Hard Row dk-13

by Margaret Maron

  “You try calling him?”

  “Of course I did,” she said impatiently. “That’s why I

  drove up to Wilkesboro. The lodge is in an area where

  reception is spotty and he never answers a land line. I

  thought sure that’s where he’d be.”

  “When did you last speak to him, Ms. Smith?”

  “Sunday before last. He was all riled up about the set-

  tlement and said he was going to be too busy to come

  down to Wilmington, but we set it up for me to come

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  here. He said the divorce would be final by then and we

  could name our wedding date.”

  “You didn’t worry when he didn’t call?”

  “I give my men a long leash,” she said with a rueful

  smile. “Buck hates to talk on the phone and I don’t

  push it.”

  “What about you?” Dwight asked Reid.

  Reid shrugged. “As she said, Mr. Harris doesn’t like

  to talk on the phone. I left messages on all his answer-

  ing machines and at his office. When Ms. Smith came

  in today, I checked with my secretary. According to our

  records, the last time he actually spoke to me was Friday

  the seventeenth. I told him that the judge was running

  out of patience and he promised to be in court this past

  Wednesday.”

  Dwight turned back to Flame Smith. “Do you know

  if Mr. Harris ever broke his arm?”

  “No, but I just remembered. He has a tiny little mole,

  right about here.” One coral-tipped finger touched an

  area of her jeans halfway below her waist. “Oh, and he’s

  an ‘outie,’ too,” she added with an electric smile.

  Dwight reached for a notepad. “Tell me the name of

  his housekeeper out at the Buckley place.” He glanced

  at Reid. “And maybe you’d better give me his wife’s

  contact numbers, as well.”

  “Oh God!” Flame Smith moaned. Her peaches-and-

  cream complexion had turned to ivory. “It is Buck,

  isn’t it?”

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  16

  City folks eat their meals more from habit than hunger, but

  country folks love to hear the horn blow.

  —Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

  Deborah Knott

  Monday Morning, March 6

  % Monday morning and my turn to handle felony

  first appearances. The State of North Carolina is

  obligated to bring an accused person before a judge

  within ninety-six hours of arrest and incarceration in the

  county jail or at the next session of district court, which-

  ever occurs first. First appearance is where the judge in-

  forms the accused of the charges, sets the bond if bail is

  deemed appropriate, appoints an attorney if so re-

  quested, and calendars a trial date. Innocence or guilt is

  irrelevant. Neither plea can be accepted. This is just to

  get the case into the system and onto a calendar so that

  it can be moved along in a judicious manner.

  When I first came on the bench, Monday mornings

  might bring me twenty or thirty people—forty after a

  real hot August weekend if it followed a week of unre-

  mitting heat. (Heat and humidity cause tempers to flare

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  and differences are too often settled with baseball bats,

  knives, handguns, and the occasional frying pan.)

  Between the building boom, and Colleton County’s

  exploding population growth, fifty’s no longer an un-

  usual number, even on a Monday morning after some

  beautiful early spring weather. Here were the hungover

  drunks, the druggies coming down from their various

  highs, the incompetent burglars, the belligerent citizens

  and aliens alike, with attitudes that hadn’t softened after

  a night or two on a jail cot.

  Coping with all this is one judge and one clerk. If

  we’re lucky, we may have a fairly skillful translator on

  hand for the whole session, but that’s about it.

  North Carolina is forty-eighth in the country in its

  funding of the whole court system, so take a guess

  where that leaves its district court? Last year 239 dis-

  trict court judges like me disposed of 2,770,951 cases.

  While upper court judges are plowing through their

  lighter load in air-conditioned tractors equipped with

  cell phones, iPods, and hydraulic lifts, district court

  judges are out in the hot sun, barefooted, following the

  back end of a mule.

  I worked straight through the morning without even

  a bathroom break. Around 10:30, a clerk handed me a

  note from Dwight. “Lunch here in my office?”

  I sent word back that I’d be down at noon and man-

  aged to gear it so that I actually recessed at 12:07.

  Lunch in Dwight’s office when he’s buying tends not

  to be soup or a healthy salad, so it was no surprise to

  smell chopped onions and Texas Pete chili sauce as I

  turned into his hallway.

  Detectives Mayleen Richards and Jack Jamison were

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  on their way out and we paused to speak to each other.

  Like Kate, Richards had a new haircut, too. Her cinnamon-

  colored hair still brushed her shoulders, but there was a

  softer, more feminine look to the cut.

  “Looks great,” I told her. “You didn’t get something

  that uptown here in Dobbs, did you?”

  “As a matter of fact I did,” she said. “There’s a new

  stylist at the Cut ’n’ Curl.”

