Up Jumps the Devil dk-4

by Margaret Maron

  I was in the shower next morning when my phone rang and by the time I was dried off enough to pick up, Portland Brewer was well launched into a complicated message for my machine.

  “—so there’s just no way we can—”

  “Sorry, Por, I was in the shower. Want to start again?”

  “Not really,” she said ruefully. “Not if you’re going to be horsey about what I’ve got to tell you.”

  I took the towel off my head and began finger-combing my wet hair. “You couldn’t reach the blood tech or your ex-client yesterday, right?”

  “He’s somewhere between here and Baltimore, according to his girlfriend, and she doesn’t expect him back till tonight. I’ve left messages with her and with his office.”

  “What about the technician?”

  “Unlisted home phone. And Jamerson Labs doesn’t open till nine this morning. I’ll try again then, okay?”

  “Fine,” I said. No point riding my high horse over Portland. She knew the seriousness of this without any lectures or exhortations from me. “Just let me know when you’ve got them rounded up so we can tell Ambrose.”

  Portland might not have been waiting for me in chambers, but Merrilee and Pete Grimes were. After handling the details of Dallas’s funeral for Mr. Jap, Merrilee considered herself an old hand at dealing with the Medical Examiner’s office over in Chapel Hill. To her frustration though, she wasn’t being allowed to deal.

  Anything that upsets Merrilee upsets Pete, and both of them wanted me to do something.

  “They’re ready to release Uncle Jap’s body, but Duck Aldcroft says he can’t send a hearse for it because Allen’s Uncle Jap’s next of kin and nobody’s seen him since Friday.”

  “Did you speak to Dwight?” I asked, fiddling with the zipper of my robe. Judge Carly Jernigan’s widow had given me this robe and its old-fashioned metal teeth had caught a fold of my blouse. I was hoping to work it loose without marking the white silk.

  “He says he’s got the Highway Patrol keeping an eye out for Allen’s truck, but if you ask me, that doesn’t sound too urgent.”

  Pete gave a supportive rumble. “If he smashed poor old Jap and took off with the money, he could be halfway to California by now.”

  Merrilee nodded vigorously. “And Uncle Jap could just lie over there in Chapel Hill and—and—and rot for all he cares!”

  Pete hitched his chair closer to hers and embraced her protectively. He was such a man mountain and she was so small and dainty that images of King Kong and Faye Wray flashed through my head as Merrilee automatically leaned into his arm.

  An attorney stuck his head in the door waving a show-cause order I’d promised to sign and I was conscious that it was time to head for the courtroom even though I still hadn’t called over to Social Services as I’d planned. The zipper chose that moment to release my blouse and yes, it left an ugly metallic mark right at my bustline.

  “Look, Merrilee, Pete,” I said, “John Claude Lee was acting as Mr. Jap’s attorney. Why don’t you go speak to him, see what he can do about the situation? After all, you’d have been one of the—”

  I abruptly caught myself, but Merrilee’s narrow little Yadkin eyes sharpened alertly.

  “I’d’ve been one of what?”

  I shrugged, annoyed that I’d let myself be distracted into speaking indiscreetly and even more annoyed because I knew Merrilee would never leave until I satisfied the curiosity I’d unleashed.

  “One of what, Deborah?” she asked again when I’d signed the show cause and the attorney was gone.

  I stood and finished zipping my robe. “I spoke out of turn, but it doesn’t really matter, I guess. Mr. Jap was planning to sign a will today that would have split his estate equally between you and Allen. You would have been co-beneficiary. Now, of course, it’ll probably all go to Allen. I’m sorry, Merrilee.”

  Pete was frowning as he worked it out in his head, but Merrilee was suddenly transformed. Tears streamed from her eyes, but her smile was radiant.

  “Oh, Deborah! Was he really going to leave me half?”

