Death's Half Acre dk-14 Read online

  McKinney swept the gnats away again with his handkerchief. “Tell you what, Brother Kezzie. Why don’t you go get the truck and drive it around here and let me take it to the Lord in prayer? He’s led us together and I’m sure He has a purpose in mind.”

  “That’s real kindly of you, Preacher. I ain’t never been much for praying, but I’m feeling easier about this now that I’ve got you to help me do the right thing.”

  As he walked away into the underbrush, Kezzie Knott glanced back and saw the preacher on his knees with his handkerchief draped over his head.

  CHAPTER 19

  The top of my head, Mister Paul, grows bald.

  I mean the Old South is gone, ain’t it?

  —Paul’s Hill, by Shelby Stephenson

  With the death of Dee Bradshaw, the investigation took on a new urgency. Richards and McLamb spent Tuesday morning tracking down the county commissioners and getting statements as to their whereabouts on the previous Tuesday afternoon when Candace Bradshaw was killed and for Sunday evening between six-thirty and midnight, the assumed time of her daughter’s death until the ME told them differently.

  Other deputies interviewed her office staff and any janitorial workers with whom Candace might have had words.

  Predictably, most could not substantiate their movements. Several claimed to have been on their way home between four and five-thirty on Tuesday, or in church on Sunday evening.

  Harvey Underwood, a commissioner and the banker who had handled the sale of Candace’s house, was the only one with solid alibis for both times. On Sunday, he and his wife had made the three-hour drive to Charlotte for their granddaughter’s birthday and had spent the night there. During the relevant time on Tuesday, he had been in consultation with his wife, a plumber, and a handyman about adding a closet for a second washer and dryer next to an upstairs bathroom.

  “Damn foolishness, if you ask me,” he’d grumbled to Richards. “The cleaning woman does all the laundry and she’s never complained about having to take the sheets and towels downstairs.”

  When pressed to elaborate on the source of Candace’s cash payment in full for the house, he looked uncomfortable, but claimed to know nothing about it. “She deposited a cashier’s check for a hundred thousand dollars ten days earlier, Deputy Richards, and she sold the old Bradshaw house for $140,000. That’s all I know.”

  And no, he was not inclined to speculate on who had given her the cashier’s check.

  It was duly noted that Candace was the only commissioner who had missed the meeting Tuesday night and none of them had noticed anything odd or constrained about any of their colleagues.

  Or so they said.

  Cameron Bradshaw would also appear to be in the clear on his wife’s murder. When his neighbors were canvassed, several confirmed that they had seen him sitting outside on his terrace that afternoon. One or another placed him there from around three o’clock till after five. As for Sunday evening, some old friends had called by to offer their condolences and the last did not leave until after nine.

  Gracie Farmer had spent Tuesday afternoon inspecting a couple of offices in the area in preparation for drawing up cleaning contracts; and Dee’s cell phone records confirmed the calls between them, although Farmer lived alone and could not prove that she had stayed in all evening. “Too bad my two cats can’t talk,” she had said wryly.

  Dee had kept her phone busy throughout the evening. Among the calls was one at 6:47 to Chapel Hill, to the dorm where her boyfriend lived, and an earlier one at 6:32 to Will Knott.

  “Yeah,” he said when Dwight stopped by his warehouse. “She wanted to apologize for not showing back up for work. Hell’s bells, Dwight. Her mama’d been killed and she was worried about that? She said she was going to go back to school and wanted me to come over and take a look at the house, give her an appraisal of what the furnishings were worth. Maybe handle a sale for her. I agreed to drop by yesterday afternoon, but—” He shrugged. “Hell of a note, idn’t it? Pretty young thing like that? Why you reckon she was shot?”

  “Beats me, Will. We’re starting to think maybe she found some records that her mother kept that might put somebody in jail.”

  “And she let ’em know?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time somebody played with dynamite and had it blow up in their face.”

