She nodded and slid to the floor, where she could lean back against the couch and tuck her legs beneath her.
“Were you and your mother close?”
She shrugged. “I guess.”
“Did you come home often? Talk on the phone?”
“Not really. She had her life. I had mine. Anyhow, she was pretty busy. Every time I called, she was usually rushing off to a meeting or heading out to check up on one of the cleaning crews.” Her tone was light but her eyes betrayed her. “She thought the only reason I called was because I wanted something. Money or clothes.”
“Be fair, Dee,” Bradshaw said softly.
“You know it’s true, Dad.” Her voice was sulky, but she dropped her eyes and stretched out the top of her bandeau to tug it up, inadvertently giving Terry a view of her firm young breasts.
“So she never mentioned that a gun had been fired into her bedroom floor?”
“Huh?”
“A gun?” asked Bradshaw.
“One of my deputies dug a bullet out of the floor just now,” Dwight told them. “Did she own a gun?”
“Absolutely not! She was completely opposed to handguns, even though she’s never said it in public. Her constituents, you see.”
“Then that might be how she was forced to write that note,” said Terry. “Her killer could have fired into the floor as a warning threat that he’d shoot her if she didn’t do as she was told.”
Dee looked up at him. “So the letter was a lie? She wasn’t doing anything wrong after all?”
“Hard to say. We might still learn that something illegal was going on and the killer wanted to set her up as the fall guy. We haven’t talked to any of the commissioners and she seems to have kept files on them. On some of the more prominent business leaders in the county as well, but we can’t find them.”
“Files?” asked Bradshaw. “What sort of files?”
“We don’t know, but we get the impression that some things were too personal—and maybe too candid—to leave lying around for anyone to read. We don’t know if it’s papers or a CD or a flash drive.”
“What’s a flash drive?” he asked.
“Thinner than a Bic lighter but about the same shape,” Dee explained to him. “Plugs into your computer and has a ton of memory.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m pretty much a Luddite when it comes to computers. I read The London Times and The New York Review of Books online, and I can do e-mail or look up information, but as far as understanding the mechanical side of it?” He gave a hands-up gesture of ignorance.
“What about you, Dee?”
“Yeah, she used flash drives for her personal sh—” She caught herself. “Her personal stuff. See, there was this story on the news. About some crooked politician or one of those sleazy corporations? And how they got nailed by their computers because even if you delete or erase, it’s still there on your hard drive? For some reason, that really freaked Mom, so I told her that if she’d get herself a memory stick and work from that and never save anything to the hard drive, she ought to be safe from most snoopers. That’s when she bought her laptop. I showed her how to download to the flash drive and then transfer the files to her new computer. I even told her how to disable the automatic backup on her word processing program. She bought an extra stick, so I know she used at least one for her private stuff.
“Next time I came home, I told her about digital shredders that even get rid of cache files. She said she wished she’d known about that before she took apart her old computer and smashed the insides with a hammer. I thought that was a little over the top. I mean, what did she have that was so damn secret? A formula to blow up the world? She laughed and said I was closer to the truth than I knew.”
“And how did you interpret that?”
Dee gave a dismissive shrug of her bare shoulder. “I thought she was just trying to sound important.”
“When was this?”
“Last fall. Before she moved into the new place.”
“It’s an expensive house,” Dwight observed. “She must have been doing very well with the business.”
Cameron Bradshaw looked uncomfortable at that, and Dwight made a mental note to look into the financing of that house.
“I’m sorry, Officers,” Bradshaw said, clearly trying to cover his lapse. “I never offered you anything to drink. Tea? Or I could make coffee?”
“Would you, Dad?” Dee asked, deliberately widening her clear green eyes to coax him. “Dad grinds his own beans and I’m absolutely addicted to his coffee.”
“Flatterer,” Bradshaw said with an indulgent smile, but he was already rising from his chair. “Officers?”
