Murder at the Courthouse

by A. H. Gabhart

  “But if he did, you don’t know who they are?” Michael looked straight at the mother.

  She didn’t shy away from his stare. “It’s like I told you earlier. We didn’t stay in contact. There was no reason to after the children grew up.”

  Michael hesitated, kicking himself for not asking this question before they rejoined the daughter, but he went ahead and threw out the question he wanted answered. “Did your husband have affairs while you were married?”

  Alice Hawfield narrowed her eyes on Michael. “What could old history like that possibly have to do with Jay getting shot now?”

  “Probably nothing,” Michael admitted. “But for years, your ex-husband has been stopping at a restaurant near Hidden Springs. Maybe he made some friends there.”

  “You’re not asking about other friends. You’re asking about another woman,” the mother said flatly.

  “Yes.” Michael didn’t hesitate this time. He had to know.

  When the mother glanced at the daughter, the girl said, “Mother, I’m not a child anymore. If you know anything that might help, tell him.”

  “I don’t see how it could help.” Alice Hawfield took another look at her daughter. “It wasn’t another woman who took him from us, but there was once when I wondered.”

  She paused, looking more uncomfortable than she had at any time since Michael had asked his first question.

  “When was that?” Michael prodded her.

  “Not long before we split up. Eleven, twelve years ago.” She shifted in the lobby chair, making the seat squeak. “I haven’t thought about this for years. I’m surprised I even remember it with everything else that was going on. That could be why I do remember. We were having all these problems of our own, and Jay was obsessed with something that had happened to this woman he knew from the road.”

  Michael interrupted. “Do you remember her name?”

  She thought a moment. “If he ever said her name, I don’t remember it. He talked about people he met on the road that way. Without names. He knew I wouldn’t know them anyway, so he’d say something like West End Bill or Louisville Lady.”

  “Did he do that this time?” Michael wanted to push Roxanne’s name at the woman, but he waited.

  “I don’t think he ever said Hidden Springs anything, but then it’s all been so long ago.”

  “But you remember him talking about a woman,” Michael prompted.

  “Only because when Jay talked about her I realized how attracted he was to her, whether he’d done anything about it or not. As I said, she was in some kind of trouble, and he wanted us to help her. I remember wondering if he was in love with her, and that’s when I discovered I didn’t care. Maybe that’s why I remember it. Because I didn’t care.”

  She sent a look of silent apology toward the daughter. “Jay talked on and on about this woman. The hard time she was having. He even wanted to loan her money as if we had any money to loan. I remember thinking I should be jealous, but I just didn’t care.”

  Michael pushed a few more questions at her, but that was all Alice Hawfield could recall. The woman Rayburn wanted to help might have been a waitress, but she could also have been a motel clerk or somebody in one of the offices Jay visited. She didn’t think Jay mentioned a child or children, but he could have. It was so long ago.

  At last, Michael threw out the name Roxanne.

  “Roxanne?” The woman echoed the name, then shook her head. “I don’t remember anything about a Roxanne. I’m sorry, but I can’t see how any of this could help you in your investigation.”

  Michael took a drink of the stone cold coffee to give him a moment to think, but he couldn’t come up with any more questions. He printed his name and phone number on a couple of Sheriff Potter’s old campaign cards and asked them to call if they thought of anything else that might help.

  When Michael trotted out a couple more of his stock phrases, the daughter gave him a trembling smile. The mother didn’t smile, but her assessing look was friendlier.

  Before going out the door, Michael glanced back at them. The girl stood forlornly watching the mother straighten the magazines on the table and pick up tissues and coffee cups.

  On the drive back to Hidden Springs, Michael considered the mother. Her bitter anger toward her ex-husband could be counted motive. Marital complications often figured in homicides. The woman hadn’t shown an inkling of sorrow that Jay Rayburn was dead, only relief that he wouldn’t be able to hurt her daughter anymore.

  Not that death always stopped those kinds of hurts. Especially a death like this, but if she thought it could, that might strengthen her motive. Even if she was at work miles from Hidden Springs on Tuesday, she could have hired someone to kill Rayburn. In that scenario, why not in Hidden Springs?

