Christmas Mourning

by Margaret Maron

“Let’s don’t get ahead of ourselves, Richards,” he cautioned. “Might and did aren’t even kissing cousins. That trash could have been thrown out anytime between ten-something Tuesday night and six-thirty Friday morning when my niece picked it up.”

  Mayleen Richards tossed her red head and reached for a folder. “I beg to differ with you, sir. Here’re the pictures the trooper took that night and the next morning.”

  The pictures were in black and white. One of the night pictures, taken from the front of Mallory’s car and looking back, showed faint blurs of white on the far shoulder. An almost identical shot the next morning showed trash in the same location. Again, though, even if they blew it up, the distance was probably too great to be able to say for certain that it was a Bojangles’ box.

  “Any good attorney would call it wishful thinking.”

  She grinned. “Well, it is Christmas and we’ve all been good, haven’t we?”

  He laughed and went on into his office, but Mayleen noticed that he took the disc and the player with him.

  She sat down at her desk, opened Charlie Barefoot’s cell phone, and when prompted for a password, typed in “Avenger.”

  CHAPTER 28

  The more he thought, the more perplexed he was.

  —A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

  Next day was Christmas Eve and I almost overslept. Cal wasn’t all that eager to get up either. By the time we left the house, we were both cranky with each other.

  “Try to take a nap today, if you can,” I told him, wishing I could crawl in for one myself. “We’ll be up again late tonight and a full day tomorrow.”

  He yawned and nodded, although I knew that once he was with Mary Pat and Jake, the excitement and anticipation would kick in.

  When I dropped him off at Kate’s, Erin Gladstone, the live-in nanny, told me that Kate had already planned some downtime for the children that afternoon. Erin planned to head out after lunch to spend Christmas with some friends in Durham, so I handed her a small gift and a fairly large check and wished her lots of merriment.

  Although we didn’t get started much before 9:30, court was due to recess for the holiday at noon. Happily, I had heard everything on my docket by 11:17, so when Dwight sent word for me to stop by his office when I was finished, I wished everyone a merry Christmas, slung my robe over my arm, and headed downstairs.

  With the search warrant I had signed for him that morning, he had picked up Charlie Barefoot’s phone and Mayleen Richards had transferred the uncensored message to a DVD disc.

  Dwight was disappointed with it, though, and when we were in his office with the door closed, he said, “It doesn’t give us any more information about the wreck itself, but she was sure as hell upset about something, and that, combined with the other stuff in her system, probably had her too distracted to pay attention to the road. You picked up on something we missed the first time around, let’s see if you can make more sense out of this than I can.”

  A DVD player from the squad room now sat on his desk and he mashed a button and once again I was listening to Mallory Johnson’s angry young voice over the bells of “Silent Night.”

  I had to take several deep breaths after listening to Mallory die again. “Who’s Gallie What’s-his-face?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Didn’t you ask Charlie?”

  “Of course I did. He says he never met the kid, and yet I get the feeling there’s something there that’s important.”

  He told me how he had gone by the Johnson house, how Sarah had given him all of Mallory’s presents to donate to the clerk of court’s gift drive, and how she, too, had first denied knowing any Gallie and then told him it was none of his business.

  “Mallory said this Gallie’s mother was mad at him for being late,” I mused. “Why would a kid getting home late ruin Christmas for everybody? Does he go to West Colleton?”

  “I spoke to Mama and she said she’d ask around, but she’s never heard of a student called Gallie at her school.”

  “I guess you don’t want to ask Malcolm yet?”

  “Not after Sarah’s reaction. She doesn’t want him to know and the poor guy’s hurting bad enough without adding to it. Whatever’s going on in that family, I guess she’s right. If it doesn’t have any bearing on the wreck, then it really isn’t any of our business, is it?”

  “Every family has its secrets,” I said lightly, hoping he would never learn all the facts behind my first appointment to the bench. “I don’t suppose you want to have lunch?”

  “No, I’ll grab a bowl of chili across the street. You off to pick up Cal now?”

