The Buzzard Table

by Margaret Maron

  I turned into the lane that led to our house, then took a cutoff that would take me across the farm to the homeplace. Bare-twigged oaks and maples formed a delicate fretwork against the orange-and-purple sky, reminding me of the stained glass windows in the church where Mrs. Lattimore’s funeral service would probably be held before summer. Even though Daddy’s almost never sick and always gets a good report on his annual physical, Mrs. Lattimore’s terminal illness made me doubly conscious of his eighty-plus years.

  His old truck was parked at the back door, and without knocking, I opened the squeaky screen door, then the heavy wooden one, and walked into the kitchen where he and Maidie were. Both sat at the kitchen table and both were in their stocking feet. Maidie was taking the meat off a roasted chicken, carefully putting the skin and bones into a pot with chopped onions to make broth for pot pies. Daddy had spread a newspaper over his end of the table, and several pairs of shoes, including Maidie’s, waited for his attention. Despite the pungent onions, I could smell the shoe polish he had spread on the leather, a familiar homey aroma.

  I hugged them both and snitched a bit of chicken while Daddy reached in his pocket to pay me for the grits. Maidie fumbled in her own pocket and came up with only two quarters.

  “Don’t worry about a bag of grits,” he told her. “I didn’t give you no birthday present yet.”

  “Ain’t my birthday,” Maidie said, her gold tooth flashing.

  “Then it must be Cletus’s. Tell him happy birthday from me.”

  “You mean you ain’t gonna get him that white Cadillac he’s been wanting?”

  “What’d he do with the red one I give him for Christmas?” Daddy asked in mock indignation.

  I laughed. Those two have been teasing each other for most of my lifetime, long before Mother died. They tried to get me to sit down and visit, but I told them Dwight and Cal would be wanting their supper soon.

  “Y’all gonna be home this evening?” Daddy asked.

  “Dwight’s probably already there and I’ll be there myself in a few minutes. Why?”

  “Nothing really. Just ain’t seen Dwight to talk to this week.”

  “Then come on over for supper. I’m fixing shrimp and grits.”

  He looked at Maidie, who gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “Go on. You’ll not be getting anything that good here. I was only gonna warm you up some stuff from last night.”

  “Well, if you’re sure,” he said, speaking to both of us.

  “Come!” I said.

  “Go!” said Maidie.

  By the time Daddy joined us, Cal had finished struggling with his math homework—fractions—and Dwight had picked up the newspapers that had been scattered around the couch when I came home.

  I spooned the grits into a ring on a large serving platter and now I finished thickening the creamy sauce and poured it over the pile of sautéed shrimp in the middle.

  “Yum!” said Cal as he speared a shrimp on his fork.

  I knew I’d find a little pile of diced green pepper on the side of his plate when supper was over, but on the whole, Cal’s not a fussy eater, so I don’t nag. Dwight and I have a two-bite rule. He has to eat at least two bites of everything served, but then he’s free to fill up on bread and whatever else is on the table. No way am I going to lock horns in pointless food fights. He gets plenty of fruits and vegetables and it all balances out in the end.

  Conversation was general at first because Dwight and I both know from long experience that Daddy will get around to saying whatever he wants to say in his own good time. We caught up on family news. Only six of my eleven brothers live out here on the farm, but two more live in Dobbs, so we stay in fairly close contact. We’re not as close to the three who live out west, but Daddy said Adam had called from California a couple of nights ago.

  “Everything okay with them?” I asked.

  “Far as I could tell,” Daddy said. “Sure didn’t say nothing worth a long-distance phone call.”

  He’s from the generation that remembers when calling out of the state cost a dime or more a minute and it bothers him to talk more than three minutes even when he’s been told over and over again that there’s no extra charge.

  “He did say Karen’s mama won’t doing too good and she may fly out here next week if somebody could meet her at RDU.”

  I made a mental note to email Adam’s wife and ask for details of her flight.

  Eventually, Cal finished eating and asked to be excused. He carried his plate over to the sink and then went into the living room to settle down in front of the TV.

