Hard Row dk-13

by Margaret Maron

  on a fence post, but I didn’t get a chance to call Dwight

  till after I’d adjourned at five-fifteen and I was afraid I

  might interrupt the talk he planned to have with Cal.

  Satisfying my curiosity could wait. That head wasn’t

  going anywhere.

  Except maybe over to the ME’s office in Chapel Hill.

  “You’re not making Dwight take sides, are you?”

  Portland asked when we were finally in the car and I had

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  told her a little about the situation with Cal. She was

  totally thrilled when I married Dwight, and she worries

  that I’m going to mess up if I’m not careful.

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “Because he may be crazy about you, but Cal’s his

  son.”

  “Like I need a lecture on this? After four years of

  family court? After watching Kidd Chapin’s daughter

  make him choose between her and me? Hell, Por! I may

  be dumb, but I’m not stupid. Cal and I got along just

  fine before Jonna died. I’m pretty sure he liked me back

  then and he’ll probably like me again once he settles

  in. It’s a rough time for him, a lot of adjustments, but

  I don’t think he wants to split Dwight and me up. He’s

  not a conniver like Amber. Besides, boys don’t usually

  think like that. My brothers and their sons have always

  been pretty easy to read, even when they were getting

  ready to bend the rules or break the law. Unlike my

  nieces. Girls are out there plotting three moves ahead.

  Remember?”

  “Oh, sugar!” she said with a grin, and I knew she

  was recalling some of the stuff we used to get into, the

  way we could manipulate teachers and boyfriends from

  kindergarten on.

  She pulled out a pack of Life Savers, the latest weapon

  in her diet arsenal and offered me one. The clean smell

  of peppermint filled the car.

  “Have you talked to your friend Flame since Buck

  Harris’s body was identified?” I asked.

  “Yeah, she stopped by for coffee this afternoon on her

  way back to Wilmington. She said there was no reason

  for her to stay, that his ex-wife and daughter certainly

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  wouldn’t save her a seat at any memorial service and she

  didn’t want to add to his daughter’s grief.”

  “She okay herself?”

  “Not right now, but she will be. I’m not going to

  say she didn’t really love him, but I’m sure his bank ac-

  count helped, so I doubt if her heart’s completely bro-

  ken. Besides, Flame’s always known when to cut her

  losses.”

  “Not a total loss, though, is it?” I said as I dimmed

  my lights for an oncoming car.

  “Reid told her she was in the will. She didn’t say for

  how much though.”

  “Dwight kicked me out of his office before I could

  get Reid to tell me, but remember when he took your

  umbrella this morning?”

  “And did not leave it at the office, the bastard.”

  “Well, just before you got there, when he was trying

  to borrow one from me, he said she was down for half

  a million.”

  “Interesting. We had lunch last week and she was

  worried about the mortgage on her B-and-B. A half-

  million sure makes a nice consolation prize.”

  “Also makes a motive for murder.”

  “No way!” Portland protested. But she mulled it over

  as I pulled out to pass a slow-moving pickup. “Dwight

  got her in his range finder?”

  “Probably. Along with Mrs. Harris and everybody on

  the farm, I should think. Not that he tells me every-

  thing.”

  “Yeah, right,” she jeered. “I don’t suppose he’s said

  anything about Karen Braswell’s place getting shot

  up?”

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  “Nope. But I haven’t really talked to him since this

  morning and that only happened last night, right?”

  “Well, when you do, would you please stress that this

  guy’s gone over the edge? Bo promised to tell his peo-

  ple to be on the lookout in her neighborhood and so

  did Lonnie Revell, for what that’s worth.”

  Lonnie Revell is Dobbs’s chief of police. Nice guy but

  not the brightest star in the town’s constellation.

  I repeated what Dwight had said about hurricanes

  and the need to head for high ground when you know

  one’s on the way.

  “Moving in with her mother’s not really high ground,

  but with a little luck, he’ll do something to get himself

  arrested again before he finds out that’s where she is. I

  just hope you’ll give him a couple of years next time.”

  “Hey, no ex parte talk here, okay?”

  “What’s ex parte? You’ve already heard his case and

  if there is a next time, there’s not a judge in the district

  who could possibly be unaware of the situation unless

  it’s Harrison Hobart and isn’t that old dinosaur ever

  going to turn seventy-two?”

  Seventy-two’s the mandatory retirement age and

  it looked like he was going to hang on till the end.

  Hobart’s a throwback to an earlier age when men were

  men and their women kept silent. Not only in church

  but everywhere else if he’d had his way. He had tried to

  keep female attorneys from wearing slacks in his court-

  room, and whenever I had to argue a case before him,

  he never failed to lecture me that skirts were the only

  attire proper for the courtroom.

