Christmas Mourning

by Margaret Maron

  Brushing a strand of red hair from her eyes, she thumped the papers on her desk and said, “I tell you, Major, it’s getting a little scary how much information these phone companies keep on you. I wonder if people would be so indiscreet if they knew their text messages were being saved?”

  Technology was always a trade-off between convenience and privacy, thought Dwight, as he looked at the printouts of phone numbers that Richards was trying to put names to. Good when they needed to track someone’s activities; bad to think yours could be tracked just as easily if someone wanted to attach spyware to your phone number.

  Every time Mallory Johnson had used her cell phone in the last few months, there it was. Documented in date, time, minutes used, the numbers she had dialed, the numbers that had called her, even the general location of where she was when the call was made.

  “My wife says this is why she doesn’t leave her phone switched on,” Dwight said.

  My wife.

  Even as he concentrated on what his deputy was saying, a small corner of his mind savored those words. They still awed him. After so many years of thinking she would never be his, here they were: ready to celebrate a full year of marriage.

  “Any of these numbers connected to the Wentworth boy?” McLamb asked.

  “Nope. Neither outgoing or incoming. At least not that we can tell. If he had one of those disposable phones with a prepaid card, there’s no way to know. There’s no land line at that trailer, just Jason Wentworth’s cell phone, and when we found it this morning, it does show the 911 call that the Faison guy made. That number’s not on the girl’s records, though.” She pointed to the last incoming number. “That’s her dad’s number right at ten-thirty. She didn’t answer and it went into her voice mail.”

  Richards picked up the girl’s phone and pressed some buttons and Dwight heard Malcolm Johnson’s voice say, “Mallory? I hope you’re on your way home, honey. It’s ten-thirty and tomorrow’s still a school day.”

  “What about her last outgoing?”

  “It’s her brother’s number. The call lasted about three minutes, but Denning says her phone was switched on and the battery was drained.”

  Richards pointed to the time: 10:37. “The kids at the party say she left the Crowder house around ten-thirty. She must have talked to him right before she crashed.”

  She thumbed the stack of pages piled up on her desk. “Is there really any point to reading all these text messages?”

  “Probably not.” As much as he felt sorry for Sarah and Malcolm, their daughter’s death was a lower priority than the Wentworth killings. “Why don’t you start on the day of her death and skim back through a week or so? I don’t expect anything to jump up about the Wentworths, but you never know. Let me have the brother’s phone number, though. I’ll see if she mentioned either of them to him.”

  As McLamb went on to his desk to write up his report, Dwight paused in the doorway. “What about calls to and from Wentworth?”

  “Matt called him a little before nine Friday morning from his stepmother’s house and there were several calls from Faison. One on Thursday evening, and after that, Faison’s calls were sent right to voice mail, so I guess they were dead by then.”

  “Faison say anything useful?”

  “Just that he wanted his gun and stuff. And he was pissed that Jason wasn’t picking up the phone. Finally, on Sunday, he said that he was going to come over that night after he took his aunt to a movie.” She smiled and added parenthetically, “Faison’s lived with his aunt in Cotton Grove since he was twelve.”

  “Hello?”

  “Charlie Barefoot?”

  “Yeah. Who’s this?”

  “Major Dwight Bryant with the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department. I was wondering if you could stop by my office this afternoon? I’d like to clear up a few things and—Hello? Mr. Barefoot?”

  Dwight realized that he was talking to dead air and pushed the redial button. After five rings, Charlie Barefoot’s voice said, “Here comes the beep. You know what to do.”

  “We seem to have been disconnected,” Dwight said sternly. “Please call me.” He carefully enunciated his number, then hung up and sat back in his seat.

  Now wasn’t that interesting?

  Before he could decide what to make of the boy’s action, Deputy Sam Dalton, CCSD’s newest detective, rapped on the frame of his open door. Dalton had been put in charge of the patrol officers sent to canvass the Massengill Road area surrounding the Wentworth single-wide.

