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  “Another cute thing,” Dwight said as we pulled out

  of the parking lot behind the courthouse. “A lot of

  Alzheimer’s patients will try to get away, but the nurs-

  ing home has said all along that Mitchiner wasn’t one to

  wander off. For some reason the place reminded him of

  spending the summers at his grandparents’ house with a

  bunch of cousins, so he was pretty content there.”

  “So content that they didn’t put an electronic brace-

  let on him?”

  “Exactly. Another reason that the family’s claiming

  negligence. You do know that the town’s speed limit is

  thirty-five, don’t you?”

  I braked for a red light and adjusted his mirrors while

  I waited for the green. “When’s the last time a Dobbs

  police officer stopped a sheriff ’s deputy for speeding?”

  “That’s because we don’t speed unless we’ve got a

  blue light flashing.”

  “Hmmm,” I said, and reached as if to turn his on.

  He snorted and batted my hand away. “You try that

  and I’ll write you up myself.”

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  “Any theories as to how and why he wound up in the

  creek? Who profits?”

  “Nobody. That’s the hell of it. He was there on

  Medicaid. No property. No bank account. His nearest

  relatives are the daughter who’s suing and a sixteen-

  year-old grandson and everybody says they were both

  devoted to the old man. One or the other was there

  almost every day for the last two years, ever since she

  had to put him there because they couldn’t handle him

  at home anymore what with her working and the kid in

  school. Wasn’t like the Parsons woman.”

  “That the one down in Makely?”

  “Yeah. She had children and grandchildren, too, but

  when she went missing, none of them noticed till the

  nursing home told them. They say nobody from the

  family had come to visit her in nearly a year.”

  “Didn’t stop them from trying to get damages for

  mental anguish, though, did it?” I said, recalling some

  of the details.

  He laughed and relaxed a little as I merged onto the

  interstate where it’s legal to go seventy and troopers

  usually turn a blind eye to seventy-five.

  “What about Buck Harris’s place?” I asked. “Anything

  turn up there?”

  “Oh yes,” he said, his jaw tightening. “He was butch-

  ered in one of the sheds back of the house.”

  Without going into too many of the grisly details, he

  hit the high spots of what they had found—a locked

  chain, the fact that Harris had been naked and probably

  conscious when the first axe blow fell, how the killer

  must have used the trunk of Harris’s car to strew the

  body parts along Ward Dairy Road.

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  I mulled over the chronology and tried not to visu-

  alize what he had described. “Nobody saw him after

  that Sunday, the divorce was final on Monday, his legs

  weren’t found till Friday and the ME’s setting the time

  of death as when?”

  “Originally between Saturday and Thursday, but

  that’s been narrowed down to Sunday as the earliest

  possible day.”

  “Because Flame talked to him then?”

  “And because his farm manager saw him on Sunday

  around noon. If the body was in that unheated shed

  from the time of death till the night they were found,

  then Sunday’s more likely. If somebody held him pris-

  oner for a few days first though, it could be as late as

  Thursday. Denning’s taking extra pains with the insect

  evidence in the blood.”

  Insect evidence?

  Read maggots.

  “Is that going to be much use? Cold as it was all that

  week, would there have been blowflies?”

  “Remember the foxes?”

  I smiled and lifted his hand to my lips. Of course I

  remembered.

  It had been a chilly Sunday morning back in early

  January. The temperature could not have been much

  over freezing, but the sun was shining and when he asked

  if I’d like to take a walk, I had immediately reached for

  a scarf and jacket. Hand in hand, we had rambled down

  along the far side of the pond, going nowhere and in no

  hurry to get there, enjoying the morning and sharing a

  contentment that had needed few words. On the right

  side of the rutted lane lay the lake-size expanse of dark

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  water; on the left, a tangle of bushes, trash trees, and

  vines edged a field that had lain fallow since early sum-

  mer. Some farmers hate to see messy underbrush and

  are out with weed killers at the first hint of unwanted

  woody plants, but we’ve always left wide swaths for the

  birds and small mammals that share the farm with us.

  That morning, sparrows and thrashers fluttered in

  and out of the hedgerow ahead of us as we approached

  and our footsteps flushed huge grasshoppers that had

  emerged from their winter hiding to bask in the warm

  sun. At a break in the bushes, we paused to look out

  over the field and saw movement in the dried weeds

  less than fifty feet away. A warning squeeze of his hand

  made me keep still. At first I couldn’t make out if they

  were dogs or rabbits or—

  “Foxes!” Dwight said in a half-whisper.

  A pair of little gray foxes were jumping and pounc-

  ing. With the wind blowing in our direction, they had

  not caught our scent and seemed not to have heard our

  low voices.

