Hog Wild

by Cathy Pickens

  “A job,” he said. “What’s your excuse?” The last was a jab, not a question.

  “My family is here.”

  “That’s not necessarily a reason to stay somewhere—or return. Especially when—” He shrugged and turned back toward the water, deciding not to finish his thought.

  I listened to the water bubble over the rocks. That alone was reason enough to come home, though this was the first opportunity I’d taken to enjoy it since I’d been back.

  Noah checked his watch. “You ready to head out?”

  “Sure.” I dusted the leaf mold off the seat of my jeans. I had work to do, too, though I’d rather have spent the day hiking along the river to Ellicott’s Rock. No need to argue with Noah. He was entitled to both his bad mood and his opinion.

  We walked in silence, and I soaked up a few last smells and sounds.

  As we pulled out of the damp, deep green parking lot, I said, “I’m sorry about our hike, about the bridge and all.”

  “No, that’s okay. This was fine. It gave me a feel for the place. Just what I wanted.” His voice was quiet, and he stared at the deep forest on either side as the car made the steep climb out of the valley. No sign of pique or bad mood. Just silence, a silence I chose to take as companionable. After we turned onto the main highway, he wrestled a notebook from his hip pocket and scribbled a few notes to himself as I sailed the last few miles down the mountain to where we’d left his car.

  At Pop’s Place, I waved him on his way, his ridiculous canoe contraption swaying as he pulled onto the blacktop. Strange fellow, that Noah Lakefield. Inside the store, I grabbed a pack of peanuts and a Coke. The musicians were taking a break.

  Before I headed toward town, I clipped my plastic cup holder to the window frame—such amenities were not standard equipment on 1964 autos—and poured my peanuts into my Coke bottle. Always a treat in a glass bottle, and combining the two made it easier to drink and drive—and think—on curvy roads.

  I kept playing victim association games in my head. There had to be some connection between the spate of odd deaths. Particularly Lionel Shoal and Suse Knight; they’d died in such a similar and gruesome way. But what could be the connection? In Suse Knight’s case, an irate mother-to-be could have come after her for helping a shiftless boyfriend dodge a paternity bullet. I could see a woman being frustrated and angry enough to kill, knowing who the father was when the blood test said otherwise.

  Did Suse Knight fake a paternity test for Shoal? Was that a connection? Seemed unlikely, given his age, though South Carolina’s former senior senator sired children into his seventies. Anyway, I didn’t see Valerie giving him enough leash to fool around on her. She’d have been wearing his ears on a necklace if she’d caught him running around.

  What about Len Ruffin? Had Suse Knight faked a test for him? Had some irate pregnant lover killed them both? Hard to imagine. From what I’d heard of him, sowing misery close to home was his strong suit.

  None of the three victims were easy people to mourn, but Ruffin, in my book, was the least likely to be missed. Anybody who’d hurt a child, his own daughter. Courts see similar cases with depressing repetition, but, despite the practice they get, courts offer poor protection, especially from parents. If Jesse had been my daughter, I might have considered killing him myself. But if the Ruffins were like-mother-like-daughter in the mousy-quiet department, could Mrs. Ruffin have suddenly turned into a tiger to defend her daughter—and herself? Unlikely. If she had, it would have been in a fit of passion, and he’d have been found dead on the kitchen or bedroom floor. If she had stuffed him in the mine, surely she wouldn’t have let her daughter go on the plant dig, knowing he was there.

  Of the three victims, Ruffin might be the one that most needed killing, but his was the murder that made the least sense. It didn’t fit the pattern. How had Ruffin’s body ended up stuffed in an abandoned mine? Wouldn’t an autopsy show if he’d been killed in town, driven up the mountain, and dumped in the mine? Had somebody in Lionel Shoal’s operation found him snooping around on the site? Had Ruffin discovered something Shoal wanted hidden, and been killed on the spot?

  None of that made any sense. The only thing I knew for sure about Ruffin was the one thing I couldn’t for-give him. And the two people who were now safe from him seemed the least likely to have killed him.