  Michael let the idea circle in his mind as he pulled out and around a slow-moving tractor-trailer truck, but it just wouldn’t fit the woman. If Alice Hawfield had shot Jay Rayburn, she’d have shot him point-blank, covered his dead body with an old blanket, and then washed her hands before she called the police. Simple, straightforward, to the point.

  As he stared at the road, Michael just couldn’t make her a suspect. He was almost to the exit for Hidden Springs, the town’s name little more than an afterthought to the real reason for the exit, Eagle Lake. Maybe he should have asked the mother about that. Rayburn might have linked the woman from his past to Eagle Lake. Eagle Lake waitress or something like that.

  That morning, Michael had headed to Eagleton thinking Rayburn might be Anthony’s father. Now he was driving home, somehow sure he wasn’t. He didn’t have any proof one way or the other. At the same time, Michael had a gut feeling the woman Rayburn had wanted to help was Roxanne. He could be reaching for straws in his search for a reason for Rayburn to be in Hidden Springs. Plus, even if the man had known Roxanne, what possible connection could that have to his murder? Roxanne left Hidden Springs years ago.

  At the office, Sheriff Potter listened to Michael run through what the women had told him and then said, “So they weren’t much help other than his gambling, and Buck had already found out about that.”

  Michael sat down at his desk. “I’ll write up a report on what they said anyway.”

  “Good.” The sheriff leaned forward in his chair. “We’d better go by the book on this one in case the higher-ups get involved. It might turn out to be more than we suspect, but right now it’s looking like those men his ex-wife talked about finally got tired of waiting for their money.”

  “Could be.” Michael gave the computer on his desk a look, but grabbed a notepad instead. He could think better with a pen in his hand.

  “Oh, by the way.” The sheriff’s voice was casual, as though talking about somebody bringing in doughnuts. “Darrell Peterson came in this morning, and we got that mess all squared away.”

  Michael looked up. “Did you?”

  “Sure. First offense. Juveniles like that. I don’t think it’ll happen again. They’re basically good boys who just got carried away. You remember how it was, don’t you?”

  “No.” Michael kept his eyes on the sheriff’s face. He’d known the sheriff would let the boys off, and he did hope the boys would straighten up after their little scare last night. But he wasn’t going to pretend he thought the sheriff had done the right thing.

  Sheriff Potter gave a wave of his hand like he was flicking away a pesky fly. “No sense making criminals out of kids if you don’t have to.”

  “What if it had been Anthony Blake who’d stolen the stuff? Would you have given him another chance?”

  The sheriff’s eyebrows almost met as he frowned over at Michael. “Good granny gravy, Mike, we’ve bent over backwards for that boy a dozen times, and what good has it done so far?”

  Michael looked down at his desk. “I guess you’re right, Sheriff. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. I know you’ve made a personal case of straightening up that boy, but sometimes in our business we have to face facts. And the fact is,
the Blake kid doesn’t want to straighten up.”

  “Aunt Lindy thinks he does. She has him doing his homework.”

  “Well, Malinda has worked miracles before.” The sheriff leaned back, wincing when his chair creaked loudly. He looked over at Betty Jean. “Did you buy the oil for this chair yet, Betty Jean?”

  “No, Uncle Al. You said you’d take care of that.” Betty Jean answered without shifting her attention away from her computer screen.

  “I did? Huh.” The sheriff turned back to Michael. “But if I was you, Mike, I’d keep a close eye on that boy and think twice about letting him be alone with Malinda.” Sheriff Potter picked up a pencil and twirled it between his fingers.

  “Come on, Sheriff. Anthony’s never done anything that bad. Minor stuff mostly.”

  “Maybe so, but the boy’s got an attitude.” The sheriff leaned forward, his chair popping and creaking again. This time he didn’t appear to notice as he stared over at Michael. “I saw him the morning we found the body out front, and he looked guilty as all get-out. I’m thinking he knew something he wasn’t telling.”

