Rituals of the Season Page 10

  “Y’all are living together?”

  “It started out with fishing.” She capped her lipstick and slipped the case back into her black velvet clutch. “I let him put his boat in the water at my landing this summer and one thing sorta led to another. I’m still not completely sure that he’s not in it for the bass.”

  “Oh, right,” I said.

  She shook her head in bemusement. “I never intended to tie up with somebody on the job.”

  “Me either.”

  “Oh well, those roads to hell—they do keep getting themselves paved, don’t they?” she said, and we smiled at each other in the mirror.

  Tonight, Jerry’s red tablecloths had been replaced by snowy white ones with alternating red and green napkins. The centerpieces were pots of red poinsettias wrapped in green foil.

  Although Tracy’s death was again the main topic of conversation around the room, for most of them it was more a matter of professional interest than a sense of personal loss. Yes, Tracy had conferred with many of these officers about various cases under investigation, but that was business. She had not socialized with them.

  Among the ones who did have a personal connection were Mike Castleman and Don Whitley, both white, and Eddie Lloyd, black, the three deputies who worked drug interdiction. According to Dwight, out on the interstate, they were like bird dogs in a covey of bobwhites, especially Castleman. “Going sixty-five miles an hour, he can look at two cars you’d swear were identical and point out the one that’s carrying drugs while the other one’s clean as a whistle.”

  Indeed, he’d even been in my court before lunch on Friday to testify at a probable cause hearing for a couple of Haitian mules who were being bound over for trial in superior court. Coincidentally, he was on duty Friday evening and was one of the first responding officers, but when he repeated the story again for the group, it was Mei’s death that seemed to bother him more.

  “When we talked about my testimony that morning, Ms. Johnson did say she was taking off early, but you never expect it to be somebody you know,” he said. “But the baby. God! I didn’t even see her at first. You automatically go for the driver or a front-seat passenger. Check for vitals, you know? When they told me there was a baby in the backseat—” He shook his head and took a deep breath. “Man, all I could think about was Heidi.”

  Heidi? I raised my eyebrows at Dwight.

  “His daughter,” Dwight murmured in my ear. “Grown now, but she hung the moon for him.”

  I knew he was divorced and I had him pegged more for a good-timing lover than a doting daddy. Early forties with thick curly black hair and dark flashing eyes, Castleman had even cast one of those eyes my way back while I was still in private practice and he testified against one of my clients, but I was involved with someone else at the time and wasn’t interested.

  He was personable and funny as a rule, but there was nothing funny about his story of coming up on Tracy’s wrecked car. Eddie Lloyd had been off duty that night and listened without his usual hip-hop flippancy. When standing on a street corner in the seedier parts of Makely or Widdington, Lloyd could look like a strung-out user in bad need of a hit. Tonight he was sharp in a black turtleneck and dark gray jacket.

  Don Whitley sat off at the end of the table and he didn’t have much to say either.

  “That’s right,” Dwight said to Don. “You and Tracy worked pretty closely on that carjacking case, back in the spring, didn’t you?”

  Whitley nodded sadly. “She was one smart lady.”

  The case had come to trial last month, and although I hadn’t followed it closely, I knew that Tracy had gotten stiff sentences for all the perps involved, thanks to the meticulous case Whitley had built for her. He was mid-thirties and nowhere near as flashy as Castleman or Lloyd. In fact, I barely knew him except by sight, but Dwight had given him a commendation for that piece of work, and whenever he talked about the productive members of the department, Whitley, Lloyd, and Castleman were always mentioned. Between them, they were responsible for confiscating close to a hundred thousand dollars in drug money last year, which was partly why the department got a new crime scene van and was able to provide Kevlar vests for everyone.

  Lloyd and Castleman seemed stone-cold sober but Whitley had clearly had more than one. He wasn’t drunk, but he didn’t seem in control of his emotions either. “She’s the reason I’m going for my associate degree,” he said mournfully. “She encouraged me to do it.”

