A door opened in the wall behind me and a clerk handed my clerk a note that she passed up to me. I opened it to see Dwight’s familiar scrawl: “Lunch in my office in 15 minutes?”
I scrawled back, “Make it 10,” and caught the eye of the ADA. “Ms. Walsh?”
“Sorry, Your Honor. Call Ruben Oliver.”
Oliver had light brown skin and shoulder-length black curls. At first I thought he was African American until he spoke and I heard the Latino accent. Twenty-four, charged with misdemeanor larceny and resisting arrest. After taking a beer from the Quick Stop’s cooler, he had given the clerk the finger and strolled out of the store. Gothic black letters and symbols on his fingers spelled out the name of a gang down in Fayetteville, one that was not active in our county so far as I knew.
The clerk’s testimony was brief and to the point. As was that of the police officer who had responded to the call and had to chase Mr. Oliver through a parking lot and down an alley. I had no doubt that Oliver was guilty as charged. When I questioned him about his tattoos, he swore he was no longer in a gang and wanted to start his life over in Durham, where he had relatives.
“But aren’t those gang symbols on your fingers?” I asked.
He grudgingly admitted that they were and said he wished he’d never had them put on.
“If you really want to get rid of them,” I said, “there’s a doctor here in town who’ll remove gang tattoos for free.”
He thought about it a minute, then shook his head; but after I had pronounced him guilty and told him the penalties, he pushed back his hair and pulled down the collar of his shirt. There in vertical black letters on the side of his neck was the name “Estrella.”
“That doctor—can he get rid of this bitch’s name for me?”
“Sorry,” I said and remanded him to the jailor. “This court will be in recess until one-thirty.”
“All rise,” said the bailiff.
Downstairs, Dwight immediately closed the door to his office and gave me the long slow kiss we had forfeited this morning so as not to embarrass Cal. I put my arms around his neck and pressed my body against his, giving myself up to the sensual pleasure of his mouth, his hands, the smell of his skin.
“Too bad your office is so small,” I said when the kiss reluctantly ended. “We could really use a couch in here.”
He laughed and pushed aside the papers on his desk to clear a space for the salads he’d sent out for. Tuna for me, steak for him. He’s never going to give up red meat altogether, but he does try to humor me with more green veggies. Last year, that salad would have been charbroiled hamburgers and a double order of french fries.
“I hope this doesn’t mean you won’t be home for supper,” I said.
“Nope. Not unless something breaks in this Jowett case, and I’m not holding my breath.” He handed me a can of tomato juice and snapped off the plastic lids of our salads.
“Rough morning?” I shook the can hard, then popped the top and inserted a straw.
“Just that my two prime suspects seem to have solid alibis,” he said gloomily.
While we ate, he told me what they’d learned about Rebecca Jowett—how she was reputed to be promiscuous and how the lingerie in her laundry hamper seemed to confirm it. “That hairdresser you told me about? She told Mayleen that she had a fresh hickey on her neck last Wednesday and it was still faintly visible when we found her. We’re pretty sure Dave didn’t give it to her. Anyhow, he was in Louisiana all weekend.”
He described Wesley Todd, a macho type, and Paul Kendrick, who appeared more than strong enough to move a slender corpse. “We’ve sent her underpants out for DNA testing. See if the semen on them matches the couch. We’re also sending the foam cups both men used when I interviewed them. So far as we’ve learned, they seem to be the only men she’s been involved with who fit the time frame for that love bite.” He paused and grinned at me. “Unless we count your Don Juan cousin.”
“Reid?”
“He was supposed to have drinks with her that night, but he got ordered to Southern Pines instead.”
Remembering Reid’s exasperation with his parents’ determination to see him settle down, I had to laugh. “The debutante with her own breeding stable? Yeah, he told me about that.” I took another swallow of my tomato juice. “But why would Todd or Kendrick kill her? Rough sex that got out of hand?”
