by Allen Kent
Joseph nodded back toward the deck.
“My choice too. It’s going to be a nice evening.” I flipped a switch just inside the deck door that turned on the bug zapper and started gathering up placemats and silverware.
“Perfectly done,” Joseph complimented as she savored her first bite of pork. “What’s your secret?”
I poked at my own chop with a fork. “Choice cuts. Jerry butchers all his own meats and cuts these up specially for me. Buys from farmers around who field-raise their hogs. Which brings us around to business. What did Jerry have to tell you?”
Joseph sipped at her wine and dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a napkin. I was enjoying looking across at her. When on the job, she reminded me of a hunting bobcat: compact, quick, and constantly alert. But as she sat across from me, she was the refined city girl: elbows off the table, napkin in her lap, and cutting only one piece of her meat at a time. And she was damn pretty.
She returned the napkin to her lap. “That Jerry is a character! And treated me like we’d always known each other. Like you said, he seems to know everything that goes on about town. Nettie always used cash, both at the market, and everywhere else. Jerry said he’d never seen her use a credit card or check. Always cash. And if she was buying much, she often used hundred dollar bills. New bills.”
“He never cashed a check for her? The folks over at the bank said she didn’t have an account there and didn’t cash checks. The market’s pretty much the only other place around town a body can cash a check.”
“No. She always had the money she needed. And like I said, often laid out a fresh hundred dollar bill.”
“How about a will? Had Able drawn one up for her?”
“He wasn’t in. The receptionist thought he’d be in court most of the day, but was pretty sure he’d helped Nettie with one. She was nervous about looking through the files without his approval, even with the warrant. But she promised to have him call when he got back.”
“Doesn’t seem like that would have taken much of your afternoon. How did you fill the rest of your day?”
She smiled in a way that let me know she didn’t feel the need to account for her time. “First of all, you don’t have a brief conversation with Jerry Covell. But when I finished with the law office, I walked around your lovely little square seeing what other merchants could tell me about Nettie and her buying habits. Turns out Jerry was absolutely right. She always used cash. Usually smaller bills, but sometimes the hundreds he told me about. But the most interesting visits were with the clinic and her minister.”
“Bill Latimer?”
“Yes. Loved the guy. He seems the perfect small town pastor. Knew everyone in town and was especially fond of Nettie. He’d been called by the coroner and was pretty shaken—partly by her death, but especially by the fact that she’d been murdered.”
“Yeah. He’s quite a fixture here. I guess the Methodists try to move their pastors about every seven years or so. Bill refused to be reassigned. I think he’s no longer official Methodist, but nobody here cares. He preaches a good sermon, runs a good youth program, and takes good care of his parishioners. That’s about all anyone wants from their minister. What did he have to tell you?”
Joseph had taken another bite of meat and waited until she had completely finished with it and taken another sip of wine before answering. “Hundred dollar bills. Every first Sunday like clockwork, she left a new hundred in an envelope in the plate.”
I started with a question, but she cut me off. “. . . and get this! Your doctor’s receptionist—Waterman, if I remember right—said Nettie never applied for Medicare. The woman didn’t think she’d ever even applied for Social Security. She didn’t come in often, but when she did . . .” She waited expectantly for me to finish the thought.
“. . . she paid with new hundreds.”
“Bingo.”
She had answered the question I was about to ask. Whether she’d stopped by Waterman’s clinic. But she’d raised a lot more.
“If she’s not getting Social Security and not cashing other checks somewhere, where’s this cash coming from?”
Joseph had relaxed back into her chair. “What did you learn? Maybe she was selling timber.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that the Greaves could be cutting for Nettie and giving her cash. The mills all liked to deal in cash to keep their financial transactions as fuzzy as possible. But the Greaves hadn’t had a good thing to say about Nettie when we confronted them in Blackjack Holler and would have told us about selling for her if it had gotten us off their land.
“I don’t think so,” I guessed. “They’ve been cutting a lot of her trees. Probably thousands of dollars-worth. But I didn’t get the impression from our little conversation that it was for shares. And she seems to have had money a lot longer than they’ve been cutting her timber.”
“Maybe that woman with the emergency alert system will have some idea where she gets the cash. Other than Reverend Latimer, she seems to have been her most regular contact.”
“Brenda Castoe?”
Her answer was interrupted by strains of the Scott Joplin rag that had been used as the theme for the movie “The Sting.”
“Sorry,” she said, reaching over to her handbag that sat on one of the spare table chairs. “My phone. Maybe that’s our attorney.”
“Officer Joseph,” she said officially, then listened, nodding to let me know it was Able Pendergraft.
“Yes,” she said after a moment. “I would appreciate getting a copy. But for now, can you tell me who the beneficiary is and if there are any unusual assets?”
As she listened, a wry smile crept across her animated face as it returned again to bobcat.
“Thank you, Mr. Pendergraft,” she said. “Either Sheriff Tate or I will come by and get a copy. Probably tomorrow. But this has been extremely helpful.” She ended the call with a satisfied grin.
“Speak of the devil. Who do you think is beneficiary to Nettie’s estate, such as it is?”