“Yes, please,” Terry said before Dwight could decline. “Let me help you, sir. I know how Major Bryant likes his.” He gave Dwight a significant wink as he followed Bradshaw.
As soon as they were clear of the room, Dee turned to Dwight and in a low and urgent voice said, “You’re right, Major Bryant. Dad’s in denial, but Mom was doing very well. She bought a new car last spring even though her old one was only two years old. She just gave it away to her cousin in Georgia, a cousin she didn’t even like all that much.” Unforgotten resentment darkened her pretty face. “He came through with a load of peaches and a hard-luck story and she just handed him the damn keys. Paid cash for a new one the very next day. Same with the house. She paid cash for it, too. I mean, I guess when she sold our old house, she must’ve got a nice chunk of money, but the new house probably cost half a million and she just wrote a check.”
“Where do you think the extra money came from?” Dwight asked her.
“I’m sure she was skimming from the company. Dad thinks because he hired his own accountant that the books are straight, but I know Mom. There was never a man she couldn’t get around once she set her mind to it and Roger Flackman’s a real weenie.”
“Any other man in particular?”
She shrugged. “Look, you asked if Mom and I were close? We used to be. Not maybe when I was a little kid because she was working so hard and I got left with day care or babysitters, but once I hit ten or twelve and didn’t need a sitter any more, she’d take me along on some of the jobs, especially after she and Dad split. We’d go shopping and eat out a lot. I was proud of her and in her way, I think she was proud of me. Little things. Like, she took me to one of those Chamber of Commerce banquets one year when I was eleven and it totally cracked her up that I knew which was the salad fork and which was my bread-and-butter plate. She told me later that she’d never even seen a salad fork till after she married Dad.
“And that thing about guns? She wouldn’t talk about her parents very often except to say that they were trailer trash and that she used to pretend they had stolen her away from her real parents. But she did let slip once that her father used to get drunk and shoot up the trailer they lived in. Scared the hell out of her.”
She looked up at Dwight in sudden wonder. “I guess I never thought about it before, but she really did come a long way, didn’t she?”
“Sounds like it,” Dwight said.
“I mean, no money, no family connections, no education except a GED. Yeah, marrying Dad helped, but she took advantage of all her opportunities, didn’t she? Making enough of a name for herself to run for the board of commissioners? She was always saying she wanted to be somebody, but it was like nothing was ever enough. Important people could praise her to the skies, but if the Ledger ran a critical letter from some nobody out in the country, it cut her to the quick.
“You want to know what was probably on her flash drive? I guarantee you it had everybody who ever said something ugly about her. She had the memory of an elephant. I’m not saying she used her position to hurt that person, but she certainly wouldn’t have gone out of her way to do him any favors.”
“So who did she do favors for, Dee?”
The girl looked back at him and Dwight saw her jaw tighten.
“You said you weren’t close to her when she died. What happened
?”
But the time of confidences seemed to be over. It was as if suddenly realizing why her mother had been so driven to succeed had made her no longer willing to speak of any failings Candace might have had.
“You do know that whoever killed her might have been one of those she did favors for?” he said gently.
“I’d better go help Dad bring in the coffee,” she said, unfolding herself up from the floor just as Bradshaw and Wilson returned.
The coffee was every bit as delicious as promised and Bradshaw seemed as willing as ever to help, but a distinct chill radiated from his daughter.
“When can we have the house back?” she asked as she handed Dwight a cup of fragrant brew.
“My deputies are finishing up there now.” He looked at his watch. “I guess they’re probably done. But if you come across that flash drive, I hope you’ll call us right away.”
She gave an indifferent shrug that promised nothing.
“Of course she will,” said Bradshaw. “Cream or sugar, Bryant?”
“No, thank you. Just a couple of further questions. Can you suggest anyone at all that might want your wife out of the way?”
The older man shook his head. Dee sat motionless, as if her mind were elsewhere and she wished they were gone so that she could go wherever that was.