Dwight shrugged and uncapped a bottle of water, his choice of on-duty beverage when he’s OD’d on coffee. “Whatever the motive, it’s no good without opportunity. Becca Jowett’s neighbor says she left the house around seven and the autopsy puts her time of death about an hour or so after eating some celery and pimento cheese. I suppose Kendrick could have sneaked out while his wife was sleeping off a headache, but she was pretty detailed about the early part of the evening.”
“Any tomato juice in her stomach?” I asked, hoisting my can. “Could she have stopped off somewhere for a Bloody Mary?”
“With a side order of pimento cheese?”
“You’re right. That sounds like a light snack out of her own refrigerator. So that would mean she couldn’t have been killed much after eight?”
“I’m guessing eight-thirty at the latest. At which time, Wesley Todd was setting out rat traps in the Creekside subdivision and Paul Kendrick was banging pots and pans in his kitchen if we can believe their wives.”
“But if she ate the celery earlier than seven…?” I frowned in concentration. “What if Todd drove down East Cleveland Street on his way out of town, saw her going into the house alone, and stopped his truck—it was a truck, wasn’t it?”
“I guess,” said Dwight. “We’ll have to check.”
“So he stops his truck, goes in with her. They fight for some reason. He kills her and slings her in the back of his truck and covers her up with a tarp or something. Then he goes on to the client’s house, sets his traps, and dumps the body on his way home.” Even as I spoke, I saw the big hole in my theory. “Only there wasn’t much of a moon that night, so how would he have known how to find that dead-end drop-off in the dark?”
He grinned. “Probably the same way I would, and don’t tell me you never parked out there with some horny teenager either.”
“Moi?” I said, knowing that my own grin was an admission of guilt. “Did Todd grow up over that way?”
“Not sure. He may be one of those Todds who used to farm some of the Creech land on Old Forty-Eight.”
Dwight lifted a forkful of cubed steak and butter crunch lettuce and paused with it in midair. “If he did, that scenario of yours might work. Becca Jowett told the hairdresser that she didn’t like it that rough and that whoever marked her wasn’t going to get another try. So he sees her going into the house, thinks he’ll have a little romp before going out to catch rats, she refuses, he flies off the handle, and bang! He’s got a dead woman bleeding out on the couch. He stashes her in the truck, pulls the afghan over the bloodstain, and the rest is like you said.”
He carried the fork to his mouth and I could almost see his mind working as he chewed and swallowed. “And you know something else? Ms. Coyne told me that he was the one who drew attention to that couch. And he was the one who whipped off that afghan. They were supposed to close today, so if they hadn’t found the blood, they would have handed over their check. Now that it’s known the murder took place there, they’re balking at going through with it, and they may even get their earnest money back, but once their check was deposited, the bank could probably string it out for who knows how long?”
With Dwight eager to get a search warrant for Wes Todd’s truck, we didn’t linger over the rest of our lunch and I went back upstairs a little early to find Anne Harald and Richard Williams waiting to show me the community service plan they had worked out for Jeremy Harper.
Among Richard’s many interests are gardening and flowers. Winter or summer, there’s almost always something blooming in his and Carolyn’s yard, and even in the throes of February he had put together
a small vase for my desk: a fistful of fragrant daphne blossoms mixed with cedar and boxwood, the whole thing no bigger than a baseball.
“Lovely,” I said, lifting it to my nose and breathing in the clean, sweet aroma. “So tell me what you plan for the Harper boy.”
They quickly laid it out for me.
Richard was a volunteer for the disabled vets’ chapter in town. “Mostly I just sit and listen to them,” he said. “They want to tell their stories, to make sense of what they’ve gone through. We have an old man who lost an arm and a foot at Iwo Jima and a Marine who had his spinal cord severed in Afghanistan.”
Anne said, “We think Jeremy can use his camera and computer skills to put together an essay about their views on war and why it was worth the sacrifice, maybe even get their views on torture and whether or not they think it works. It could be an article that one of the service magazines would want to run.”
“You’ve spoken to them about it?” I asked. “And they’ve agreed?”
