There was a round of Amens and the men descended on the food.
Taneesha, despite her uniform, despite the fact that she was hungry, too, despite everything, started helping her grandmother make sure that everybody was served.
In Mama Rene’s kitchen, women didn’t sit by and let other women do the kitchen work without helping. Taneesha found herself getting more butter out of the refrigerator, asking if anybody wanted cream in their coffee, pouring more orange juice for men perfectly capable of picking up a pitcher.
It was Skeet Borders who noticed, looking up as she offered to crack some fresh pepper over his scrambled eggs.
“Sgt. Martin,” he said, “We’re all fine. You better get yourself some breakfast before it’s all gone.”
“He’s right, ‘Neesha,” Mama Rene said as if a surprising truth had just struck her. Then she beamed with pride.
“He’s right, Miss Sgt. Martin. Now you sit down, and let me fix you a plate.”
CHAPTER 5
THE SKY WAS CLOUDING OVER AGAIN when Hunter arrived at Bubba Shipley’s hangar on a private landing strip in the west side of the county. Harold Holmes, a thin and mournful man in a dark suit, looked none too happy about flying over the flood in Bubba Shipley’s Cessna.
He chose to climb into the back, and went to work on his seatbelt, looking apprehensively around him. Hunter knew from Sam that Shipley, who now ran his family’s pecan business, had been an Air Force pilot. She kept her nervousness to herself.
It wasn’t that she was afraid of flying. It was just that all her flying had been as a passenger with a ticket, nicely buffered from the reality of hurtling through the air, burying her nose in a book until the whole thing was over.
This, she realized, was going to be a lot more like, well, like flying.
Five minutes later, when they were in the air, she had forgotten all fear and was just hoping her camera battery wouldn’t give out.
Merchantsville, off the distance, looked like a perfectly created toy town, the courthouse, the old Hilliard Conservatory, and the steeples of the larger churches rising above the other rooftops.
And there at the edge of town, creeping up on the Middle School, was the river, or was it Jump Back Creek? No matter, it was all muddy brown water
“You want a better shot?” Bubba asked.
She nodded, and he tilted the airplane sideways, making a circle over the town below. Harold Holmes made a noise that sounded like a stifled scream.
Bubba turned the airplane in a big circle, and headed out over the floodwaters, toward the older of the two river bridges, which was under water and then to the newer one, which seemed to be lying on top of the water.
“You want to see where the dam broke before we fly over Cathay?”
Hunter nodded, and Harold Holmes groaned. She turned around to see him with his head between his knees.”
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He didn’t answer.
“There’s bags back there somewhere if you need to throw up,” Bubba shouted.
Then they were over the place where Timpoochee Lake had been. It was a vast shallow, muddy crater filled with debris and long-dead tree stumps, with a small river rushing through it toward the ruins of the dam and the bridge. The creek, long dammed, still knew its own bed.
“Good thing that old dam broke,” Bubba observed, “or all those houses would have flooded. Of course, now they’re going to have to build another dam, or everybody’s property value will drop, ‘cause they’ve got docks and boathouses and no lake.”
He tilted the airplane for Hunter, who was leaning against her window to get a shot. Harold Holmes groaned.
In Cathay, the floodwaters had turned the main street into a river, with a small church, a row of houses and most of the businesses in high water, Bubba flew lower, almost skimming the rooftops so Hunter could get better pictures. People were everywhere, some in boats, some standing on higher ground.
“It’s awful,” Hunter said, taking photos methodically, her excitement suddenly deflated.
“Yup,” Bubba said, looking at his watch. “It’s bad, and it’s going to be worse when the water goes down. Nothin’s nastier than what a flood leaves behind. Looks like it’s going to rain again. You got the pictures you want?”
A few minutes later, the Cessna landed with a three bumps on a stretch of muddy ground between two huge pecan orchards. The building at the end of the strip had a large sign proclaiming, “Shipley’s Pecans: The Best in the South.”
Taneesha Martin was standing by a Crown Victoria with splattered red clay covering the sheriff’s office insignia on the door. Hunter waved and smiled, but then all her attention and Bubba’s turned to the problem of getting Harold Holmes out of the fetal position and out of the airplane.
He seemed to have fainted sitting up, and after he came to, and accepted being unceremoniously pushed and pulled out of the airplane to the ground, he managed to stand up on his own.
He even managed to speak.
“I won’t get back in that damn thing even if I have to stay over here until the flood goes down.” He said. “I’ve got a cousin I can stay with.”
Then he threw up.
Bubba shrugged, and said, “Up to you. I’d just as soon get back home before it storms. You going with me, Hunter?”
There was a rumble of thunder.
Hunter could see that Taneesha had enough on her hands. She nodded, and climbed back into the airplane.
An hour later, Sam Bailey got a call from Harold Holmes, who was nowhere nearly as bothered by human remains as he was by flying.
“Got nothing but bones, a little hair, and rotted cloth in there,” he said. “Whoever it was, wasn’t embalmed, and was wrapped in a sheet or something—like what they used to call a shroud. The casket wasn’t watertight, even had a couple of water bugs in it and some tree roots. I don’t know whether it was a man or a woman, but the pathologist can tell you that.