  I’d never seen anyone react quite like this to hearing they’re not going to inherit a penny. “The will doesn’t count, Merrilee, because he didn’t—”

  She brushed that aside. “I don’t care about his money. Don’t you see? All these years, ever since Aunt Elsie died, I’ve been looking in on Uncle Jap, making sure he was all right, doing the sort of woman things Dallas couldn’t and Cherry Lou wouldn’t. And then when Allen came—Uncle Jap was never one for thanking people, not that I wanted to be thanked. Jesus says, ‘As you do it for the least of these, you do it for me,’ and that’s what I tried to do, but even so, it was hard to watch Allen taking and taking and Uncle Jap acting like he hung the moon. And now you tell me that he was going to will me half of what he had?”

  She jumped up and gave me a hug. “Thank you for telling me, Deb’rah. Now I know that he did appreciate that I loved him and that he loved me back.”

  “Aw, honey,” said Pete, looking as if he could eat her with a spoon. “Of course he loved you. Everybody loves you.”

  Remembering how enthusiastically Mr. Jap had planned Allen’s future with a well-equipped garage, even if it meant selling off some of his land to get the cash, I had to wonder whether the equitable division in his will sprang from love and gratitude or was the result of John Claude’s power of persuasion and sense of fair play. John Claude would surely have pointed out to the old man that Elsie’s niece was just as deserving as his nephew.

  “You go talk to John Claude,” I told Pete and Merrilee. “If he can’t help you with the ME’s office, come on back and I’ll issue you a writ or something.”

  I convened court almost on time, but as soon as I decently could, I declared a fifteen-minute recess and phoned Birdie McElveen.

  Birdie is a chain-smoking, hard-nosed supervisor of Colleton County’s Child Support Enforcement. More to the point, she’s a close friend of Aunt Zell’s and thinks I’m cuter than a speckled pup.

  I didn’t have to explain to her why I wanted to know the financial situation between one Allen Stancil and his ex-wife Sally Stancil regarding their minor daughter Wendy Nicole, currently of 1212 East Lever Drive in Charlotte, the address I’d memorized from the dossier Dwight had compiled on Allen. It was enough for Birdie that I wanted the information and she was sure she could have it for me by mid-afternoon.

  She was better than that. When we broke for lunch, a clerk arrived with a message to call her.

  “There is a support order on record,” Birdie told me, “and the caseworker thinks he’s behind by about forty-five hundred dollars, but you know how it is—if the mother doesn’t holler, no one automatically goes hunting for the father. Besides, the caseworker says that he’s paid the support directly to the mother more than once. It’s supposed to be monitored and it messes up the paperwork if they don’t do it by the book, but the caseworker thinks he’s probably been giving her some of the money right along since she’s not screaming for help.”

  Birdie paused and I could hear her lighting another cigarette.

  “So then?” I prompted.

  “So then I called Mrs. Stancil at her work. Said I was a supervisor in Child Support Enforcement, which I am.”

  “Only not in Mecklenburg County.”

  “I didn’t tell and she didn’t ask. Just said yes, ma’am, he did get a little behind, but he’s been making payments regularly. In fact, he came by this weekend and—”

  “What?”

  “That’s what she said. He was there, left this morning right after breakfast, but he gave her two thousand in cash and that caught him up with everything he owed her.”

  “She didn’t happen to say when he got there, did she?”

  “Sorry. I thought you wanted information on the father’s fiscal situation, not his physical whereabouts. If I’d realized—”

  “That’s okay, Birdie. I didn’t realize it either. Thanks, though. I owe you one.”
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br />   “You owe me more than one,” she said with tart affection. “I’ll put it on your account.”

  As I took off my robe and put on my jacket to go out for lunch, I wondered if Pete and Merrilee could be right. I hadn’t considered Allen a serious suspect and I didn’t think Dwight did either, but he’d acted broke when he fixed my alternator on Friday. Where did he get two thousand in cash to give his ex-wife this weekend?

  My appetite gone, I headed down to Dwight’s office in the basement. He would have to be told.

  But when I entered Dwight’s office, there sat Allen in his black leather jacket and scuffed cowboy boots, with a mournful look on his face.

  “Hello, darlin’,” he said. “Ain’t this one hell of a note about Uncle Jap?”

  20

  « ^ » None of either sex or profession need fear the want of employment, or an ample reward and encouragement in their different occupations and callings.“Scotus Americanus,” 1773

  “What’s going on here?” I asked inanely.

