Deep South Dead (A Hunter Jones Mystery Book 1)

by Charlotte Moore

  The older Sonny gave Hunter a worried look. “Don’t be puttin’ that in the newspaper. My daughter-in-law runs her mouth more than she should, and she ain’t one to talk about anybody and credit cards.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Hunter said with a smile, making a mental note to remember the name Davonne Wilcox.

  Long as you’re here, let me sell you a ticket to our barbecue chicken dinner next Saturday,” the older Sonny said, reaching into his pocket.

  The tickets, held together with a rubber band, were printed on red paper.

  “Bar-B-Q chicken. Slaw. Beans. Slice bread. Pound Cake. Ice Tea. $5. Take out. Eat In.”

  “It’s to get us a new roof at the rescue center. County Commission’s too cheap to do it.”

  “I don’t know, Sonny. Last time I got some barbecued chicken around here it was raw at the bone,” Hunter said, half-teasing, knowing she’d buy the ticket and forget the take-out tray when the day came to pick it up.

  “Yeah? Well, you’re new here and you don’t know nothin’ about who can barbecue chicken. I bet you got that from the VFW. They liked to gave my sister food poisnin’ one time and they got bought cake, too. You get it from us, that chicken’ll be fallin’ off the bone and that cake’ll be homemade. And if you don’t like it, you get your five dollars straight back.”

  Hunter fished her wallet out of her bag.

  “I’ll tell you sumpin’,” the older man said, taking the money. “If you want to get a picture, you could get one from over there, “he pointed his finger. “See up that hill where that Hilliard Real Estate sign is, and see that old chimney where the house burned down?”

  Hunter nodded.

  “You pull your car up that driveway and go up where the chimney is, and then walk out through that stand of young pines just a little. You don’t need to go any further than that and you can see clean out to the river from the top of the hill. You oughta be able to see the house and all the vehicles pretty good, ‘cause it’s just down and around that curve.

  “Thanks!”

  Five minutes later, Hunter made it through the stand of pines. She couldn’t see the river, but Sonny Willcox was right about the crime scene. From the hilltop she could see an emergency medical service ambulance, the sheriff’s unmarked Crown Victoria, a dark green late model BMW and a half dozen other vehicles parked along a curving, narrow red clay road. Beyond the road was a doublewide mobile home set in a pecan orchard. Yellow crime tape was strung from one pecan tree to the next. She recognized Sam Bailey near the house by his height, and Deputy Bub Williston by his bulk. She tried the zoom setting on her camera, and took a few shots. They didn’t look promising on the little screen. Just a lot of greenery and red clay, with a few miniscule human beings.

  Okay, might as well get a little closer and get something good. What are they going to do about it anyway, besides tell her to go back?

  Taneesha sat in the Crown Victoria considering other lines of work she might go into. Somehow, she had known before they even got to the house after Tilda Ross called about Tamlyn not showing up for work, but she hadn’t known how awful it could be. She had made it all the way through finding a bottle for the baby, changing that diaper, and who cared about the damned crime scene? She had made it through turning the baby over to the EMTs to take to the social worker, and then she had thrown up.

  The baby howling.

  Tamlyn on her side, all stiff and weird-looking, hair over her eyes, blood already settling like a dark outline on her chin and cheek, where her arm touched on the floor. Wearing satin. A pink, rose and green flowered kimono hemmed with broad bands of rose. Open. Actually more off than on. The sash under her neck. It hadn’t been tied, probably just crossed and pulled tight from behind. Tight enough to leave a red trench and deep purple bruising.

  The baby’s high chair on its side. A toaster pulled to the floor. A lamp on its side shattered, as if Tamlyn had been grabbing for anything to pull herself free.

  That’s what she saw as soon as they got in the house after Bub kicked in the door in .She just gave Tamlyn’s body a quick glance at that point, and even though she knew they were supposed to make sure that nobody was in the house before they did anything else, she left Bub staring at Tamlyn’s body and ran down the hall to get the howling baby.

  “Neesha, quit brooding.”