  Dwight split the remaining shrimp between our three plates and Daddy said, “I heared y’all know that buzzard man that’s staying across the creek over yonder.”

  There was no point asking who he’d heard it from. Daddy’s web of informants stretches across the county and not much pertaining to him or his slips past unnoticed.

  “Ferrabee Gilbert’s boy, right?”

  “You knew her?” I asked, surprised.

  “Naw, both them Gilbert girls was older’n me. I just used to see her around town once in a while ’fore she run off to Washington. Pretty little thing. Prettier’n her sister, and you know how she’s still a good-looking woman. Never quite understood how come ol’ Ben Lattimore turned Ferrabee loose for her. Her boy must take atter his daddy, though, ’cause I don’t see none of her in him.”

  “You’ve met him?” Dwight asked.

  “Well, I didn’t sit down and eat supper with him like y’all did, but yeah, I met him.” He cut a shrimp in half and I wondered if Chloe Adams had talked to Maidie, who has her own network of informants.

  “They say he writes picture books about buzzards?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “See, the thing is, I’ve watched him feed them buzzards. Even seen him pick some of ’em up and put bands or something on their legs.”

  I was intrigued. “The buzzards let him do that?”

  “Ain’t all that unusual. Remember my cousin Bud? He raised a buzzard chick that got blowed outten its nest. They tame real easy. But I ain’t seen this man take no pictures of ’em. Course now, I only watched him a couple of times and it may be that he goes somewheres else to take pictures. They follow him, you know. Follow his truck anyhow.”

  “What’s really bothering you about him, Mr. Kezzie?” Dwight asked, cutting to the chase.

  “You know that dirt road that runs along the back of the airport? Garrett Road?”

  I didn’t, but Dwight nodded.

  Daddy took a forkful of grits and smeared them in some of the sauce on his plate. “Him and them buzzards go there almost every day it ain’t raining. There or to Johnson Mill Road.”

  “That goes through the woods on the other side of the airport, doesn’t it?” Dwight asked. “What does he do?”

  “Nothing,” Daddy said flatly. “Once or twice he just parks on the side and sets there. Sometimes when he hears somebody rattling down that dirt road, he’ll lean back and put his hat over his eyes like he’s sleeping, excepting atter they go past, he sets back up again and watches them buzzards kettling up over the truck.”

  He took a large swallow of his iced tea. “I heared he was out there on Garrett Road around noon today, so I rode over to take a look. He had his jack and a spare wheel laying beside the right back wheel next to the ditch, so I stopped and asked if I could be of help. He thanked me kindly and said that he could handle it, so I drove on.”

  “But?” Dwight asked.

  “That tire won’t flat, Dwight, so why was he playacting that it was? What’s he doing out there?”

  CHAPTER

  19

  Generally, turkey vultures do not kill.

  —The Turkey Vulture Society

  Thursday night

  The knock on the door of the motel room came shortly after seven.

  “Yeah?”

  “Barbecue Pit,” said a muffled male voice.

  With his hand on the automatic in his poc
ket, the man inside said, “Hold it up to the peephole.”

  Not that he was going to look. He hated these damn things. Apocryphal or not, the story had gone around a few years back about someone being shot through the eye he’d used to see who had knocked, and he never used one if he could avoid it.

  Instead, he pushed aside an edge of the window curtain and peered out.

  Reassured by the familiar face of a kid who had delivered to him on his last trip and the logo on the white paper bag the kid was holding up to the peephole, he let the curtain fall, unlocked the door, and handed over a couple of bills.

  “Keep the change,” he said expansively.

  Although the tip was barely eight percent of the bill, he planned to add his usual twenty percent to this receipt before he turned it in with the rest of his expense chits. They had deep pockets and they never questioned him about small things, but two dollars here, three dollars there—it could add up to a tidy yearly sum. He wasn’t getting any younger and a man had to shore up against retirement, didn’t he?

