by Martin Clark
“Yeah. Sounds good.”
While they were deciding where to eat, Betty appeared to tell them the sheriff and a state police investigator were in the lobby and needed to speak with them. After almost two decades of practicing law, it was the kind of occurrence that raised their interest but didn’t cause any particular alarm, and they continued to discuss diners, restaurants, fast food and blue plates until the cops arrived at the door. Joe and Lisa stood, and Joe gestured for them to come in.
Sheriff Lane Perry was a large, amiable man with close-cropped hair and a physicality that was pronounced and obvious but not threatening. The Stones considered him honest and conscientious, and he and Joe both enjoyed quarter horses and trout fishing, occasionally crossed paths at the saddle club or on the banks of the Smith River. The state police officer, Clay Hatcher, was younger, maybe thirty-five, a brash, noisy, spring-loaded hotshot who was, it seemed, always itching for a high-speed chase or a chance to bust into a house at 3:00 a.m. and scream commands as he brandished his pistol, though it was safe to assume he wouldn’t be the first through a dangerous door, or even the second.
“Hey, Joe,” the sheriff said. “I think you know Special Agent Hatcher from the state police.”
“Yeah. Sure. Good to see you both.”
Sheriff Perry then nodded at Lisa and said, “Mrs. Stone.”
Hatcher had his hands on his hips and wore his silver badge on a chain around his neck. His weapon was apparent in a shoulder holster. “Nice to see you again, Mr. Stone,” he said. “And pleased to meet you, ma’am.”
“What brings you gents by?” Lisa asked. “Sit down if you’d like.”
“We’re fine,” the sheriff replied. “Thanks just the same.” He hooked a thumb into his patent leather gun belt. “I know you’ve been good to look after Lettie VanSandt,” he said to Joe, “so I thought I’d tell you that we found her dead this morning. Out at her place.”
“Oh no,” Joe said. Everyone was still standing, and he’d walked back behind his desk and leaned against a credenza. “What—”
“Got fried cookin’ meth,” Hatcher interjected, eager to tell what he knew, no pity or concern in his tone. He smirked through the words.
“Meth?” Joe repeated. “Lettie’s a lot of things, but she’s not a druggie.”
“Facts prove different,” Hatcher remarked. He took his hands off his hips. “She was in a shack next to her house, and the damn place had the whole shebang, from the Coleman fuel to the matches to the boxes of cold medicines. Iodine. Burners. I’ve seen my share of methamphetamine outfits, and this lady was cooking crank. No doubt.”
“It sure looks that way,” Perry added. “Surprised me too. Lettie was a pain in the butt and as hateful as a striped snake, but I’d have never pegged her for a drug dealer, no sir, not me.”
“So what happened?” Lisa asked.
“Well,” Perry said, “it looks—”
“Meth is volatile,” Hatcher interrupted, “and the fumes can be very flammable, and she screwed up and, boom, there’s an explosion and a fire, and it’s curtains. End of story. We bring in the feds to take these damn things apart—that’s how serious it is. You brew this poison, bad things can happen to the chef.”
“Thanks for the tutorial,” Joe said.
“Poor lady,” Lisa said. She sighed, raked a hank of hair behind her ear. “I never cared for her, but you have to hate it for the old kook.”
“It wasn’t pretty,” Perry said. “We didn’t find her for several days, and between the fire and all those animals, well, you get the picture.” He peered at the floor for a moment.
“Ouch.” Joe grimaced. “You guys certain it was her?”
“I mean, who else would it be, Joe?” Perry shifted his weight, and the hardwood boards creaked. “She’s not around and hasn’t been seen for well over a week, the remains—the little bit we can find—are in a shack on her property, the jewelry that didn’t completely melt is similar to hers, and it’s a female.”
“How about dental?” Joe asked.
“We, well, a lot of her was either burned or destroyed or has gone missing. I’ll check. But where would we find her records? She had the gold tooth when she moved here years ago from St. Louis, and I’d wager she’s never darkened the door of a dentist’s office since.”
“Then you should run DNA.” Joe was firm.
