Rituals of the Season Read online

  “If you’re still in the courthouse around noon, I’ll take you to lunch,” I offered.

  I’d already hung up before I remembered Deenie Gates. It probably wouldn’t help their cause to track her down, but then again, she might remember others with a better reason to kill her ex-boyfriend.

  I showered and dried my hair, all the time wondering why Brix Junior had scribbled her name when there was nothing in his notes about her.

  Eight-fifteen. Surely he wouldn’t be on the golf course this early?

  “Was just leaving for breakfast at the clubhouse,” he told me when he answered the phone. “Baked cheese grits and the best link sausage I’ve had since your mama died.”

  The healthy bowl of cereal I was holding turned to sawdust in my mouth as I remembered the sausage Mother and Maidie used to make after hog-killing every winter. They would grind together just the right balance of fat and lean, season it with fresh sage, flecks of red pepper, salt and black pepper, mix it by hand in a large dishpan, then stuff it into the well-cleaned intestines.

  Daddy and the boys continue to raise hogs for our own tables, but now those hogs are slaughtered at a nearby abattoir, and come back from the butcher as neatly packaged hams and chops and roasts, ready for the freezer. Maidie still gets fifty pounds of ground pork that she seasons herself. She takes down the old cast-iron sausage stuffer and makes long ropes of link sausage with commercial casings.

  It tastes better than anything I can buy and I’m always grateful that she shares, yet it lacks something. Mother’s strong and capable hands maybe? She died the summer I was eighteen, but as my wedding day gets closer and closer, I keep thinking of her. She had talked about my eventual marriage someday, had even said, “I wonder if you’ve met him yet?”

  I wish she could have known it was Dwight.

  “You want to speak to Jane?” Brix Junior said, bringing me back to the moment.

  “No, I just had a quick question about your Martha Hurst file.”

  I heard his impatient huff, but I pressed on and asked him about the scrap of paper with Deenie Gates’s name on it.

  “Sorry. I have no idea who she is.”

  “Amy says she was hooked up with Roy Hurst at the time. That she was pregnant by him.”

  “Oh, yes . . . I do sort of remember now. They had a fight, right? ’Cause he’d moved on to somebody else?”

  “Knocked out a couple of teeth is what Amy said.”

  “These people,” Brix said, distaste in every syllable. “Not much better than cats in heat. I cannot tell you how glad I am to be through with them. Best I recall, though, she did have an alibi for the killing. Can’t think what it was right now, but I’m pretty sure it was good or I’d’ve had her on the stand to cast doubt on Martha Hurst being the only one with a quick temper.”

  I thought of the drab, defeated-looking woman in my courtroom back in the summer. No quick temper there and hard to imagine that there’d ever been a time she stood up for herself. The only reason she was in court was because the State of North Carolina no longer allows the complainant in a domestic brawl to “take up the charges.” If the cops get called in to break it up, somebody’s going to come to court and answer for the disturbance. If I was remembering the right person, Deenie Gates would have dropped the charges if she could’ve because she was sure the man hadn’t meant to hurt her, and besides, he had promised her he wouldn’t ever hit her again. I forget what I’d decided. I’m sure I gave him some sort of penalty, but whether jail time had been involved, I couldn’t say.

  I thanked Brix for his time and he said he’d see me Wednesday.

  Wednesday.

  One week.

  I dumped my cereal in the compost bin and looked over my to-do list. Everything that could be done ahead of time was already done except for the cake topper, which was now in Kate’s clever hands.

  Not knowing how long we’d stay at Dwight’s apartment, I packed a case of lingerie and cosmetics, put a couple of extra outfits in a garment bag, and carried everything out to the car, including the files Kayra and Nolan had borrowed from Ellis Glover. As I left, I turned down the thermostat. No point paying for heat when the house would be empty.

  Kayra and Nolan eased in and sat down at the back of my courtroom as I finished ruling on the last case of the morning, a judgment in a case of non-support—and good luck to the poor mother in finding the father, who had left the state without giving anyone a forwarding address. Surprise, surprise.