“I figured it was an old one,” Sam said.
“Well, the casket’s old, I guess,” The coroner said, “But this person wasn’t put in it all that long ago.”
“What makes you say that?” Sam asked, surprised.
“Real good dental work “Holmes said. “Porcelain crowns mostly, some bridgework. Looks like somebody who could have afforded a funeral policy if you ask me.”
“You got any idea how long ago this person might have been buried?”
“Not my expertise,” Holmes said. “But I do know if a body isn’t embalmed it goes pretty fast. That’s just nature’s way. If I was you, I’d send the whole thing up to the crime lab in Macon and let them worry about it. The fire chief over here already had it moved out back ‘cause it was dripping creek water all over the floor inside.”
Bubba Shipley called Sam a few minutes later.
“Have you got something serious going with Hunter Jones?” he asked.
“Yes,” Sam said. “Why?”
“Because if you didn’t, I was going to ask her out. That girl really likes to fly. Cute, too.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Sam said.
CHAPTER 6
OUT IN THE RURAL AREA PAST the rushing creek and the broken dam, Deirdre Bennett looked out the window at the rain that had started up again. She hoped her husband, Grady, wasn’t getting wet while he helped people.
Her toy poodle, Binky, came to let her know he needed to go out. She told him he was a good dog and went to the front door to let him out, since there was a big pond of water in the back yard. She was waiting for the shivering dog with a towel when he scrambled up the steps, shaking water in all directions. She grabbed him and wrapped him up, holding him tight until he let her know he wanted to get down.
She went back to the studio where she did her painting. Grady had stretched ten new canvases for her. Not too big. Not too little. Just right. Five were longer than they were wide. Five were square which meant all four sides were the same.
He wanted her
to paint ten pictures before the Apple Festival up in the mountains.
“You can do it, Dee Dee,” he had said. “Just do a little each day. Maybe you could paint the ground and the sky on all of them first.”
She had laughed. Grady was smart about all kinds of things, but he didn’t know anything about art. She told him she couldn’t do it that way, that she could only do them one at a time.
She loved the festivals. She loved the mountains in the fall. She loved staying in their little camper at night, the festival food, the music and the people. Grady did most of the talking to people about her paintings. Sometimes people wanted to buy Grady’s decoys and the wooden chests and toys he made. Sometimes they wanted to buy her paintings.
Some people just looked at her paintings and smiled or frowned and walked on by. Other people loved them. That was the way it had always been, even before Grady.
Don’t get your feelings hurt, Deirdre. Different people like different kinds of paintings.
Grady had told her to stay inside because of the flood. He was out helping people who had water in their houses.
Deirdre dipped her paintbrush into the sky blue paint she had mixed and had an idea. There would be clouds in the middle with rain coming down, and heaven would be sitting on top of the clouds and earth would be down below.
What would heaven look like?
Angels. She knew there would be angels. Angels were easy, like birds. But what kind of place would it be?
There wouldn’t be any rain, but there would be flowers, she thought. She could paint those things. Little houses for people to live in. Mountains and winding roads. Trees. Maybe a church where Jesus lived. Or would Jesus have a castle? Would everybody have wings, or just some people?
When you don’t know, Deirdre, ask somebody. People like to explain things that they know.
She would ask Arnette what heaven looked like. Grady didn’t know things like that, but Arnette knew all about heaven. Arnette came every Wednesday morning and took her to Bible study.
She painted the top half of the board with blue paint. That would be the sky and heaven part. She painted the bottom half with dark green and light green
Binky came in with his ball in his mouth and dropped it at her feet. She took it and threw it. He ran to get it and came back over and over to play again. And again. And again.
She went to the kitchen and got Binky a new chewy bone so he would think about that instead. So that she could paint some more.
She mixed white paint with a tiny dab of black to get gray for the clouds.
The clouds turned out ugly. Ugly ugly ugly. Like big gray potatoes.
She tried to lighten them up with white, but they were still ugly. She got up and went to the window to look out and see how the clouds really looked. She couldn’t see any clouds. Only more rain.
She looked at her work and frowned. Ugly.
Let the paint dry, Deirdre, and you can paint over your mistakes.
The clock on the wall above her made the sound of birds singing. Grady had put it there to remind her to keep up with the time. The big hand was pointing at five.
That meant that Grady would be home soon.
She screwed the tops onto the tubes of paint one by one, and put the tubes in their places in her paint box.
A place for everything, Deirdre, and everything in its place
She took her brushes and washed them carefully under running water in the kitchen sink. She patted them dry with a dishtowel, stood them upright in a glass jar and made sure there were no paint splatters in the sink. Then she took the jar back to her little painting room.
Good brushes cost money, Deirdre. Take care of your brushes.
The rain kept banging and drumming on the tin roof. She wanted it to stop. It had already rained so much that there was a flood. That reminded Deirdre of Noah and the Ark. She had painted that over and over, always with a big rainbow. She decided that she would paint some of those for the festival. Noah’s Ark was easy.
But not now. Now it was time to set the table.