“There’s a great idea,” Hatcher said. “Let’s waste time and taxpayers’ money and clog a lab that’s already months behind and can’t get us what we need on important cases so we can confirm information we already know for certain.” He narrowed his eyes. “The way I figure it, if she’s not dead, we’ll all know soon enough when she shows up at the grocery store or the Friday night square dance. Right?”
“Or the board of supervisors’ meeting or my office or Delegate Armstrong’s office or at the phone company to bitch about the static in her line,” Perry cracked. “Joe, what more could there be to it?” he asked. “She was a mean old fruitcake who lived with a bunch of stray animals and could worry the horns off a brass billy goat. Nothing’s missing so far as we can tell, nothing’s hinky, and maybe a meth habit would explain why she was so contrary.”
“People get killed in drug deals every day,” Joe noted. “It’s possible there is more to it.”
“Like what?” Lisa asked. She was looking at her husband but noticed Agent Hatcher in the periphery, staring at her.
“I don’t know. Maybe Lane’s right. It’s just a shock.” Joe stood straighter, folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t guess DNA would really tell us much, especially in light of the info you guys already have. It’s…well…it’s hard to believe, but it’s hard to believe that friends you’ve known for decades are embezzlers or child molesters or wholesale alcoholics, and we see it happen again and again, don’t we? The deacon at your church arrested for a DUI, the Rotary Club president in a trailer park buying dope from some skank. Nothing should surprise us in this business.”
Perry nodded. “Right, you never know. But this seems clear to me. And to Agent Hatcher.”
“She got blown up,” Hatcher said curtly. “Fire and animals done the rest.”
“How much does the DNA cost?” Joe asked. “If there’s no rush?”
“For heaven’s sake, Joe,” Lisa scolded him. “Haven’t we wasted enough time and money on Lettie VanSandt already? You especially.”
Perry raised his hands, fingers gaped, palms uncovered. “Okay, Joe, sure, if it’ll make you happy, we’ll send the remains for an analysis. Whatever. I suppose if we can’t make a visual ID, it’s technically called for. We’ll do it by the book.”
“Appreciate it,” Joe told him.
“I reckon you already know she left you everything and put you in charge of her affairs. You can ride out there with me first chance you have, and we’ll collect her hairbrush and toothbrush. That’s what they always request at the lab. I’ll pull her prints from her concealed weapon application, but from what we saw, there won’t be nothing they can do along those lines. I didn’t see anything left that looked like fingers.”
Joe glanced at his wife, then at the sheriff. “I’m her executor, but how do you know that?”
“We did a walk-through at her house,” Perry answered, unperturbed. “Found her dead and burned, so it follows we’d investigate. Her will was wrote on a sheet of yellow legal paper. It was on a bedroom table. Left you everything and put you in charge.” He smiled. “Quite a gift, huh? A pack of cur dogs and a bunch of starvin’ cats. All yours now, Joe.” The sheriff chuckled. “Plus her three or four acres and her run-down trailer. I don’t envy you trying to administer that mess.”
“Man, the place is just lousy with animals,” Hatcher noted. He shook his head, amused. “I was expecting that Sarah McLachlan chick from the TV commercials to show up and start singing. That’s how bad it is.”
“You must’ve found an old will,” Joe said, ignoring Hatcher. “We just did the paperwork here a couple weeks
ago, and she left her estate to her son and the SPCA, not me.”
“Well, this was all in her handwriting, and it…I took it with me, so you can have the original. Maybe it is old. I’ll leave that to you folks with the legal degrees to solve.”
“Was it dated?” Joe asked.
“Yeah,” the sheriff answered. “But I don’t recall the details. It was right recent, that much I remember.”
Joe sawed his teeth across his bottom lip. He touched his temple with his index finger. “Odd.”
“Why’s it odd, Joe?” Lisa pressed him, clearly irritated. “Lettie was crazy as a loon, okay? She changed her will and rewrote all of her nonsensical corporate bylaws and tinkered with all the other assorted rubbish you drafted for her every week, like she was J. Paul Getty or Melinda Gates. Her life was entirely about signing meaningless documents and filing her own spite suits and harassing bag boys who didn’t put her frozen hamburger and cans of white beans in the right sack. She was a legal hypochondriac. Jeez.”
Hatcher grinned.
