The Buzzard Table

by Margaret Maron

  “Get what working?” Dwight asked, sticking his head around the door.

  “Your birthday present,” I said quickly.

  He gave me a suspicious look. “My birthday’s not till May.”

  “All the more reason for me to get started on it right away,” I said, and gave Annie Sue a wink. “I’m not sure I have enough wool and you know how slow I knit.”

  My niece giggled and scooped up a couple of screws that had fallen to the floor when she stood to go. “I can get you a good deal on some dog hair and LEDs if you go that route.”

  Dwight shook his head at our teasing. “Y’all’re not going to get me to bite.”

  From the living room came sounds of the kids getting ready to leave. Lee pulled his sleepy sister to her feet and Dwight slipped her a twenty that she tried to refuse. “We should be paying you for the pizzas,” she said with a yawn, but he just closed her hand around the bill.

  There were hugs all around, a chorus of engines in the yard, then Dwight and I were left in the sudden quiet of the house.

  And whaddya know? It was still Valentine’s Day.

  (Ping!)

  Annie Sue arrived the next morning after Dwight and Cal had left for work and school. She popped the new exhaust fan into the old cutout and had it running in less than fifteen minutes. I didn’t have to be in court till 9:30, so I poured us another cup of coffee and was soon listening to why she had broken up with her latest boyfriend.

  “I got tired of his dad’s sniping. He thinks it’s unfeminine for a woman to work a blue-collar trade. He just couldn’t deal with the fact that I have my own truck and that I’m out physically pulling wire through basements and attics. He thinks Andy would be happier with a more girly girl, as he puts it. And better educated. Like a teacher or a computer programmer. Never mind that I’m already making almost twice as much as most beginning teachers.”

  I was appalled on her behalf. “He told you this himself?”

  “No, but he told Andy.”

  “And Andy agreed?”

  “Well, you saw where I was on Valentine’s Day. Did you get stuff like this when you first became a judge? All that crap about ‘what’s a pretty little thing like you doing a man’s job?’”

  “Not really. Most of the barriers in my profession had been broken by the time I got to law school. Your granddaddy was the biggest roadblock. He didn’t think my delicate ears could stand hearing all the ugly things people say and do to each other.”

  She laughed, knowing how he still didn’t like anyone to use language around the women in his family. As if we hadn’t heard it all by the time we were ten.

  “And we really have come a long way,” I told her. “I saw a woman working one of those monster bulldozers the other day. Power to the sisterhood!”

  “One thing about my job. I don’t have to worry about it going offshore. People are always going to need electricians and plumbers and carpenters. All the same, I’ll be glad when people can take it for granted that we’re as competent in the trades as any man.”

  I patted her hand. “All they have to do is look at Reese, honey.”

  My first case of the day could have been a textbook for Annie Sue’s complaints. Ronnie Currin, 41, was charged with four counts of assault against his former boss and her other three employees, the “assault” being the adulteration of a food substance with intent to do bodily harm.

  When the charges against him were read, I said, “How do you plead, Mr. Currin?”

  “Not guilty,” he answered firmly.

  For twelve years, Mr. Currin had evidently been a satisfied employee at Braswell Hardware and Seed Store here in Dobbs. Then Leland Braswell died and his wife Linda took over. Mrs. Braswell had worked side by side with her husband and knew as much about seeds and hardware as he did, but when she decided to freshen up the store’s faded appearance, expand the gardening section, and discontinue what she considered was an inferior line of hand tools, Mr. Currin took exception. He grumbled about the extra workload that the plants and hanging baskets caused, and what did a woman know about running a hardware store anyhow?

  When Mrs. Braswell made it clear that he could be replaced and the other three employees told him to suck it up, he stopped joining them in the break room for coffee and doughnuts.

  “He said coffee had started giving him heartburn, so he switched to ginger ale,” one of them testified.

  Soon afterwards, the employees began to notice that the coffee tasted odd.

  They changed brands.

  The off-flavor continued.