  “I know. I saw him too. I asked him about it, but he says he just happened by and stopped to gawk like everybody else.”

  “And you believed him?” The sheriff’s eyes narrowed a little.

  “No.”

  “That’s what I mean. You’ve got to watch the boy. He’s a hard one to peg, and it’s no telling what he might do next.”

  “I can’t believe he had anything to do with the shooting.” Michael couldn’t keep from coming to Anthony’s defense.

  “I’m not saying he did, but you best keep an eye on him, like I said.”

  “I plan to do that.”

  Sheriff Potter stood up and put on his hat. “I’m going up the street.” He glanced at Betty Jean. “Got to get that oil. I’ll be at the Grill if anybody needs me.”

  Betty Jean looked up from her computer. “You haven’t told Michael about Paul calling.”

  “Oh yeah, I nearly forgot that.” The sheriff turned back to Michael. “Paul’s back to knowing where he is, and he wants you to call him over at the hospital and give him a report.”

  “Great.” Michael didn’t hide his lack of enthusiasm. “How about if I just take a copy of my report over to the chief?”

  “Nope, you call Paul. He says they’re letting him go home on Monday, and he’s thinking he can run the investigation from his house for a while. Just till he gets back to the office.” The sheriff grinned. “I told him we’d be glad to work with him any way we could.”

  “Thanks for nothing.” Michael didn’t crack a smile as he added, “Actually Buck and I have been talking about taking a couple of weeks off to go fishing now that the weather’s warming up. This might be the perfect time.”

  “Now, none of that kind of talk.” The sheriff laughed. “You boys are going to have to learn to work together.”

  “You tell that to Buck.”

  “I expect I’ll have to. Several times. But the fact is, it don’t matter much anyhow. Like I already told you, I don’t figure whoever did Rayburn in stayed around town.”

  “I wish I could believe that,” Michael said.

  “I don’t know why you can’t. Nobody in Hidden Springs even knew this guy, much less had any reason to shoot him. Now, I don’t think we’ve got anybody in this town that would just walk up and shoot somebody without some kind of reason, do you?” He didn’t expect Michael to answer as he went on. “That kind of meanness may go on in the cities where folks are pushed in too close on one another, but not out here. Not in Hidden Springs.”

  Judge Campbell spotted the sheriff in the doorway and came across the hall. “What’s this that’s not in Hidden Springs?” His voice was at normal boom level.

  “I was just telling Mike here that if folks shoot one another in Hidden Springs, they generally have a pretty darn good reason, and I’m thinking we can be pretty sure whoever shot this Rayburn fellow is long gone from here.”

  “You haven’t found out anything then about who did it?” The judge peeked around the sheriff at Michael. “I heard you went to Eagleton today to meet with the victim’s family. Did they know why the man was here in Hidden Springs?”

  Michael shook his head, and the sheriff answered for him. “They neither one ever heard of Hidden Springs.”

  “Neither one?” the judge said.

  “The daughter and ex-wife,” Sheriff Potter explained. “But the ex-wife backed up what we already knew about Rayburn. He was up to his eyeballs in debt to folks what don’t mess around if you don’t pay up.”

  “Then you think that’s what happened.” The judge looked from the sheriff to Michael again.

  “It’s a possibility.” Michael shrugged a little. “But we’re low on proof.”

  “Well, proof is good if you’re taking something to trial, but proof in black and white isn’t all that necessary if you’re just deciding what actually happened.” The judge looked back at the sheriff. “You’ve seen a lot of those kind of cases in your days, haven’t you, Al? Ones where you knew who did it, but there wasn’t any way you could get them convicted in a court of law.”

  “Not so many.” Sheriff Potter’s voice rose to match the judge’s just in case some voters might be loitering out in the hall hearing their conversation. “We take care of our people.”

  “Of course you do,” Judge Campbell said. “I wasn’t suggesting that you didn’t. I’m confident you’ll get this cleared up in no time at all.”