  We were joined by Deputy Mayleen Richards, recently promoted to detective and one of those investigating Tracy’s death. She’s four or five years younger, a few inches taller, and always reminds me of a half-grown filly that still has moments of coltish, lurching awkwardness. For some reason, she often gets tongue-tied around me, and tonight was worse than usual. With shoulder-length hair the color of cinnamon and thick freckles, she turned brick red and only briefly met my eyes when she shook my hand and wished us happiness. It was with visible relief that she turned to Castleman and asked if he’d noticed a Palm Pilot in Tracy’s car. “We know she owned one, but we haven’t been able to locate it.”

  Castleman shook his head. “The window was open on the passenger side. Maybe it bounced out and one of the gawkers grabbed it.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” Richards sighed and glanced up at Dwight. “We have a list of the bystanders, though, and we’ll check it out. Maybe we’ll find an honest person who’ll give it back.”

  I’ve never used one of those electronic schedulers, but I remembered Tracy singing their praises when she first got hers.

  “I can see why you’d want it,” I said. “She used it for everything: address book, calendar, notes. She told me she’d thrown her old Rolodex in the trash. Everything was computerized.”

  Since Dwight was distracted by something another deputy was telling him, I sneaked in a question of my own. “Do you know who she was seeing?”

  “Not yet. Didn’t she tell you?”

  “Sorry. Maybe he’s just a figment of our imagination.”

  “Figments don’t get you pregnant,” Richards blurted just as Dwight turned back to us. She flushed an even brighter red and looked at him like a guilty kid with her hand in the cookie jar. “Oh gosh! That was really dumb of me.”

  “Yes, it was,” said Dwight, and his face was as stern as I’d ever seen it. He looked around the small circle of officers, fixing each of them with his eyes. “This goes no further. Understood? If I hear even a whisper of this before we get the ME’s official findings, I’ll put every one of you on report. Is that clear?”

  There were murmurs of “Yessir” and uncomfortable glances towards Richards, who stood there looking as if she could burst into tears.

  Stunned as I was by hearing that Tracy had been pregnant, I nevertheless put my hand on Dwight’s arm. “You’d put me on report, too?”

  He relaxed enough to grin down at me. “Damn straight.”

  I made a face and that broke the tension. Except for Richards, the others laughed, and talk moved on to a series of break-ins in the Cotton Grove area that had them baffled.

  Since Thanksgiving, there had been a systematic looting of houses around Cotton Grove and nobody had a clue who was doing it. In each incident, the owners had been gone for at least three or four days, either on vacation or traveling for business or pleasure during this holiday season. All the houses were without burglar alarms, in middle-class neighborhoods, and entry was always by breaking through a rear door or window. The only items taken were money, jewelry, and small electronics that were easily fenced. From their talk, I gathered that there were no fingerprints and nothing to indicate whether it was the work of a single person or a whole gang. The biggest puzzle was trying to figure out how the perps knew which houses would be empty, especially since all the victims had taken sensible precautions. They had stopped delivery of mail and newspapers, they had used timers to turn lamps on and off at normal hours, they had even alerted neighbors to keep an eye out. Unfortuna
tely, nothing seemed to be working.

  “What about the post office?” Mike Castleman asked. “Loose lips? The mail carrier?”

  “We’re talking two separate postal zones,” said Raeford McLamb, the black deputy in charge of the investigation.

  “Newspapers?”

  “Three papers and at least four or five carriers.”

  Before others could offer suggestions, Bo Poole asked us to be seated so the waiters could take our orders. I wound up between Bo and Terry with Dwight across the table from us, next to K.C.

  I chose broiled catfish and Dwight ordered fried oysters, then Terry caught us up on news of Stanton. Sounded as if his son was breaking hearts rather than breaking a sweat over his grades, “But hell, I never averaged better than a low B or a high C myself, so I can’t cuss at him too bad. Besides, he found my old grade cards up in the attic and every time I say something about whether or not he’s hitting the books hard enough, he reminds me of that D in calculus.”

  Dwight laughed and turned to answer a question Bo had about work, so I quickly asked Terry if he knew anything about Martha Hurst. He gave me a puzzled look. “Naw, like I told Dwight just now, when she called me this week, I had to go look up our records.”

