Death's Half Acre dk-14

by Margaret Maron

  “You have a key?” Richards asked gently.

  He nodded. “I opened the front door and called and there she was. On the floor. Soon as I saw her, I knew it was no use. Blood all over Candace’s white carpet. So much blood for such a little thing. My beautiful little girl. All that blood.”

  He lifted the glass to his lips with both hands and drank deeply. It was clear that this was not his first nor even third drink.

  Tears puddled in Mrs. Farmer’s eyes as she watched, but she didn’t try to stop him.

  “Who would do this, Bryant?” Bradshaw asked in a voice that was rough with grief. “What did Dee ever do to make a monster shoot her down in her own house? She was just a girl still.”

  “When did you last see her?” Dwight asked.

  “Yesterday. After the service for Candace. Gracie made us come home with her for supper so that we wouldn’t have to go to a restaurant. Not that any of us were very hungry, but Dee left before dark. She wanted to get started packing up her clothes and the things she wanted to keep.”

  “Did you talk to her later that evening?”

  “I didn’t, but Gracie—?”

  Gracie Farmer nodded. “We talked a couple of times on the phone. I asked her to look for an umbrella of mine that Candace had borrowed last week. It cost more than I usually pay, but it has parrots and tropical flowers, so . . . Silly to even think of such a thing when Candace . . .” Her voice trailed off and they could see her try to recover control.

  Unlike the cacophony of clashing colors they had seen her in before, today’s outfit was almost somber: dark red linen slacks and white silk shirt, a zip-up white cotton sweater randomly striped in thick and thin red lines. Black patent shoes with low Cuban heels, a black leather purse. Her short fingernails were painted the exact same shade as her lipstick and slacks.

  “You said you talked a couple of times?”

  Mrs. Farmer nodded. “Around six, I think. She called me about the dollhouse. Wanted to know if she could store it in my attic till she had a place for it. I told her of course she could.”

  Bradshaw turned to her in wonderment. “She was going to keep it?”

  “That surprises you, sir?” asked Mayleen Richards.

  “She always made fun of Candace for playing with it and buying new furniture and things for it. She didn’t care much for dolls even when she was a little girl, but Candace? Candace never had the toys and pretty things that Dee had, and the dollhouse was important to her in ways I’ll probably never understand without talking to a psychiatrist. Wish fulfillment? Restructuring her childhood? Candace seldom talked about her family and home life to me. I think it embarrassed her. But I gather it was most”—he hesitated, searching for the discreet term—“chaotic and thoroughly unpleasant and—”

  He lapsed into silence.

  Gracie Farmer patted his arm consolingly and said, “When she came to me for a job, she was sixteen and pretty much on her own. She had left home and moved in with her grandmother, who died two or three years later. But Cam’s right. Dee did make fun of the dollhouse. But when she called to ask if I’d keep it for her, she was crying and blaming herself for not understanding Candace better.”

  “And that was the last time you spoke to her?”

  “No, she called back around eight and said she’d found the umbrella. She was going to give it to me today when—” Her voice broke and she reached for her handbag and some tissues to wipe away the tears that were freely coursing down her cheeks.

  “The night she was born, I was there. Remember, Cam?”

  He nodded without looking up from the empty glass in his hands.

  “Little blond ringlets all over her tiny little head.”

  Dwight stood up and said, “Mrs. Farmer, may we speak with you privately somewhere?”

  She nodded, wiped her eyes, and suggested they go into the dining room next door.

  As she stood, Bradshaw handed her his glass and nodded toward the bar. “Don’t fuss, Gracie. Please?”

  Without comment, she poured him another stiff one, then led Dwight, Richards, and the SBI agent through the double doors into a formal dining room. The long polished table had seating for twelve. The centerpiece was an arrangement of silk roses and baby’s breath so realistic that Richards had to touch one to convince herself that they were not real. At least five dollars a stem, she thought, and not from any local discount house.

