Hard Row dk-13

by Margaret Maron

  a migrant center or something. If Amy doesn’t get her

  grant for the hospital, I’m thinking somebody ought to

  introduce them to each other.”

  “While Reid was talking, he happen to say what Buck

  Harris did to so seriously piss off his ex-wife last spring?

  Assuming she is his ex-wife and not his widow.”

  “Besides taking a younger mistress?” I asked.

  “You’re the one with the woman’s intuition,” he said.

  “But Richards and I both got the impression that she’s

  using the mistress as a smoke screen to keep from talk-

  ing about what really happened.”

  While I settled up with Jimmy, Dwight went on and

  picked up Cal so that the three of us got home at the

  same time. I called Daddy to see if he wanted to meet

  us later, then changed into jeans and sneakers. By the

  time I got outside, Dwight and Cal had cut the seed

  potatoes into chunks, making sure that each chunk had

  one or two eyes that would sprout into a plant. Seth

  had opened a furrow about eight inches deep when he

  was here with the plows, and Cal and I dropped the

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  potatoes in the furrow, cut side down, about a foot

  apart. Dwight followed along behind with the hoe and

  covered them with three or four inches of dirt. In a

  week or so, after they’d sprouted, he would come back

  and pull another few inches of dirt over the stems until

  eventually they would be hilled up at least a foot deep

  in the sandy loam.

  “Why so deep?” Cal asked when the process was de-

  scribed to him.

  “Because the new potatoes form between the chunk

  we’re planting and the surface of the soil,” I explained.

  “We have to give them enough room to grow or

  else they’ll pop through the ground,” said Dwight. “If

  they’re exposed to light, they’ll turn green and green

  potatoes are poison.”

  With less than five pounds of potatoes to plant, it

  didn’t take us long to get them in the ground.

  Then we washed up and I put my guitar in the back

  of the truck.

  On the drive over, while telling Cal who he could

  expect to see, I said, “Steve Paulie owns the place, but I

  can never remember if he’s my third cousin or a second

  cousin once removed.”

  Cal was puzzled. “How do you remove a cousin?”

  “Removed just means a degree of separation,” I said.

  “Look, R.W.’s your first cousin because his dad and

  your dad are brothers, okay?”

  He nodded.

  “Now if R.W. had a child, he would be your first

  cousin, once removed. But if he had a child and you

  had a child, they would be second cousins. Got it?”

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  “And if they had children, they would be third

  cousins?”

  “By George, ’e’s got it!” I said with an exaggerated

  English accent.

  “So what are Mary Pat and Jake to me?”

  “Just good friends, I’m afraid, honey.”

  No way was I going to try to untangle Kate’s rela-

  tionship to her young ward. Enough to know they were

  cousins even though Mary Pat now called her Mom.

  Just as it was enough to know that the owner of Paulie’s

  Barbecue House was related to me through one of

  Daddy’s aunts.

  Every Wednesday night, friends and relatives gather

  there to eat supper and then do a little picking and singing

  for an hour or so. It’s very informal. Some Wednesdays,

  there aren’t enough to bother. Other times, there’ll be

  twelve or fourteen of us. Before I married Dwight, I

  would join them at least once a month for some good

  fellowshipping as Haywood calls it, but this would be

  the first time since New Year’s.

  We ordered plates of barbecue—that wonderful east-

  ern Carolina smoked pork, coarsely chopped and sea-

  soned with vinegar and hot sauce. It’s always served

  with coleslaw and spiced apples and a bottomless bas-

  ket of crispy hushpuppies, and everything gets washed

  down with pitchers of sweet iced tea.

  “Want to split a side order of chicken livers?” I asked

  Dwight and Cal.

  You’d’ve thought I had offered them anchovies the

  way they both turned up their noses, but Aunt Sister

  was seated at the end of the long table and she called

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  down to say, “I could eat one or two if you’re getting

  them.”

  Dwight always wants to tell me how unhealthy they

  are, but I just point to Aunt Sister, who’s over eighty

  and still going strong. Daddy was there next to her and

  allowed as how he wouldn’t mind a taste either, so I

  moved on down the table to be closer to them.

  After supper, the instruments came out. Daddy and

  Haywood both play the fiddle, Isabel has a banjo and

  Aunt Sister plays a dulcimer. Zach’s Emma and Andrew’s

  Ruth spell each other on the piano and Herman’s son

  Reese is good with the harmonica. The rest of us, in-

  cluding Steve Paulie, play guitar and those that don’t

  play tap their toes and sing.