  Now it was my turn to look puzzled. “Martha Hurst called you?”

  “No, Tracy Johnson. Didn’t you hear me tell Dwight?”

  “Tell Dwight what?”

  “Aw, no, that’s right. That must’ve been when you and K.C. went to powder y’all’s noses. Tracy called me about some other stuff this week, and before we hung up, she asked me, same as you, if I worked the Roy Hurst homicide.”

  “Did you?”

  He shook his head. “I might’ve interviewed some of the witnesses, but the only reason I remembered the case even after I looked it up is because of how that woman took her bat to his balls. Scotty Underwood was our point man on that one. I don’t know if Tracy ever got in touch with him or not.”

  It was a good thing we’d driven over to Jerry’s in Dwight’s truck. When all the after-dinner toasts to wish us a long and happy marriage were finished, Jack Jamison and Raeford McLamb carried in the gift everyone had chipped in on. Wrapped in a green plastic tarp and tied with a huge red satin ribbon, it was clearly heavy and quite large—six feet long, eighteen inches wide, and a couple of feet tall—and it clanked when they set it down.

  They made Dwight and me unwrap it right there and then, and I was delighted to see it was a bench swing, complete with long chains and sturdy hooks.

  Beaming, Bo explained to those unfamiliar with the farm that there were two large trees on the bank of the pond below the house. “If they hang it there, then next summer they can sit and swing and fish from the shade.”

  “Or,” said K.C. with a mischievous smile, “they could pad it with a few cushions and forget about fish.”

  I kept my mouth shut and let Dwight respond to that one.

  CHAPTER 12

  Say all that is necessary, in plain, distinct language, and say no more. State, in forcible words, every point that it is desirable for your correspondent to be made acquainted with, that your designs and prospects upon the subject may be perfectly well understood.

  Florence Hartley, The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, 1873

  SUNDAY NIGHT, DECEMBER 12

  On the drive home that night, their new swing lashed down in the back of his truck, Dwight said, “I really appreciate you not asking any questions back there about Tracy being pregnant.”

  “Nice try,” Deborah told him, “but if you’re hoping to guilt me into not asking questions now that we’re alone, that mule won’t pull.”

  He glanced across at her with an amused shake of his head. “You want to tell me again how we need to stay out of each other’s business?”

  “C’mon, Dwight, be fair. We all knew Tracy. You can’t expect me to pretend I didn’t hear what Mayleen Richards said.”

  “Yeah, well, first thing tomorrow morning, Richards and me, we’re gonna have a little come-to-Jesus talk,” he said grimly.

  She laid a placating hand on his thigh. “Don’t be too rough on her, okay? It was partly my fault. I mean, you’re her boss and I’m your—your—”

  “Yes, you are,” he said as she hesitated, searching for the right term.

  She smiled in the glow of the dash lights. “Yes, I are what?”

  “Mine,” he said simply.

  It was still a thing of wonder that she was there beside him, that in ten days she was actually going to stand up in church before God and the world—not to mention her whole family—and promise to be with him forever. He had loved her and wanted her for more than half his lifetime and now here she was. In his life. In his truck. In his bed. As the warmth of her hand passed through the fabric of his trousers, he felt himself begin to harden. To neutralize the moment, he told her about Tracy’s autopsy.

  “All the same,” he said, “Richards knows better than to give out information like that in an ongoing investigation, I don’t care who’s doing the asking. This is precisely why we don’t push the ME’s office to give us the written report right away.”

  Next morning, Dwight found himself ramming home those same facts to Deputy Mayleen Richards, who stood before him contrite, apprehensive, and so humiliated that her face was a dull brick red from the hairline of her forehead all the way down her neck to her collar as he blasted her for last night’s indiscretion. “You know the first forty-eight hours are the most critical, and that the longer we can truthfully say we don’t have an official cause of death or any other findings, the better for developing leads. When it gets out that she was pregnant—and yeah, dammit, thanks to you, it’s probably all over the whole county by now—you think any man’s going to admit he even had a cup of coffee with her?”

