Rituals of the Season Read online

  “Either way, he was going to walk, right?”

  “If he could help her build a case against Whitley, she was probably going to cut him loose. He’s been a guest in our jail since July. Five months. Almost what he’ll wind up serving if convicted.”

  “Which Doug don’t think’s gonna happen if we believe all his pissing and moaning yesterday.” Poole leaned back in his chair. “You can talk with Ruiz, but what the hell’s the point? He’s not going to plead now that Tracy and Whitley are both dead. Not when he can walk out a free man tomorrow with no record. Any chance of recovering the money?”

  “I doubt it. Jamison and Richards searched his place when they picked up his DNA samples. They flipped through his bank statements, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I’ll have ’em take a closer look. They did find an expensive gold bracelet that he gave Tracy and she gave back to him. What happened to the rest of the money, though . . .” Dwight gave a palms-up shrug. “He told Castleman that money wouldn’t be a problem if he quit the department.”

  “Oh, hell, let it go,” said Bo. “Even if you found a pot of cash sitting in his checking account, without Ruiz, you couldn’t prove he didn’t save it clipping grocery coupons out of the Ledger.”

  Out at the hospital, Deenie Gates had positioned the folding yellow plastic board beside the door to the second-floor men’s room. It read, CAUTION—WET FLOOR, although she hadn’t yet begun to mop.

  “Why you here wanting to know about Roy Hurst?” she asked, giving Kayra and Nolan deeply suspicious looks.

  “Because Martha Hurst is about to be put to death for killing him, and we thought you might have remembered something after all these years,” they explained. “Something that could help her.”

  “I don’t remember nothing.” The woman was so bone thin that her shoulder blades were sharply outlined beneath the dark red uniform shirt she wore, but she wielded the heavy mop and bucket with surprising strength. Kayra found it impossible to guess her age. There was no visible gray in her lanky brown hair, but from the wear and tear on her face, she could have been anywhere from thirty to sixty.

  “Did you see him at all that Saturday?” Kayra persisted. “Y’all were together back then, right?”

  “No.”

  “We heard you were going to have his baby.”

  “You heard wrong.”

  “He didn’t get you pregnant?”

  “You people cops or something?”

  She sloshed her mop up and down in the bucket of disinfectant, then plopped it out on the tiles. Nolan had to step back smartly to avoid getting his sneakers wet as she pushed it back and forth.

  “We’re not cops,” he said. “My mom was a friend of Martha’s. We heard she was your friend, too.”

  “I got nothing against Martha,” said Deenie Gates, and her mouth tightened in a grim line. “But I don’t know nothing about her killing Roy and that’s all I got to say. I got work to do.”

  Again the passive aggression of her dripping wet mop threatened their shoes and they retreated.

  That afternoon, Dwight had Daniel Ruiz brought into an interrogation room. Ruiz was early thirties, with a chubby face and brown eyes that, at first glance, appeared sleepy and relaxed. It was only later that one noticed how wary and alert they were beneath those drooping eyelids. His English was good and, unlike other Latinos caught in this situation, he did not pretend he needed an interpreter. Nevertheless, for all the comprehension he showed to Dwight’s questions, Dwight might as well have been speaking Russian.

  No, he hadn’t been offered a deal. How could there be a deal when he was innocent? Oh, and he was truly sorry to hear about the beautiful ADA’s death, but there had been no understanding between them.

  Missing drugs and money? But he’d known nothing about the drugs and money in that car. It wasn’t even his car, merely one he was driving down to Florida as a personal favor to an elderly friend who was spending the winter there.

  Don Whitley? Was that the officer who shot the lady DA? Sorry. He had been treated courteously by the officers who arrested and booked him, but they hadn’t exchanged business cards and he didn’t know their names.

  “Yeah, right,” said Dwight and signaled to the bailiff to take Ruiz back to his cell.

  He hadn’t been back in his own office ten minutes when Doug Woodall appeared in his doorway.

  “I thought you were down in Makely.”

  “Miss Helen said you called about the Ruiz case? I hope to hell you’ve got something we can use on that slick bastard.”

  “Sorry,” said Dwight and told him about Whitley and the deal it appeared that Tracy was making with Ruiz. “Did you authorize it?”