  “After I run a couple of errands. Don’t forget that Kate and Rob are expecting us at six.”

  He gave me an absentminded kiss good-bye and I went out to the parking lot, with Mallory’s words running through my head. Calling him “Gallie What’s-his-face” made it sound as if she didn’t know him. A kid from another high school? On the other hand, something about his mother being mad at him because he didn’t come straight home was ringing a distant bell. Unfortunately, the bell was so distant that it faded from my mind as I tossed my robe in the car and ran through the mental list of things that still needed doing before tomorrow.

  Most of Dwight’s family would gather at Kate and Rob’s tonight for dinner and to exchange gifts. Tomorrow was when my family would get together.

  Kate and Rob are very dear. I’ve come to love them almost like blood siblings. They are thoughtful and kind and Dwight and I are eternally grateful that Cal can go there after school rather than day care. The evening would be warm and loving and in perfect Christmas-card taste.

  And the get-together with my rowdy bunch?

  Not so much.

  I was smiling as I drove out of the parking lot, but when I got to the intersection where I should have turned left to go home, I spotted Reid Stephenson, my cousin and former law partner, taking the steps to our old office two at a time. Now why did I look at Reid and think Gallie?

  The light changed from red to green. Instead of turning left, I drove through the intersection and parked in front of Lee and Stephenson, Attorneys at Law. Maybe Reid would like to buy me lunch.

  CHAPTER 29

  “Do they really catch deer that way? How vile.”

  —“The Running of the Deer,” Reginald Hall

  MAJOR DWIGHT BRYANT—WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, DECEMBER 24

  Deputy Mayleen Richards tapped on Dwight’s open door shortly after one and said, “Charlie Barefoot’s here for his phone. Okay if we give it back to him?”

  “Find anything else relevant to our investigation?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then let me have it.” He took the cell phone and walked down to the front desk where the boy waited. As persuasively as he could, he said, “I told you, son, that your dad and I played ball together. Are you sure there’s not something more you can tell me about your sister’s death?”

  Charlie met his gaze without blinking. “You played ball with Malcolm, too,” he said bitterly; and without waiting for Dwight to reply, he took the phone and left.

  Puzzled, Dwight went back to his office. Was Charlie somehow implying that Malcolm was involved with Mallory’s death? When everyone said he idolized his daughter? Would have lain down in a mud puddle so that she could walk across without dirtying her shoes?

  It didn’t make sense.

  The squad room was semi-deserted by now. Everyone expendable had taken off for the holiday. Richards had straightened her desk and already had her jacket on. He knew that she would be spending tomorrow with Mike Diaz’s extended family because her own family members were still hostile to their relationship.

  “Okay if I leave now?” she asked.

  “Denning gone yet?”

  “I don’t think so. I know he wanted to run some fingerprints through IAFIS—”

  Before she could finish the sentence, Percy Denning hurried in, excitement and triumph gleaming in his eyes. “Guess what, ya�
��ll? I ran the prints off the beer cans and the chicken box and got a hit. Jason Wentworth! So then I checked our own records and the other multiple prints are his brother Matt’s! So that bright light the Johnson girl was screaming about?”

  “Faison’s halogen flashlight!” Mayleen exclaimed. “Of course! They were sitting there next to the woods with their lights off, getting ready to jacklight the field for deer.”

  “And when a car came zipping along, they probably thought it’d be a hoot to jacklight the driver.”

  They could all picture it in their minds. The seemingly deserted road, the girl talking on her cell phone, angry at her brother, oblivious to any dark truck parked next to dark trees. Then suddenly a blinding light, that seemed to come from out of nowhere and at such an odd angle that she must have thought it was in her lane. No wonder Matt had been so shaken up when word came that Mallory had died. No wonder he’d skipped school Friday and gone out to talk with Jason.

  “So the Wentworths killed Mallory, but then who killed the Wentworths?” said Dwight.