  “Sir, I don’t think any of our people will talk,” she said tremulously.

  “You think not, huh? And what about their spouses or dates? You trusting enough to think they’re going to sit on something this juicy?”

  “I— No, sir.”

  Her eyes met his steadily. He’d give her points for that. And she didn’t make excuses or cry. More points.

  “Okay, Richards. That’s it. Now get over to her computer and get me some names before the innards of that machine go missing, too.”

  Her eyes widened. “I’m still on the case? You’re not going to bust me back to uniform?”

  “If I was going to bust you over one screwup, you’d be sitting in a patrol car doing speed checks out on the bypass right now,” he told her. “Just don’t expect me to go this easy if you mess up again.”

  “No, sir.”

  Out in the squad room, Jack Jamison gave her a sympathetic look. “You okay?”

  Her smile was radiant. “I’m fine.”

  Raeford McLamb glanced up from his computer screen where he was checking pawnshop records for any of the items stolen in the past week’s break-ins and grinned at Jamison. “Getting married must be making him soft.”

  “Oh, he took me to the woodshed, all right,” Richards assured them, “but he didn’t fire me.” She picked up a notepad from her desk and tucked it in the pocket of her black wool jacket. She never carried a purse if she could help it and all her jackets and slacks had as many pockets as a man’s suit. “Anybody wants me, I’ll be in the DA’s office.”

  “While you’re there, ask them for her cell phone number,” said Jamison, turning back to the pile of paper in the box on his desk. “That wasn’t in the car either and I bet you a dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts she had her boyfriend on speed dial. Oh, wait a minute. Never mind. Here’s her bill with the itemized calls.”

  He pulled up a reverse directory on his computer screen and keyed in the first number. It was immediately identified as a daycare facility here in Dobbs.

  Across the hall, Mike Castleman, with his hand over the mouthpiece of his phone, rolled his chair over to the doorway and said, “Y’all seen Whitley this morning? DA’s office is on the
phone. He’s supposed to testify on Thursday, but he hasn’t shown up for the briefing and Woodall’s pissed.”

  When the others shook their heads, he spoke into the mouthpiece: “Sorry, ma’am, but nobody’s seen him today. Did you try his pager? . . . Aw, now, Miss Helen, I wasn’t implying you’re dumb. No, ma’am. Honest. I was just trying to be helpful.”

  He was still using all his considerable charm to placate Woodall’s testy secretary as Richards headed upstairs to the DA’s offices on the far side of the courthouse.

  Minutes later, Dwight Bryant emerged from his office and nodded approvingly as Jamison explained that he was going down the list of the most frequently called numbers on Tracy Johnson’s phone bill and trying to put a name to each of them.

  “I don’t have this month’s bill, but I’ll put in a request for it.”

  “Where’s Jones?” Dwight asked. Deputy Silas Lee Jones was old and lazy and had never been worth a damn so far as he’d ever heard, but the man would do to check out bystanders at the crash site and see if anyone had picked up Tracy’s Palm Pilot.

  “Must be with Whitley,” Raeford McLamb said, cracking wise. “He’s missing, too.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Julie Walsh as she watched Mayleen Richards’s fingers flash across the keys of Tracy’s computer. “Whenever she had to give me her password, she’d change it as soon as she got back to the office.”

  “She told you her passwords?”

  “Sure. She’d call and have me pull up a file or something, but the next time, it’d be a different code.”

  “Like what?” asked Richards, knowing that most people don’t bother to get too complicated.

  “It was all to do with her daughter and numbers. Last time, I think it was M-E-I-six-eight-ten. Another time, it was one-two-three-four-M-E-I.”

  A deceptively fragile-looking young white woman, Julie Walsh was eager to help, but she had not worked there long. She had passed the bar exam last spring and only joined the DA’s staff the past summer. “Tracy sort of mentored me here, but we weren’t real close. I mean, we ate lunch together if we were both here at the courthouse, but she was older and what with the baby and all . . .”