  I made a face. “Too bad. That’s where I go when I

  need a quick fix. Ethelene would kill me if I went to

  someone else in the same shop.”

  “How long since you were last there?” Richards said.

  “I think the new girl might be her replacement.”

  “Really? Thanks.”

  New hairdo? New air of confidence? Heretofore she

  could barely look me in the eye without turning brick

  red.

  “You give Richards a promotion or has she got a new

  boyfriend?” I asked Dwight as soon as the door was

  closed behind me.

  He popped the tops on a couple of drink cans. “No

  promotion.”

  “Boyfriend, then,” I said. “Somebody here in the

  courthouse?”

  “Don’t ask me, shug. That’s Faye Myers’s depart-

  ment. Dispatchers seem to keep up with that stuff.”

  He handed over the sack from our local sandwich

  shop. “I got extra napkins.”

  “Thanks.” I took the chair beside his desk and un-

  wrapped a hot dog, being careful not to let it drip on

  my white wool skirt.

  I know it’s full of nitrates and artificial coloring and

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  probably a dozen other coronary-inducing additives,

  but a frankfurter tucked into a soft roll with onions,

  chili, and coleslaw is difficult to resist and I didn’t try.

  “Cheers,” Dwight said, touching his can to mine.

  “So how come you didn’t tell me that Buck Harris is

  missing?”

  “Huh?”

&nbs
p; “Or did the sight of Dent Lee in your courtroom run

  it right out of your head?” he asked sardonically.

  I groaned. “Do you remember every comment I ever

  made about every guy I ever lusted after?”

  The corner of his lips twitched.

  “If I’d realized I was going to wind up married to

  you, I’d’ve kept my mouth shut when we used to hang

  out together. You’ve never heard me say a single word

  about Belle Byrd, have you? Or Claudia Ward or Mary

  Nell Lee? Or Loretta Sawyer or—”

  His grin was so wide at that point that I had to laugh,

  too. He’d suckered me again. “You must have been

  talking to Reid.”

  “Yep.”

  “Guess he’s in no hurry to have his client show up.

  Have you seen the client’s girlfriend? Anyhow, why

  should I have told you how some self-important mil-

  lionaire keeps ditching his court dates? I will tell you

  this, though. If he doesn’t come to court next week,

  I’m going to hear the case without him and he can

  whistle down the wind if he thinks I’ve acted unfairly.

  Until then—”

  I looked at him in sudden dismay as the last dime

  finally dropped.

  “Those body parts. Buck Harris?”

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  He gave a grim nod. “It’s not a hundred percent pos-

  itive, but it’s on up there in the nineties.” He finished

  his first hot dog and started on the second. “Nobody

  seems to have seen your missing Buck Harris since those

  legs were found last week. He had a mole just below

  his navel; so does the torso we found Friday night. His

  navel was an outie and so is this.”

  “His girlfriend—Flame Smith—does she know?”

  “She’s the one told me about the mole and the ‘pro-

  trusive umbilicus,’ as the ME put it. She contacted Reid

  and they were both in this morning. We’re getting a

  search warrant for the old Buckley place. That seems to

  be the last place he was seen.”

  “The old Buckley place,” I said slowly. “It’s on Ward

  Dairy Road.”

  “Yeah,” said Dwight.

  That big bull of a man reduced to chunks of hacked-

  off arms and legs? My hot dog suddenly turned to ashes.

  I set it back on the paper plate and took a long swallow

  from the drink can.

  “You know this Smith woman?” he asked.

  “Not really. Portland’s the one who introduced us

  the other day. They used to work together down at the

  beach. She was surprised to see Por here and I think

  they were going to get in touch with each other, have

  dinner or something.”

  “How far along was Harris’s divorce?”

  “It was final last month, but we’re still working on

  the ED. There’s a lot of money, property, and real estate

  to divide. That’s why Dent was there to testify.”

  “Was it going amicably?”

  “Not particularly. Mediation didn’t work for them.

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  That’s why their case came to me. I can’t quote you

  chapter and verse but the one time they were in court

  together, you’d’ve needed a chainsaw to cut the hostil-

  ity. They split hairs and argued every point. But what do

  Pete and Reid care? If their clients want to waste time

  sniping at each other and not cooperating, that’s just

  more billable hours. Wednesday, though, Mrs. Harris

  was furious that Flame was even there at all. Whether or

  not she’s the primary reason they split, I get the impres-

  sion that Mrs. Harris blames her for the divorce. You’ve

  seen her.”

  “Oh yes indeed,” said Dwight with just a little more

  enthusiasm than I might have preferred.

  “Mrs. Harris is fifty-two and wears every year on her

  face. Flame Smith doesn’t look much over forty, does

  she? Buck Harris wouldn’t be the first man to trade in

  an old wife for a new model and try to give the back of

  his hand to the old one.”