  “What are they after?” I asked, standing on tiptoes to

  see. “Field mice?”

  At that instant, a big grasshopper flew off from a tuft

  of broomstraw and one of the foxes leaped to catch it

  in mid-flight.

  Entranced, we stood motionless and watched them

  hunt and catch more of the hapless insects until they

  spooked a cottontail that sprang straight up in the air and

  lit off toward the woods with both foxes close behind.

  So no, not all insects died in winter.

  “There are always blowflies in barns and sheds,”

  Dwight reminded me. “They may hunker down when

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  the mercury drops, but anything above thirty-five

  and they’re right back out, especially if there’s blood

  around.”

  We rode in silence for a few minutes. I was carefully

  keeping under the speed limit. With all he’d had to cope

  with today, I didn’t need to add any more stress. So

  what if we missed the opening face-off?

  “If it turns out Harris died on Sunday, what’s this

  going to do to your ED case?” he asked.

  “Not my problem. If it can be proved that he died

  before I signed the divorce judgment, then that judg-

  ment’s vacated. If he died afterwards, then it proceeds

  unless Mrs. Harris dismisses her claim.”

  “And if nobody can agree on a time of death?”

  “Then
Reid and Pete get to argue it out. They or the

  beneficiaries under Harris’s will. With a little bit of luck,

  some other judge will get to decide on time of death.” I

  thought about Flame Smith, who had clearly planned on

  becoming the second Mrs. Harris. “I wonder if he made

  a will after the separation? Want me to ask Reid?”

  “Better let me,” Dwight said. “Could be the motive

  for his death.”

  “I rather doubt if Flame Smith swung that axe,” I

  said.

  “You think? I long ago quit saying what a woman will

  or won’t do.”

  After such a harrowing day, I was glad to see Dwight

  get caught up in the hockey game. We ordered ham-

  burgers and beers that were delivered to our seats and

  found we had only missed the first few scoreless min-

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  utes. Soon we were roaring and shouting with the rest

  of the fans as the lead seesawed back and forth. Each

  time one of our players was sent to the penalty box, the

  clock ticked off the seconds with a maddening slowness

  that was just the opposite of the way time whizzed by

  if it was our chance for a power play. Near the end, the

  Canes pulled ahead 3 to 2 and when Brind’Amour iced

  the cake with a slap shot that zoomed past their goalie,

  Dwight swept me up and spun me around in an exuber-

  ant bear hug.

  Canes 4 to 2.

  Yes!

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  C H A P T E R

  20

  Those farmers who are generally dissatisfied with their con-

  dition and imagine that they may be greatly benefitted by a

  change of place, will find, in the majority of cases, that the

  fault is more in themselves than in their surroundings.

  —Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

  Dwight Bryant

  Tuesday Morning, March 7

  % The clouds that had intermittently obscured the

  moon on the drive home last night had thickened

  in the early morning hours and now a heavy rain beat

  against the cab of the truck as Dwight and Deborah

  waited with Cal at the end of their long driveway for his

  schoolbus to arrive.

  Normally, thought Dwight, the three of them would

  be laughing and chattering about last night’s game, but

  his attempt to get Cal to speak of it earlier went no-

  where. “The Canes won, you know.”

  “I didn’t watch it,” Cal had said, concentrating on

  his cereal.

  Yes, they had watched the beginning of the game, he

  said, but then it was his bedtime. Yes, it was good the

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  MARGARET MARON

  Canes had won. Yes, he’d had a good time with Jessie

  and Emma. When pushed for details, he allowed as how

  they had taken him over to Jessie’s house for a couple

  of hours to ride horses across the farm. These boots

  that he was wearing today? “Jess said I could have them

  since they don’t fit anybody else right now.”

  “That was nice of her,” Dwight said heartily.

  Cal shrugged. “I have to give them back when they

  get too tight, so that maybe Bert can wear them.”

  He wasn’t openly sulking, and he wasn’t rude. He did

  and said nothing that Dwight could use as a launching

  pad for a lecture on attitude.

  Sitting between them while the rain streamed down

  and fogged the truck windows, Deborah was pleasant

  and matter-of-fact. Had he not known her so intimately,

  he could almost swear that it was a perfectly ordinary

  morning. He did know her though, and he sensed her

  conscious determination to keep the situation from be-

  coming confrontational.

  He also sensed the relief that radiated from both of

  his passengers when they spotted the big yellow bus

  lumbering down the road. Cal immediately pulled on

  the door handle.

  Although his hooded jacket was water-repellent,

  Dwight said, “Wait till she stops or you’ll get soaked,”

  but his son was out the truck so quickly that he had to

  wait in the downpour for a moment before the driver

  could get the door open.