  He popped the top on a can of beer that had chilled in his ice bucket, then removed the lid on the foam take-out plate and felt his mouth water as the aroma of vinegar and roasted pork reached his nose. He had been born in Texas, and grilled beef ribs drenched in a fiery tomato sauce with jalapeño cornbread on the side would always be his favorite, but the chopped pork barbecue of eastern North Carolina and its deep-fried hushpuppies sure ran Texas a close second.

  He unwrapped the plastic utensils and napkins and dribbled a packet of Texas Pete over the fragrant meat before turning his attention back to the weather channel on his TV screen. They had planned for him to refuel here and fly on to Maine tonight, but a vicious little ice storm up there had closed the Bangor airport so he’d been ordered to wait it out till morning.

  A secure bunkhouse occupied a corner of the hangar here, but it didn’t have television and it didn’t have beer and he sure as hell didn’t feel like listening to the moans and curses of the prisoner he was ferrying up from Gitmo. The medic refused to give him another knockout shot till they were ready to put him back on the plane tomorrow morning. Been up to me, thought the man, I’d have given him a knockout shot to the head with a monkey wrench.

  He devoured a crispy hushpuppy in one bite, then picked up the remote and clicked over to a basketball game. According to the announcer, Duke had a good chance to win the NCAA championship this year.

  Shortly before ten, Martin Crawford crossed the motel parking lot and moved silently along the side to the room number the clerk had given him. He had already checked that there was no security camera on this side, only on the reception area. Nevertheless, before putting his ear to the door, he kept his hat pulled down and his scarf pulled up until he had unscrewed the overhead lightbulb with a gloved hand. From within came an announcer’s excited voice and the televised roar of a sports event.

  A tiny crack in the curtain let him see the whole room: a rumpled bed, a handgun on the nightstand beside it, and a glimpse of movement in the bathroom beyond.

  He’s getting fat and sloppy, Crawford thought to himself as he picked the lock. He was prepared to kick the door in if necessary, but to his surprise, the man had also neglected to put the safety latch on. In three steps, Crawford had crossed to the gun and dumped its clip onto the floor.

  A moment later, the man walked out of the bathroom, bare-assed, still damp from his shower, toweling his hair dry.

  “Guess what, Al?” Crawford said. “Your pals didn’t quite kill me after all.”

  CHAPTER

  20

  Extremely unaggressive and non-confrontational, the turkey vulture has only rarely been documented to feed on still-living prey.

  —The Turkey Vulture Society

  Dwight Bryant—Friday morning

  The first call came at 8:07, only minutes after Dwight got to the office and poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “Major Bryant? Dwight? It’s Anne Harald. I’m sorry to bother you so early, but Mrs. Harper called and she’s worried. She says Jeremy didn’t come home last night.”

  “Who?” Dwight asked.

  “Jeremy Harper. One of your mother’s students. He was arrested for trespassing out at the little county airport. Richard Williams and I are supposed to be monitoring his community service.”

  “Oh yeah, Deb’rah told me about that.”

  “We both left my cousin Martin’s place a little after four yesterday and no one seems to have seen him since. She’s called everyone she can think of. I just wondered if you’d heard anything?”

  “Sorry,” Dwight told her. “But teenage boys aren’t noted for telling their mothers where they’ll be every minute. He probably spent the night with friends and will show up at school this morning.”

  “Well, maybe,” Anne said doubtfully. “But if you hear anything…?”

  “I’ll call you,” he promised.

  Sigrid was not a morning person, but the aroma of full-bodied coffee and Martha’s made-from-scratch cinnamon rolls had rousted her from bed, and she entered the dining room in time to hear the end of Anne’s call to Dwight.

  “The Harper boy’s missing?” she asked as she filled a cup from the silver urn on the sideboard.

  “His mother thinks so.” Anne bit into a soft warm roll that oozed with vanilla icing. “I just hope it’s teenage thoughtlessness and that he’s not sticking his nose in things that don’t concern him.”

  Following her mother’s train of thought, Sigrid said, “Like that woman they found out near Martin’s place?”