  For a moment, Dwight was irresistibly reminded of Bandit when the terrier thought there was a big juicy bone in his immediate future. If Dalton had possessed a stubby little tail, it would be wagging in excitement.

  “Sir,” he said, “I believe we’ve got us a witness in the Wentworth shootings.”

  CHAPTER 20

  An hour later, to the accompaniment of Bing’s voice singing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” McMurtrie rang the doorbell of No. 3. The door was opened finally by a white-faced woman with burning black eyes and raven hair.

  —“Silent Night,” Baynard Kendrick

  MAJOR DWIGHT BRYANT—MONDAY AFTERNOON, DECEMBER 22

  Mrs. Alma Higgins had short white hair that feathered softly around a heart-shaped face, bright china blue eyes, and very fair complexion that was now finely wrinkled with age. At first glance, she looked like an old-fashioned pink-and-white porcelain doll that someone had slipped inside a green velvet pouch and then pulled the drawstrings up tight around her neck. A second glance showed that the green velvet tunic that she wore over matching green slacks had a stand-up ruffled neckband of the same material and that the drawstring was actually a thick gold necklace. Either the holiday outfit was a hand-me-down from a heavier woman or she had lost weight since she first acquired it.

  Someone had rolled an armchair in from the conference room and seated her beside Mayleen Richards’s desk. When Dwight joined them, he almost bumped into Raeford McLamb, who was on his way back from the break room with a cup of instant hot chocolate.

  “Now isn’t that so sweet of you!” the elderly woman exclaimed in a soft voice halfway between a girlish flutter and the cooing of doves.

  “Mrs. Higgins,” said Deputy Sam Dalton, “this is Major Bryant.”

  Her blue eyes widened as she looked up. “Oh, my goodness! You must be Calvin Bryant’s son.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, trying to remember if he had ever met this woman before.

  “Oh, honey,” she cooed. “You’re the spitting image of your daddy. He’s been gone—How long is it now? Almost forty years? But it’s like he just walked into the room. He and my second husband were in the Grange together, and I always notice the handsome men.” Her laughter was a cascade of soft flute notes. “Not that Harold wasn’t nice-looking, too, but nothing like your daddy. Or like my first husband either, for that matter. Or—oh, but you don’t want to hear about them. You want me to talk about Friday morning, don’t you?”

  “If you would, ma’am.” He pulled up a straight-backed chair and sat down. “Do you mind if Deputy Denning records this?”

  “Not a bit.” She watched with bright interest as that detective took up a position with his camera, and immediately began to fuss with her hair and to straighten her gold necklace. “I must look a sight.” She turned to Mayleen Richards. “Do I still have any lipstick on?”

  That young woman gave an encouraging smile. “You look just beautiful, Mrs. Higgins. Why don’t you start by saying your name and where you live?”

  Hesitantly at first, then with growing confidence, Mrs. Higgins repeated her full last name, which seemed to consist of several surnames, followed by an address out on Massengill Road. “After I divorced my second husband, I gave my daughter and her husband the farm and just kept an acre for myself in case I ever wanted to come back here to live.”

  She mentioned her daughter’s name and it was vaguely familiar to Dwight. “Well, after James died—he was my fourth—I decided to move
back up here from Florida to be near Mary and her children. We built me a little house on my acre even though Mary said there was plenty of room with her now that the children are grown, but I didn’t want to be a bother.”

  She paused to lift the hot cocoa to her lips that were painted the same pale pink as her nails, and Dwight immediately said, “If you could tell us about yesterday morning, ma’am?”

  “Oh, I am sorry. I do keep running on, don’t I?” She laughed again, the tinkling laugh of a woman who has always known that most men were enchanted by both her laughter and her tendency to “run on.”

  Dwight glanced at Richards, expecting signs of impatience. Instead, Mayleen appeared to be fascinated by this preserved-in-amber example of pre-ERA femininity.

  “You said you were on your way to get your hair done?” Dalton prompted.