  “Michael’s working on it.” Sheriff Potter’s smile was back. “And the deputy always gets his man.”

  When both the men at the door laughed, Michael managed a smile, but he wasn’t sorry when the two men drifted on up the hall and out the door. The judge’s every word was clear till the front door swung shut behind them.

  “Thank goodness they’re gone,” Betty Jean muttered. “The judge could wake the dead.”

  “He does have a way of broadcasting anything we tell him to the rest of the town.” Michael got up and poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “I don’t guess any of it’s a secret.” Betty Jean looked up from her computer screen. “The investigation, I mean.”

  “No, I don’t suppose so.”

  “Good.” She looked relieved. “I mean, you didn’t tell me not to say anything, and the judge was over here earlier asking how things were going with the case.”

  “Nothing unusual about that. The judge doesn’t like anything going on in Hidden Springs that he doesn’t know about.” Michael sat back down at his desk and looked at the phone. He’d have to call Paul whether he wanted to or not.

  “I guess so,” Betty Jean said slowly. “But he seems extra interested in this.”

  “So’s everybody else.” Michael looked down at the little stack of messages on his desk. Paul’s number was on the top. He tried to ignore it. “Wouldn’t you feel better if we knew who the murderer was?”

  “I think it’s like Uncle Al says. Whoever did it is long gone now. Besides, it had to be the mob. Everybody says so.” Betty Jean stared back at her screen. “But all this commotion doesn’t help me get my work done. First Miss Willadean came in to see if it was safe for crazy old ladies to be out on the street. Then Hank Leland shows up, acting like I’m his favorite person in the world.”

  “Poor Hank. I guess you didn’t give him the time of day.”

  “He’s got a watch.” Betty Jean gave a little sniff and went on with her recital. “He was still hanging around, trying to overhear me saying something on the phone, when Stella Pinkston saunters on back here. Of course, it doesn’t take a genius to know she’s more interested in the investigator than the investigation. She didn’t tarry long when she saw you weren’t here. And all the time the phone’s ringing. Folks must think I’m Hidden Springs’s own information bureau.”

  “You usually know what’s going on.”

  “Knowing and telling are two different things,” Betty Jean pointed out. “
Anyway, then when the judge came in here acting like he’s a real judge or something with all his questions, that was the last straw. I called Uncle Al and told him he’d have to come stay down here till you or Lester came in.”

  “Sounds like a traumatic morning all the way around.” Michael grinned over at her. “Tell you what. If it’ll help, I won’t talk to you the rest of the day.”

  “Promises, promises.” Betty Jean made a face at him. “Of course, when Lester gets here, he’ll have to tell me all the cute things every kid did or said today.”

  “Quit pretending to be cross about that. You wish at least a dozen of those kids were yours.”

  “Only a half dozen,” Betty Jean said without smiling. “Now keep your promise, call Paul Osgood, and let me get my work done.”

  Michael picked up the note with Paul’s cell number, but didn’t pick up the phone. When he felt Betty Jean watching him, he said, “I’ll call him later. He might be resting just now.”

  “Whatever.” Betty Jean shrugged. “Just don’t try leaving this office without calling him. I’ve already talked to him once today, and once is my limit.”

  “Okay.” Michael breathed out a sigh. “I promise I’ll call before I leave. Any of these other calls anything I need to know about?” He waved the pink notes at her.

  “You could try reading them yourself, you know. But Karen called. Said she couldn’t get you on your cell. She would have texted you, but she was afraid you’d left your phone at home or forgotten to charge it up. Does she know you or what?” Betty Jean shot him a look. “Anyway, she says tonight is sort of dress-up, and she was worried you might show up in your uniform.” Betty Jean’s fingers fell idle on the keyboard, and her eyes got dreamy. “It must be heaven to have a guy at your beck and call.”

  “I thought you were working on a new boyfriend.”

  “I’m not ready to let him know I’m interested yet and don’t you dare say anything to anybody about it.” She gave Michael a warning look. “I figure I’d better lose another twenty pounds first. That’ll shorten the odds of him saying no.”