  “This is an awfully big house for one person,” Terry Wilson said as they sat down at the table.

  Gracie Farmer looked around the room, almost as if seeing it for the first time. “Candace thought she might start entertaining if she ran for the state senate. This would have been a great place for a dinner party, the way the double doors open into the sunroom.”

  “How did she pay for it?” Dwight asked bluntly.

  “Pay for it?” The older woman’s voice faltered for a moment. “She owned half of Bradshaw Management, Major, and she had just sold her old house. She could afford it.”

  “Afford to pay cash?”

  She looked at them in bewilderment. “Is that what she did? I assumed she took out a mortgage. I mean, this is one of the smaller houses in this development, but I’m sure it must have cost her close to half a million by the time she added on the extras and the landscaping. She wasn’t taking that much money out of the business and the old house was in such bad shape that—are you sure she paid cash?”

  “That’s what they told us at the bank.”

  “Dee thought she was skimming from the business,” Richards told her.

  “Never!” Mrs. Farmer said indignantly.

  But then a shadow crossed her face and Dwight glanced at Wilson, wondering if his old friend was thinking the same thing he was—that here was a woman who should never play poker for money. She sat silently for a moment, pleating the fabric of her red slacks as she thought about what they had said.

  “Okay, look. I told y’all that she sometimes probably took money for some of the favors she did a few developers and real estate people? She really did care more about power and having people think she was very important than about money, but I guess she probably liked the money, too. If she was skimming though, Roger Flackman had to know about it.”

  “Mr. Bradshaw’s auditor?” Wilson asked.

  The office manager nodded. “I hate speaking ill of the dead, but it’s not as if Candace was really married. And you know how beautiful she was. Looked more like thirty than forty. I don’t know if he would have cooked the books for her, but she could be very persuasive when she was trying to sell something.”

  “And sometimes she paid with sex?”

  Gracie Farmer had quit meeting his eyes. “You’ll have to ask Flackman about that. I truly don’t know.”

  “Tell us about her cousin down in Georgia,” Dwight said.

  “Cousin? Oh, yes, the one with the peaches. Someone from your office called me about that this morning, asking about her car. All I know is that he showed up at the office last spring and said his name was Manny and that Candace had called him, asked him to bring some peaches up for the office staff. There were like five bushels. Even the cleaning crews got a few. Candace said his truck broke down and she was going to lend him her car to get back.”

  “Lend it to him?”

  “But then she decided to just give it to him because the peach orchard wasn’t doing so good and she felt sorry for him. I told you she liked doing people favors.”

  “And that’s all you know?”

  “He was scamming her with that hard-luck story about the orchard,” the woman said, as if remembering an old grievance. “He didn’t own any orchard. Those peaches came from north Florida, not north Georgia. When I went out to the truck to take a look at them, one of the baskets had a label. I said something about was that the name of his orchard and he immediately shifted it around. I’d already seen the Florida address though. By the time those baskets came inside, every label had been torn off. And something else. That w
asn’t his truck either. It was one of those rent-a-wrecks.”

  “Did you tell her that?”

  “I tried, but she got mad and said it was none of my business, so I backed off.”

  “Do you remember the date, Mrs. Farmer?”

  “The week after her birthday,” she said and told them the date.

  Exactly one day after Linsey Thomas was killed.

  They allowed Mrs. Farmer to rejoin Bradshaw and were discussing the implications of what she had told them when Denning appeared in the hall doorway. “Major Bryant? You might want to see this.”

  They followed him back to the front of the house. In the foyer, opposite a large coat closet, was a small powder room. When Denning opened the door, a strong odor of a chlorine-based toilet bowl cleanser hit their noses. He had removed the lid of the tank and left it propped against the wall. The three crowded into the room and peered inside the tank, where a wineglass lay completely submerged in the cleanser.

  “Cute, huh?” said Denning from behind them. “Try getting DNA off that glass.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Quiet lies the body under the limb . . .