  Even as he said it, he had a sinking suspicion that he knew. “Sorry, Richards,” he said, “but I need you to check the gun records. See if Malcolm Johnson ever applied for a permit for a thirty-two. And find out what kind of car he’s driving these days. Denning, hop upstairs and see if there’s a judge still around to sign us a search warrant. I don’t know how the hell he knew the Wentworths were there, but—”

  “I know,” said a voice behind him.

  Dwight turned and saw Deborah standing there, white-faced.

  CHAPTER 30

  “—I dreamed me and Rosita was married instead of her and him; and we was living in a house, and I could see her smiling at me, and—oh! h--l, Mex, he got her; and I’ll get him—yes, sir, on Christmas Eve he got her, and that’s when I’ll get him.”

  —“A Chaparral Christmas Gift,” O. Henry

  Lunch with Reid was as informative as I had hoped. I had a name now to go with a conversation I’d had back in June, but I still didn’t know what it could mean until I remembered Saturday morning and how irate Isabel had been when she realized that Jane Ann’s college friends had dropped her off at my house to bake cookies rather than taking her straight home.

  Once again, Isabel was my go-to person, only this time, by the time we finished talking, she realized what I was asking. “Oh, Lord, honey. You gonna tell Dwight?”

  “I think I have to, Isabel. Don’t you?”

  * * *

  Now I stood in the doorway of the detective squad room. I had heard enough to realize that the Wentworth boys had blinded Mallory with that flashlight and that Dwight and his deputies now suspected Malcolm of gunning them down on Friday morning.

  I heard Dwight say, “I don’t know how the hell he knew the Wentworths were there, but—”

  “I know,” I said quietly.

  “Deb’rah?”

  “Jessica said she’d heard that Malcolm was so torn up and half mad with grief that he was out walking that road the next morning, trying to figure out why Mallory swerved. He was probably looking for a dead dog or something. Instead he found fresh chicken bones and probably a piece of junk mail with Jason Wentworth’s name on it. I can’t swear he was in my courtroom the day I confiscated Wentworth’s rifle and hunting license for jacklighting deer, but I can’t swear he wasn’t. Doesn’t matter, though. The Clarion ran his name when they did that article about illegal hunting practices last fall, remember? Malcolm would have jumped to the same conclusions y’all did in a heartbeat.”

  I turned to Deputy Denning. “If you can’t find another judge upstairs, I’ll sign a search warrant for that bastard’s house.”

  Dwight frowned at me.

  “Sorry,” I said, realizing a little late that I probably ought not to go blabbing the rest of my suspicions to the world. “All the same, I will sign one if all the others have left for the holiday.”

  I let Dwight lead me into his office and close the door.

  “What’s all this about, Deb’rah?”

  “Charlie Barefoot thinks Malcolm killed Jeff. I do, too.”

  “What?”

  “And right now, Isabel probably does, too.”

  “Isabel? How did the hell did Isabel get into this?”

  “Last summer,” I said. “Wrightsville Beach. Our summer conference?”

  He smiled, remembering the Jacuzzi in my hotel room. “Yeah?”

  “I told you that the trial lawyers were having their conference, too. Remember? I had a drink with Reid and some of his colleagues that first night before I found one of my colleagues floating in the river?”

  “So?”

  “There was an attorney at the table that they called Gallie. Not a high school student, Dwight. Someone out of Malcolm’s past. I had lunch with Reid just now and he says the guy’s real name is Paul Gallagher. He married a girl from Asheville and has been in practice out there ever since he graduated from law school. He’s originally from Fuquay, though, and when he heard that I was from outside Cotton Grove, he asked me if I knew various people. Malcolm Johnson was one of several he mentioned. He said he and Malcolm used to room next door to each other at Carolina and hadn’t seen each other in years till he ran into Malcolm and his son in Raleigh last spring. He said the son wanted to hear all about what Malcolm was like when they were in college.”

  Dwight still didn’t get it. “What’s that got to do with Jeff Barefoot? Or Isabel, for that matter.”

