“Hi,” he said, answering that question as she sat on a deck chair next to his chaise.
She was glad she had told Dirk to take Tammy back to the café while she did this interview. She would have freaked, being this close to so many bulging muscles. While she, on the other hand, was perfectly cool and collected. “Hi. I’m Sa—” Her voice broke like a pubescent teenager’s, but she quickly recovered.“—vannah Reid.”
“Yes, I recognize you.” He sat up halfway, leaning on his elbows, accenting marvelous pecs. On his wrist he wore a sports watch that Savannah instantly recognized as one of Tag Heuer’s nicer models. Apparently tennis instructing paid a heck of a lot more than private detecting.
“You recognize me?” Savannah asked. “Have we met?”
“No. But Bonnie described you . . .” He reached up and lowered his sunglasses just long enough to peer at her over the top of the frames. After a leisurely look up and down her figure, he replaced them. “. . . Described you to a tee.”
Not being blind, Savannah couldn’t help but see the disgust in his eyes. And not being deaf, she couldn’t miss the nasty note of sarcasm in his voice.
Mr. Perfect Body had apparently been told by Miss Priss that Savannah was no hardbody.
Several searing obscenities raced across her mind in mile-high, flashing, red-neon letters. But, professional that she was, she swallowed the words and imagined, instead, several excruciating forms of physical torture she could easily inflict on him. And would, if given the chance.
Better yet, she’d just nail him for first-degree murder.
“Then you know why I’m here,” she said. “I’m investigating the judge’s murder to find out who really did it.”
Even from behind the silver lenses, Savannah could see his surprise. Apparently, ol’ Alvin wasn’t accustomed to such candor.
“I’m trying to figure out who actually pulled the trigger,” she continued, “you or Bonnie.”
He bolted upright on the chaise and ripped off his glasses. She saw the anger in his eyes. And now that they were uncovered, she saw that his eyes did, indeed, look exactly like his departed father’s. She also saw the fear, and she felt a thrill of success.
Bingo! Bull’s eye! Gin! All in one!
“Had to do it now, huh?” she said. “I mean, if the old man wouldn’t roll over and play dead, like he was supposed to from his heart trouble, you’d just have to help him along. And you couldn’t wait . . . what with the divorce becoming final.”
As Savannah saw the anger on his face quickly escalate to pure rage, she mentally checked the location of the Beretta in her purse. Her vivid imagination also ran through a few judo moves, flipping him headfirst into the pool.
“This club is private property,” he said. “And you aren’t a member. You’d better leave.”
“Oh, I’m the guest of a member.”
“Who?”
She said the first name that came to mind. “Mack Goodwin. He’s a good friend of mine.”
“Well, Mack’s my friend, too. And I don’t remember him having anything good to say about you or your brother. In fact, he said he was going to see the little punk strapped to a gurney, getting put down like a dog before this is all over. And he said you’d better not get in his way.”
Savannah knew her own limitations. And she was just about to do serious harm to Alvin Barnes.
So she stood and turned her back on him. But before she walked away, she shot one more verbal dart over her shoulder.
“I’ll be watching you. Bonnie, too,” she said. “And you won’t even know I’m there. Count on it, you sonofabitch.”
By the time Savannah drove to the sheriff’s office, she had two speeches memorized. One if Mahoney was there and a second if she were lucky enough to catch Tom alone.
When she charged through the door and saw her former boyfriend sitting at his desk, filling out a stack of papers . . . all by himself, she launched into monologue number two.
“Tom, I need your help, and please just keep an open mind, okay?”
He stared up at her blankly, and she hurried on before he could say no.
“You may think I’m nuts, but I’m telling you, Bonnie Patterson and Alvin Barnes are in cahoots somehow in the judge’s homicide. And I think if you go out to the Patterson place and dust for fingerprints on the left drawer of the judge’s rolltop desk, you’ll find one of their fingerprints. Now if it’s Bonnie’s, I realize that won’t prove anything, but if it’s Alvin’s . . .” She took a deep breath. “Well, that won’t really prove anything either, but I’m telling you that they’re in on this. I know it! Macon didn’t do it.”