  It was Sam, looking weary and rumpled.

  Taneesha looked up at him with tears in her eyes.

  “You’ve got car payments,” he said, reading her mind and her mood. “Lucky for me you can’t quit ‘til you find something else.”

  “Yeah,” she said, biting her bottom lip, “It wasn’t so lucky for Tamlyn. If I’d been smart enough, she’d still be alive.

  “You mean if she’d have been smart enough,” Sam said. “She told you she was going to stay with her folks, and besides, it looks a lot like she let whoever it was into the house. Come on now. Sanders Beal is here and he wants to hear about your talk with Tamlyn yesterday.”

  Taneesha cursed under her breath, and got out of the car.

  If there was anybody in law enforcement she didn’t feel like dealing with, it was District Attorney Sanders Beal.

  A heavy-set man in a very expensive suit, he stood there, talking to T.J. Jackson, muttering and rolling his eyes as if he couldn’t believe the Magnolia County Sheriff’s Office had been so inept as to allow another murder to take place.

  “Okay, Deputy,” he said brusquely, when she walked over with Sam. “Tell me what you know.”

  “Sheriff Bailey wanted me to find out who she had seen during the morning. The victim worked right next door to Miss Mae-Lula…”

  “I know where she worked. So you got out here when?”

  “5:05.”

  “And?”

  “She arrived at 5:20.”

  “By herself?”

  “With her baby daughter and her nephew. He’s about five.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “The baby’s with the father’s sister right now. They’ll care for her until he gets home. The nephew spent the night at his own home. She was just taking care of him until his mother got off work. She says that Tamlyn…”

  Beal cut her off, turning to Sam,” Any chance the husband made a quick trip home and killed her?”

  “Not unless he drove an 18-wheeler from here to Maine after he did it,” Sam said. “He’s been notified and he’s on his way back.”

  Beal turned back to Taneesha.

  “Go ahead,” he said, “and how about cutting to the chase?”

  Taneesha stared at him for a moment.

  “Neesha,” Sam cautioned in a low voice, too late.

  “Mr. Beal,” Taneesha asked. “Have I been wasting your precious time?”

  Sam reached out to touch Taneesha’s shoulder.

  She shrugged his hand off, still focused on Beal.

  “Because when somebody asks me to cut to the chase,” she said, “the impression I get is that I’ve been talking too much, or saying irrelevant things or not staying on the point, so maybe you ought to just guess what happened and I can tell you if you’re right.”

  “Deputy Martin.” Sam said. “That’s enough.”

  She stopped abruptly, feeling the heat in her cheeks, afraid she was going to cry. Was Sam going to back her up or not?

  “Good Lord!” Beal said. “What brought that on?”

  “You brought that on, Sandy,” Sam said an even tone, “and I’ve got enough on my plate without having you come in here talking down to my people. You need to hear every word Taneesha has to say, and also what her impressions were, because she’s good at what she does and that interview she did yesterday is all we’ve got.”

  “Okay, okay, everybody’s stressed,” Beal said. “Sorry, Deputy, I didn’t mean to give you a hard time. You tell it your way.”

  Taneesha relaxed a little, but the anger was still there. She opened her notebook for reference and began by explaining that Tamlyn had been shoppi
ng in Macon and that when she came home, loaded down with shopping bags and kids, she didn’t know yet that Mae-Lula Hilliard had been murdered. Then she went on with the rest, systematically.

  “Okay,” Beal said ten minutes later. “So, if I’m getting this right, they got her name, but no address. Could they have asked around here and found out where she lived?”

  “It’s sure possible,” Sam said, “and if they did, we’ll probably be hearing about it as soon as the news gets out, but I’m going to check that out at Jaybird Hilliard’s office myself, because he says the kids came in there, turned in their petitions and got their money from him. It’s at least possible that somebody there could have told them where Tamlyn lived since she used to work there.”

  Beal tried a friendly tone with Taneesha.

  “Do you think she would have let the guys into her house, Deputy?”