  As for the boyfriend, his roommates confirmed that he’d been drunk and semi-comatose by late afternoon on Sunday. No way could he have driven from Chapel Hill to Dobbs. Last Tuesday evening? “Hey, man, who can remember that far back?”

  The Honorable Woodrow Galloway, North Carolina state senator for their district, was unavailable for questioning about the deaths. Or so said his office. The senator, they said piously, was personally saddened by Mrs. Bradshaw’s death. The county and the state had lost a dedicated public servant who had worked tirelessly to further the growth and prosperity of her county and her state, but he himself could add nothing substantive to the investigation. They were friends and colleagues, nothing more, and any attempts to paint them as lovers were merely the usual smear tactics of the Democratic party. If Sheriff Poole insisted, Senator Galloway would try to make time in his busy schedule, which was posted on the senator’s website.

  A few phone calls to disinterested parties confirmed that Galloway had indeed been in a committee meeting in Raleigh last Tuesday afternoon until after six and at a church function on Sunday evening that broke up around ten o’clock.

  Dwight himself questioned Danny Creedmore, another man with no confirmed alibis. To Dwight’s complete and utter lack of surprise, Creedmore was indignant that he would be asked to account for his movements and insisted that all his dealings with Candace Bradshaw had been open and aboveboard. “Yeah, okay, so we got it on for a couple of years, but that part was ending with no hard feelings on either side.” He sat back in his chair with the air of a man who thought the world was his for the taking. “We were still working together to help the county grow and prosper.”

  That cashier’s check for a hundred thousand dollars?

  “Maybe somebody gave it to her as a housewarming present.”

  “For services rendered?” Dwight asked.

  Creedmore shrugged and again denied any knowledge.

  “According to her phone records, Dee Bradshaw called you a little after eight.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What was that about?”

  “To be honest with you, Bryant, I’m not real sure. She didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I couldn’t tell if she was drunk or just mad.”

  “Mad about what?”

  “Who knows? She accused me of using Candace and said she could prove it. Before I could ask her what the hell she was talking about, she said the doorbell was ringing and just hung up on me.”

  Dwight did not find it needful to warn Creedmore that the SBI would soon be asking permission to subpoena his financial records. Triple C had poured all the concrete for the development where Candace lived and they had picked up hints that he had negotiated a lower price for her with the developer, who was a former board member.

  One hand scratching the back of somebody who was scratching someone else’s. So what else was new? They’d have to wait for the Ginsburg twins to sort it all out. In the meantime, their own DA was trying to stay out of it.

  “You bring me some solid evidence, and I’ll indict,” Doug Woodall told Bo when the sheriff caught him heading out to give a speech in Raleigh, “but this is a tricky time for me.”

  “You saying we should lay off Danny Creedmore?”

  “No, I’m saying I can’t afford to go on any fishing expeditions right now. You can understand that, right?”

  “Right,” said Bo and tried to keep the distaste from his face.

  “Don’t get so high and mighty with me, Bo Poole. You don’t know what it takes to run for statewide office. Yeah, you may think Creedmore’s crooked as a snake. Hell, I’m not all that crazy about him myself, but he’s got a lot of clout in this
part of the state.”

  “And how’d he get that clout, Doug?”

  “At the moment, that’s not my concern. The reality is that here and now, he’s got it and he’s willing to swing some votes my way. We may not need the open endorsement of Republicans, but we sure as hell don’t need their active opposition. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go make a speech.”

  “On law and order and the need for clean local government?” Bo asked sardonically.

  “Fuck you and the mule you rode in on,” said the Colleton County district attorney.

  Roger Flackman was not only a CPA, he was also on the board of commissioners. When asked to come to Dwight’s office, he initially resisted.

  “Or we can come to your office,” Dwight said mildly. “My colleagues from the State Bureau of Investigation are looking into Mrs. Bradshaw’s financial dealings and they have some questions, too.”

