Death Over the Dam (A Hunter Jones Mystery Book 2)

by Charlotte Moore

  “Can you believe that?” he said as they walked off. “Here the man’s dead, and she’s wondering if the pictures are going to be on sale on his website.”

  At noon, the first clean copies of the Special Flood Edition of the Messenger were coming off the press and Hunter was suddenly feeling torn between wanting to wait around and see people coming in to buy it, and wanting to go home and take a nap. She yawned. It had happened before.

  “Out of adrenaline, huh?” Tyler said. “You know why this paper comes out on Wednesday?

  “No,” she said, stifling a second yawn.

  “Because of Wednesday night prayer meeting,” he said. “Not that many people go, but traditionally nothing else gets scheduled on Wednesday night that we have to report on. Go on home.”

  The part time circulation manager had arrived with his team. Some of the papers would go through a labeling machine to be addressed for mailing. Some would be delivered to subscribers that afternoon, and many more than usual would be picked up from newsstands strategically located around the county.

  Tyler went back to his office, whistling, and Hunter considered following him and asking for a raise, but she mostly wanted to leave , go home and collapse before the telephone rang one more time.

  She took a paper to give to Miss Rose, and ducked out of an invitation to have tea. Then she trudged up the stairs to her apartment, curled up on her bed with both cats joining her, and slept a deep, dreamless sleep until the phone woke her up.

  “Did I wake you up?” Sam asked when she answered in a groggy voice. “Are you OK?”

  “Of course,” she said, yawning and blinking. “What time is it?”

  “Almost five,” Sam said. “The paper looks great. Everybody in town is reading it.”

  “Good,” she said, waking up a bit more. “And please don’t tell me that somebody else has gotten killed.”

  “It was just one, “Sam said. “We don’t know about the bones in the coffin yet.”

  Hunter yawned again.

  “Have you gotten anywhere with Ned Thigpen’s murder?” she asked.

  “No. All we can find out is that he had a room at the Day’s Inn and his suitcase was there. No cameras, though. Wherever he was going, he was planning to come back and spend the night.”

  “I don’t imagine he would have left his cameras in a motel room,” Hunter said. “I wouldn’t and mine isn’t even valuable. My friend Nikki is fanatical about hers.”

  “And we know that he wandered around Cathay talking to people, and that he didn’t eat supper at R&J’s or any other local place,” Sam said.

  Hunter yawned and exhaled with a big sigh.

  “It you’re through with your nap, why don’t we go out to dinner?” he asked.

  “Why don’t you pick us up something and come over here?” she answered.

  After he hung up Sam frowned and wondered briefly if he should have insisted on a restaurant. He could have said they both needed a real break, or that she deserved something special after all that work on the paper.

  Then he decided maybe he didn’t even need to tell her. She would find out soon enough, and he could act like he knew about it but didn’t think it was any big deal.

  Because it wasn’t really any big deal, just a big nuisance.

  Skeet Borders picked up his daughter from his sister’s house buckled her into her car seat and headed home.

  Everybody said Madison looked just like him, but sometimes he could see a trace of her mother when she pouted, which she was doing now. She hadn’t wanted to stop playing with her cousin Chipper’s new puppy, and he could understand that. He was just glad that she was only three—not old enough to know that there were other puppies that could be adopted.

  Eventually, he’d get her one, he thought, but not now, when it took every bit of energy he had to do right by his new job, finish the training course, keep some kind of normal home and be a single dad.

  He was sure she had forgotten her mother, which was fine for now, but the time would come when she had to know what happened to Tamlyn before some smart-aleck kid blurted it out on the playground. Mommy was in heaven because Mommy had been killed. It gave him a headache even thinking about trying to explain that to a child, but he didn’t believe in secrets. There had been too many secrets already.

  He glanced back and Madison was asleep, looking like a little angel.

  He let the worry go and used the rest of the drive to think about work.