“They’re looking forward to it,” Richard said.
“And Jeremy’s on board with this, too?”
“I think so. Of course, Anne’s sweetened the pot a little.”
“Oh?”
She nodded. “My cousin Martin that you met Tuesday night? He’s agreed to talk to Jeremy about some of the interesting places his cameras have taken him.”
“And Anne’s giving him a tutorial in how to ask tactful questions,” Richard said.
“That won’t take too much time from your mother, will it?” I asked.
Anne gave a wry smile. “She and Sigrid are making an inventory of the house and I’m in the way.”
That surprised me. “I should think you’d know more about what things are than Sigrid.”
“I do,” Anne said, and for a moment her blue-gray eyes misted over. “That’s part of the problem. Sigrid can look at them more objectively than I can.”
I suppose “objective” is a kinder word than “cold.” I was more drawn to Anne’s warmth, but if I were dying and saying goodbye to things I’d held dear, cool objectivity might not wear me down like teary-eyed emotion.
I added a note to Jeremy Harper’s file. “This sounds good to me,” I said. “Just make sure one of you documents his hours.”
CHAPTER
16
Its primary form of defense is regurgitating semi-digested meat, a foul-smelling substance that deters most creatures.
—The Turkey Vulture Society
Major Dwight Bryant—Thursday afternoon
When Dwight and Ray McLamb, followed by Percy Denning in his van, pulled into the parking lot of Todd Pest Control, the door to the office was locked, but a flat cardboard clock face with moveable hands indicated that someone would be back at two. As it was now 2:00 on the dot, they leaned against the side of the van to enjoy the warmth of the February sun and to talk about Carolina’s chances at the ACC basketball tournament next month. Despite the cool air and the diesel fumes as a semi ground its gears and eased away from the traffic light on the corner, it felt good to be outside.
At 2:04, a beige pickup with bright orange lettering pulled in beside them and Wesley Todd got out of the cab, accompanied by one of his workers. Both wore the company’s brown coveralls and jacket. Todd handed the man some keys and gestured for him to go on inside before walking over to them.
“Help you, Major?” he asked warily, squinting in the bright sunlight.
“I hope so,” Dwight told him. “We’d like to search your truck if you don’t mind.”
“Search my truck? Why?” He bristled as Denning and McLamb moved around to the rear and began to lower the tailgate. “What the hell y’all think you’re doing? You’re damn right I mind.”
“Actually, we have a search warrant, Mr. Todd,” Dwight said, pulling it from his jacket pocket. “Rebecca Jowett’s body was transported from the house on East Cleveland to that dump site over near the Creekside subdivision where you were on Saturday night. We’re wondering if your truck was used.”
“You think I killed Becca?”
“You tell me, sir. You were having sex with her, weren’t you?”
“Go to hell!”
Todd’s big hands clenched into fists, but before he could land the punch, Dwight caught his arm and twisted it back. McLamb hurried over and together they pinned the man into submission.
“Whoa, now,” Dwight said, loosening his hold on Todd. “How ’bout you back that mule up and let’s start over again.”
They released him and Todd stood there rubbing his elbow where it had been wrenched. Still angry, he straightened the billed cap that had been pushed sideways in the scuffle and said, “I don’t know where you got the idea I—”
“We found semen stains on that long couch you liked so much,” Dwight told him bluntly. “And more stains on Mrs. Jowett’s underwear. We’ve sent them to the SBI for DNA analysis, along with the cup you drank from in my office this morning. You willing to bet we won’t get a match?”
Todd held his belligerence a moment longer, then backed down. “Okay. Yeah. We had a thing going there for a while, but that doesn’t mean I killed her. We both knew it was just a fling.”
His anger changed to a half-sheepish, half-smug look of masculine cockiness. “That husband of hers was a weenie and she was ready for a real man. She came on to me first and she liked what I had to offer.”
“Except you got a little too rough?” Dwight asked.