“You’re probably right,” Joe calmly said, but he didn’t direct his answer to her or either of the men. His gaze was elsewhere, skipped everyone in the room. “But it is curious she’d suddenly do her own will when she loved to come in here and waste my time and thrived on the attention and the ceremony.”
“So…I don’t understand,” Hatcher snapped. “What exactly is it you’re gettin’ at?”
“Yeah, Joe, what’re you tryin’ to say?” Perry frowned. “At first you were kinda hintin’ maybe she was killed in a dope deal. Or suggestin’ it wasn’t her. Help me with this, but since she didn’t leave a will to some stranger and then wind up dead, since she left her buddy Joe everything, why is that peculiar to you?”
Joe shrugged. “Who knows. Hey, thanks for doing the DNA. Like I said, I’m just a little shocked to hear the news, but drugs would go a long way in explaining her personality—”
“And her bizarre behavior and skin-and-bones appearance,” Lisa interjected.
“When do you want to ride over there?” Perry asked Joe.
“Doesn’t matter,” Joe said. “Whatever’s best for you.”
“I might go too,” Lisa added. “We’ve never seen where she lived. It’ll be good to have a look at our grand inheritance. Assuming, of course, we’re so fortunate.” She walked to her husband and slid her arm around his waist so that the two of them were facing the policemen. “I’ve always wanted a summer home. And I understand she kept cash hidden. Probably three or four hundred dollars at the end of that rainbow.”
—
Joe never grew tired of eating at Byrd’s Store, and it was on the route to Lettie’s, so they agreed to meet Sheriff Perry and Hatcher at the trailer around one-thirty and dropped by the store for lunch. The business was housed in a sprawling frame building and had been run by the Byrd family since the 1920s. A country emporium, it had stout shelves stocked with Vienna sausages, potted meat, green cans of Del Monte fruits and vegetables, Little Debbie cakes, cookies, chips, gum, candy, off-brand motor oil, antifreeze, fishing lures, bread, flour, sugar and cheap, flimsy toys, mostly race cars and six-shooters. A woodstove in the rear was surrounded by a couple rockers and some mismatched ladder-backs, and more often than not a picked-apart copy of The Martinsville Bulletin was lying on one of the chairs. The small grill served standard short-order food, but there was always homemade gravy for the morning, and pinto beans and corn bread at noon, and usually a stew during cold weather, and a fresh from-scratch pie early in the week.
They ate by the stove, their forks and spoons white plastic disposables, and when “Act Naturally” played on the radio—dialed to the local AM channel—Joe mentioned he was a fan of Buck Owens and liked the song but hadn’t heard it since the 2004 Galax Fiddlers’ Convention.
“It’s okay, I guess,” Lisa said. She was holding a bowl of Brunswick stew in one hand and spooning it with the other. Her Diet Coke was on the floor beside her chair.
“Buck’s a dandy-fine musician. If you can survive Hee Haw and still have Dwight Yoakam cover you, that’s pretty impressive.”
Lisa wasn’t interested. This was a minor variation of a set piece she’d heard Joe recite many times before. Soon would come a mention of Merle Haggard. She bit into a saltine she’d daubed with stew. “Most of those guys sound the same to me. No difference.”
“It can be tricky, I’ll grant you that. Buck Owens really is a talent and still holds up well, but poor old Porter Wagoner is an outright hick. A clodhopper extraordinaire. Conway Twitty will never be more than a sequined peckerwood with a hopeless name; Ferlin Husky’s brilliant.” He swallowed a mouthful of beans and sang a few lines of the song, the part about the movies and becoming a big star, patted his foot with the music. “Of course, there’s no disputing that Merle Haggard’s a minor deity. In the pantheon.”
She watched him sitting there in his dark lawyer’s suit against a backdrop of canned goods and dusty rural knickknacks, mouthing the refrain from a sixties novelty tune, filling up on pintos and yellow corn bread, the smell of food and burning kindling clouding around them, and she envied how damn content and satisfied he was with it all. “Yeah” was what she offered, a single mild syllable. She set her bowl on the floor beside the soda and didn’t finish either of them.
He noticed she was distracted. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
“You sure? You seem awfully quiet.”
