want to see…the kitchen. Sit down…and I’ll fetch…the lemonade.”

  Kat reluctantly sat on the sofa. Her mother walked with a cane, moving as if she were knee-deep in wet sand. Kat lowered the volume on the television and waited.

  She heard her mother trundling around in the kitchen. Kat tried to think of what to say to a dying woman. Her mother might not have loved her, but she’d taken care of her and never abused her.