  Mrs. Braswell brought in a new coffeemaker. It worked fine for a few days and then the unpleasant taste began again.

  Eventually, someone noticed a yellowish liquid around the top of the pot immediately after Mr. Currin had been in the break room alone. Mrs. Braswell had it tested.

  Urine.

  At that point, the ADA Julie Walsh looked around the courtroom and said, “Any real big coffee drinkers here today?”

  When I raised my hand, along with four-fifths of the audience, Mr. Currin abruptly decided to plead guilty and throw himself on the mercy of the court.

  I have to admit I wasn’t feeling all that merciful. I sentenced him to five years’ supervised probation and required him to get a mental health exam, pay a $2,000 fine, and reimburse Mrs. Braswell for two coffeemakers.

  CHAPTER

  27

  Turkey vultures, along with all other North and South American vultures, do not build nests. Instead, they lay their eggs on bare ground in concealed places, like caves or hollowed logs.

  —The Turkey Vulture Society

  Colleton County Sheriff’s Department—

  Tuesday morning

  With Wes Todd firmly alibied for the time of her death and no other viable candidate in sight until Paul Kendrick returned from Mexico at the end of the month—“Assuming he does come back and we don’t have to issue a warrant for his arrest,” Major Bryant said gloomily—the investigation into Rebecca Jowett’s murder was stalled for the time being, “so let’s get out there and clean up some of this other stuff,” he told his deputies at the morning briefing.

  As he reviewed the pending investigations and listened to their updates, they were joined by a tall slender woman in tailored black slacks and a white parka with a turquoise scarf looped around her neck. Her short dark hair was layered in an expensive cut with wisps of bangs that showcased her clear gray eyes. Not a haircut from the Cut ’n’ Curl, thought Mayleen Richards.

  “Major Bryant? I was told to come on back, but if I’m interrupting, I can wait elsewhere.”

  Not a Southern accent either.

  “Come in, Lieutenant,” he said formally as he stood up to welcome her.

  Turning back to his detectives, he said, “Y’all, this is Lieutenant Harald of the New York City PD. She gave me a view of her department when I was up there last month, so I asked her in to see how we do things down here.”

  He described to her the cases they were working on: the arson they had just wrapped up, the murder of a Realtor, a bank robbery, an armed robbery at a local gas station, some serious vandalism at a local elementary school, and a drug-related shooting. As he finished the briefing, he asked Richards and McLamb to join him in his office.

  “Coffee, Lieutenant? We just made a fresh pot.”

  She nodded, well aware of the psychological benefits of sharing coffee and how it would help the other two accept her more quickly.

  When they were settled with the door closed, Dwight said, “There’s a possibility, a rather strong possibility in fact, that the attack on Jeremy Harper could be connected to his Patriots Against Torture activities and that death out at the Clarenden, so we’re going to have to tread lightly here and not do anything to tick the feds off if we can help it.”

  The two deputies shared a glance of surprise that he would speak of this in front of an outsider.

  “Lieutenant Harald is up to speed on this,” Dwight said. “I’m sure
you both know of her grandmother, Mrs. Jane Lattimore over in Cotton Grove?”

  They nodded.

  “The lieutenant’s mother was mentoring the Harper kid’s community service. In fact, she may have been one of the last ones to speak to him before he was attacked.”

  McLamb lifted an eyebrow at that. “I don’t suppose he happened to mention where he was going?”

  “Sorry,” Sigrid Harald said. She glanced at Dwight. “Did you tell them about his jump drives?”

  “We aren’t sure about this,” Dwight told them, “but there’s a possibility that the kid copied a computer file that might be connected to that pilot’s death. Whose computer it was isn’t relevant at the moment, but keep an eye out for his jump drives. Mrs. Harald said he had several.”

  The Harper house lay in a lower-middle-class neighborhood several blocks west of the county courthouse. Brick ranches sat elbow-to-elbow with white clapboard bungalows on small lots that featured tidy hedges and shared dirt driveways that led to separate single-car garages in the back.