  Anne nodded. “If he got it in his head to investigate on his own…”

  Her voice trailed off in uncertainty and concern.

  Sigrid immediately thought of the homicide Dwight and Deborah had stumbled into when they were in New York last month. A boy had gone missing in that case, too, and his mother’s pain was too fresh in her mind to let her tell Anne not to worry. “Have another cinnamon bun,” she said.

  The second call was a 911 logged in at 10:14. An accidental death out at the Clarenden Arms Motel on Highway 48 near Cotton Grove. A man had slipped in the bathtub and managed to break his neck.

  “On our way,” Dwight said.

  Twenty minutes later, he stood in the bathroom with the local medical examiner and stared down at the nude body of a middle-aged, well-nourished white male who looked as if he had fallen backwards into the tub while standing under the shower and hadn’t moved since.

  Richards came to the doorway holding a wallet in her gloved hand. “According to his driver license, he’s Frank Alexander, fifty-three. From McLean, Virginia. The manager says he’s a private pilot who’s stayed here before.”

  Dwight nodded and turned back to the ME, who lived in Cotton Grove and had arrived several minutes before them. “In a fall like this,” he said, “you usually just get a partial break. Looks to me like his neck snapped like a stick, almost as if he went over backwards and banged his neck on the edge of the tub without trying to break his fall. If it’s between the C-2 and C-3 vertebrae, that would cause almost instant death. We’ll know better when we take a look at his neck.”

  “Time of death?”

  “Too soon to know. No rigor, but that doesn’t mean much. The maid said the shower was still on when she came in to clean the room at ten. As soon as she found him, she called the manager, who turned it off. Warm water, so it’s hard to get an accurate reading of his temperature. Cleanest corpse I ever saw.” He gestured to a nail clipper on the sink. “One fingernail torn into the quick, the rest trimmed down to the nub. You can bag his hands, but I can guaran-damn-tee you there’s nothing there.”

  Dwight automatically scanned the bathroom floor but saw no nail clippings. The wastebasket was empty, too, not even the usual plastic liner.

  “Any defense marks?”

  “None that I can see. No sign of a struggle either unless you count the torn nail, and that could have happened earlier. Right now, I’d call it an acciden
t pure and simple.”

  He half turned the body so that Dwight could see where the blood had pooled in the man’s buttocks. “And that reminds me. You’ll be getting the report in the next couple of days on the Jowett woman.”

  “Any surprises?” Dwight asked as his eyes roamed the bathroom.

  “Naw. What you saw was what we got. Two strong blows to the head. We found her facedown, but her butt looked just like this, too, so she was moved.”

  “Well, we knew she wasn’t killed out there at the dump.”

  Dwight stepped back into the bedroom just as Deputy Richards lifted a greasy white bag from the wastebasket. The stiff paper crackled when she opened the bag with her gloved hands. “Looks like he had a couple of beers and takeout from the Pit,” she said. “Want me to run by and ask?”

  “We’ll do that,” someone said.

  Dwight turned and saw a tall black man who filled the outside doorway. Two equally large white men were directly behind him. “And you would be?” he asked mildly.

  “FBI,” the man said and held up his badge. “Agent Sherman Pritchard. Mr. Franklin was one of ours.”

  “Franklin?” Richards looked at him dubiously. “His driver license says Alexander. Frank Alexander.”

  Agent Pritchard just smiled. “Right. Like I said. One of ours.”

  Dwight’s own boss edged around the big men. “Sorry, Dwight. I had a call from the AG himself. It’s theirs now.”

  Despite the departmental budget crunch, Sheriff Bowman Poole was not one to give up jurisdiction lightly. That he was turning this over to the feds without a fight must mean that strong words had come down from above.

  Acknowledging the inevitable, Dwight nodded. “Fine. You’ll share the results of your investigation with us?”

  “Anything pertinent?” the FBI agent said. “Absolutely.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” Bo Poole muttered to Dwight as they headed back to their respective vehicles.