  At the thought of the gossip that could ensue from a visit by state agents and sheriff’s deputies, Flackman decided he could, after all, make time to come to Dwight’s office that afternoon. A thin man with large ears and a prominent Adam’s apple, he nervously smoothed his thick brown hair with his long bony fingers and straightened his tie and glasses upon his taking a seat across from the desk between them. He seemed rattled by their questions and twirled a white ballpoint pen around and around between his thumb, index, and middle fingers as they thanked him for coming in and questions got under way.

  “Who paid you to audit the books at Bradshaw Management?”

  “Mr. Bradshaw. It was purely a formality though. Part of their original divorce agreement.”

  “Only they weren’t divorced,” Terry Wilson observed.

  “True, true,” said Flackman, as that pen turned faster, “but he decided it would be to his advantage to keep the arrangement in place. It’s not at all unusual in these circumstances.”

  “So he didn’t really suspect his wife of holding back on him?” asked Dwight.

  “Not really. There may have been a little distrust in the beginning. I mean he did hire me, didn’t he? But they’ve actually been quite friendly these last few years.”

  “The business was doing well?”

  “Extremely well. All the growth in the county has given rise to new apartments to rent and new businesses that need cleaning, but the company was stagnating under Mr. Bradshaw’s leadership. Mrs. Bradshaw grew their business a good thirty percent after she took over. I’ve heard that you suspect her of wrongdoing, of using her position on the board to benefit herself, but I assure you, it was not the case.” The pen was almost a blur now as it spun around and under those long thin fingers. “She was a smart businesswoman and it was not unethical to avail herself of opportunities for more work when new businesses expressed a desire to locate here.”

  “That how she could pay for her new house with cash?” asked Dwight.

  “And buy a new car?” Terry Wilson added.

  “I had no access to her private accounts,” Flackman said primly. “If she saved and invested prudently—”

  He shrugged and let the suggestion die on its own. The pen slowed to a leisurely twirl and it did not quicken when Dwight said, “Dee Bradshaw told us she thought Candace was skimming from the company.”

  “Certainly not. The company books balance out to the penny. Sorry, Bryant, Agent Wilson. If Candace Bradshaw had more money in her bank account than she could account for, it didn’t come out of the company. You can bring in your own auditors, if you want.”

  “You sleeping with her, Mr. Flackman?” Terry asked politely.

  “That something else Dee told you?”

  When they didn’t answer, he shook his head. “No. I’m not going to say I didn’t want to—my wife left me eight years ago—but it never happened. Sorry.”

  With his eyes on that pen, now almost motionless in Flackman’s fingers, Dwight said, “What about your own position on the board? She throw some of those extra opportunities your way, too?”

  Roger Flackman’s Adam’s apple bobbled as he denied it, but his pen was suddenly twirling so fast that it flew out of his fingers and clattered across the table.

  “Oops! Sorry.” He retrieved the pen and slid it into an inner jacket pocket. With his hands planted firmly on his legs under the table, he told them that he had gone home early on Tuesday with a migraine headache and that he stayed home watching television alone on Sunday.

  Greg Turner had the blond good looks of an All-America lacrosse player, as indeed he had been when he played for Duke twenty years earlier. With straight hair so blond that it was almost silver, extremely fair skin, keen blue eyes, a neck almost as wide as his head, and a lightly muscled body that stood two hairs over six feet, there was a prosperous sleekness about him when he poked his head in Dwight’s door in mid-afternoon and said, “You left a message with my office that you wanted to speak to me?”

  Mayleen Richards was there to report on the morning’s findings and she rose to go, but Dwight motioned for her to stay, so she sat back down and nodded politely as introductions were made. She knew who this attorney was. Greg Turner was gaining a reputation for infallibility and clever arguments, especially in the big-money civil cases. Courthouse gossip had him divorced and currently unattached. He was certainly handsome, but did not appear conceited, and he was pleasant to everyone, even sheriff’s deputies with a high school education, while he himself was a graduate of the Duke school of law.