  Mayleen Richards and Ray McLamb parked in front of one of the brick ranches with a narrow front porch and were met at the door by Jeremy Harper’s grandfather, whom they had called a few minutes earlier.

  While McLamb went around the house to the back where the blue Toyota was parked, Richards went inside.

  Early sixties, with frizzy white hair and rimless bifocals that kept slipping down his nose, Gene Turnage was a tubby little man with bright inquisitive eyes and an open smile that probably flashed more readily when he wasn’t worried because his only remaining grandson lay comatose in a Raleigh hospital. He wore khaki pants, a white shirt and tie, and a blue Wal-Mart vest that strained the buttons across his ample belly.

  The front door led immediately into a living room crowded with two couches, three lounge chairs, and some mismatched occasional tables. Judging by the different styles and colors, Richards guessed that Jeremy’s mother had brought along some of her own furniture when they lost the house in Cotton Grove. There was a built-in bookcase near the door, jammed with an assortment of family photographs. A younger Mr. and Mrs. Turnage beamed at each other in what was probably a formal anniversary picture. In other snapshots they were joined by their daughter and two little curly-top boys.

  The top shelf held a photograph of a young soldier in his dress uniform, a folded American flag in a plastic case, and a framed Purple Heart.

  A short hall to the right of the front door led to three bedrooms.

  “I hope this won’t take very long,” Mr. Turnage said.

  He cast an anxious glance at his watch as he showed her into Jeremy’s room. “It took me a while to get this job after I got laid off at the bread company and I don’t want ’em to think I can’t show up when I’m supposed to.”

  “What time does your shift start?” Richards asked.

  He pushed his glasses back up. “Not till ten.”

  “Oh, we should be out of here way before then,” she assured him.

  The bedroom was adequate if cramped and was furnished with a single bed against the outside wall, a nightstand, a chest of drawers, an armless steno chair on casters, and a desk that was nothing more than a narrow flush door supported at each end by wooden shelves. The nightstand held a cheap CD player, and the top drawer was filled with rock groups and country music in equal numbers.

  A homemade bulletin board over the desk was layered with memos and photographs of school events. Atop the desk, an older boxy computer shared space with a neat stack of photography magazines, schoolbooks, a pencil jar, and a lidless cigar box full of odds and ends. A printer sat on the floor beside the CPU.

  Someone must have tidied up in here, Mayleen thought, remembering the shambles her brothers used to make of their rooms. For the flicker of a moment images of Tom’s indignant face flashed through her head. “Just stay out of my room, Mayleen!” was overlaid by Steve’s angry “You try and bring a Mexican into this family and you ain’t no sister of mine!”

  Resolutely, she continued her visual examination of the room as Mr. Turnage said, “There’s his computer. Just don’t ask me how to turn it on or anything.”

  He shook his head with a wry smile and his glasses slid back down his nose. “I’m starting to sound like my dad. When I was a boy, I was the one who knew how to adjust the rabbit ears and fiddle with the horizontal and vertical holds till we got a clear picture. Now Jeremy and his mother have to show me how to record a program or play a DVD. As for computers, he might as well be speaking Chinese when he starts trying to tell me how to look something up. The only reason we got cable was so he could go on the Internet. It’s expensive and we don’t watch that much television, but I guess the kids nowadays need to stay up with things.”

  He watched as Mayleen sat down in front of the PC.

  “I don’t suppose y’all found his camera?”

  “I’m not sure we knew it was missing,” Mayleen said, pressing the power button.

  “Maybe no one thought to say, but yeah, when we went to get his car, his camera bag was gone and he always has it with him.”

  Mayleen poked through the cigar box. “What about his jump drives?”

  “His what?”

  “Portable memory sticks.”

  When Turnage continued to look at her blankly, she reached into her pocket and pulled out her car keys. Two jump drives were on the chain.