“A rough day,” she said. “Plus I’m not looking forward to crazy Lettie VanSandt’s nasty trailer.”
—
Sheriff Perry and Hatcher were waiting for them at Lettie’s, and after Perry unlocked the door they all filed into the trailer, everyone briefly silent as they entered, even Hatcher. The sheriff gave Joe Lettie’s keys, the collection on a plain round ring along with a Food Lion shopper’s card and a silver metal whistle. “Yours now,” Perry told Joe. “They were hangin’ on a nail beside the door when we first investigated.”
The four of them walked to a tiny bathroom at the end of the hall. The sheriff went in, Joe and Lisa stood at the threshold and Hatcher peered over and around them as best he could. A section of discolored plywood, nailed down but not flush with the rest of the floor, covered an area in front of the shower. A kerosene heater was pushed into a corner. A bare ceiling bulb wired without a proper fixture was the only light, a worn red towel was draped across the shower rod, a razor and a toothbrush were in a recycled jelly jar beside the sink, generic baby shampoo sat on a small shower ledge and store-brand aspirin, rubbing alcohol and oodles of patent medicines—labels visible, organized by height—were crowded onto an unpainted pine shelf. Bottle after bottle of fingernail polish, the hues garish and bright—purple, chartreuse and scarlet—were meticulously lined along the counter, grouped by color and shade. The top was missing from the toilet tank and the sink mirror black-flecked with a crack arcing across the glass above the bottom edge.
“So you’ve never been here before?” Perry asked Joe.
“No.”
“Pretty pitiful,” the sheriff said. “She even has cardboard stuck in the den window.” He squeezed his beefy hand into a latex glove, pinched the toothbrush between his thumb and first finger and dropped it into a plastic evidence bag. He placed the razor in another bag. He opened a drawer, inspected the contents, shut it, opened another, then removed a hairbrush with his protected hand. He held up the brush and they all could see strands of hair winding through the bristles. “That ought to do it,” he said, sealing a third bag.
“Thanks again,” Joe said. “Sorry for the trouble. For some reason, being here like this kind of drives home what’s happened, though. Not much doubt how this’ll turn out.”
“No kidding,” Hatcher groused.
Lisa stuck him with a hard look. “You know, the more I think about it, the more I agree with my husband: Joe’s the executor, and he needs to be positive she’s deceased. There’s a correct way to do this.” She kept glaring at
the smart-ass cop. “I’m sure this case will find its appropriate place in the lab line, probably ahead of the extremely important analysis of a joint you seized at a sorority party or the examination of a Mason jar full of moonshine you guys raided from a still over in Woolwine. The woman’s dead, Officer Hatcher. Dead is significant.”
Before he could respond, Sheriff Perry spoke. “No problem. Joe’s technically right. The rules say we should confirm if there’s no visual ID.”
“I still say it’s a waste of time and money,” Hatcher said stubbornly. “But the sheriff is goin’ to do it your way, so you’ll have your DNA.”
“You wanna take a look at where the fire was?” Perry asked. “Where we found her?”
“Is there any problem with that?” Joe asked.
“Nope. We shot photos and a video, and we had the fire marshal do his investigation. We’ve collected some evidence, what little we could. Her remains are at the hospital. We’re finished from a police standpoint. We soaked it real good, too, so the cinders won’t kick up on us.”
“Sure,” Joe said. He looked at Lisa. “Okay with you?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
“The sooner the better,” Hatcher said. “It stinks of cat piss in here.”
There wasn’t much to see. The fire had left a charred rectangle dotted with debris and ashes and burned chunks of beams and posts, and the tin roof had collapsed into the blaze and later been dragged to one side by the police or firefighters. Cats and dogs wandered around, several approaching them. A fat black tomcat sat at the apex of the tin pile. The shed had been in a clearing, the ground around it worn to the bare red dirt by the strays, so the blaze hadn’t spread. A blackened cinder-block foundation marked off the structure’s dimensions. A few items were identifiable: a metal barrel, a scorched metal chair frame, sections of wire, beakers, the guts of a radio, a tablespoon, pliers and wrenches, a pair of car wheels wrapped in melted rubber.