“I know.”
It took her a second to apply the mental brakes. “What? You know what? That Bonnie and Alvin—”
“That Macon didn’t do it. That’s what this is, right here.” He pointed to several papers spread across his desk.
She leaned over and peered at them. “Release forms?”
“Yeah, I’m letting him out as soon as I’m done here.”
“Oh, my, I . . .”
Suddenly, she found it difficult to stand, so she sank onto the folding metal chair next to his desk. Time seemed to slow as she sat there, holding on to the cold steel of the seat with her hands, listening to the air conditioner crank away.
He smiled at her, and it occurred to her, not for the first time, that Tom Stafford really did have a gorgeous smile. No wonder she had loved him for all of her adolescence and a good part of her adulthood.
For all the good it had done her.
“You’re releasing him. Oh, Tommy that’s wonderful! I can’t tell you how much this means to me, how much it’ll mean to Gran. She’s been so worried and—”
“Aren’t you going to ask me why?” he said, leaning back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head.
“No. I learned a long time ago: If it’s good news, just take it and run! I don’t care why.”
He kept grinning at her.
“Okay,” she finally said. “Why? Did you figure out, too, that it was Bonnie and Alvin?”
“No. It wasn’t those two. They’re worthless and they’re not above it, but it wasn’t them.”
“Then who?”
“Clifton Oprey.”
“Clifton? That old guy who farms down there by the river?”
“Did farm. Thanks to the judge, Cliff lost his place about six months ago. His wife, Sally, took sick . . . cancer or something . . . and Cliff ran up a bunch of hospital bills. She died anyway, and after working like a dog all his life, Cliff was deep in debt. The judge took a second mortgage on his land, then worked behind the scenes to get Cliff’s credit cut off, so that he couldn’t plant this spring. The judge foreclosed on the farm and threw Cliff off the land that had been in his family four generations.”
“How nice of his honor. No wonder people are happy he’s gone. I hear he’s done that sort of thing plenty of times over the years.”
“Cliff hasn’t been the first. That’s for sure. But thanks to Cliff, he’ll be the last.”
“Have you picked him up yet?”
Tom pointed his thumb toward the ceiling. “He’s right upstairs in the cell next to Yukon Bill.”
“You must have some pretty good evidence against him, I mean . . . if you’re releasing Macon and . . .”
“And considering all we’ve got on Macon. Is that what you mean?”
“Something like that.”
“I got a confession.” He reached across the desk and picked up a yellow legal pad. “Signed and dated,” he added, shoving the notepad into her hands.
Savannah scanned the brief, but concise statement, written in crude, shaky penmanship and signed by Clifton Oprey.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” She thought of Bonnie and Alvin, and how much she had wanted to pin this killing on them. She also thought of Clifton, who had seemed old and broken to her the last time she had seen him . . . years ago.
But you didn’t look a gift hors
e in the mouth to see if his dentures fit. Her baby brother was getting sprung.
“Do Sheriff Mahoney and Mack Goodwin know about this yet?” she asked, dreading the answer which she was fairly certain she wouldn’t like.
“The sheriff knows. He’s the one who brought Clifton in. He’s gone out now to tell Mr. Goodwin in person.”
Tom looked up from his paperwork and held her eyes for a long moment. Finally, he said, “I gotta tell you, Mack ain’t gonna like it.”
She nodded. “So, maybe you’d better get that paperwork done.” She scooted her chair around next to his. “Need any help?”
Chapter 16
Savannah and Tom finished the release papers in record time, but it still wasn’t fast enough. No sooner had Tom signed and dated the final form than the front door crashed open and Mack Goodwin rushed into the office.
The prosecutor didn’t look nearly as cool and collected as he had at the country club. His sports shirt and jeans looked as though he had slept in them, and his formerly perfect hair was a tangled mess.