  “That what you call them things? Yeah, I think he did have some.” With his index finger, he pushed his glasses back into place and looked around the room with a helpless air. “I don’t know where he keeps them, though.”

  He pulled open a dresser drawer and felt around the edges.

  “Why don’t you let me do that?” Mayleen said. “His computer seems a little slow to load.”

  “Yeah, he’s always complaining about that.” He turned away from the dresser. “How ’bout I fix us all a glass of tea?”

  “That would be nice,” Mayleen said encouragingly.

  As soon as the older man left the room, she quickly and efficiently checked all the dresser drawers as well as the drawers in the nightstand. She slid her fingers into the pockets of the jackets in his closet, patted down all the slacks and jeans, then looked under the bed and lifted the mattress.

  Nothing.

  The computer finally came to life and the screen saver was a picture of Jeremy’s brother, dressed in Desert Storm–type cammies as he leaned against a sand-colored Humvee. Although she had only seen Jeremy when he lay wounded and bloody the morning he was found, she noted the resemblance between the two brothers, the same thin necks, the same frizzy blond hair even though the dead brother’s hair was clipped short. Every time Jeremy booted up his computer, this was what he would see, she thought sadly.

  With a sigh for all the young men and women who had died or been wounded in this misguided war, she turned back to the task at hand. Happily, the computer did not seem to be password-protected. She went first to the history of websites the teenager had visited. In the week leading up to his attack, they consisted mostly of Facebook pages, Google searches for what might be school subjects, newspaper stories, and some games. He had also looked up the Disabled American Veterans websites, Anne Harald’s Wikipedia entry, and had tried to find a Martin Crawford.

  No luck there.

  But Crawford? Oh yes, she thought. The guy who had found him. Now how did Jeremy know Crawford?

  One of his last searches was of the FAA’s registry, which made sense in light of Major Bryant’s cryptic statement that he might have copied something linked to the FBI’s case. His last search had been the Colleton County yellow pages, but he must not have clicked on anything specific. On the other hand, the phone directory was atop that stack of magazines at the end of the desk.

  Mr. Turnage returned with a tall glass of iced tea and Mayleen thanked him as she took a deep swallow. Nice and sweet, just as she liked it.

  “I took a glass out to your friend. He doesn’t seem to be
finding anything.”

  “Does Jeremy have a cell phone?” she asked.

  Turnage adjusted his bifocals and shook his head. “It quit working last week and he was saving up to get a new one. Something else this generation’s got that ours didn’t have. When we were kids, we thought the twenty-first century would find us all flying our own personal airplanes. Never dawned on us that we’d cut the cord and carry our phones around in our pockets. Never dawned on us that one phone wouldn’t last you thirty years either. Way Jeremy acted, you’d’ve thought somebody’d cut off his right arm.”

  Mayleen smiled and finished skimming through the boy’s email—the usual teenage boy talk. A group message to tell some friends that his phone was fried. “Bummer.” A short summary of his day in court and how “that asshole DA doesn’t have a fucking clue as to how this country’s being taken over by those Blackwater supporters.”

  Regretfully, Mayleen realized that the computer was no help. “Who straightened up this room, Mr. Turnage? I can’t believe any teenage boy is this neat.”

  “Me,” he said. “And you’re right. It was a mess. My wife and daughter have to be in Raleigh at eight-thirty and it’s nearly suppertime before they get home, so since I’m only working part-time, I try to do what I can to help out. I always knew how to cook, but now I’ve learned how to run the washer and the vacuum cleaner.”

  She pointed to the phone directory. “Was that on the desk when you started straightening up?”

  He shook his head. “No, it was there on the floor right where he left it.”

  “Open or closed?”

  “Open,” he answered promptly.

  “I don’t suppose you noticed where?”

  “Sorry. You reckon it was important?”

  “Hard to say,” Mayleen told him.

  “It was in the yellow pages section, though.”

  The Colleton County yellow pages were barely half an inch thick. Turnage picked it up. “Best I can remember, maybe halfway in?”