  He knew that Sam had to make the decisions, and he probably would have sent the new kid on the block too, but he had gotten frustrated the night before driving all that way across the county just for Grady Bennett to tell him that he didn’t know any Ned Thigpen.

  He pulled into the driveway by the prefab home he was renting . Madison woke up the moment the car stopped moving, and wailed, “I want puppeeee!”.

  Grady showed Deirdre his picture on the front of the paper and she smiled and threw her arms around his neck.

  “It’s you! It’s you and a cat. You saved the cat! I like the picture.”

  They sat together on the sofa and looked at all the pictures. Neither one of them was good at reading, but Grady knew many of the people in the pictures, and could explain the whole thing.

  CHAPTER 12

  ON THURSDAY, HUNTER CALLED IN TO say she wanted to take the day off to make up for all the weekend work.

  “Enjoy yourself,” Tyler said, “Just don’t forget the county P&Z meeting tonight.

  “P&Z” was Planning and Zoning, which could either be a total waste of time or the beginning of a community war, depending on the agenda.

  “I won’t,” she said, wanting to add, “Have I ever?”

  “I’d say skip it,” Tyler went on. “But their agenda just came through the fax machine. They’ll have Sam and Clarence Bartow there to report on the flood damage. I don’t know why they can’t read the paper, but maybe something new will come up..”

  “Well,” she said, “It beats hearing them argue about what size signs people can put up.”

  The meeting would start at 6 p.m. so she still had a full day to do other things.

  One thing on her mind was Bethie’s tenth birthday party, which was just a week away.

  Bethie had told Hunter she wanted a butterfly party, but she hated pink and she wanted lavender butterflies. Hunter had promised to provide a cake decorated with lavender butterflies. She knew exactly where to get one, because she had written a story only a few months back about a stay-at-home mom who was making a successful business of beautiful made-to-order cakes.

  She found the card for “Just for You” cakes, and called to make the order.

  By the time she was off the phone, having agreed on a side order of matching cupcakes, she was suffering from sticker shock, but smiling about it too. Sam wouldn’t need to know how much it cost. The thing was that it would be just right.

  It was a real blessing, she thought, that she and Sam’s daughter had hit it off from the moment they met. Hunter had lost her mother to cancer when she was Bethie’s age. Like Bethie, she had grandmothers and aunts who made every effort to fill the gap, but she couldn’t imagine having had a mother who just moved away like Bethie’s had.

  Bethie was small for her age with fine straight blonde hair that defied braids or barrettes, and glasses that magnified her big blue eyes. Although she looked vulnerable, Hunter had discovered early that Bethie was doing just fine. She made good grades, had plenty of friends and didn’t need for Hunter to be a mommy to substitute for the one who had left her behind. She had her dad and two grandmothers who adored her, and when she talked about Rhonda, it was mainly casual, like “This was my mom’s chest of drawers when she was growing up.” or “My mom sent me that for Christmas last year.”

  As for Sam’s ex-wife, Rhonda Ransom Bailey, now just Rhonda Ransom, Hunter knew more about her than she wanted to know.

  She had been homecoming queen, Miss Magnolia County and first runner-up in the Miss G
eorgia Pageant. She could sing and she wanted to be a country music star, which is why she left Sam. He wouldn’t move to Nashville, and she wouldn’t stay in Merchantsville, or that’s the way the local story went.

  You could find her on line and she had some CDs out that Hunter thought she had probably paid to produce, including one with hymns. As far as Hunter could tell, Rhonda wasn’t a big name in Nashville. In her media photos she looked 18 and beautiful.

  Hunter hadn’t learned anything about Rhonda from Sam, who generally clammed up on the subject except to say that it was done and over. Hunter knew that he had legal custody of Bethie, and there was a contingent of Rhonda supporters who claimed that Sam wasn’t letting Bethie visit because he wanted Rhonda to have to come back to see her own child.

  The most generally accepted story in Merchantsville had been that “Rhonda broke Sam’s heart,” which had led to any number of people telling Hunter, “It’s so nice to see Sam finally going out with somebody, after well, you know..”