“Would you tell us, sir, where were you Tuesday evening between four-thirty and six?”
“Is that when it happened?” The man shook his head sadly. “I realize you must ask that question, Bryant, but I could never hurt my wife. I was here at home then.”
“Alone?”
Bradshaw nodded. “Dee dropped her things off earlier, but she was gone by then.”
“There’s no one to corroborate that?”
He placed his spoon precisely on the saucer and set them back on the tray. “Sorry. I sat on my patio with a drink and a dictionary of quotations until dark, but I saw no one until a neighbor came out to walk his dog on the commons. That would have been around seven or seven-thirty.”
“Dee?”
“I was at a friend’s house till four.” She gave the friend’s name and address. “Then I drove back into Dobbs for a five o’clock job interview. After that I went out to supper with more friends and didn’t get back to Dad’s till almost ten.”
“Job interview?” asked Dwight.
“I believe he’s your brother-in-law,” she said with a mocking smile. “Mr. Will Knott?”
CHAPTER 13
Hope is forgetting that one’s
Father will be in the deep, running currents
Forever.
—The Persimmon Tree Carol, by Shelby Stephenson
Shortly before the Friday afternoon break, my clerk leaned over between cases and whispered, “Someone down in the office says Danny Creedmore told his secretary that Candace Bradshaw was murdered.”
“Really?” It had been difficult to think of Candace killing herself, but somehow less surprising to hear that she’d been murdered. “Any details?”
“Not yet. I’ll IM Faye Myers. See if she knows anything.”
Faye Myers is a plump and gossipy dispatcher who’s married to an EMS tech. Between them they know most of what’s going on in the county before anyone else does. Bo Poole keeps threatening to fire her, but somehow he never has, probably because she seldom reveals anything sensitive to an investigation before it becomes common knowledge. It might also be that he regards her as a barometer of public opinion and likes the feedback she gives him. Grapevines do tend to run in both directions and there’s a reason Bo barely has to break a sweat out on the campaign trail every four years.
If Faye knew more than the bare facts though, she wasn’t responding to my clerk’s instant message, so I wandered around to Luther Parker’s office during the break. As soon as I walked in, he said, “I hear Candace Bradshaw didn’t kill herself. That true? What does Dwight say?”
“Sorry, friend. I buzzed his office but he’s not there and I don’t like to bother him on his cell phone during working hours.”
“Yeah?” He lifted an eyebrow and grinned. “Since when?”
Roger Longmire, our chief district court judge, stuck his head in. “Y’all hear that Candace was murdered?”
We batted it around for a few minutes, wondering if the motive was personal, a love affair gone wrong, something connected with her business or with her position as a county commissioner.
“I’m guessing it was something to do with kickbacks for approving some of those iffy housing developments,” Longmire said.
“I don’t know,” said Luther. “I heard she and Creedmore had a falling out over a clerk down in Ellis Glover’s office.”
Ellis Glover is our clerk of court and gives a lot of young women their first jobs. Like us, he has to run for office every four years, too, so he always seems to have an opening for the sister or daughter of constituents. Many important men—and yes, dammit, men still hold most of the power in our county—are grateful to him for looking after their female relatives. He makes sure that his “girls” are the first to hear of any opening in other county departments so that he can cycle them out and cycle in a new group to keep widening his circle of supporters. Democrats or Republicans, it doesn’t much matter to Ellis. He knows that men are daddies and brothers and uncles and grandfathers first, party members second.
I didn’t recognize the name of the young woman that Danny Creedmore was supposed to be lusting after, but it wasn’t important. Most courthouse affairs have a sell-by date from the get-go and they usually end with no hard feelings on either side.
“From all I’ve heard, it wouldn’t really matter if Danny and Candace weren’t lovers any longer. They were still in bed together, weren’t they?” I asked.
Convoluted but Luther and Roger knew what I meant.