  “No,” Taneesha said, “I don’t. I think she enjoyed kidding around with them, but after the business came up about her telling them that Miss Mae-Lula lived next door, and she got the impression they might have had something to do with it, she started getting really anxious. She was saying she wouldn’t sign any kind of statement or testify in court, and she was acting as if she thought she could just, I don’t know, deny the whole thing. It didn’t seem to me like she was scared of them so much as she was scared that people might think it was her fault that it happened. But no, I don’t think she would have let them in. I think that if they had come knocking on her door, she would have had a gun in one hand and the telephone in the other. I’m just thinking she calmed down and decided there wasn’t any reason to stay with her folks. I sure wish she had stayed with them.”

  “Hey, maybe Bounds and Rocker had the girls with them,” T.J. said. “The girls could have gone to the door like they had a flat tire or something and the victim could have opened the door, and the guys could have come right in behind them. The victim didn’t see the girls before, right? Just the guys.”

  “That’s requires having four people able to stomach two murders,” Sam said, looking off into the distance.

  “Okay, so let’s leave Rocker and Bounds and the girls out of it a minute, and get back to basics,” Beal said “How about something extramarital going on? How about a lover?”

  “We’re going to have to check that out, obviously.” Sam said, “But what I don’t understand is why whoever did it broke her car window to get into the car and tried to get into the trunk from the inside of the car. Why not just take her keys while they were in there?”

  “Hey, look who’s over there taking pictures,” T.J. said. “I thought you told them not to let anybody past the barricade.”

  “She didn’t drive down here,” Sam said. “She parked her car up there on the top of the hill and walked down here. I wouldn’t have figured she’d know the lay of the land that well.”

  “She came all the way down that hill in those high heeled boots?” Taneesha said, almost smiling for the first time in hours. “I guess she’ll do anything for a story.”

  “No,” Sam said, “She took the boots off about halfway down, and put them back on after she jumped across that drainage ditch.”

  “That girl over there with the camera?” Sanders Beal said, brightening up and standing a little taller. “Is she a reporter? What did you say her name is?”

  Hunter took dutiful notes as the District Attorney made his statement about the determination of his office, in cooperation with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Magnolia County Sheriff’s Office, to apprehend and bring swift and certain justice to the vicious perpetrators of the two Merchantsville murders

  “Why don’t I drive Hunter back to her car?” T.J. said to Sam.

  Sam covered a yawn and turned to Taneesha.

  “You need to go home,” he said, “You take Hunter to her car and then get some rest.”

  They were half-way up Old River Road when Hunter noticed that Taneesha was biting her bottom lip.

  “You found the body didn’t you?” she asked.

  Taneesha nodded.

  “Yes,” her voice seemed about to break “and I do not want to talk about it to…”

  “Hey, it’s okay. I wasn’t going to ask you…”

  “I don’t mean you, dammit. I mean I already got this ‘chin up it’s not your fault’ talk from Sam, and nearly had a fist fight with the district attorney, cause I’m feeling so crappy, and I don’t want to go home, cause you know in my house nobody can just go in their room and slam a door. Aunt Ramona can see trouble on my face a mile away, and it won’t be five minutes before Uncle James’ll start in on how I don’t need to be mixed up with all this violence. He’ll start saying he’s got the money for me to go to law school, and I don’t want him bringing that up because right now I’m about ready to take him up on it.”

  Hunter waited in silence in case there was more. There wasn’t.

  She took a light tone.

  “Well, my own rule in a crisis is to make no decisions without ice cream, “she said as Taneesha pulled up beside her car. “I’ve got a half-gallon of Rocky Road ice cream in my freezer. Why don’t we go eat it?”

  Taneesha pondered the invitation.

  “Sounds good to me,” she said, “But, I’d rather have some pizza first. If I take pizza home, first thing I hear is ‘Why are you eating that junk when we’ve got a refrigerator full of real food?’ Let me go swap cars and check my messages and I’ll get the pizza and be over a half hour. Okay with you if it’s got everything on it?”

  “Anything I don’t like, I can pick off,” Hunter said.