  She had been at Bethie’s ninth birthday party at Sam’s mother’s house, a few months after she and Sam had had their first few dates, and it was a nice event with Rhonda’s mother there too. Elizabeth Ransom was a sweet woman who clearly loved her grandchild, and was fond of Sam, too. She had brought a beautifully wrapped present and told Bethie was from her mother.

  “It’s for your first day of school,” she had said, but to Hunter it looked more like a dress for the Little Miss Magnolia County Pageant, all pink and frilly, nothing like Bethie picked for herself.

  Bethie had not worn the dress on the first day of school, which Hunter knew because she had gone to the school to take pictures, and seen Bethie dressed much like the other girls in her class, in a simple denim skirt and a pullover top. Bethie wore what Bethie wanted to wear.

  And that reminded Hunter of a phone call she needed to make.

  “Dee Dee,” Grady Bennett was saying to his wife as she started out the back door with Binky. “I don’t want you walking out back. It’s all muddy and slippery out there, and you could fall. “

  “I’m tired of staying inside all the time,” she said. “Binky is too. Stop frowning so much and being so bossy.”

  Grady’s cell phone beeped. He put one arm around Dee Dee as he answered. She tensed up and struggled to be free. He let go of her with his arm, but grabbed her hand and held it tightly.

  “That’s great,” he said over the phone after listening for a moment.” That sounds like it for sure. Yeah, I know where Buckhead is. Let me write down the phone number”

  After the call was over, he beamed at Dee Dee.

  “That was the lady from the newspaper,” he said. “The one I told you was going to come out to see us on Sunday afternoon, the one who likes your paintings so much. She found out where Meredith’s is, so we can go there and you can get the clothes you like.”

  Dee Dee ‘s sullen look disappeared.

  “When can we go?” she asked.

  Grady looked at the clock. “Let’s get ready and go now,” he said. “I don’t have any jobs for a couple of days. We can take the camper and stay overnight at Stone Mountain, and go to Meredith’s tomorrow.”

  Deirdre was all smiles again, back to her sweet self. Grady relaxed a little. He had enough on his mind without worrying about without Dee Dee getting into one of her bad moods, and it seemed like a very good time to take a little vacation.

  The phone beeped again. This time he could tell it was his mother, and he didn’t much want to talk to her because he knew what she was going to say. He let it beep until the message came on, and then turned the phone off and went to pack a few clothes for himself and for Dee Dee. When everything was ready, he opened the metal lock box on the top shelf of the closet, and took out cash for the trip.

  Hunter ran out of things to do at home by 11. She knew Sam would be all tied up with the Thigpen murder investigation, so she called and asked him if he wanted her to bring him some lunch at noon. She wanted to tell him about the cake for Bethie.

  He sounded happy to hear from her and definitely did want lunch.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE PHONE RANG AT MAGNOLIA COUNTY sheriff’s office and Shellie, who was having coffee and conversation with Skeet Borders, took the call.

  “Magnolia County Sheriff’s Office. May I help you?”

  “I know whose body that is in that coffin.”

  The voice was nearly a whisper.

  “Who is this please?” Shellie asked, turning on the speakerphone and giving Skeet a significant look.

  “I don’t want to tell you my name,” the voice rose. “I’m married and my husband don’t know I knew this man, that is the one in that coffin.”

  “Who is it?” Shellie asked as Skeet reached for his notebook. Shellie jotted down the number that had showed up on her telephone.

  “J.T. Collingsworth. That wife of his killed him. You ask out around that trailer court.”

  “Can you spell that last name?’

  She spelled it slowly.

  “Which trailer court?” Shellie asked.

  “The one almost to the county line just off 23. You just ask them out there, and that’s all I’m gonna say.”

  “Oh, come on,” Shellie said in a just-us-girls voice. “You can tell me what her name is. It’ll save us a lot of time.”