  “Stancil’s helping us with our inquiries,” Dwight said in a deadpan parody of a cliché-ridden British mystery we’d watched together a few weeks ago.

  Allen didn’t quite catch the reference, but he understood the game. “Dwight here don’t know whether to tell me he’s sorry about Uncle Jap or read me my rights. You’re still a lawyer, ain’t you, darlin’? Reckon I could hire you?”

  “Using what for money?” I asked. “I thought you were broke.”

  “Oh, I always keep a little jingle in my jeans,” he said with an easy smile.

  “You may not need an attorney, but you can’t blame Dwight for wondering how come you ran off like that.”

  “Hey, I didn’t ‘run off.’ Uncle Jap knew where I was. If I’d of thought for one minute he was going to get hisself killed—”

  “So where were you?”

  “Greensboro. Like I told Dwight, I had to go look at a car.”

  Greensboro’s about ninety minutes to the west of us, give or take ten minutes, depending on road conditions and how heavy you’re willing to push the speed limit. It’s also only a little more than halfway to Charlotte and I didn’t understand why Allen was lying. Seems like he’d want to document as much distance as possible between himself and the murder scene.

  He must have seen the disbelief on my face because he started shoring up.

  “One of my old buddies asked me to take a look under the hood of a car he’s thinking to buy. I give you his number, Dwight. You don’t believe me, just call him.”

  Dwight looked at the crumpled piece of paper that held a scrawled phone number. “What’s his name again?”

  “Raiford Hollyfield. His wife’s Jan.”

  “Anybody else see you there?”

  “His sister stays with ’em. I forget her name. But I got there around ten o’clock Saturday morning and we went right over to see that car. A nice little Cutlass Supreme. They’ll tell you.” He turned back to me. “All I’ve heard is that somebody’s killed poor old Uncle Jap. Not when, not how. Come on, Deb’rah. Don’t I have the right to know?”

  “You’ll get all the details soon as I confirm your story,” Dwight said sternly. He raised his voice and called, “Hey, Jack! You out there?”

  A slightly pudgy, baby-faced officer came to the open doorway. “Yes, Major?”

  “How ’bout you take Mr. Stancil here into the squad room? Get him a cup of coffee, maybe a sandwich?”

  “And a newspaper?” Allen said slyly.

  “Sure,” said Dwight. “Give him the latest Ledger, Jack.”

  The Ledger is Dobb’s biweekly. It comes out on Tuesdays and Fridays. Today being Monday, it wouldn’t help Allen much.

  “He’s probably already read about the murder,” I said, taking the seat Allen had vacated.

  “I doubt it,” said Dwight. “Even if it made the Greensboro paper, they wouldn’t have as much on it as the News and Observer and you know what that was.”

  A bare paragraph on an inside page of the Metro section: “Man Killed in Colleton County.”

  “Not to say he couldn’t have talked to somebody down here an hour after Mr. Kezzie found the body. Phone lines were still working, so far as I’ve heard.”

  He punched in the numbers on his own phone. The connection between Dobbs and Greensboro was extraordinarily clear for I could hear the rings from where I sat, then a woman’s staccato “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Hollyfield?”

  “Just a minute. Jan?” Jan Hollyfield’s voice was too soft for me to make out more than a murmur.

  Dwight identified himself, then explained that he was trying to confirm Allen Stancil’s whereabouts this past weekend. Could Mrs. Hollyfield help him? Had she seen him? She had? When?

  “No, ma’am, he’s not in any trouble. Not if you can tell me when you saw him… Yes, ma’am, he does know I’m calling you. That’s how I have your name and number, ma’am.”

  Whoever Jan Hollyfield was, she was certainly cautious about divulging anything to a police officer she didn’t know.

  “Yes, ma’am. I understand.” He slowly spelled his name and rank and gave her the Sheriff’s Department’s number, then hung up.

  “She’s going to have her husband call me back.”

  “Through the switchboard? Cagy lady.”

  “Does make you wonder why, don’t it?” He pushed a button on his keypad and spoke into the receiver. “Faye? Could you call Detective Harry Smithwick over in Charlotte? Remind him that I talked to him last week about that chop shop they broke up a month or so ago. Ask him if he’s got anything on a Raiford or Jan Hollyfield, now living in Greensboro, okay?”