  “That’s right. Every Friday morning, as soon as I hear the bells of the little Methodist church down the road begin to chime the half hour, I know it’s time to leave for my standing appointment at eleven o’clock. They’re not real bells, of course, just a recording, and I don’t know that I’d like to live right next door to them, but it sounds so pretty from a distance. Anyhow, I was driving down Massengill Road at about a quarter to eleven when a car came whipping out of a driveway on my right. The trees and bushes are so thick there that he probably couldn’t see me, but I’m sure he never even slowed down to look. Just shot out and made a left-hand turn right in front of me. I was doing about fifty, and before I could put on my brakes I felt my car brush the rear end of his. Well, I immediately stopped, but he didn’t. I got out and looked at my front bumper. You could see where it was scraped, but it wasn’t enough to call it any real damage, and I must say I was relieved about that, because if he had stopped and we’d called the highway patrol to come out and take a look, I knew they would say it was my fault. After you pass seventy, they just assume your reflexes are poor and that any accident is always your fault. Down in Florida—”

  Mayleen interrupted. “Excuse me, ma’am, but do you mind if I ask just how old you are?”

  Mrs. Higgins cocked her head archly. “Oh now, honey, you know a lady never tells her age, but you lean your pretty little head a little closer and I’ll whisper it in your ear.”

  The deputy did as she was instructed and her eyes widened in surprise at what she heard.

  “So you see why I was just as happy not to have a trooper come out, although I do think that this was one time they would have taken the word of a somewhat older woman over some young man. I mean, I couldn’t have scraped his car if he wasn’t in my lane when I had the right-of-way, now could I?”

  “No, ma’am. You say he was a young man? Black or white?”

  “White, but I’m afraid that’s all I can say. It all happened so fast that I really didn’t have time to see him.”

  “But you think he was a young man?” Dwight persisted.

  “That was my impression. Not white-headed, anyhow, or bald. I would have noticed that.”

  Dwight smiled, willing to accept that a woman who’d had four husbands would indeed have noticed. “What about the car itself, ma’am?”

  “White,” she said promptly. “And either a Honda or a Toyota. Fairly new, too. Mine’s a silver Prius, and I looked at both makes very carefully when I was trying to decide which to buy last summer. My grandson thought the Prius would hold its value best, so that’s what I got. You menfolks always know about cars.”

  “Two-door or four?”

  “Four.”

  “Did you notice what the driver was wearing?”

  “I’m so sorry, honey, but I didn’t. Do you really think he’s the one who shot those two young men?”

  “We won’t know until we find him,” Dwight told her. “But it certainly sounds as if he was there at the right time.”

  They took her back over it again, and when it was clear that she could add nothing more, Percy Denning volunteered to drive her home and see if he could lift any paint samples from her bumper.

  Dalton reported that someone on the other side of the woods from the Wentworth trailer told them that he’d heard four gunshots around ten-thirty or eleven, but he had not paid much attention. He assumed that Jason Wentworth was shooting at squirrels or rabbits again.

  As Dalton swiveled around to his desk to begin writing up his report, Dwight paused and said, “So how old is Mrs. Higgins?”

  Mayleen Richards grinned. “Would you believe ninety-two?”

  * * *

  Shaking his head, Dwight returned to his own office and tried calling Charlie Barefoot again. Again, he was shunted into voice mail.

  3:30. A half hour till his shift was technically over. With everything quiet for the moment, he decided that he would drive back to Cotton Grove and see if he could get up with that evasive young man before going home to shower and shave for dinner out with Deborah that night.

  Accordingly, he arrived at the modest home of Nelson and Edie Barefoot a few minutes past four. He found Mrs. Barefoot outside, busily plugging in the Christmas lights that dripped from the eaves and adorned the bushes along the porch. She was pleased to see him, “But Charlie’s not here right now, Dwight. He’s gone over to see Sarah about something. Can I give him a message?”

  “That’s all right,” he told her. “I’ll catch up with him there.”