  “Her name is Lucille Collingsworth unless she’s got married again. I wouldn’t know ‘cause I don’t go near where she lives and I wouldn’t know her if I saw her, but she killed him for sure, and I ain’t never heard of his body turnin’ up. And that’s all I’m gonna say, and I gotta go now.”

  “How did you know Mr. Collingsworth?” Shellie asked.

  We was in love,” she said softly. “He was gonna get a divorce from her, but it was takin’ a while cause she was sayin’ she wasn’t goin’ to move out, even though that trailer was his. They was fightin’ all the time, about it, cause she had paid to put the fence up.”

  “So they were fighting,” Shellie said. “What makes you say she killed him?”

  “You just ask those people out there,” the woman said. “They heard the gun shots and the dogs carrying on, and he ain’t never been seen since by nobody. I even called his job and they said just hadn’t showed up for work.”

  “Where did he work?” Shellie asked.

  “At the kaolin plant.”

  “About when did all this happen?” Shellie asked in a relaxed way, because the woman seemed to be relaxing.”

  “Five, six years ago.”

  “Did anybody report him missing?”

  “I didn’t, ‘cause at first I thought maybe he had just left town and I’d hear from him. I don’t know about nobody else. Prob’ly not though. That’s one mean woman. I knew somebody who lived out there, and the talk was that she shot him and them pit bulls ate him. I got married about a year after all that, but I still got a place in my heart for J.T. and I would sure like to think he’s gonna get a decent burial.”

  “M’am, if that’s what you want to see, and you want justice done, it sure would help if you’d come in and talk to us, or tell me where you are, and I’ll come there.”

  The phone went dead.

  Skeet and Shellie headed for Sam’s office.

  Hunter dropped by the newspaper office to check her e-mail and her in basket, and Novena gave her a worried look and said, “Did you hear?”

  “Hear what?” Hunter asked, hoping that she hadn’t made some glaring error in her stories, that there wasn’t a typo in a headline, or a name wrong under a photo.

  “Mmm, about Rhonda. I guess probably Sam told you.”

  “What about Rhonda?”

  “Well maybe you know about this already,” Novena said, “but, I just sold an ad to the new preacher over at Cathay First Baptist Church, and they want a story too, so I told them I’d write it and ..”

  “What about Rhonda?” Hunter asked, bewildered.

  Rhonda is coming home to do a benefit concert for the fl
ood victims,” Novena said.

  Hunter managed to have no expression and walked over to pick up her extra papers. She could almost feel her own blood pressure rising.

  “And, uh,” Novena said, “There’s more.”

  She seemed genuinely bothered by knowing something before Hunter did, which just wasn’t like Novena. Her voice was gentler than usual.

  Hunter turned around and tried to keep her own voice normal “What else, Novena? This is the first I’ve heard of any of it, but I haven’t talked to Sam more than a minute today.”

  “Well the preacher over there said we ought to interview her because it’s going to be her homecoming concert too. He said she’s planning to come back to Magnolia County to live, because she has she misses all her homefolks. I really nearly threw up. Like when did Rhonda Ransom start missing anybody?”

  “I’ll do the interview,” Novena added. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

  Hunter managed a shrug and got back to her car before the tearscame.

  She drove around a while to calm down, to try to think clearly, but the only clear thought she had as that this ruined everything. Rhonda in Nashville was one thing. Rhonda right here in Merchantsville was another thing entirely. Did Bethie know? Did Sam know?

  Had Sam known and just not told her?

  She reached for her cell phone.

  Sam answered, “Hey, I thought you were coming over with lunch.”

  “Sam,” she said, impressed at how calm her voice was. “Did you know that your ex-wife is moving back here?”

  “Yeah,” he said slowly “Her mom told me, but I doubt she’s really going to stay…”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Well, I didn’t know until yesterday myself, Hunter, it’s..”

  “And you just forgot to mention it the whole time we were together last night, so I had to find this out from Novena?’

  “I guess I should have,” he began, “but..”

  Hunter hung up and headed home. She knew she had to talk to somebody, and the most natural choice was her landlady.