  Shooting somebody and stuffing him in a hole was an up-close and personal act. Poison was a cruel, impersonal, long-distance kind of murder. Maybe the poison candy deaths were the only related ones. Where had the candy come from? I certainly hoped L.J. had called in experienced help. Could she get the state crime lab and the FBI involved? When it comes to doing her job, L.J. tends to know when she’s out of her league. I’ll give her that.

  Poison candy. From my dimly remembered legal reading, I recalled a product tampering case, a Victorian-era murder where a woman mailed her lover’s wife a box of arsenic-laced chocolates. Surely, after anthrax letters and terror threats, no one would eat candy that came in the mail. Or would they? A beautiful box with a scrawled note. They would think it came from someone they knew. Which it probably had. That’s what made it so very scary.

  Poison-pen letters, poisoned candy. Was there a connection? That thought made my head spin. This whole thing had too much the flavor of an English drawing room murder. But in those, nothing more than a dainty line of blood trickled onto the hearth rug. No vomiting, no tortured contorted bodies. Lionel Shoal’s face, that horror-house grin twisting his mouth, was seared into my memory. I wished I’d only heard about it, without the memory enhancers of smell and fear.

  Forget about linking the victims. Who was capable of killing them? Someone unknown? Unlikely. These murders were intimate and personal.

  The vengeful part of me would like to think Alex Shoal and Len Ruffin’s wife had finally come to their senses and exacted their revenge. Highly unlikely. And what about Suse Knight? I couldn’t see Alex Shoal sending Suse a box of poisoned candy to draw the police off her trail. If Alex had been that kind of woman, Lionel Shoal would’ve been dead a long time ago.

  Who blew up Golden Cove? Did Lionel Shoal decide to destroy it and leave town with his investors’ money? If so, where were the screaming investors? Even if he was about to do a bunk, why go to the trouble of blowing up his buildings? Maybe the dynamite trail the police were following would lead somewhere. Melvin might know about the investors. I’d have to remember to ask him.

  My speculations carried me all the way down the mountain to town. I turned left off Main Street, picked up the mail at the post office, and sat in the car sorting through it. Mostly junk. Notice of a South Carolina Bar Continuing Legal Education seminar. I needed to get some hours in, so I wouldn’t be cramming at the end of the year. A good excuse to go to Columbia for chicken-fried steak at Yesterday’s.

  From between the sheets of a supermarket circular slid a familiar vellum envelope. I stared at it in my lap, at the careful blue script of the address.

  My stomach knotted. I raised my hands, my body drawn back as if the envelope might strike.

  Breathe. I needed to get this to Rudy. I couldn’t open it, though I wanted to know what it said. This would be the first letter the lab had gotten intact. In case it might offer new forensic information. I scooped the envelope gently into the newspaper circular, laid it on the passenger seat, and turned toward the Law Enforcement Center.

  22

  Thursday Morning

  No way can we open it,” Rudy said. “Lester Watts and I talked it over yesterday, after you brought those other letters in. The documents lab in Columbia will have to open it. We shipped off those you brought and the others we had just this morning. We’ll send this one along to join them.”

  I hadn’t thought about it needing to travel all the way to Columbia.

  “You sure you can’t just gently slit it open and take a peek?” I asked, only half joking. “You could wear gloves.”

  Rudy just sucked on his toothpick.

 
I knew better, but I had to ask. I should’ve opened the danged thing before I surrendered it. How embarrassing might it be? After all, none of the letters had been Rotary Club testimonials for the recipients.

  “I’ll have them fax a copy of it as soon as possible.” Rudy’s consolation prize to me for being a good citizen.

  Best I could ask for. “Wait a minute. Did you just say ‘the others’? There were other letters, besides the three I brought in?”

  “Yep. We got a few calls over the last weeks, people said they’d gotten these weird letters. Tame stuff, so we didn’t follow up. After all this other started happening, we went back to them. Two ladies let us have their letters to be tested. The other just wanted to file a complaint, but she didn’t want anybody to read her letter. Not much we could do with that.”

  “What did they say? The ones you got.”

  Rudy rolled his eyes.

  “Okay, that wasn’t fair.” I wouldn’t want him broad-casting die contents of my letter to whoever asked.

