As her gaze traveled the completely formed circle, she suddenly saw her perfect spot, right between Amy Simms and Thomasina Hardy. Brenda hurried across the room, then paused and looked from Amy to Thomasina.
“Would y’all mind making room for me?” Before either could reply, Brenda squeezed in between them, forcing them to separate enough to make room for her.
Amy smiled pleasantly at Brenda. “Yes, please, join us.”
“We were just talking about what happened to that poor girl, Stephanie Preston, from over in Scottsboro,” Thomasina said.
“It’s the world we live in.” Brenda shook her head sadly. “When I was a girl, you never heard of anything like that happening around here. Northeast Alabama was one of the safest places on earth to live. Why, my folks never locked the doors and we slept with the windows open and never worried about somebody breaking into the house.”
“All the article in this morning’s Daily Reporter said was that she’d been murdered.” Amy looked right at Brenda. “You don’t know anything else, do you? Something you could share with us?”
Brenda smiled, hoping her expression conveyed to these ladies that she did, indeed, know something very important about the murder case. Although she knew no more than they did, being the sheriff’s mother, as she had once been the sheriff’s wife, afforded her the privilege of pretending to be in possession of top-secret information.
“I’m afraid there’s nothing I’m at liberty to share with y’all,” Brenda said. “There are many things that can’t be shared with the public or it might jeopardize the case. I learned years ago, as R.B.’s wife, to keep my mouth shut.”
“Oh, Brenda, come on,” Amy cajoled. “Isn’t there some little something? You know we’d never tell a soul.”
Brenda shook her head, then leaned over and whispered to Amy, “Well…No, no, I can’t. Sorry.”
“We understand,” Thomasina said. “Besides, I’m not sure I want to know the details. Rumors are that she was naked when they found her, and you know what that usually means—it means she was probably raped. Poor girl.”
“Wonder if they think her husband killed her?” Amy said. “I tried to pry something out of Jerry Dale last night, but he wasn’t talking. I told him, what good is it for me to be the DA’s wife if the DA never tells me anything.”
All three women laughed.
“Did somebody tell a good joke?” Robyn asked as she pulled the serving cart behind herself.
“Not really,” Brenda replied. “It was just nervous laughter.”
“We were talking about that poor Stephanie Preston,” Thomasina said.
Robyn retrieved two salads in plastic containers from the serving cart, then handed one to Thomasina and the other to her mother. “You know, when she came up missing and all those searches didn’t turn up anything, I had a feeling she was dead. It gives me cold chills to think about what happened to her.” Robyn handed Amy a salad.
“We were trying to dig information out of your mother, but she won’t tell us anything,” Amy said.
Robyn eyed her mother speculatively, the corners of her wide, full mouth turning up ever so slightly. Brenda knew that expression only too well. It was Robyn’s shame-on-you-Mama look.
“Being members of the sheriff’s family doesn’t necessarily mean we’re in possession of any more information than the average citizen,” Robyn said, then winked at her mother.
Brenda let out a mental sigh of relief that her daughter hadn’t given her away. But then Robyn had been Brenda’s coconspirator all her life, backing her up, keeping her secrets, sharing in her love for gossip. Bernie had been the tattletale, always telling R.B. everything. Her elder daughter had never learned the art of telling socially acceptable little white lies. Like R.B., she could be too in-your-face blunt and brutally honest. That detrimental trait wasn’t very appealing to most men and was probably one of the reasons Bernie couldn’t find a husband. That and the fact that Bernie needed to lose twenty pounds.
Since the Preston home was in Jackson County, Sheriff Mays accompanied Bernie, Jim and Charlie Patterson when they met Kyle Preston and Stephanie’s parents at the white vinyl-sided house the newlywed couple had rented near Hollywood. Bernie asked the parents and husband to come outside with her and sit on the porch to talk to her and Ed Mays while Charlie Patterson and Jim Norton searched the house.