  Dwight pushed the phone away and gave me an inquiring look. “You come downstairs because you heard we’d picked up Stancil?”

  I shook my head. “Actually, the main reason was to ask if you’ve put names to all the tire treads past Mr. Jap’s that morning.”

  He shuffled through the folders on his desk and came up with a set of black-and-white photographs. “This one’s your dad’s, this one’s Dick Sutterly’s, the bald one’s Billy Wall’s, and we don’t have a match to these diamond treads yet, why?”

  “They’re Reese’s. Herman’s boy?” I paused and took a closer look at the tracks left by Billy Wall’s truck. “I thought he said he bought new tires a few weeks ago.”

  Dwight wasn’t interested in Billy’s tires, he was more concerned about Reese.

  “You can talk to him,” I said. “Just try not to do it around Herman or Nadine. He was supposed to be working that morning, but he took off to see if he could get a shot at a deer back along the creek. He says he went past the shop around ten forty-five and didn’t see any sign of anybody going or coming.”

  “What time did he leave?”

  “I don’t believe he said, but I got the impression that he probably wasn’t in there more than thirty or forty minutes.”

  Dwight made a note of it. “Okay. And thanks. This’ll save us a little running around. Maybe narrow things down even more.”

  “One other thing,” I said. “And it’s probably not important.”

  “But?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know why Allen’s trying to make you think he spent the whole weekend in Greensboro, but Birdie McElveen talked to his ex-wife in Charlotte about an hour ago. He stayed at her place last night and left from there this morning after giving her two thousand in cash.”

  “Yeah?” He pulled the phone back closer—it was starting to wear a rut in his desktop—and said, “Faye? If you do get hold of Smithwick, I think maybe I better talk to him myself.”

  As I stood to go, Dwight said, “How did Birdie McElveen happen to be talking to Stancil’s ex-wife this morning?”

  I gave him my blandest shrug.

  “And why’d she call you with that information?”

  “Well, you said there weren’t any warrants out on him. I might’ve wondered out loud to Birdie if he was evading his responsibilities,” I admitte
d. “She’s in Child Support Enforcement and you know how dedicated she is to her work.”

  “Yeah? Now listen, Deb’rah—”

  “Oh, my Lord, look at the time! I’m supposed to be back in the courtroom in twenty minutes and I haven’t had a bite of lunch. See you,” I said and got out of there before he could start lecturing me to mind my own business and stay out of his investigation.

  No sign of Allen or Jack Jamison as I hurried through the halls. He’d probably conned the deputy into buying him a real lunch.

  More than I was going to have. It looked like Nabs and a Diet Pepsi from the vending machines over in the old courthouse basement again.

  By late afternoon, all the routine crimes and misdemeanors of the day had been disposed of and I was left with a civil matter: Stevens vs. Johnson. Desecration of a family graveyard.

  Five minutes into the case, I knew I was watching the latest episode in a long-running family soap opera.

  The combatants were two cousins. Geraldine Stevens and Annice Johnson. Mid-thirties, blond, so similar in appearance they could have been sisters. When the women married, their mutual grandfather had deeded each of them adjoining building lots. Proximity had only worsened their feud.

  Geraldine’s two acres made a fairly neat rectangle, slightly deeper than it was wide, with sufficient road frontage for an ample semicircular drive.

  Annice’s drive was barely wide enough to let a Geo through. Her two acres looked a little like the outline of the United States if you cut off California, Oregon and Washington and squared off Texas. “Florida” was an eight-foot-wide strip that touched the road. That eight feet was Annice’s only bit of road frontage because an old family graveyard occupied a tenth of an acre where Texas and the Gulf of Mexico should have touched the road bank.

  No matter who holds a title to the land where it sits, a graveyard itself is an encumbrance protected by the law in perpetuity. It may not be desecrated, moved nor adversely disturbed without a court order and the consent of the nearest kin.

  According to Annice, who brought along before-and-after photographs, the graveyard had fallen into shocking condition these last eight years. Their grandfather had tended it until poor health forced him to put down his rake and hoe and pruning shears. Nobody else ever picked them up.