My mind ran quickly through the names that had come up in the last twenty minutes. Pendergraft? Latimer? Workman? Greaves? I settled on the one who had given Nettie the most support.
“Reverend Latimer and the church,” I guessed.
“Merrrnk!” She imitated the sound of the buzzers that signal a wrong gameshow answer. “The other person who gave her regular attention. Brenda Castoe.”
I’d been using the phone conversation to catch up on my own chop and spent the next minute finishing a bite as Joseph had done, mulling over what I’d just heard.
“It will be interesting to find out if she’s aware of that bit of information,” I offered finally.
“That trailer can’t be worth much.”
“No. But three hundred acres of prime timber that’s about to be purchased through eminent domain is.”
“How much?”
“I’d guess the trees can be harvested for tens of thousands of dollars. And the land without them will be valued at three to five thousand an acre.”
“That little? Five thousand an acre? Whew! I need to invest in some property down here.”
“That’s what timberland is generally selling for. And this is going to be flooded, so won’t bring top dollar.”
“Yes. But that’s still hundreds of thousands.”
I nodded. “Enough to be a motive.”
“Before I drive down from Springfield tomorrow, I’ll stop and visit with Mrs. Castoe,” Joseph suggested.
“I’d like to be with you.”
“You may want to come up for another reason.” Joseph gave me her best bobcat grin. “The will says she does have a bank account. Well, a safe deposit box. But it’s in Springfield. I think you may want to be with me when I open it.”
9
I’ve been surprised in this new job at how often my sense of duty and my personal desires run headlong into each other. Like with the Greaves. Even before I saw how much timber they’d taken off Nettie’s land, my per
sonal desire was to go down to their place and whup up on the pair until one of them gave me a reason to shoot him in self-defense. But duty told me that as convinced as I was that Darnell was right, that they didn’t have an ounce of goodness between them, they deserved the protection of the law until proven guilty of one of their endless offenses. My assistant Marti would be disappointed in her protégé if I denied the worthless pair due process.
There’s a town up in the northwest corner of the state called Skidmore that’s become something of a legend in Missouri. Decades ago, back in the early 1980s, the local folk became so frightened and fed up with a town bully that the man was gunned down by snipers on Main Street while sitting in his truck. Twenty-five or thirty people saw the shooting, but no one ever talked. One of those unsolved crimes that people would just as soon remain unsolved. Well, that’s pretty close to how I felt about the Greaves. If someone happened to find that pair dead in their junk warehouse someday, I’d have a hard time investigating it very enthusiastically.
But on this particular night, admiring Inspector Mara Joseph as she sipped at her wine across the table, the personal desire that bumped up against good professional judgment was to suggest that she not drive back to Springfield, but stay with me and drive up in the morning. I’d suggest the spare room, of course. Then hope that some overpowering chemical attraction would bring one of us to the other’s door during the night and we’d end up awkwardly explaining to the other that it really wasn’t like us to mix pleasure with business. But it shouldn’t be like us, so I savored the thought for a few minutes, hoping she was having the same fantasy and might be less resolute, then said what duty required.
“Do you know any judges well enough to call one this late? It would be nice to get to that box as soon as the bank opens. If it gives us some clue as to where Nettie’s money came from, I’d like to have that bit of information in hand when we talk to Brenda Castoe.”
“There’s one I can call,” She showed just enough hesitation that I wondered if she’d been harboring the same fantasy. “I knew him in law school and we dated a few times. I’ll call him now and see if I can swing by and get a warrant when I get up there this evening.” She hesitated. “You know, if we want to start early, it would make sense for you to follow me up and bunk in my spare room tonight. It would cut an hour off your morning.”
Ah! The stars must be aligned! “Wouldn’t your neighbors talk?” I asked with a chuckle.
“My neighbors don’t pay much attention to me. And if they’re talking about me, they won’t be talking about someone else.” She fixed me with a gaze over the wine bottle. “And this is a business invitation, so they’ll have nothing to talk about.”
“Of course,” I said. “And one I’ll accept.” I stood from the table and began gathering up dishes. She picked up her own glass and plate and headed for the sink.
“Anyway, I ran into that deputy of yours while I was in town this afternoon. What’s her name? Grace? A very pretty woman, and she wasn’t wearing a ring. My guess is that you’re used to a little gossip.”
I was, and if Grace didn’t have a serious boyfriend, there would have been good reason for it. If I was ranking Joseph as a six on the Richter scale of good looks, Grace was about one point short of a full nine. She doesn’t wear the makeup that would make her look stunning and is so damn professional it forces me to be the same. But if she wanted to, and decided to get her hair out of that ponytail she sticks through the back of her ball cap, she’d rattle every window between here and St. Louis. None of that kept people around town from talking, especially over at A Cut Above on weekday mornings.
“Yeah. She’s a pretty one,” I confessed, “but is all business and has a guy who guards her like a sheepdog.”