Sheriff Mahoney followed close behind, appearing equally upset. Savannah had never seen Mahoney looking anything but bored or cocky. If he was worried, things weren’t going well for somebody.
Goodwin gave Savannah only a brief scowl as he swept past her and up the stairs to the jail above.
Mahoney paused at the desk and whispered, “We got trouble, Tom. Mack ain’t buying it.” He glanced down at the forms on the desk. “Ditch those papers. I don’t want him seeing them.”
When he, too, disappeared up the stairs, Tom slid the stack into a drawer and followed the two men without a word to Savannah.
Although she knew she should just quietly slip out the door, she couldn’t. Even if her brother’s life weren’t on the line, curiosity alone would have driven her up the steps.
Before she even got to the top, she heard Mack Goodwin saying, “We’re supposed to believe that you’re the one who killed the judge, huh? You? How old are you anyway, Clifton, seventy? Seventy-five?”
“I’m seventy-one, which is only a couple of years older than the fella I killed,” she heard Clifton Oprey reply. “Don’t you think I’m up to it? It don’t take a young man to pull a trigger.”
She reached the uppermost step and peered down the hallway that bisected the jail. Mack Goodwin was standing to the left, gripping the bars of a cell, red-faced and glowering at its occupant, who was out of Savannah’s line of vision.
“Okay, so you shot Judge Patterson,” Mack said in a sarcastic tone. “With what? You tell me, Cliff Oprey, with what, pray tell?”
“A twenty-two caliber pistol.”
That seemed to take Goodwin aback, but only for a second. “And where is the murder weapon? What did you do with it?”
“I threw it in the river, where nobody’s ever gonna find it.”
Goodwin grasped the bars even tighter. “Well, what if I told you that the gun that killed the judge was found, right there at the scene of the crime. Huh? What would you say to that?”
Savannah waited, breathless for the reply. It was a while coming. She could practically hear the wheels of Clifton’s brain whirring, spinning out an answer.
“You ain’t neither,” he finally said. “You may have a gun, but it’s not the one that did it. I told you, I shot him and I tossed the pistol out in the water. Way out.”
“We have the bullet from my father-in-law’s brain,” Mack told him. “It was analyzed in a lab in Atlanta, and they say it was fired from the gun that was left in the library close to the judge’s body. So, how could you have done it with another gun?”
“That’s not what I heard,” Clifton said. “I heard over at Whiskey Joe’s that the bullet was banged up so bad from bouncing around inside that bastard’s hard skull that you couldn’t get a match. That’s what I heard.”
Savannah perked up; there was a ring of conviction to Cliff’s words.
And the angry look on Goodwin’s face, along with the quick glance exchanged between the sheriff and Tom, told Savannah that Cliff had heard right.
“A match,” Tom had told her.
Oh, well, she thought. He’s not the first cop to lie in the course of an investigation.
A sense of relief—no matter how small—swept over her. No ballistics match to her brother’s gun.
That had to be good news, no matter what happened with Clifton Oprey.
“Don’t believe everything you hear at Whiskey Joe’s,” Mack told the old man. “I don’t. And I don’t believe that you killed Judge Patterson. I think you hated him, and you would have liked to shoot him. But you didn’t. You’re just bragging, trying to impress your buddies and some women there at the bar.”
“I wrote a statement—a real, official confession,” Cliff argued. “And I signed it, too. You ask Deputy Tom there. He’ll tell you.”
Mack turned to Tom, who gave a slight nod.
“Yeah, well, I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” Mack said, “and when I do, you’ll still be in jail, Cliff, but it won’t be for anything as sensational as killing a judge. It’ll be for obstructing justice, that’s all. And everybody at Whiskey Joe’s will be laughing at you. Just wait and see.”
Mack turned away from the cell, and Savannah decided it might be an excellent time to backtrack down the steps.
She did. Quickly. And by the time the prosecutor, the sheriff, and Tom were downstairs, she was sitting demurely in the folding chair beside Tom’s desk.
“I guess we’ll have to cut the Reid boy loose,” she heard Tom say over his shoulder.