The parents sat side by side in the porch swing. The husband sat in one of the two white rocking chairs, while Ed Mays took the other. Bernie remained standing.
“I can only imagine how difficult this is for y’all.” Bernie looked at each of them individually. “And I’m truly sorry that we have to question y’all again.”
“Ed explained,” Jay Floyd, Stephanie’s father, said. “We want to do whatever we can to help y’all catch whoever killed our little girl.” Tears welled up in the middle-aged man’s faded brown eyes.
“We appreciate your cooperation.” Bernie glanced at Emmy Floyd, Stephanie’s mother, who sat quietly, tears streaming down her cheeks and a glazed expression on her face. She held her hands in her lap and kept twisting her gold wedding band around and around. Dear God, how horrible this must be for her. To lose a child would be bad enough, but to know that child had suffered repeated brutality for nearly two weeks would be something no mother could ever come to terms with.
Bernie turned to Kyle Preston, and she could tell by the glassy look in his eyes that he was still medicated. “Mr. Preston…Kyle…thank you for allowing us to search your house. I promise that Agent Patterson and Captain Norton will not tear things apart in the search.”
“I don’t know what they think they’ll find,” Kyle said. “If I’m not a suspect…” His voice cracked. He swallowed hard.
“You’re not a suspect, Kyle. Your in-laws verify the fact that you were at their house the evening Stephanie came up missing, that you two had eaten supper there before her night class and that you’d stayed on to help Mr. Floyd work on his tractor.”
“That’s right,” Jay Floyd said. “We expected Stephie to come back by and pick up Kyle, and when she didn’t show up by eleven, we called Ed.”
Bernie nodded. “I realize y’all have answered a lot of questions since that night, that y’all did everything you could to help us in our investigation then and again yesterday after we verified that Stephanie was dead.”
Emmy Floyd keened softly. Her lips puckered; her chin quivered. Jay scooted closer to his wife where they sat in the porch swing and put his arm around her shoulders.
“I hate to go over this again, but it’s possible something one of you thinks is totally insignificant might help us in the investigation.” Bernie eased backward and braced her hips against the porch banisters. “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Stephanie? Someone who was upset with her or had a grudge against one of you?”
“Our girl didn’t have an enemy in this world,” Jay said. “She was as good as gold.”
“Jay and Emmy don’t have any enemies,” Ed Mays told Bernie. “I don’t know a soul who doesn’t think the world of them and of all three of their kids, too.”
Bernie nodded again. “What about you, Kyle?”
“I don’t know of anybody, except maybe all of Stephie’s old boyfriends,” Kyle replied. “They gotta be jealous because I got Stephie.”
“She was a prize,” Jay said. “Pretty. Smart as a whip. A good girl.”
Old boyfriends. Hmm…Was it possible that an old boyfriend hated Stephanie for dumping him in favor of Kyle? Hated her enough to kidnap her, rape and torture her, then kill her?
“Was Stephanie dating someone she broke up with before the two of you got serious?” Bernie asked.
“I—I wasn’t serious about the old boyfriends,” Kyle said nervously. “The only boyfriend she ever had before me was Richie Lowery.”
“Richie was a good boy,” Jay said. “Besides, he’s the one who broke up with Stephie.”
“He might have been the one who ende
d things, but I think he wished he hadn’t,” Kyle said.
“What makes you say that?” Bernie asked.
Kyle glanced at his wife’s parents, then at Ed Mays. “Stephie got some notes and some little presents from him last month. She showed them to me and I told her that if he called her or bothered her, she was to tell me and I’d go have a talk with Richie. You know, beat the shit out of him if he messed with her.”
“Are you saying Richie was harassing Stephanie?” Bernie looked point-blank at Kyle.
“Nah, nothing like that. After a couple of notes and presents, nothing else happened. I guess when Stephie didn’t respond, he got the message that she was happily married.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about this before now?” Ed asked.