  “Gallagher said he was poor as Job’s turkey back then. Didn’t have a car and Malcolm often gave him a ride home since Fuquay’s right on the way to Cotton Grove. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions without a net,” I said, “but I think you ought to look up the records, see if there was much of an investigation when Jeff Barefoot fell off his roof that night and supposedly hit his head on a rock. See if that’s the same day the kids would be getting home from Carolina. Fuquay’s only twenty minutes from Cotton Grove. If he says Malcolm dropped him off around six, why did it take Malcolm two hours to get home?”

  Exasperated, Dwight said, “Now how the hell do you know it took him two hours?”

  “I called Isabel. That woman doesn’t forget a thing.”

  When my sister-in-law answered the phone an hour earlier, I had asked her if she remembered telling me how Malcolm and Sarah had married.

  “Oh, honey, yes,” she’d said. “I can’t stop grieving for them. Especially poor Sarah, losing her daughter right here at Christmas just like she lost her first husband. It was a blessing for her to have another fine man wanting her, but it sure did hurt Jeff’s mama. I told you about that.”

  “Yes. That she was bitter because Malcolm got Jeff’s wife and Jeff’s son and Jeff’s life.” Hesitantly, I had asked Isabel, “I don’t suppose anybody asked where Malcolm was when Jeff fell off the roof?”

  “Now, you know something? That’s exactly what Jeff’s mama wanted to know when Sarah was fixing to get married again. She just couldn’t believe that Jeff would fall off his own roof when he’d been up and down so many roofs his whole life.”

  “She thought Mal had something to do with it?”

  “No, not really. That was the grief talking. Like I said, Jeff and Mal stayed real good friends. Only time they had a cross word was when Jeff and Sarah eloped to South Carolina. He thought Jeff should’ve told him so he could be the best man.”

  “So where was he, Isabel?”

  “Driving home from Chapel Hill for Christmas. I heard he hadn’t been in the house a half hour till somebody called him about Jeff’s fall. His mother was so provoked. She’d made a dinner party ’specially so Malcolm could meet the daughter of some fancy-pants businessman in Raleigh. They were supposed to eat at seven-thirty, but he didn’t get home till almost eight, and even then, soon as he got that phone call, he left and went right over to Jeff’s house. He was so tore up about it, he even finished stringing up the lights and threw the rock into the gully out back of the house so Sarah wouldn’t have
to see it.”

  “Now wasn’t that real thoughtful of him?” I had said.

  At that point, Isabel had caught her breath. “When you say it like that, honey… you don’t really think—? Do you?”

  “And then he married her eight months later.”

  “Oh, Lord, honey,” she had said. “You gonna tell Dwight?”

  When I finished repeating that conversation to Dwight, I said, “Don’t you think Jeff’s mother might have hinted at something like that to Charlie when he and Malcolm started having problems? Then Charlie met Gallagher last spring and right after that he changed his name. You don’t think the two events are related?”

  “That’s an awfully big jump, shug,” Dwight said. “You don’t know that Jeff died the same evening this Gallagher person hitched a ride. Or that it was even the same Christmas.”

  Even while he was throwing up reasonable objections, I could see his mind working.

  “Malcolm always did go after whatever he wanted, but this? I don’t know, Deb’rah.”

  Denning and Richards returned almost together. Denning had caught Judge Longmire on his way out the door. He agreed to hang around a few minutes longer if it turned out that Malcolm Johnson really did own a .32.

  “He does,” said Richards. “Bought it eight years ago. What you want to bet that he’s the one that smashed Faison’s flashlight?”

  “Get me a warrant form,” Dwight told her.

  He turned to me with a what-can-I-tell-you look on his face.

  I fixed him with a stern eye. “It’s not even two o’clock yet. If y’all can’t find that gun and book him in three hours, you’re not much of a detective. Besides, it’s your family. Six o’clock, mister.”

  CHAPTER 31

  … but he knew what path lay straight before him, and he took it.

  —A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

  MAJOR DWIGHT BRYANT—WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, DECEMBER 24