“And you’ve chosen not to share this lovely little spot with anyone else?” She deposited the dishes at the sink and crossed to the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room, picking up a picture of me with Adeena. Yellowstone’s Morning Glory pool steamed in vivid turquoise and orange in the background. “And this is another lovely woman.”
“The closest I’ve come to having a housemate.”
“You still display the picture.”
“Not too many people come in here. It’s mainly there for me. Am I being interrogated?”
She replaced the picture and looked around the room for other clues of who she was working with and who she had just invited home. Another photo showed me with Adeena in front of the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat.
Joseph turned to me with a questioning smile. “She’s Arab?”
“Was,” I said simply. “Her family is Palestinian.” I watched Joseph for a reaction.
“She changed her faith?”
“No. She was killed a few years ago.”
“Oh. I’m so sorry,” she said, showing nothing but sincerity. “What happened to her, if I might pry a little?”
Mere thought of that afternoon quickened my pulse and tightened the muscles along my jaw. “One of the many Bagdad suicide bombings. This one at a hotel.”
“Hmm,” Joseph murmured. “Every person in the Middle East’s worst nightmare. Were you there at the same time?”
The memories that had tightened the jaw now forced beads of cold sweat onto my temples and upper lip. I wiped the side of my brow with a hand that shook more than I wanted her to see.
“We were in the city at the same time, but not at the same functions. She went to interpret for a visiting group at a hotel in the city. I took a party at the embassy inside the Green Zone I thought might win me a few political points. Worst decision of my life.” My voice showed the same tremor.
Joseph looked back at the photo. “Were you married?” she asked quietly.
I sucked in a deep breath. “About to be. We met while working in the embassy in Bahrain. Both doing interpreting work. She was from Chicago. Second generation American. And because of my time in Iraq and Afghanistan, I knew more about that part of the world than she did. She helped me polish my Arabic. I helped her get used to desert life and being more careful about where she went as a single woman.” The memories prompted a melancholy smile. “To begin with, I volunteered to be her male escort when she wanted to drive over into Dammam or Riyadh. Before we knew it, we were a serious couple.”
“How long ago did this happen?” She lifted the picture of the two of us in Muscat and studied it more carefully.
“Two years next month.”
“She is lovely,” she said softly, then turned with a questioning smile. “So you escaped back into the hills?”
“You don’t escape something like that. You just gradually learn to manage it.”
“And you don’t risk it again.” It was more a statement than a question.
I chuckled, surprised I’d let the conversation go this far, but realizing I wanted her to know. “Not in any serious way. Not yet, at least.”
She replaced the photo onto the side table. “That should make you the ideal house guest,” she quipped. “Why don’t you grab what you’ll need and I’ll call Judge Lindstrom. I’ll give you a key and an address. If he can draw something up for us tonight, I’ll stop and pick it up and meet you at my place.”
“I need to call Grace. Let her know I’ll be in Springfield for at least the morning.” I headed for the bedroom, knowing that after the discussion we’d just had, there was going to be no irresistible chemistry and no late-night door knocking.
10
Any remaining fantasies of a midnight rendezvous were jarred away by a sharp rap on the door and a “Tate, we’d better get moving if we’re going to be at the bank when it opens.” I glanced at a bedside clock and bailed from the bed. Seven-fifteen blinked back at me. I’m an early riser. Generally up and having my microwave bowl of oatmeal with brown sugar, blueberries, and shelled walnuts by a quarter of six. But I sometimes find that worrisome problems and being reminded of half-buried tragedies keep me awake late, then sap away the normal energy that rousts me out
early.
Joseph and I had talked over a glass of wine until 11:00, briefly about what we knew about Nettie’s murder, then at length about how I’d gotten into interpreting.
She was lounging in the corner of her sofa and, after a long, inquisitive look, asked, “After driving around your home turf, how in the world did you get into Middle Eastern languages, Tate? It’s sort of like leaving there to become a ballet dancer or something.”
I grinned at her over my glass. “And the reaction was about the same. But I told you about my reading obsession. I’d come across these foreign phrases in what I read and had to look them up. It was a bit like solving puzzles, with these strange symbols representing words and ideas. I felt like I had to understand them.”
“You couldn’t have picked many things more difficult—especially in the language category.”
A broader grin. “I could have gone into Asian languages. But I preferred learning a new alphabet rather than sets of symbols that represent words or phrases. I started with an on-line course in Arabic my senior year of high school, loved it, and used it to finagle my way into American University in DC. I think their admissions people said, ‘We’ve got to see this kid from the Ozarks who’s studying Arabic.’ I joined the Marines after graduation. Went through the defense language school in Monterey, and you know the rest of the story.”
“Except how you ended up in Bahrain.”
Not somewhere I’d wanted the evening to go. But we were relaxed, I wanted her to feel comfortable with me, and this was probably part of getting there. “I joined the State Department when discharged, manage to get assigned to the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, and was assigned to Language Services. My first assignment was the Embassy in Oman. Then I was moved to Bahrain and ran into this beautiful Arab-American from Chicago. I wouldn’t say it was love at first sight, but for me, it was love during the first month. It took her a little longer.”
She waited silently, indicating she wanted to hear the explanation.