“I didn’t think about it,” Kyle admitted. “It wasn’t anything important. Like I said, nothing more ever came of it.”
“Where does Richie Lowery live?” Bernie posed this question to Stephanie’s parents.
“As far as I know, he still lives in Hollywood,” Jay said. “You don’t think Richie…” He cleared his throat. “The boy was all right. There’s no way he would have hurt Stephie. He wasn’t the type.”
“I understand,” Bernie said. “But it won’t hurt to question him.”
As she continued speaking with the family, periodically checking her watch and wondering just how long it would take Jim and Charlie to do a thorough inspection of the house, she became more and more certain that Stephanie’s parents and husband didn’t know anything that could shed new light on the case. That is, other than the information about Richie Lowery, which Bernie’s instincts told her probably wouldn’t amount to anything. Not unless Kyle wasn’t telling her everything. But the guy seemed to be an open book.
After running out of questions, Bernie let Ed take over and she sat back and listened. He talked to the family, reminisced about Stephanie and gave them the opportunity to relive happier days.
The front door opened and Jim peered out onto the porch. His gaze connected with Bernie’s. He nodded for her to come to him. She eased up from her perch on the banisters and headed toward the door.
“I believe Captain Norton and Agent Patterson are just about finished,” she said. “If y’all will excuse me, I’ll check with them and be right back.”
When she walked into the living room, Jim closed the door behind her and said, “We found something interesting.”
Bernie’s heart sank. Oh, please, God, don’t let there be any evidence against Kyle Preston. He seemed like such a good guy, a guy in love with his wife.
“Charlie found the items in a box in a cedar chest in the second bedroom,” Jim said. “The box was tied with string and had been placed under several quilts.”
“What was in the box?”
“Come see for yourself. Charlie’s been really careful handling it.” Jim held out a pair of gloves to Bernie. She took them, slipped them on and then followed Jim down the hall and into the bedroom.
“Did you tell her?” Charlie asked.
Jim shook his head. “I thought she’d want to see them for herself.”
Thomasina got another bottle of water out of the machine at Robyn’s Fitness Center before she left. She was warm and sweaty and thirsty, and all she wanted to do was cool off before driving over to the Pig, which was what everyone called their local Piggly Wiggly supermarket, to pick up the items on the grocery list her mother gave her before she left Verona this morning. On the off chance that Brandon Kelley might be doing his shopping this afternoon, Thomasina had reapplied her makeup before leaving Robyn’s. She knew she was acting like a silly teenager with a crush, but she couldn’t help it. She had even dreamed about Brandon last night. Sigh, sigh. Be still my heart.
Hitting the automatic UNLOCK on her keyless entry pad, Thomasina headed straight for her car parked in the back lot behind the fitness center. As she approached, she noticed something hanging on the handle of the driver’s door. An advertisement of some sort? Probably. But it was rather large for a flyer.
Stopping and staring when she reached her car, she realized that someone had tied a white plastic bag to the door handle. Her heartbeat accelerated. Thomasina set her unopened bottle of water on the hood of her car, then hesitantly yet expectantly reached out, untied the knot holding the bag in place and grasped it. Standing there in the parking lot, in the noonday July sun, she peeked inside, but all she could make out was a white box and a manila envelope.
She opened the car door, got in and after closing the door and starting the engine to get the air-conditioning running, reached inside the bag and pulled out the note. With trembling fingers, she removed the message from the envelope and unfolded the note.
Please accept this small token of my affection. Pearls for a lovely lady.
Thomasina gasped silently. Pearls?
She reached into the bag again and withdrew the small, white rectangular box. She felt like a kid on Christmas morning. After removing the lid, she stared at the eighteen-inch string of pearls nestled on a bed of white cotton. Round and creamy white, with a small gold catch, the pearls weren’t real. They couldn’t be. But they were beautiful all the same. And such a sweet gift. A gift from a very romantic man.
A gift from Brandon?