  Dwight sighed as the bus pulled off and he gave a

  rueful smile to Deborah, who had not moved away even

  though the other third of the truck’s bench seat was

  now empty. “Sorry about that.”

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  HARD ROW

  She laid a hand on his thigh and smiled back. A genu-

  ine smile this time. “Don’t be. If he wasn’t mad because

  I made him miss the game, I’d be worried. I like it that

  he’s feeling secure enough to show a little temper.”

  “You’re still not going to tell me what it was all

  about?”

  “One of these years, maybe. Not now though.”

  “All the same,” he said as he pulled onto the road and

  headed the truck toward Dobbs, “I think he and I are

  due to have a little talk this afternoon.”

  She considered the ramifications for a moment, then

  said, “That might not be a bad idea. It won’t hurt for

  him to hear again from you that he’s supposed to listen

  to me when you’re not around so that he’ll know we’re

  both on the same page, but please make it clear that you

  don’t know any details and that you’re not asking for any,

  okay?”

  “Gotcha.”

  She sighed and leaned her head against his shoul-

  der. “Poor kid. I think it’s really starting to sink in that

  Jonna’s gone forever and he’s stuck here with us.”

  “That still doesn’t mean—”

  “No,” she agreed before he could finish the thought.

  “But it does mean I’m not going to take it too person-

  ally and you shouldn’t either. Mother used to tease me

  about the time I stomped my foot and yelled that I was

  purply mad with her.”

  “Purply mad?”

  “I knew purple, I didn’t know perfect. The point is, she

  was my mother. Not my stepmother, yet I absolutely hated

  her at that moment. Nothing we can say or do changes the

  fact that Jonna’s dead. That’s the cold hard reality Cal has

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  to deal with, but it’s something he’s going to have to work

  through on his own. All we can do is give him love and

  security and let him know what the rules are.”

  Her face was turned up to his and he bent his head to

  kiss her. “Anybody ever tell you you ought to run for

  judge?”

  When they got to the courthouse, it was still pour-

  ing, so he dropped her at the covered doorway to the

  Sheriff ’s Department and she waited while he parked

  and made his way back with a large umbrella. Despite

  the rawness of the day, this felt to him like a spring rain,

  not a winter one.

  “I know Cletus and Mr. Kezzie have a garden big

  enough to feed everybody,” he said happily, “but don’t

  we want a few tomato plants of our own? And maybe

  some peppers? Oh, and three or four hills of okra,

  too?”

/>   She shook her head in mock dismay. “Are tomatoes

  the camel’s nose under the tent? Am I going to come

  home and find the south forty planted in kitchen veg-

  etables? I’m warning you right now, Major Bryant. You

  can plant anything you want, but I don’t freeze and I

  certainly don’t can.”

  Because it was early for her, they walked down to the

  break room and as they emerged with paper cups of

  steaming coffee, they met a damp Reid Stephenson.

  “Got an extra one of those?” he asked.

  “You’re out early,” Deborah said.

  “I’ve had Flame Smith on my tail since last night.

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  HARD ROW

  What about it, Dwight? When did he die? Before the

  divorce or after?”

  “Now that I can’t tell you for sure. We may not ever

  know.”

  “Guess I’d better go talk to Pete Taylor,” he said.

  “Was there a will?” Deborah asked.

  Dwight frowned at her and she grinned unrepen-

  tantly. “It’s going to be a matter of public record sooner

  or later. So cui bono, Reid? Or weren’t you the one who

  drew it up?”

  “Oh, I did one. It was about a week after he initi-

  ated divorce proceedings over here. Both the Harrises

  decided to hire personal attorneys instead of using the

  New Bern firm that handles their combined business

  interests.”

  “Does Flame inherit anything?”

  “Goodbye, Deborah,” Dwight said, sounding out

  every syllable of her name.

  She laughed and turned to go. “See you for lunch?”

  “Probably not.” He motioned for Reid to follow him

  into his office.

  “I really ought not to tell you anything till I put the

  will in for probate,” the younger man said.

  Dwight took his seat behind the desk and asked,

  “Who’s his executor?”

  “His daughter up in New York.” Reid pulled up a

  chair and set his coffee on the edge of the desk. “She

  was pretty upset when I called her yesterday, but she

  called back this morning and she’s flying in this after-

  noon.”

  “Whether or not the divorce was final won’t affect

  the terms of the will, will it?”

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  MARGARET MARON

  “Actually, it probably will. From the documents he

  gave me—and you might want to check with their com-

  pany attorneys—their LLC was set for shared ownership

  with rights of survival.”

  “If one of them dies, the other gets full ownership?”

  “That’s my understanding. I’m sure Mrs. Harris’s at-