  The ground’s a harp strung with shadows.

  —Middle Creek Poems, by Shelby Stephenson

  MONDAY AFTERNOON

  Sweat poured from Faison McKinney’s face, gnats whined in his unprotected ears, and the pace that old man had set was giving him a painful stitch in his side. How in the dickens could a man who was at least forty years older and six inches taller eel his way through briars and vines and low-hanging limbs without once tripping or banging his head? He himself had already fallen twice and he knew he had a nasty scrape on his forehead where he had misjudged a pine limb.

  “ ’Fraid I’m gonna have to ask you to slow down a little, Brother Kezzie,” he called, embarrassed that the man ahead should be in such better shape. Maybe it was time to cut back on the cakes and pies the ladies of the church insisted on sharing with him and Marian. Cut back on the barbecue, too. Marian didn’t seem to gain an ounce, he thought irritably, but he’d had to let out his belt another notch recently and the gold band with the nice diamond inset that he used to wear on his ring finger when it was new only fit his pinky now. He was going to have to talk to her, make her—no, not make, he corrected himself—ask her to quit serving the rich foods he liked and learn how to prepare healthy low-calorie meals that still tasted just as good and rich.

  “Sorry, Preacher,” Kezzie Knott said when McKinney caught up with him, huffing like a steam engine. “It ain’t much further now. Just on the other side of that big oak yonder.”

  A few yards on and he came to a stop by a large tree that must have fallen in the last hurricane. He sat down on the trunk and a grateful McKinney sank down beside him, trying not to breathe too strenuously. Kezzie Knott seemed to be breathing normally and if the man had broken a sweat, McKinney couldn’t see it.

  “It was right here,” the old man said. “Twenty-five years ago. I had me a still down the slope there on the creek bank and I come along this way that day. Never went to any of my stills the same way twice. You don’t want to make a path, see? Laziness’ll give you away quicker’n the smoke or the smell.”

  He paused as if remembering old secrets of his craft. “It was just a little still. I’d purty much got out of making it myself by then. My wife didn’t like me messing with it and you know how women are. You got to promise them things, don’t you?”

  “Well . . .” said McKinney, mopping his sweaty face with his handkerchief. “I believe it’s a woman’s place to abide by her husband’s wishes, but moonshining? She was probably trying to save your soul.”

  “And my hide, too,” the old man said with a chuckle. “Them ATF men was plumb aching to catch me out and stick me in jail. That’s why I put my still down here on Sid Pritchard’s land so that—”

  “Pritchard’s land?” McKinney exclaimed. “This is part of Frances Pritchard’s land?”

  “Yeah. I wouldn’t never do stuff like that on my own land. Ain’t safe. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “No, Brother Kezzie, you did not tell me. Isn’t there a road right over there? Why did we have to walk a mile through the woods when we could’ve driven almost right to the spot?”

  “And park my truck on the road out yonder for every passing busybody to wonder what I was doing in here?” asked Kezzie. “No, sir. That ain’t my way. Iffen you don’t want people asking questions, then you don’t give ’em nothing to ask questions about.”

  He stood up and pointed up into the limbs of the tall oak. “Right here’s where I found him hanging, all tangled up in them parachute lines. He was dangling just a few feet off the ground, and every time the wind blew, the branches make it look like he was still alive, but he won’t. His neck was broke. I cut him down and after I seen what was in his backpack, I buried him right here. Him and his parachute and everything on him except that backpack.”

  “I see,” said the preacher.

  “It’s been a-eating on me for twenty-five years,” the old man said, “and I just can’t go to meet my maker knowing he didn’t have a Christian burial and I didn’t take the opportunity to make things right when I got the chance. That was pure-out providence meeting you Friday.”

  “The Lord still works in mysterious ways,” McKinney agreed solemnly. He waved away the gnats that were buzzing around his eyes. “I think He led us both to that fishpond for his own reasons.”