  I recessed and motioned them back to chambers while I washed my hands and exchanged my robe for a deep blue wool blazer that I’d bought because it brought out the blue of my eyes. Forget-me-Knott blue, my mother used to say, because all of Daddy’s children and most of his grandchildren have his eyes. Mother’s were blue, too, but with a slight tinge of hazel, while Daddy’s are the clear bright blue of a late summer sky just after sunset.

  I usually grab lunch at a soup and sandwich place across the street. Today was so beautiful, though, that we walked three blocks to a new café that had recently opened. Taos Tacos is the first upscale Tex-Mex restaurant in Dobbs, and to help keep it in business, I try to go there at least twice a week. Kayra said she’d split a burrito sampler plate with me, and Nolan opted for the chicken fajitas.

  The kids were in a glum mood. Last night, Rob had helped them get through the files I’d brought back to Ellis this morning. Today, they had skimmed through the trial transcript itself without finding any reversible errors.

  “It doesn’t seem real that she could’ve left a dead man on the floor of her trailer and then waltzed off to the beach for a week,” said Nolan.

  “Just because it’s not something you could do doesn’t mean she couldn’t,” Kayra told him.

  I was learning that Kayra was the more cynical of the two and that she was only going through the motions because Nolan was such a believer. Or was it that she cared for him more than she might like to admit?

  “But what about those two witnesses that Mr. Stephenson called to the stand?” he argued. “They said that she seemed perfectly normal the whole time she was there and was really surprised when the police showed up at their door to tell her about Roy Hurst. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

  “Tells me some people are good liars?”

  I took a sip of my iced tea—in the South, iced tea is like champagne: goes with any kind of food any time of the year—and told them about Deenie Gates. “My cousin thinks he remembers that she had a solid alibi for that time period, but maybe she could come up with other suspects. Too bad you can’t find someone who actually saw him alive after Sunday morning.”

  “But that couldn’t be, could it?” asked Nolan. “That’s when he was dead.”

  “No,” I corrected. “According to the medical examiner’s report, his death occurred sometime between Saturday afternoon and Tuesday. Unless the body’s still warm, MEs usually begin by asking when the decedent was last seen alive. After that, the deterioration of the body helps calculate what was the latest he could have been killed.”

  “So technically, he could have been killed as late as Tuesday?”

  “Exactly. Not to get gross while we’re eating shredded meat, but you’re familiar with dating time of death by maggot growth?”

  “Sure,” Kayra said cheerfully. “Isn’t there a formula for calculating the blowfly’s larval stages depending on the temperature?”

  I nodded, and Nolan stopped loading his tortilla with the strips of pale white chicken. “Could we please change the subject?”

  “Hey, remember the Gell case?” Kayra said excitedly. “The medical examiner wasn’t told that there were witnesses who swore they’d seen the victim alive at a time when Gell was in jail.”

  Alan Gell had been a big story here in North Carolina when his murder conviction was overturned after he’d spent four years on death row. The prosecution said it had relied on SBI statements to build its case against Gell, and the ME’s office had based the time of death on a ra
nge of data that began with the last credible witness to see the victim alive. The earliest date within that time frame happened to be the only day Gell could have done it since he was in jail on an unrelated matter the rest of that time. He was tried and convicted and sentenced to death. Later, it was determined that the SBI had withheld the statements of several witnesses who swore the victim was still alive after that date. His attorneys managed to win a new trial, the original verdict was overturned, and there was much talk about prosecutorial misconduct. As a result, North Carolina law now requires prosecutors to share their entire file with the defense before a felony trial.

  “Maybe that happened here, too.” Nolan’s face brightened up and he went back to his food, all thought of insect evidence momentarily banished. “Maybe this Deenie Gates actually saw him after Martha left for the beach. Another case of the prosecution withholding evidence illegally.”

  “Not illegally,” I said. “Gell’s case changed the law, but back then there was no legal compulsion to tell his defense everything, only an ethical one.”