  There were at least a dozen of us, and soon the place

  was rocking. From rousing gospel hymns to country

  ballads and back again. Mother used to say that she fell

  in love with Daddy for his fiddle-playing and he was in

  good form tonight, his fingers moving nimbly up and

  down the neck as he bowed the strings of his mellow

  old fiddle. Aunt Sister’s daughter Beverly was there and

  she, Annie Sue, Emma, and Ruth blended their voices

  into such sweet cousinly harmony on one of the hymns

  that I got chill bumps.

  Cal kept his eyes glued on Reese, fascinated by the

  way my nephew used his harmonica to counterpoint the

  melody line or make musical jokes. I glanced over at

  Dwight and he winked at me.

  The music lifted me up and for a time, washed away

  both the sadness I had felt for Fred Mitchiner’s grand-

  son and the ugliness of Buck Harris’s death. Shortly after

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  nine though, I noticed that Cal was yawning. “Time we

  were calling it a night,” I said.

  Aunt Sister looked at Daddy and without a word,

  both began to play an old familiar tune. Annie Sue’s

  clear soprano voice joined in softly before they’d played

  two bars and the rest of us picked it up until it floated

  over us in gentle benediction:

  God be with you till we meet again

  By his counsels guide, uphold you,

  With his sheep securely fold you;

  God be with you till we meet again.

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  33

  Success may be attained once by accident, but permanent

  results are found only attendant upon a practice based

  upon correct theory.

  —Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

  % I had just loaded the last breakfast plate in the dish-

>   washer the next morning when the phone rang.

  “Oh good,” Dwight said. “You haven’t left yet. I’m

  halfway to Dobbs and I just realized that I left some

  papers I’ll need on the floor beside our bed. Could you

  bring them when you come?”

  “Sure,” I told him and immediately went to our room

  to find them. When I circled the bed to his side, I saw

  several sheets of paper on top of a manila file folder. I

  picked them up and straightened them, and saw that the

  top page was titled “Harris Farm #1: Workers on site as

  of 1 January.” One name leaped out at me and I smiled

  as I read it, then tucked the pages neatly into the folder

  and placed it with my purse so I’d remember to take it

  with me.

  On my drive in, though, that name began to gnaw at

  me. January? I thought about the blowup Mrs. Harris

  had with her husband last spring, almost a year ago.

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  Why would someone wait nine or ten months to

  avenge a wrong if that’s when Buck Harris had done

  anything worth avenging? And why chop off his arms

  and legs in such a rage?

  Unless—?

  Unbidden came the memory of how Will’s wife, Amy,

  had vented last Saturday when I helped her write her

  grant proposal. Emma, too, when she and her cousins

  were arguing with Haywood. I coupled it with what

  Faye Myers had almost told me on Tuesday and a nebu-

  lous theory began to form.

  At Bethel Baptist Church on Ward Dairy Road, I

  pulled into the churchyard to call my favorite clerk in

  Ellis Glover’s office and ask her to pull a file for me.

  When I got to the courthouse, I stopped there first.

  It was as I thought. The original addresses were the

  same.

  Downstairs, Faye Myers was on duty at the dispatch

  desk. I waited till she was off the phone and then asked

  her to finish telling me what she’d started to on Tuesday.

  “About what Flip told you when you were telling me

  about Mike Diaz and Mayleen Richards,” I reminded

  her.

  “Well, I probably shouldn’t repeat it,” she said. And

  of course, she did.

  It was worse than I’d thought, but it clarified the

  whole situation and I walked on down to Dwight’s of-

  fice. He saw my face and his smile turned to concern.

  “Deb’rah? What’s wrong, shug?”

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  I closed his door. “Did Mayleen Richards learn much

  from those migrants yesterday?”

  He shook his head. “She couldn’t pry a thing out of

  them except that the two women did see Mrs. Harris

  take that tumble into the mud. They didn’t tell before

  because they respect her and thought she would be hu-

  miliated if they did. Why?”

  “I think I know who butchered Buck Harris,” I told

  him bleakly. “Ernesto Palmeiro.”

  “Who?”

  “The tractor guy that I had in court Friday.” I opened

  his file and pointed to Palmeiro’s name on the list of

  workers living on Harris Farm #1 in January. It was fol-

  lowed by a María Palmeiro. Neither name was on the

  current list the farm manager had given them.

  Then I showed him the file I’d had the clerk pull for

  me. “When Palmeiro was arrested in January, his ad-

  dress was Ward Dairy Road. See? But that was before

  you knew it was Harris’s body so it didn’t really register.

  Everyone said he was loco for taking the tractor because

  his wife had left him after they lost their baby. But he

  was heading east, not south. I think he was trying to

  get to New Bern to find Buck Harris. If he had, Harris

  would have been chopped up at least a month and a half

  sooner.”

  “But why?”

  “You said the blowup between the Harrises was last

  spring. That’s when the tomato fields would have been

  sprayed with a pesticide. Eight or nine months later—in

  January—the Palmeiro baby was born. Stillborn. With

  no arms or legs.” I couldn’t keep my voice from shak-

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  ing. “No arms and no legs, Dwight. Just like that torso

  you found.”