  Chapter 10

  THEY DUG INTO THE PIZZA WITH little conversation, until Taneesha looked around and said, “You still got Miss Mae-Lula’s cat?”

  “The cat!” Hunter said, getting up, “I haven’t seen her since I got home. I wonder…”

  Katie the Calico was under Hunter’s bed, purring like an outboard motor.

  “You dope!” Hunter said to her, “And I fixed up a nice basket for you!”

  Lying on her stomach, she managed to get the kittens out from under the bed one at a time, and hand them to Taneesha. There were four: one solid black, two calicos, one black and white.

  Hunter and Taneesha marveled over each one, holding the tiny stubby-tailed creatures with the palms of their hands, passing them back and forth, admitting that they didn’t have clue how to tell the boys from the girls.

  “Except,” Hunter said, “the three-colored ones, they’re always girls.”

  Then Hunter got out the basket she had prepared, and put the mewing kittens into it. Katie hopped right in and the two young women sat on the bedroom floor, watching as the mother cat washed the babies roughly with her tongue and got them settled down for another round of nursing.

  “You know what I think is amazing,” Hunter said. “I think it’s amazing that she knows exactly how to take care of them. I mean nobody has to teach a mama cat how to be a mama cat.”

  Taneesha, to Hunter’s astonishment, suddenly fell apart, going from tears to bawling, to a few choice curse words, to more tears, and then to snuffling and nose blowing.

  Hunter, who had found a box of tissues and handed it silently to Taneesha, waited it out.

  “I’m sorry,” Taneesha finally said, “You must think I’m a big baby.”

  “Yeah, right,” Hunter said with a grin. “I myself have never cried since I was an infant. You feel better?”

  “Some,” Taneesha said, “You know if you hadn’t said that about mama cats knowing…” she stopped, snuffled a little more, “if you just hadn’t said that.”

  “You’ve lost me,” Hunter said. “Let’s go get some ice cream.”

  “The thing is,” Taneesha said when they were back at the kitchen table, digging into the Rocky Road, “in high school, I always thought Tamlyn was sort of a Barbie Doll, like pretty and dumb, maybe even a little mean sometimes. And yesterday when I was talking to her, I was looking around thinking she must have be
en spending Skeet’s money as fast as he could make it, and she wasn’t all that nice yesterday either. She finally just about told me to get out of her house.”

  She ate a huge spoonful of ice cream, and thought about it further.

  “But the other thing is, honest to God, Hunter, anybody could tell she loved that baby, and she took good care of her and kept her looking so clean and pretty. It just makes me want to scream when I think about somebody, you know…”

  Hunter waited.

  “I mean whoever the son of a bitch was, he left her lying there dead on the floor with her baby alone in the house, and I know that’s not the worst part of it, and the baby’s okay, but that’s what I just keep thinking about. Tamlyn put up one hell of a fight, and.. and I keep thinking how she would have felt if she could have seen her baby girl standing there in that stinky diaper and howling like that.”

  “That must have been horrible,” Hunter said. “I thought finding Miss Mae-Lula was bad, but that’s worse.”

  “It definitely was horrible and I’m not supposed to be talking about it either,” Taneesha said wearily.

  “Look,” Hunter said, “When I wear this tee shirt, I’m not a reporter, but let’s change the subject. Is Sanders Beal a pompous ass all the time, or was that just his media relations bit?”

  “He’s a pain,” Taneesha said, “I’d say about 90 percent of the time, but if you want to see a bad guy put away for good, he’s your man. I mean he’s good in court.”

  “What about T.J.?” Hunter asked.

  “T.J.?” Taneesha shrugged. “I guess he’s okay for routine stuff, but he’s a moron about people. It’s like he understands English, but he doesn’t get body language at all, so I don’t see him ever being a really good investigator. And he’s sort of a male chauvinist pig, too. I guess he’s lucky he’s cute looking or somebody probably would have killed him by now.”

  “I’m going out to dinner with him Saturday night,” Hunter said.

  Taneesha stared at her and then she put her hands in a praying position and looked up toward the ceiling.