  “If that’s true,” I had said sweetly, gesturing to our

  district attorney who sat at the prosecution’s table and

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  tried not to grin, “then the day Mr. Woodall comes to

  court in a skirt, I’ll wear one, too.”

  Hobart had threatened me with contempt, but the

  next day every woman in the courthouse showed up in

  pants, even the clerks who didn’t particularly like me

  but who liked being lectured on dress and decorum

  even less. He had been censured more than once and

  his last one came when he informed the jury that the

  defendant might not be sitting there if her husband had

  taken a strap to her backside once in a while.

  “I think his birthday’s this spring,” Portland said as

  I parked in front of the restaurant on the north edge of

  Makely.

  Because of our late start, most of the tables were

  filled by the time we paid our money and looked for

  seats. And wouldn’t you know it? The only table with

  two empty chairs had Harrison Hobart at it. It was a

  no-brainer.

  We split up.

  Portland caught a ride back to Dobbs with Reid, so

  I headed straight home after the dinner and got there a

  little before ten. Both my guys were in bed, but only Cal

  was asleep. Dwight was watching the early news, but he

  turned it off and came out to the kitchen for a glass of

  milk and the last of the chocolate chip cookies while I

  reheated a cup
of coffee left over from the morning.

  I told him about the dinner and Portland’s comments

  about Flame Smith. “Is she a suspect?”

  “Probably not. She gave me the names of people who

  saw her down in Wilmington during the three days after

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  Harris was last seen. I’ve got a query in with the sheriff

  down there. He said he’d check her statement for me.”

  “I hear you finally found the head?”

  “Yeah. Stuck on a fence post at the back of one of the

  fields out there, so it’s definitely someone familiar with

  the place.”

  “Get anything out of that migrant who knew Harris

  was dead?” I asked.

  “He says he stumbled into that empty shed by mis-

  take, and seeing all that blood and gore’s what made

  him go looking for a quick high on Saturday.”

  “But?” I asked, hearing something more in his

  voice.

  “Oh hell, Deb’rah. I don’t know. I got the feeling that

  he was holding something back, but if he ever had any

  real dealings with Harris, no one seems to know about

  it. The only other worker still there that had much to

  do with him is Sanaugustin’s buddy Juan Santos. Both

  of ’em are married. Both have kids. The farm manager,

  Sid Lomax, thinks Santos and Harris might have had a

  run-in last spring when he had to fly out to California

  and Harris came in to run things. But that was almost a

  year ago. Besides, it sounds like Harris’s real run-in was

  with his wife.”

  “Was he maybe trying to exercise his droit de seigneur

  with one of the migrant women?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The privilege of ownership.”

  “Like a plantation owner with his female slaves?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, his housekeeper did say he slept with the wife

  of a different worker, but they moved to the farm below

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  Kinston months ago. I suppose he could have tried it

  with one of the other women, although the housekeeper

  says he was pretty much saving it for Flame Smith these

  last few months.” He broke a cookie in half, dunked it

  in his milk, then savored the soft sweetness. “You make

  a mean cookie, Mrs. Bryant.”

  “Why thank you, Major.” Then, just to make sure, I

  said, “You really don’t mind that I haven’t changed my

  name professionally, do you?”

  He smiled and glanced at my left hand. “Not as long

  as that ring stays on your finger.”

  “What about Mrs. Harris?” I asked since he was in a

  talkative mood. “Is she still wearing a ring?”

  “Who knows? If we can’t pin down the time of death,

  she may claim she’s a widow and not an ex. She’s sched-

  uled to come in tomorrow morning.” He told me about

  the tumble she supposedly took in a mud puddle the

  Monday after Harris was last seen. “Only nobody actu-

  ally saw her do it and the housekeeper says she bundled

  her clothes up in a garbage bag and borrowed some of

  his things to wear back to New Bern.”

  “Whoa!” I said. “She came in the house and took

  a shower and no one saw if it really was mud on her

  clothes?”

  “Mrs. Samuelson says there was no blood on her

  sneakers, just a little mud. If she was going to lie for the

  bosslady, why stop at sneakers?”

  “Unless . . .” I said slowly.

  “Unless what?”

  “I keep a second pair of old shoes in the trunk of my

  car,” I reminded him. “To save my good ones if it’s

  mucky or I have to walk on soft dirt.”

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  “I’ll keep that in mind when I talk to her tomor-

  row.”

  “Speaking of talks, how did it go with Cal tonight?”