  “Jesus H!” he murmured as he began to connect the

  dots. He opened his door and shouted, “All detectives!

  In my office. Now!”

  Five or six deputies came hurrying in, including

  Mayleen Richards.

  “Tell them,” Dwight said.

  While I repeated my conjectures, Dwight took Percy

  Denning aside and sent him to pull the fingerprint card

  on Palmeiro. A copy of the prints had been sent to the

  state’s central crime lab, but like most crime labs around

  the country, ours is so underfunded and understaffed

  that the fingerprints connected to a misdemeanor theft

  would not have been entered into their computers yet.

  As I went back upstairs to a courtroom where I was

  expected to dispense a little justice, an old rhyme that

  John Claude used to quote pounded through my head.

  For want of a nail, a shoe was lost.

  For want of a shoe, a horse was lost.

  For want of a horse, a rider was lost.

  For want of a rider, a battle was lost.

  Or, as my no-nonsense mother used to say more suc-

  cinctly, “Penny-wise, pound foolish.”

  With better funding, more crimes could be solved

  more quickly. In England, I hear they’re using DNA

  to solve ordinary burglaries. Here in America we can’t

  even afford to test for all the rapes and murders, much

  less enter the fingerprints of every convicted felon into

  a national database in a timely way.

  . . . All for the want of a nail.

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  C H A P T E R

  34

  Search ever after the truth—not the truth which justifies

  you or your pet theories to yourself, but seek truth for truth’s

  sake, and when you have found it, follow its lead.

  —Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

  Mayleen Richards

  Thursday Morning, March 9

  % While two squad cars headed for the old Buckley

  place, three others peeled out for the Diaz nurs-

  ery, blue lights flashing and sirens wailing, with Dwight

  Bryant bringing up the rear in his own truck.

  Mayleen Richards was keenly aware of not being in

  on the kill.

  “I think not,” was all Major Bryant had said when

  she asked to go with them to arrest Ernesto Palmeiro

  instead of confronting the women of Harris Farm #1

  again.

  A cold lump still lodged in her chest from hear-

  ing Judge Knott say, “Miguel Diaz of Diaz y Garcia

  Landscaping came to court with him last Friday and

  spoke for him. It’s my understanding that he works

  there now.”

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  The judge had not once glanced in Mayleen’s direc-

  tion, but coupled with the long level look she got from

  Major Bryant when he denied her request, she was su
re

  they were both aware of her relationship with Mike.

  And what about Mike? He knew of Palmeiro’s still-

  born baby. Did he also know that Palmeiro had killed

  Buck Harris?

  There was no doubt in anyone’s mind now that he

  was the killer, and his desperate drive with the tractor

  had gone from being a funny story to something of

  grim seriousness in the brief minutes it had taken Percy

  Denning to look at Palmeiro’s fingerprints and find the

  significant markers he had noted from the prints on the

  bloody axe.

  Her own fingers itched to call Diaz, but she kept both

  hands on the steering wheel. Beside her, Jack Jamison

  seemed to be on an adrenaline high, a combination of

  wrapping up this homicide and the anticipation of leav-

  ing for Texas next week.

  “If I pass the selection and training process, they’ll

  ship me out immediately, so this could be my last week-

  end with Cindy and Jay for a year.”

  “I’m not going to say break a leg,” she said tartly.

  “How do you mean that?”

  “Oh hell, Jack. I don’t really know. Both ways, I

  guess. I still think you’re crazy to put yourself in harm’s

  way like this, but if it’s what you want, then I really do

  hope you pass and that it works out for you.”

  It was after nine before the second team reached the

  nursery. The woman who came to the door seemed

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  frightened by so many police cars. Dwight recognized

  her from a murder investigation back in January and the

  sight of him seemed to reassure her. In halting English,

  she told them that her cousin Miguel Diaz and his crew

  had left for a job nearly two hours ago.

  “Ernesto Palmeiro,” said Dwight. “Is he here or with

  your cousin?”

  She shook her head. “No here. He leave sábado—

  Saturday. Go Mexico. You ask Miguel.”

  “Tell me about him,” Dwight said. But she imme-

  diately lapsed into Spanish and claimed not to under-

  stand.

  Fortunately, they had brought along a translator.

  “She says he was from the village next to theirs back

  in Mexico, but they did not really know him until his

  wife gave birth to a badly deformed baby in January.

  A baby that died. After that, the wife left and Ernesto

  went crazy. He was arrested and from jail he sent word

  to her brother and her cousin that they must help him,

  as compatriots of the same valley. They didn’t want to,

  but felt it was their duty. They gave him work, gave