The knife goes next to the plate, Deirdre. The spoon goes next to the knife. That’s right. The fork goes on the other side ALL by itself. The glass goes on the side with the knife and spoon. The napkin goes by the fork. That’s exactly right. That’s good. You did a good job.
CHAPTER 7
SUNDAY, THE SUN CAME OUT, AND the newest of the three river bridges in Magnolia County was opened to traffic. The floodwaters were slowly retreating, moving south to wreak more havoc. By noon, half of the population of Magnolia County seemed to have descended on Cathay to see the ravages of the flood.
The governor, who had arrived by helicopter, was wearing Sunday clothes in the rising heat. He was on the front steps of Cathay First Baptist at the moment, squinting into the sun and quoting Kipling.
“If you can see the things you’ve worked for broken, and stoop to build them up with worn out tools…”
He said he had already asked the President to have Magnolia County and six other counties declared a disaster area. He had the director of GEMA, the state’s emergency management agency, with him. He completed his flood speech, and went into his usual stump speech. The crowd’s attention began to wander.
Two TV crews had managed to get there, along with reporters and photographers Hunter had never seen before. She made her way to the front of the crowd and began taking pictures of the governor, assorted state and local officials, Mayor Debbie Taylor of Cathay, Mayor Will Harris of Merchantsville, members of the Cathay City Council and the Magnolia County Board of Commissioners.
Volunteers in front of a Red Cross van were offering bottled water. Women were carrying dishes of food into the side door of the church’s fellowship hall… A group of men from the Mennonite Disaster Service were surveying the damage and taking notes. Hunter stopped from time to time to take pictures and notes of her own.
The governor, having noticed that people were no longer clinging to his every word, wrapped things up. He and his entourage followed the smell of Sunday dinner into the fellowship hall.
Hunter took time to look at the camera’s display of the photos she had accumulated and laughed at herself. The exceptionally photogenic Sheriff Sam Bailey seemed to be in half of them, noticeably taller than most of the people around him. Sam smiling. Sam serious. Sam laughing.
She looked back at the flooded downtown and saw a stocky, bearded man rowing a boat through the water that covered Main Street.
He yelled out, “Anybody know whose cat this is?”
A girl about the age of Sam’s Bethie ran to the water’s edge.
The man was holding up a big black and white cat, who struggled in his grip. Hunter zoomed in with her camera.
“You got him! You got Thomas!” the girl called back, just as Hunter caught her in the viewfinder, jumping up and down with excitement. “That’s my cat.”
She stopped and noticed Hunter standing there.
“He found my cat,” she said, beaming.
“That’s wonderful, “Hunter said.” Was your house flooded?”
“Yes, M’am. I was in my pajamas and we had to go and stay with my cousins. I wanted to find Thomas and take him with us, but my mommy and daddy kept saying we didn’t have time, and there was water coming in the house. I was afraid Thomas would get drownded, because he wouldn’t come when I called,” she said, watching as the boat came closer, “but, daddy said that he was a smart cat and he hates water, and he probably climbed a tree or got up on top of a roof or something . I guess he was right.”
The boat was closer now. Hunter took another picture.
The man was climbing out of the boat. He had scratches up and down his arm.
As Hunter kept snapping pictures, Emily took the cat from him, and it cuddled up against her, purring loudly.
“I know who you are!” the little girl suddenly said. “You’re the one with the golden hair who works for the newspaper. Bethie Bailey told me about you. Bethie’s got a cat n
amed Tuxedo.”
“Yes, I know Bethie and her daddy, and I work for the newspaper,” Hunter said, “That’s why I’m taking pictures. What’s your name?”
“Emily Turner.”
The man turned to Hunter as the little girl went off with her cat.
“They lost everything else,” he said, “There’s flood water up to the ceilings in those houses down there.”
He was a big man with a gentle voice
“Did you get one of those tetanus shots they’re giving up at the church?” Hunter asked, looking at the scratches on his arm. “They’re saying the flood water’s contaminated.”
“I already got one,” he said. “My mama made me.”
“I’m Hunter Jones from the Messenger,” she said, “Can I get your name?”
“I’m Grady Bennett. You’re the sheriff’s girlfriend, aren’t you?” he asked, sounding like a teenager.
Despite her best efforts, Hunter blushed like a teenager at the question, and just nodded.
What could she say? “Girlfriend” sounded like high school, but they weren’t engaged.
As they headed toward the church together, he told her that his mother’s store only had about a foot of flooding, but they still had to move everything out and would have a big cleaning job.
“Which store is that?” Hunter asked.
“Over that way” he said, pointing. “She sells all sorts of second hand stuff and arts and crafts. She’s got just about everything outside and on sale today. She says she’s going to get it fixed up nice and re-open.”
“I’ll go take a look before I leave,” Hunter said.
Sam joined them, and Grady smiled.
“This is a nice girlfriend you’ve got, Sheriff,” he said.
“So I’ve heard,” Sam said, smiling back. “It was good of you to get that little girl’s cat for her.”
A woman’s voice came through the crowd.
Death Over the Dam (A Hunter Jones Mystery Book 2) Page 3
