Hard Row dk-13 Page 17
“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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MARGARET MARON
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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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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“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-