She laid the box and the note on the passenger seat, then retrieved the manila envelope and tossed the bag alongside the box.
What could this be?
After opening the sealed envelope, she removed the contents. A single page from an artist’s sketch pad. Her heart skipped a beat. Brandon was the art director at the junior college. She turned the paper over and gasped aloud. It was a charcoal sketch of her face. This was the work of a true artist.
Brandon Kelley was that true artist. He was her secret admirer. But why was he courting her in such an old-fashioned, secretive manner? Why didn’t he just come right out and ask her for a date?
Because Brandon isn’t like other men, she told herself. He’s older, more experienced, worldly wise and undoubtedly one of the last of a dying breed—a romantic gentleman.
She reached over, lifted the pearls from the box and fingered them lovingly. She would wear them to school on Monday to show him that she liked his gift.
Bubbling with excitement and giddy with expectations, Thomasina attached her seatbelt, shifted into reverse and began humming to herself as she backed up and headed out to the street.
Bernie handled the items very carefully, taking her time to study the details as Charlie Patterson gave the pieces to her, one at a time. First were notes written in heavy black ink on white note cards, the kind you could buy just about any place that sold stationery. Each note was succinct, flattering to the receiver and eerily romantic.
“Kyle Preston told me that one of Stephanie’s old boyfriends sent her some notes and gifts. These must be the notes.” But something wasn’t quite right about these things. The notes were unsigned, and the wording didn’t seem to be something a former lover would write. No, her guess would be the messages were sent from a would-be lover.
“Why didn’t he mention these notes before?” Jim asked.
“He’d forgotten about them, didn’t think they were important.”
“I can’t believe a husband could have forgotten about these things,” Charlie said. “Especially not the sketches.”
“What sketches?” Bernie asked. “Kyle didn’t say anything about sketches.”
“Then either he’s lying or Stephanie didn’t share all her little gifts with her husband.” Jim pointed to the thin stack of papers Charlie held in his glove-covered hand.
“Let me see those.” Bernie held out her hand and accepted the items Charlie gave her.
The first item was a sketch of Stephanie, done in charcoal. Just her face, with a hint of naked shoulder. It was a remarkably accurate sketch; the artist clearly was talented. Bernie shuffled through several photographs of Stephanie, obviously taken at a distance, and it was apparent that she had not been aware s
he was being caught on film. One photo was of her on her front porch. Another was of her coming out of the grocery store wheeling a cart filled with sacks. There were six photos in all, each taken at a different location and apparently on different days.
“He was stalking her,” Bernie said.
“Yeah,” Jim replied. “Keep going. It gets worse.”
She handed the first sketch and the photos back to Charlie and took a look at the remaining sketches, probably a dozen or so. Bernie did a double take after looking at the first rendering. This was an ink sketch of Stephanie, partially undressed, with one naked breast showing, the nipple tightly puckered. She had one hand slipped suggestively between her upper thighs and her right index finger was stuck in her mouth, pressing her lips apart.
Dear God, had Stephanie posed for this or had the artist drawn it from memory? “We definitely need to question the old boyfriend.”
Bernie flipped that sketch and went on to the next. In this one, Stephanie was completely nude, except for a strand of pearls around her neck, and the expression on her face was downright unnerving. She looked like a woman in the throes of an orgasm.
“Lord.”
“Amen,” Charlie said.
Until Charlie spoke, she hadn’t realized she’d uttered the word aloud.
Each successive sketch was more graphic than the one before, and the final four depicted Stephanie in S&M poses. Bound. Gagged. Chained. Her body marred with small, round marks and teeth prints.
Sour bile rose from Bernie’s stomach and burned her esophagus on its ascent to her throat. She gagged, then swallowed. Don’t you dare vomit. Neither one of these big strong men is sick to his stomach.
“Pretty rough stuff,” Jim said.
“Disgusting.” Bernie managed to get the one word out before she had to clear her throat several times.
Close Enough to Kill Page 8