“That little nip on her neck? Hell, man, that was just a goodbye present. I’ve got a good marriage and I’m not about to mess it up for some little fancy-pants who thought she could play with fire and not get her fingers burned. And listen, you’re not going to say anything about this to my wife, are you? I’ll be honest with you, okay? Yeah, I boned her, but it was over.”
“You’re saying you dumped her? That’s not what she said.”
“Huh? She talked about me?”
“Not by name,” Dwight admitted. “But once we realized it was probably you? DNA doesn’t lie, you know.”
McLamb had gone back to searching the truck with Denning, who had finished with the cab. Now he looked over to Dwight and said, “No tarp.”
“Tarp?” asked Todd. “Why would I carry a tarp?”
Both men walked around to the back of the long-bed utility truck. Side racks held an extension ladder and a stepladder. The back of the truck itself held buckets of chemicals with hazardous warnings, a sprayer, traps of various sizes, and other pieces of equipment.
“Ah,” said Denning. “Missed it before.”
Crammed up under the utility toolbox behind some coils of plastic tubing was a roll of heavy clear plastic sheeting.
“When did you last use any of it?” Dwight asked.
“Three weeks ago,” Todd answered. “The Dik-a-Doo Motel out on the bypass. One of the outside rooms got bedbugs and we had to seal off the door and window and fumigate the place.”
“We’re going to have to take that,” Dwight said.
Wes Todd glanced at his watch and then at the glass door of the office, where his employee could be seen looking out in curiosity. “My wife’s due back here any minute, so could y’all just take what you want and leave? You know how women are. She sees you here, she’s gonna want to know why, and now I’ve got to go make sure Salvador there don’t mention y’all either. I’m asking you, man-to-man. Don’t tell her about me and Becca, okay?”
“We won’t. Unless it turns out you’ve been lying about what you did Saturday night. Just don’t leave the area.”
“Surprise, darling!” Paul Kendrick said, handing his wife a shiny brochure and an envelope with two airline tickets to Puerto Vallarta.
Nita opened it with the tips of her perfectly manicured fingernails and frowned. “What’s this?”
“A Valentine present. I’ve rented us a little hacienda in Sayulita for the rest of the month.”
“Sayulita?”
“Don’t you remember? The Grebers st
ayed there last year and loved it and you said it sounded heavenly. A pool comes with the house. And a maid. We can be sunning ourselves and drinking margaritas day after tomorrow.”
“Saturday?” Even though three weeks in Mexico implied more than the usual peace offering, she decided to be generous. After all, the little slut was dead. “I’ll have to run in to Raleigh this afternoon. I don’t have a thing to wear. You’ll need to see about boarding the dog and get someone to keep an eye on the house.”
“I don’t have a thing to wear” usually meant a twelve-hundred-dollar shopping spree; but even with the tickets and the rental cost, if it kept Nita from asking more questions or consulting an attorney, he knew he was getting out cheaply.
By the time they got back, the police would have pinned someone else for Rebecca Jowett’s murder or else the investigation would have moved to the back burner. Either way, they surely wouldn’t care where he was Saturday night.
“From there, I moved on to Chiclayo, then up into the mountains above Chota, where I found these nestlings—Sarcoramphus papa—and their parents.” Martin Crawford clicked his mouse and a soaring vista of rocky crags, blue skies, and a pair of adult king vultures filled the screen of his laptop. They had bright orange patches on their heads and their black-tipped white wings spanned five feet.
It was a gorgeous picture.
Just like the other fifty or sixty gorgeous pictures he had showed them, thought Jeremy Harper, who was starting to be bored out of his skull. With Anne’s cousin in the middle, he had been forced to sit shoulder to shoulder like this for almost forty-five minutes. Anne Harald had met him in the high school parking lot and led the way out here. She had promised him an interesting afternoon, and the first few slides of Peruvian fiestas with the colorfully dressed natives had been okay, but how many stupid bird pictures was he supposed to look at before he could say, “Okay, I get it,” and they could move on to something better? It didn’t help that a rank odor emanated from the man’s clothes.
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