  Built at the crest of an acre lot that sloped off to the rear, the Johnson house was an imposing brick two-story with the multilevel roofline, peaks, and dormers that had come to dominate the landscape these past few years. Tasteful evergreen wreaths tied with red velvet bows adorned every window. A circular concrete drive led to a lower three-car garage and side door before continuing up the slope to the front. An older-model white Hyundai was parked by the garage. Charlie Barefoot’s, Dwight assumed, and quite a contrast to the sporty red Miata that his sister had wrecked last week.

  He slowed to a stop and, even though there was no reason to think that Charlie’d had anything to do with the Wentworth killings, he found himself automatically checking the left rear fender for a recent scrape. He did see a ding in the same approximate area as Mrs. Higgins had described, but even from several feet away, he realized that this one had a skin of rust that was too old to have formed since yesterday. He took his foot off the brake and continued on up the slope to the front door, where he got out and rang the bell.

  No one immediately answered, so he rang again.

  Just as he was reaching for the bell a third time, Sarah Johnson opened the door. She wore black slacks and a black V-neck sweater over a white cotton shirt with french cuffs. Her pretty face was ravaged and even thinner than when he’d seen her at the funeral home on Saturday. Her eyes were red-rimmed and she had a ball of tissues in her hand as if she had been crying, but she managed a watery smile as she invited Dwight in and ushered him past an enormous Christmas tree in the foyer into an informal sunroom at the back that overlooked a winterized swimming pool on a lower level and the woods beyond.

  “Malcolm’s not here right now, but do you have news for us?” she asked when they were seated and he had refused her offer of something to drink.

  “News?”

  “Who put the liquor in Mallory’s drink,” she reminded him. “Malcolm’s convinced that she would still be alive if she’d had her normal reflexes.”

  “You don’t?” he asked, hearing something different in her voice.

  She leaned her head back against the couch with a tired sigh. “I don’t know, Dwight. I’ve quit trying to understand any of this. It’s not going to bring her back to know, so what difference does it make in the end? First Charlie and now Mallory. I’ve lost them both.”

  “Actually, it was Charlie I came to see,” he told her. “Mrs. Barefoot said he was here.”

  She sat upright and her expressive eyes were suddenly frightened. “Why do you want him? What have you heard, Dwight?”

  “Is there something I should have heard?” he asked gently.

&nb
sp; “No, of course not! Everybody’s upset. Nobody’s making sense. Malcolm’s raging around like a wild man and Charlie—”

  She broke off and stood up. “He’s downstairs getting some of his things. He’s moved over to Jeff’s parents’ house, and I guess you’ve heard that he took back Jeff’s name?”

  Dwight nodded.

  “Malcolm’s been good to him, Dwight.” She led the way to a carpeted staircase that curved down into a walk-out lower level. The railing was trimmed in cedar and ivy interlaced with red velvet ribbons. “There’s no reason for Charlie to act like this. Yes, Malcolm spoiled Mallory, but that didn’t mean he never loved Charlie. All daddies spoil their daughters, don’t they? Mine did. I bet Deborah’s did, too.”

  Her words sounded to Dwight like an argument she had made so many times that even she no longer believed it.

  At the bottom of the stairs lay a pleasant space furnished like a casual den with several couches that faced a large flat-screen television recessed into one wall. A granite-topped wet bar was tucked under the stairs and wide french doors led out to the pool and terrace.

  On the wall opposite the stairs were several closed doors.

  “Charlie,” Sarah called. “Honey?”

  She crossed to one of the doors, gave a light knock, then opened it. “Charlie?”

  Through the open doorway, Dwight could see a bedroom furnished in masculine colors and a full bath beyond that. The closet door stood wide and several drawers in the chest were half open. The lights were off, but another set of wide french doors let in enough December daylight to let them see that the rooms were empty.

  Back in the den area, Dwight oriented himself and gestured to a door in the corner. “Does that go outside?”