“No way,” Mack replied. “We’ve got him for that stolen rug and light fixture. He’s not going anywhere. Reid and Oprey both stay right where they are until we figure out what’s going on.”
“Yeah, that’s what I think, too,” the sheriff added. “Reid can cool his heels a while longer.”
Suddenly, Mack Goodwin seemed aware of Savannah’s presence. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“Never mind what you’re doing,” the sheriff snapped, “just get the hell outta here.”
Savannah didn’t wait for him to tell her twice. But as she hurried past them, she paused just long enough to whisper, “Fingerprints. Desk drawer. Check ’em,” to Tom.
Then she was out the door, down the street, and in Waycross’s pickup. With the door locked.
No point in hanging around where you weren’t wanted.
She decided to check in at “home base” and let Gran know the latest news about Clifton. Years ago, Gran had been close friends with Cliff’s wife, Sally, and Savannah figured Gran would have a definite opinion about this turn of events.
“It’s bull pucky. Pure and simple.” Gran stood at the kitchen counter, dragging pieces of raw chicken through a dish of buttermilk and then rolling them in another plate of flour, salt, and pepper. “Clifton’s had a hard time of it since Sally died, but not so hard that he’d lose his mind entirely and murder somebody.”
At the table, Alma sat, quietly putting together a jigsaw puzzle of the New York City skyline. “Mr. Oprey’s real sweet,” she added. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly, no matter what he’s said in the past about hating the judge’s guts.”
Gran shot her a warning look over the plate of chicken parts. “You might want to keep that sorta talk to yourself, sugar. Till this whole thing’s settled, we don’t need to be the ones throwing the oil of gossip onto the fire. There’s plenty around who’ll be more than happy to do that.”
Savannah reached for a paring knife and the bowl of potatoes in the sink.
“No, you don’t,” Gran told her, slapping her hands away. “You’ve got more important work to do than peeling potatoes. Your friend, Dirk, called a while ago.”
“Dirk? What did he want?”
“He’s at Whiskey Joe’s,” Alma said, snapping one of her pieces in place with a little grin of satisfaction. “He wants you to come over there soon as you can.”
Savannah silently groaned
and placed the knife back in the drawer. The last thing she needed right now was another walk down family lane with Shirley Reid. She had actually hoped to leave town without bumping elbows with her mom again.
But, since Dirk was well aware of her feelings, she knew he must have a good reason for asking her to drop by.
“Maybe she won’t be there,” Gran said softly.
Savannah looked up to see her grandmother watching her, eyes full of sympathy.
“She’ll be there,” Alma added without glancing up from her puzzle. “She’s always there.”
“Oh, goody,” Savannah muttered to herself when she saw Marietta’s Chevy pull into the driveway beside Waycross’s truck. “So close, but no escape.”
A freshly coifed, but slightly tipsy Marietta got out of the car and headed straight for Savannah, or as straight as she could considering her inebriation.
“Hey, big sister, I want to have a word with you. Right now!”
“Well, I don’t want a word with you, except to mention that you shouldn’t drive when you’ve been drinking, Mari. You’ll kill some innocent person.”
“There you go again, sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong, giving advice that wasn’t asked for!”
“Come on, Marietta, and I’ll give you a ride home.”
“I don’t want to go home. I came here to see you, to give you the chance to apologize for the way you acted last night.”
Savannah sighed and shook her head. “Apologize, huh? Get in the truck, and I’ll drop you by your shop. We can talk on the way.”
Marietta wavered, teetering on her high-heeled slides. “Since I’m here, I might as well stay for supper.”
“I don’t want Gran to see you drunk. Get in the truck.”
“But my boys are going to show up any minute now. Them and me, we usually eat over here of an evening.”
Taking her by the arm and leading her to the pickup, Savannah said, “Yeah. We’re gonna talk about that, too. I’m going to give you some more advice that you don’t want. Like, grow up and stop taking advantage of a kind old lady who loves you.”
Peaches And Screams (A Savannah Reid Mystery) Page 17