  “All the same . . .” Nolan said stubbornly. “There has to be a reason this woman’s not in any of the files.”

  “Where can we find her?” asked Kayra.

  “Someone in Mr. Glover’s office could probably pull a home address up for you,” I said. “If you haven’t worn out your welcome with them. Or you could try out at the hospital.”

  CHAPTER 20

  A phrase may, by the addition or omission of one word, or by the alteration of one punctuation mark, convey to the reader an entirely different idea from that intended by the writer.

  Florence Hartley, The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, 1873

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 15

  Driving back to Dobbs after the autopsy, Dwight swung by the SBI facility on Old Garner Road. Security greeted him by name at the door and waved him past with only a perfunctory glance at his shield.

  “Agent Wilson’s in his office, Major. Want me to buzz him?”

  “That’s okay. I know where it is.”

  He turned down the hall to Terry Wilson’s office and saw that Terry’s door wasn’t fully latched. As he pushed it open and stuck his head in, he found Terry and K.C. Massengill locked in each other’s arms. They jerked apart as the door nudged K.C.

  Terry scowled at him. “Hey, don’t you know how to knock?”

  “Not when the door’s open.” Dwight grinned. “What if I’d been your boss?”

  K.C. smoothed her blond hair and tugged her sweater down around her shapely hips. “We were just saying good-bye.”

  “That’s a lot of serious good-bye for somebody who only works two halls over,” Dwight observed.

  “I have to go to Charlotte for a couple of days.”

  “And don’t tell me you and Deborah don’t ever mess around in chambers,” said Terry, beginning their usual banter. “Even when she’s not going somewhere.”

  But K.C. saw the weariness in his eyes and put out her hand to him. “I’m sorry about your deputy, Dwight.”

  “Yeah,” said Terry. “That sucks, man. They sure it’s suicide?”

  “I just came from his autopsy.”

  “Bummer. This anything to do with Tracy Johnson’s shooting?”

  “Probably.”

  “Y’all talk. I’m gone,” K.C. said. “Don’t forget the cat food, hon, okay?”

  “Gotcha,” said Terry. “Drive carefully.”

  “Y’all have a cat?” Dwight asked when the door closed behind K.C.

  “Part of the package. For some reason, every woman I fall for has a damn cat. Deborah was the only one didn’t. Probably why it didn’t work out for us.”

  Dwight smiled at his sour tone. “Lucky for me.”

  “You didn’t come by to talk about cats, though, did you?” Terry sat down behind his desk and gestured for Dwight to take a chair.

  “Nope. Just tying off loose ends. Seeing if Tracy Johnson had any real reason to pursue this Hurst business so Bessie’s granddaughter’ll stop bird-dogging Deb’rah and me every night.”

  “Well, ol’ son, I went through everything we have on it. I even read Scotty’s field notes. He might not’ve pushed as hard as you or me, but this is no Gell case, Dwight. Not a single person he interviewed saw Hurst alive after Saturday evening.”

  “As he was leaving the trailer park, right?”

  “Well, naw, he pawned a couple of rings belonged to his stepmother around four o’clock, then went next door to the Fliptop Grill for a couple of beers, caught the end of a Braves game, and left around six. That was the last anybody says they saw him till that anonymous call a week later.”

  “Kayra persuaded an old woman who still lives there to admit it was the next-door neighbor who called it in. She also told them that the nosy neighbor didn’t notice his car parked in the bushes around back till long about Wednesday.”

  “Anybody see him drive in?”

  “The old lady says not.”

  “That’s still in line with the prosecution. They argued that Martha came home that night, found him there, and just let him have it for stealing her rings.”

  “And took off for the beach the next morning, leaving him there to rot in the August heat?”

  “You’re not going to start expecting logic from the criminal mind at this late date, are you?”

  “What can I tell you?” said Dwight. “I still believe in Santa Claus.”

  When he got back to the courthouse and parked, Percy Denning, Mike Castleman, and Eddie Lloyd were crossing the street, heading out for lunch.

  “We got lucky, Major,” said Denning. “Silas Lee found the slug that killed her.”