“Yeah,” said Roger. “She was still saying ‘How high?’ when Danny said ‘Jump.’ Although I did hear that she wanted to be taken seriously if she filed for Woody’s seat. She really thought she could be a state senator.”
“Hey, if Dubya could be president,” said Luther.
We laughed and returned to our separate courtrooms.
Dwight is normally finished by four and I had no compunctions about calling his cell number then. Now that Cal is part of our lives, one of us has to pick him up every afternoon.
He answered on the first ring. “On my way. What about you?”
“I may be a little late,” I told him, virtuously refraining from asking about Candace. “I need to swing past Seth’s for a few minutes.”
That encounter with Daddy at lunchtime was still bothering me. When I got to Seth’s house, though, no one was home and I decided the hell with it. Go to the source. Ask Daddy flat out what was going on. Yes, he can be touchy as a hornet when questioned about his private business, but you don’t deserve any honey if you’re not willing to get stung. And don’t bother telling me that hornets don’t make honey. You know what I mean.
There was no sign of his truck at the homeplace, and Maidie was putting his supper in the oven so the pilot light would keep it warm.
“I never know when he’s gonna be home these days,” she said. “Walk on down to the house with me, honey, so I can start Cletus’s supper. And you’re welcome to eat with us.”
“Thanks, Maidie,” I said, “but Dwight and Cal are probably waiting for me.”
Maidie was my mother’s right arm after Aunt Essie married a policeman up in Philadelphia when I was a little girl. Cletus was working for Daddy back then, too, and it got to the point that they couldn’t keep him away from the kitchen. He was eight or nine years older than Maidie, yet way too shy to pop the question.
Exasperated because he could never find Cletus when he was needed, Daddy stormed into the kitchen one day and said, “Now look here, Maidie. This man’s acting like a moonstruck calf and it’s got to quit.”
That’s when Mother and Maidie started laughing.
Daddy was too wound up to stop and
Cletus had turned ashen beneath his brown color. Daddy gave him a sour look and said, “I don’t know why on earth you’d want to marry him, but if you do, for God’s sake and mine, tell him so I can get some work out of him. All right?”
Still laughing, Maidie said, “All right.”
“Huh?” Daddy and Cletus were both dumbfounded.
“She said yes,” Mother told them. “Now will you two please get out of my kitchen? We’ve got a wedding to plan.”
The little clapboard house that Maidie and Cletus have shared for thirty-odd years is just past the barn and down the lane from the main house. The garden that he and Daddy had planted was growing vigorously. Peas and potatoes were blooming and the first planting of sweet corn was almost knee-high. No stakes yet for the tomatoes because they were still too short, but the cabbage plants had begun to head up and butter beans had their first true leaves.
“I hear Dwight’s planted y’all a garden, too,” Maidie said.
“Oh yes. I’ve told him that I don’t can and I don’t freeze, but that hasn’t stopped him.”
Maidie laughed. “And how’s that Rhonda working out?”
“You were right,” I admitted ruefully, having resisted hiring someone to help me with the housework for as long as I could. “I don’t know how I ever got along without her.”
“I know exactly how you were getting along,” she said tartly. “I saw the dust and dirt in that house.”
“Dirt?” I protested. “It wasn’t dirty. Not really.”
“Them windows? Those baseboards? Them dust bunnies under the beds? I was pure ashamed of you, Deborah.”
Which was why she had bestirred herself to find someone to clean for me when it became clear that Dwight and Cal and I weren’t keeping to her standards. She no longer has a pool of nieces and cousins to draw from. The Research Triangle and state government departments have siphoned them off. But through her own grapevine, she found an energetic young white woman willing to work mornings so she could be home with her children in the afternoons, and Rhonda Banks comes once a week now. She dusts, mops, scrubs, changes the beds, and does the laundry. I pay her more than twice the minimum wage and she’s worth every penny.
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