  “I reckon you’re right, Preacher. Anyhow, his people never knowed what happened to him and that man he stole from never got his stuff back. So I’d really appreciate it, if you’d do what you can and say a few words over him for me.”

  “Of course,” said the other man. He came to his feet and pulled out a small Bible. “How exactly did you bury him?”

  “Right here,” said Kezzie, sketching a narrow rectangle with his hands. “Head up there, facing east, his feet right about down here.”

  He sat back on the tree trunk again and listened respectfully as McKinney read from the Bible and then prayed for the repose of “thy servant, Nicholas Radzinsky. And, Father, we ask that You forgive his sins and let him enter into the paradise of Your blessed radiance, for we ask it in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.”

  “Amen,” said Kezzie. “Thank you, Preacher. I surely do appreciate it and I believe he does, too.”

  They sat in silence on the tree trunk for several long minutes as the sun sank lower in the west. McKinney was thinking of the long walk back to Kezzie Knott’s truck, but there was something even more important on his mind. When the other man remained silent, he said at last, “When you told me about this and asked my advice, it sounded so fantastic that if you hadn’t shown me that earring—”

  “Oh. Yeah. I almost forgot about it,” said Kezzie. He held out his hand and the preacher pulled it from his pocket and held it up in the sunlight. The diamonds flashed and glittered.

  “I took it to a jeweler I know,” he said as he reluctantly dropped it in the old man’s calloused hand.

  “Yeah?”

  “He said it was at least sixty years old and that the pair of them would be worth about two or three thousand dollars.”

  “That all?” Kezzie Knott’s blue eyes looked disappointed. “I thought they’d be more’n that.”

  “He looked at the diamonds under a magnifying glass and they’re not flawless.”

  “They ain’t?” He held them up to the sun again and squinted. “They surely do sparkle.”

  “The flaws aren’t visible to the naked eye,” the preacher explained in a kindly tone. “It’s what they call occlusions. Little cloudy spots no bigger than a speck of dust. They don’t hurt the way they look to you and me, but they can bring the price down real quick.”

  “You sure your man knowed what he was talking about? The newspapers back then said he jumped out’n that plane with jewelry worth four million dollars. And that was twenty-five years ago. I was thinking that’d come out t
o be six or seven million these days what with inflation and all.”

  “Oh, I imagine the owner might have exaggerated the value a little bit, don’t you? To get what he could from the insurance company? People aren’t always truthful, Brother Kezzie.”

  Kezzie Knott nodded. “You ain’t never said a truer word, Preacher.”

  He tucked the earring into his shirt pocket and buttoned it securely. “Still and all, every time me and mine’s ever insured anything, the man wants to see it. Wants to see the bill of sale, too, if it’s something that’s worth right much. Don’t you reckon the man these was stole from had to show receipts, too?”

  “Hard to know, Brother Kezzie. I went and looked it up online. The owner was a fancy jeweler in Miami. Dealt in what they call estate jewelry.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heared my boy Will talk about that stuff.”

  “He’s dead now himself. Died about eight years ago, but he did collect on the insurance. If his family were to get these back, they’d have to turn around and come up with the four million he got paid.”

  “That could work a real hardship on ’em, couldn’t it?”

  “It could, Brother Kezzie. It really could. That man might’ve paid four million for ’em, but that doesn’t mean his people could sell them for that today. My jeweler says there’s auction value and then there’s insurance value and sometimes the two are miles apart.”

  Kezzie Knott nodded sagely. “When it comes time to sell something, don’t matter how much you paid for it. You got to find somebody willing to buy what you’re selling.”

  “That’s the way of the world, I’m afraid.”

  “The thing is, I ain’t never stole nothing in my life, but this ain’t really stealing, is it? I got land, but I ain’t got money. I was hoping maybe them earrings would be enough to buy the Pritchard land so no bulldozer could ever turn up them bones, but if they ain’t worth more’n a couple of thousand, don’t look like that’s gonna happen.”