  “Really?”

  He hadn’t meant to sound so surprised, and the others grinned.

  “I’ve already put it under the microscope,” Denning said. “It came from Whitley’s .44, all right.”

  So that was that, thought Dwight as he continued on to his office. Whitley and Johnson and an affair that went sour. Because she was a snob like Deborah thought? Too concerned with class differences to be seen with him openly? Or did the baby she carried complicate things? They would probably never know. But at least it cleared Tracy’s murder off his plate, and if the citizenry would just behave themselves between now and next Wednesday, maybe he and Deborah could get married in peace.

  As he approached his office, a uniformed officer passed him in the hall with an armload of brightly colored boxes and a “Joy to the World” smile on his face. “Toy drive’s picking up, Major!”

  Every year the department collected toys for needy children, which reminded him that he still hadn’t shopped for Cal. He couldn’t decide between a dirt bike for the farm or a ten-speed for the town up in Virginia. His thoughts were interrupted by Mayleen Richards, who came down the hall with a yellow legal pad in her hand.

  “Um, Major Bryant? I think you need to take a look at this.”

  She laid the pad on his desk, the pages curled back on themselves to show a page six or eight sheets down. “We found this at Ms. Johnson’s house. That’s her handwriting.”

  He studied the figures with a sinking heart. “Shit!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, Richards. I’ll take it from here,” he said.

  She hesitated, then accepted the dismissal.

  Dwight lifted his phone and called the DA’s number. “Miss Helen? Dwight Bryant. Is Mr. Woodall in the courthouse today?”

  “Sorry, honey,” came the voice of Doug Woodall’s longtime secretary. “He’s in superior court in Makely. Won’t be in till tomorrow morning.”

  “Do you know if the Ruiz trial’s still on the calendar for tomorrow?”

  “Well, such as it is without that deputy that went and killed himself. Brandon Frazier’s going to handle it best he can, but just between you and me and the doorknob, honey, that guy’s gonna walk.”

  Dwight read over Tracy’s notes again. “Time served?” she’d written. Sure looked like she was getting ready t
o cut a deal with this Danno R. He was evidently claiming that he’d had twelve packets of drugs and a hundred twenty thousand in cash when Don Whitley stopped him. By the time it got to the property clerk, the twelve packets had dwindled to ten and the cash was down to eighty thou. If he was reading her notes correctly, she was willing to deal; to let Ruiz off with time served if he could prove that Don Whitley had skimmed his stash. Which the guy would no doubt be able to do. Civilians were always surprised to hear how often drug runners gave one another countersigned receipts—so many grams received, so much cash to make more buys—like a handshake ought to mean more in that world than it did in the straight world these days.

  “12 pkts (1 gm ea) > 10”?

  He called the DA’s office and got Brandon Frazier, who told him that the drug found in Ruiz’s car was cocaine. “Why?”

  “No reason. Just doing some paperwork over here,” Dwight said, unwilling to let the word out about Whitley just yet.

  Had his deputy been a user or had he been dealing on the side himself?

  He called the ME’s office, and after the phone rang six times for the doctor doing Whitley’s autopsy, her voice mail kicked in. “Dwight Bryant here,” he said. “Do me a favor and run a tox screen on Whitley. See if he was doing coke.”

  After that, he carried Tracy’s legal pad across the hall to show Bo Poole.

  “He shot her with the gun he used on himself, but it wasn’t about love or sex,” he told his boss. “She was going to put him in prison.”

  “Whitley was dirty?” the sheriff asked.

  “How else would you read her notes? It was his testimony that was going to put Ruiz away, so Ruiz decides to take a plea and turn it back on Whitley.”

  “Then Tracy tells him what she has planned for him: ‘No more pattycake, buster, you’re going down.’ So he shoots her, hears she’s pregnant, then kills himself in remorse?”

  Dwight nodded. “So what do you think, Bo? Do I try to make this Ruiz guy confirm what Tracy knew or do we just let the law play out in the courtroom tomorrow?”