  ‘Trust me,” he said. “It was tame stuff. Along the lines of telling them to stop gossiping.”

  “Wonder why they kept their letters,” I said, mostly trying to figure it out for myself.

  Rudy’s look said, So why did you? If he’d gotten an anonymous letter, he wouldn’t have that look.

  “Another question: Where did the candy come from?”

  “Candy?” Rudy’s eyebrows went up in mock surprise, as if he didn’t know what I meant.

  “Oh, come on. The candy at Lionel Shoal’s and Suse Knight’s.”

  He dropped his pretense. “From a shop in Atlanta. Handmade specialty chocolates. No record of them shipping those to Dacus, but lots of people from here drive to Atlanta to shop, and lots pay cash.” He sat on the edge of his desk, his toothpick planted at the corner of his mouth.

  “Was there a note or anything with the candy?”

  “We found the wrapping in the trash at Shoal’s. Up-state South Carolina postmark. Mailed with regular postage stamps—too many stamps, to make sure it got there. Found a congratulations card on the side table. Signature was just a scrawl, could’ve said anything.”

  “What about at Suse Knight’s?”

  “No wrapping anywhere. Must have been thrown out. Didfinda thank-you card lying on the living room coffee table, so the cards look like more than a coincidence.”

  “Congratulations and thank you. He probably thought somebody was congratulating him on Golden Cove, and she thought a grateful client had sent her a gift. That would be enough to lull them into eating the candy.” I shivered, a sudden chill.

  “Yeah, I thought it was dumb to eat something that just showed up in the mail,” said Rudy, nodding ruefully. “That could explain it, though.”

  I pride myself on being cautious, alert to scams and random danger, but I could see myself opening a special box of chocolates that came with a “welcome to your new office” card. Another chill ran up my back.

  “I’d better get back to work,” I said.

  Rudy heaved himself off his desk and walked me the two steps to the hallway. “See you later.”

  As I entered the office’s kitchen door, Melvin’s voice greeted me from the recesses of his office. “Quite a way to run a business, showing up early afternoon without a word.”

  I veered left, into his office, and plopped down in his soft leather client chair. Not that clients ever came here. His investment clients lived all over the country. I don’t think he had a single one in Dacus who could drop in for a visit. Lucky Melvin.

  “I’m not the one who disappeared for a couple of days without a word,” I said.

  “Muddy sneakers? And jeans?” Melvin dimmed his computer screen and settled back in his chair. “Please be careful of the rug.”

  Sure enough, dark brown river-trail mud caked the side of one shoe.

  “Sorry.” I checked the bottom of my other shoe, to make sure it was clean, and tilted the errant one so it wouldn’t get on his probably genuine Persian rug.

  “Some of us have work to do,” I smarted back. “We don’t just sit at a computer managing investments.”

  “You certainly do have some work to do.” His smile was wry. “I’m considering setting a BEWARE—DEMOLITION ZONE sign in front of your door. Maybe we should rethink the French doors. So many windows, such a clear view.”

  Ouch. He was kidding, but he was also right.” Some of us, as I said, have real work to do.”

  “Such as?” His smile was still bemused.

  “Delivering evidence to the sheriff’s office.”

  I hadn’t told him about the poison-pen letters. Melvin had started out as a client in November, but he was becoming a friend and father confessor. I’d been too embarrassed to tell him about my first letter—it hadn’t been very flattering, to either of us. Facing him now, I had to acknowledge to myself why I hadn’t told him. The intimacy implied in the letter made me uncomfortable. I knew, from a long history working in an office full of men, that maintaining platonic friendships meant carefully maintaining boundaries. I hadn’t wanted to cross any boundaries with Melvin, especially since our physical boundaries, as we set up our offices, weren’t fully defined. But he deserved to know about the letter.

  Dear Lord, had he gotten one of his own? That thought jolted me. I hadn’t considered that.

  My expression must have shown my surprise at that thought.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Um, yeah.” Best to dive right in. “Several people—including me—have gotten anonymous letters.”

  I paused to see if he’d volunteer anything. He patiently waited for my story.