  He shook his head. “It didn’t. First Haywood was

  here to drop off a load of firewood to get us through

  April. Then Mr. Kezzie came by for a few minutes with

  some extra cabbage plants for our garden—”

  “We have a garden?” I teased.

  “We do now. I mentioned to Seth that it’d be nice to

  grow tomatoes, so he plowed us a few short rows beside

  the blueberry bushes and somebody must’ve told Doris

  you were out tonight because she called up and insisted

  that Cal and I had to go over there and eat with her and

  Robert. That woman never takes no for an answer, does

  she?”

  He sounded so exasperated, I had to laugh.

  “Then coming home in the truck, I was just fixing

  to start and damned if McLamb didn’t pick that time

  to call and report his conversation with Mitchiner’s

  daughter and grandson. By the time we got back to the

  house, it was bedtime and when I went in to say good

  night, he had his head under his pillow, trying not to let

  me hear him crying.”

  “Over Jonna?” I said sympathetically.

  Dwight nodded. “I just didn’t have the heart to lay

  anything else on him right then.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t.” I ached for Cal. For Dwight,

  too, who has to watch his son grieve for something that

  can never be made right.

  He drained his glass and carried it over to the dish-

  washer, along with my now-empty coffee cup. I switched

  off the kitchen light and followed him to our bedroom.

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  “I don’t suppose McLamb got much out of the

  Mitchiner family?”

  “Not really,” he said as we undressed and got ready

  for bed. “One interesting thing though. He said that the

  daughter and the grandson sort of got into it for a min-

  ute about the lawsuit. The boy wants her to drop it.”

  “Really?”

  “McLamb said he all but accused her of wanting to

  profit by his grandfather’s death and that she got pretty

  defensive.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, he’s going to check out her alibi tomorrow.

  She was supposed to be working and the kid had her car

  until it was time to pick her up after work, but since we

  don’t know precisely when Mitchiner went missing, it’s

  possible that she dropped the boy off somewhere and

  went on to the nursing home. Here, need some help

  with that?”

  I had pulled my sweater over my head and a lock of

  hair was caught in the back zipper.

  He gently worked it free and then one thing led to

  another.

  As it usually does.

  (Ping!)

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  28

  For us, it has truly seemed that each day dawned upon a

  change.

  —Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

  % Cal’s emotional meltdown the night before must

  have cleared his system because he was in a cheer-

  ful mood the next morning and no longer seemed to be

  resentful about missing Monday night’s game. He let

  Bandit out for his morning run without being asked

  and only ha
d to be reminded once to take off his Canes

  cap at the table. He laid a pad and pencil beside his ce-

  real bowl and asked me to tell him the names of all my

  brothers, beginning with Robert—“He said I could call

  them Uncle Robert and Aunt Doris”—so that he could

  write them down and start getting them straight.

  “They could be a whole baseball team with two relief

  pitchers,” he marveled and was intrigued to hear that

  one of the little twins—Adam—lived in California. “Is

  he near Disneyland? Could we go visit him sometime?”

  It was sunshine after rain.

  I was due for an oil change, so I left when he and

  Dwight went to meet the schoolbus and drove over to

  leave my car at Jimmy White’s. Jimmy’s been my mechanic

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  ever since I took the curve in front of his garage too fast

  shortly after getting my driver’s license a million years

  ago. He pulled it out of the ditch, replaced the front

  fender, and let me pay him on time without telling my

  parents, although he did threaten to tell his uncle who

  was a state trooper if I didn’t take my foot off the gas

  pedal once in a while. Gray-haired now and starting to

  slow down a little, he’s turning more and more of the

  heavy work over to his son James. Back then, it was

  just Jimmy and one bay. Today it was Jimmy, James,

  and two employees and the one bay had become three.

  Instead of the old oil-stained denim coveralls they used

  to wear, all four of them sported crisp blue shirts that

  they put on fresh each morning and sent out to be laun-

  dered every week.

  After so much rain, the air was washed clean and

  fluffy white clouds drifted across a clear blue sky. A soft

  spring breeze ruffled my hair as we stood in the sunlit

  yard waiting for Dwight to pick me up. I accepted their

  offer of a cup of coffee and we talked about the changes

  in the neighborhood and of all the new people that had

  moved in and wanted him to service their cars with-

  out trying to build a relationship. “Like, just because

  they got the cash money, they think they’re gonna get

  moved to the front of the line ahead of people that’s

  been here all along.”

  James, who had graduated from high school a couple

  of years behind me, said, “What gets me hot though’s

  when they don’t trust us. They’ll want us to give the

  car a tune-up and if we say we had to replace one of the

  belts, they’ll want to see it and half the time they act