  This was the man of her mother’s dreams—a super-white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant professional. There were some whispered speculations about his sexual orientation, but as long as they were only whispers, her mother could easily ignore them.

  What she couldn’t ignore was Mayleen’s involvement with a dark-skinned Latino who owned a landscaping business and probably burned candles and incense to obscure saints no right-thinking Baptist had ever heard of.

  Mayleen sighed and tried to concentrate on the interview.

  “Yes,” Turner was saying with an easy smile. “I did get a phone call from Dee Bradshaw Sunday night. She left a message on my answering machine. Said she wanted to talk to me about her mother.”

  “What about?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “The time of her call was around seven-fifteen, right?”

  He nodded.

  “You were out?”

  “No, I was there, but I was in the middle of cooking myself an omelet for supper and I didn’t want to turn it off. I figured if it was anything important, they could leave a message and I’d call back.”

  “It was quite a long message,” Dwight said. “Almost three minutes.”

  “Yeah. She was talking about how Candace took her position on the board of commissioners very seriously and knew I did, too.”

  “Do you mind if we listen to that message?” Richards asked.

  Turner glanced at her as if surprised to find her still there and allowed to speak, but he gave her one of his high-wattage smiles meant to convey amused regret. “Sorry. I always erase my messages as soon as I’ve finished listening to them.”

  “And you didn’t call her back?”

  He shrugged. “Callous of me, I suppose, and now that she’s dead, I wish I had. But it had been a hard week and I just didn’t feel like dealing with a bereaved daughter at that moment.”

  “Is there anyone who can vouch for your being at home alone all evening?”

  He gave a small ironic smile. “Sorry. Alone means just that, Major Bryant.”

  CHAPTER 20

  . . . started out with a mule. Now

  he’s got sixteen big John Deere tractors:

  $100,000 a piece.

  —Paul’s Hill, by Shelby Stephenson

  I recessed for lunch a few minutes early on Tuesday at the request of the two attorneys who had not yet reached an agreement over damages incurred when a tree service dropped a huge dead oak tree on a neighbor’s in-ground swimming pool late last fall, smashing one corner and flattening
the fence. The neighbor wanted an all-new pool, and he wanted it filled with water he didn’t have to pay for. He was also asking damages for the mental trauma caused by a tree falling near the sandbox where his two young sons were playing.

  The tree service’s insurance company wanted to repair the corner and replace the fence, but they were not willing to pay for more than half the water as the pool had already been winterized and was a little low at the time. (With so many extra straws sipping water out of our rivers and treatment plants these days, water’s getting to be real pricey.) Because both parents had been at work while the boys played under the watchful eyes of a babysitter, the insurance company disputed how much trauma the neighbor had actually suffered.

  If anyone had suffered trauma, it was probably the sitter. Unfortunately for her, she wasn’t a party to the suit. Testifying for the insurance company, she described how terrified she had been when she saw that tree come crashing down, but that the boys were delighted by the whole incident. Too young to realize how close they had come to serious harm, they thought it great fun to clamber up onto the tree trunk and walk along its length. They had even begged to keep it and cried when it was removed from their yard.

  I left the attorneys to it and joined Portland Brewer and Jamie Jacobson for lunch at a Tex-Mex place three blocks from the courthouse. The food is cheap and good and there are booths along the back wall where we could talk without being interrupted. Even though I was early, they already had frozen margaritas in front of them. I knew that Portland was still nursing the baby, so hers would be a virgin and I told the waitress to bring me one about half the strength of whatever Jamie was drinking.

  Jamie laughed. “And just what makes you think mine’s not a virgin, too?”

  “I’m psychic.”

  We caught up on each other’s doings over the weekend, but soon shifted to Jamie’s curiosity about Sassy Solutions and Danny Creedmore’s brother-in-law.