  “It’s the weirdest thing,” I said. “You wouldn’t think something like that would be so . . . frightening, but it is. Really scary. Not knowing who sent it. Or why.”

  Melvin leaned forward, his arms folded on his immaculate leather blotter. “These letters aren’t. . . threatening, are they?”

  “More like repent-or-else letters. The or else wasn’t spelled out. Still. . .”

  With a simple nod, Melvin let me know he didn’t think I was crazy. “Whoever wrote you must have known you’d take it to the police. You’re a lawyer, after all.”

  “Maybe,” I said, feeling my way along an idea taking shape. “Maybe he or she didn’t care whether I took it to the police.”

  His fingertips formed a contemplative tent as he listened.

  “I didn’t,” I said. “Take it to the police. Not right away. Mine was kind of personal. It scolded me for moving in here. Said it wouldn’t look right.”

  “Because?” He tried to control how much surprise showed on his face. “Because my wife was murdered?”

  “No.” It hadn’t dawned on me that Melvin was sensitive about his own skeletons, things he knew people still gossiped about. “No. Just some, I don’t know, antiquated sense of propriety.”

  He snorted. He’d grown up here. He knew what I meant.

  “Guess there’s really no criminal penalty for writing that kind of thing, is there?”

  I’d not thought about that. “No. I. . . guess not.”

  “Without a threat or something, I mean.”

  Or something. Two dead people had gotten letters. That was a powerful “or something.” I didn’t want to dwell on that. I didn’t feel free to tell him about the other letters. They had been shared in confidence.

  Melvin changed the subject for me. “So where’ve you been playing in the leaves and mud?”

  “Huh?”

  He looked at the top of my head. “Leaves. Or leaf. In your hair.”

  I combed my fingers through my tangled hair. Sheesh. Deputy Mellin hadn’t even bothered to tell me.

  “Up on dieriver. I introduced Noah Lakefield to the Chattooga.”

  “Noah?” An odd note sounded in his voice.

  “The new reporter at the newspaper. You met at the explosion.”

  “You took him on the river?” Melvin sounded almost—what? Territorial?
Surely not jealous.

  “Oh, gosh, no. We just went to the hatchery. Stupid me didn’t know the bridge hadn’t been replaced, so we didn’t go far. Besides, he’s from out west. Thick green cove forests seem to spook him a bit. I didn’t think about going on the river. I haven’t done that in ages.”

  “Want to go?”

  “You raft?” Buttoned-down Melvin issuing spur-of the-moment invitations? To go rafting?

  “Kayak, usually.” He said it with the disdain kayakers reserve for rafters. “But we can go with a raft group, if you’d rather. You free tomorrow?”

  “Uh, sure. I think so.” My short walk in the woods had whetted my appetite for getting outside. But what happened to chiding me about my eyesore office? Was I more surprised by his sudden outdoorsiness or his spontaneity?

  “I’ll make arrangements and get back to you. You going to stay up on the mountain tonight or at your parents?”

  I mentally scrolled through what I had planned for today and tomorrow. Precious little with any income-generating potential.

  “I’ll probably stay in town tonight.” I’d promised to bake cookies for the community theater’s opening-night festivities. My niece Emma would be helping me or, more likely, bossing me around. “I can meet you here at the office.”

  “Great.”

  I never dreamed Melvin did anything more back-to-nature than walk to his Jeep. Maybe the hint of spring in the air and my mention of the river had stirred up a primal urge to return to nature.

  I shut myself in my office. The clutter was getting to me, but I couldn’t seem to make the unpacking go quickly. Or go at all. Too many interruptions.

  I pulled out the file folder where I’d stuck the papers Aunt Hattie had given me. In my former big-law-firm life, my assistant used to type lovely file folder labels for me. Then she got a gadget that made labels. Looking at my almost undecipherable scrawl, maybe I needed to get a gadget. Making labels could distract me, keep me from reading these wills. Or thinking about what they might mean.

  I hadn’t spent any time reading wills since I’d finished my trusts and estates class in law school. I’d even had a friend draw up my own will, simple as it was. Even though I wouldn’t admit it to anyone, opening these stiff, formal papers that were too close to home intimidated me.