  “Was she mad enough to do something about it?”

  “You mean kill him and then butcher him like a

  hog?”

  “More people are killed by their loved ones than by

  total strangers,” he reminded me.

  “I only saw him the one time he came to court, but

  yeah, her anger was pretty obvious. He was big, but she

  is too. They say that in the early years, she was out on

  the tractors, plowing and spraying and hoisting boxes

  of vegetables right alongside him till they were making

  enough to hire migrant labor for all the physical stuff,

  so I imagine there’s a lot of muscle underneath those

  extra pounds of fat.”

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  “Kill him and she would get the whole company,”

  Dwight said.

  “Kill him before the divorce is final and then take

  a dismissal of her ED claim, she would,” I corrected.

  “Assuming rights of survival. At this point, though, the

  ED will proceed as if he were still alive.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ll have to look it up. There’s a similar case on ap-

  peal to the state supreme court but I’m pretty sure that’s

  how it would work. But since they’re divorced—”

  “When was it final?” he interrupted.

  “Sometime within the last two weeks or so. I’d have

  to check the files. I’m pretty sure it was a summary

  judgment, so neither of them came to court. Reid just

  handed me the judgment and I signed it, so it’s a done

  deal.”

  “Today’s March sixth. What with the cold weather

  and no insect damage, the best guesstimate we have

  for time of death is sometime between the morning of

  Sunday, February nineteenth, when Ms. Smith said she

  last spoke to him, and Wednesday the twenty-second,

  two days before we found the legs. You gonna eat the

  rest of that?”

  I shook my head and the last third of my hot dog fol-

  lowed his first two.

  “Tonight we stop somewhere for something healthy,”

  I warned.

  He gave me a blank look.

  “You haven’t forgotten have you? The Hurricanes?

  You and me?”

  “Is that tonight?”

  “It is. Jessie and Emma are going to pick Cal up after

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  school and keep him till we get home, so no getting

  sidetracked, okay? You’ve got good people, darling.

  Trust them. What’s the point of being a boss if you’re

  going to roll out for every call?”

  I finished my drink and stood to go. He stood, too.

  “Wait, there’s a spot of chili on your tie.”

  I tipped the carafe on his desk to wet a napkin and

  sponged it off before it had a chance to stain.

  “I’ll be finished by five or five-thirty,” I said. “That

  gives you an extra ninety minutes. My car or your

  truck?”

  “You’ll come in early with me tomorrow?”

  “Sure.” I laced my hands behind his neck and pulled

&n
bsp; him down to my level. He smelled of mustard and chili

  and Old Spice. “I’d come to Madagascar with you.”

  “What’s in Madagascar?”

  “Who cares? You want to go, I’ll go with you. As long

  as you come with me to tonight’s game.”

  He laughed and kissed me. “My truck. Five-thirty.

  And don’t forget to find me that divorce date.”

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  17

  Horace argued both sides, and wound up by saying “the city

  is the best place for a rich man to live in; the country is the

  best place for a poor man to die in.”

  —Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

  Mayleen Richards

  Monday Afternoon, March 6

  % On the drive out to the farmhouse that Buck Harris

  had inherited from his maternal grandfather, Jack

  Jamison was unusually silent. Normally, the chubby-faced

  detective would be throwing out a dozen theories, cheer-

  fully speculating as to what they would find at the house,

  formulating possible motives. For the last few days

  though, he had seemed a million miles away and worry

  lines had begun to settle between his eyebrows.

  “Everything okay at home?” Mayleen Richards asked

  him.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Baby okay?”

  As a rule, the mere mention of Jack Junior, now called

  Jay, was enough to get her colleague talking non-stop.

  Today, all it got was an “Um.”

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  “Guess Cindy’s got her hands full now that he’s start-

  ing to crawl.”

  “Yeah.”

  It was a sour response and Mayleen backed off. If

  Jack and Cindy were having marital problems, best she

  stay out of it. She turned the heater down a notch and

  concentrated on keeping up with Percy Denning, who

  was in the car ahead of them.

  “Her sister’s husband got a big raise back around

  Christmas,” Jamison burst out suddenly. “They bought

  a new house. New car. And now she’s told Cindy that

  they’re going to have an in-ground swimming pool put

  in this summer.”

  He did not have to say more. Cindy and Jack lived

  in a doublewide next door to his widowed mother.

  Although Jack had never specifically said so, Mayleen

  was fairly sure that he gave Mrs. Jamison some financial

  help with her utility bills and car repairs in return for

  using her well and septic tank.

  “She knew what the county pays when she married

  me.”

  Knowing it’s one thing, Mayleen thought. Living on