  “Hell, no! Not that I wouldn’t have if she’d asked me. A dirty officer’s worth ten Ruizes and you know it, Bryant. Damn!” Doug Woodall was far too political not to consider the lost enhancement for his tough-on-all-crime reputation.

  “Well, well, well,” he said as he continued to put all the pieces together. “Little Tracy was fixing to grab herself some headlines, wasn’t she? Taking down a crooked officer? Puts her name right out there as the defender of truth, justice, and the American way.”

  “Worked for you, didn’t it?” Dwight asked sardonically. “Getting the death penalty for a white woman?”

  Doug grinned. “Martha Hurst? Hell yes. And if I decide not to run for DA next time, Tracy would’ve been nicely positioned for the job. Nobody else on my staff has her combination of smarts and ambition.”

  “Maybe she planned to run next election no matter what you decided,” Dwight said.

  Doug’s face relaxed into a confident smile. “She try that and I’d’ve had her for breakfast.”

  “Yeah? Seems to me that prosecutorial misconduct’s as good an issue to run on as crooked officers skimming drug money. How’d you feel about her looking into the Hurst trial?”

  “Didn’t bother me a bit. That was an open-and-shut case based on solid facts provided by this office and the SBI. She could look from now to election day and not find a damn thing.” But as he considered Tracy’s ulterior motives for questioning the Hurst trial, his indignation grew. “Well, damn! You think she was going to try to take me down?”

  After Woodall left, Dwight called a meeting of the detective and drug interdiction squads and they exchanged reports of the day’s findings, from the slug that Jones had picked up this morning to the notes on Tracy Johnson’s legal pad.

  “Hey, no fuckin’ way!” said Eddie Lloyd when told that Whitley had been pocketing cash and drugs from some of the stops. His brown eyes flashed angrily. “He kill her because she was going to dump him, that’s one thing. But kill her and the baby because one scumbag said he was dirty? Shit, Major. That don’t fly.”

  Mike Castleman sat silently with the same sick look on his handsome face that he got every time he was forcibly reminded of little Mei’s death.

  “Mike?”

  “I never saw him take a dime, Major,” he said, but his eyes dropped almost immediately and Dwight knew what he was thinking, what they all were thinking.

  Rivers of money flowed up and down the interstate. Whenever these three stopped a likely car, they’d call one of the others on patrol as backup. The goods were usually hidden in the trunk. While one officer moved on to search the front of the car, it would be so easy for someone like Whitley to slide a packet of drugs or bills into a breast pocket before sealing the briefcase or box that held all the cash, cash that wouldn’t actually be counted till it was turned in to the property clerk. Sooner or later, though, they’d be tripped up by a smartass like Daniel Ruiz, who was sharp enough to know that the DA’s office would turn him loose in a heartbeat if he could prove that he’d been skimmed by an officer. It had happened in other jurisdictions and only the most naive would think that it wouldn’t happen here, too.

  They kicked it around another ten minutes, then Dwight said, “Okay. Jack, you and Mayleen go through his place one more time. See what you can find, t
hen everybody turn in your reports. Let’s wrap this up today.”

  CHAPTER 21

  The trials of married life are such,—its temptations to irritability and contention are so manifold, its anxieties so unforseen and so complicated, that few can steer their difficult course safely and happily, unless there be a deep and true attachment.

  Florence Hartley, The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, 1873

  When I finished court that Wednesday afternoon, I checked by Dwight’s office, but it was empty and an officer said that he was in a meeting, so I drove over to Aunt Zell’s and freshened up there. Uncle Ash fixed us drinks and they wanted to know if what they’d heard about one of Dwight’s deputies was true—that he’d killed Tracy Johnson and then himself?

  I said it seemed to be true, but I hadn’t talked to Dwight since this morning and so I didn’t really know any of the details other than where he’d been found on the bank of Ryder Creek, which reminded Uncle Ash of camping there as a boy to catfish all night.

  Talk circled back to the wedding and I went up to the closet at the head of the stairs in my old apartment so that I could check again for the tenth time that I had every item laid out on the bed to go with the dress I had found in a shop over in Fuquay, of all places. My bouquet and Portland’s would be delivered to the church next Wednesday, along with boutonnieres for the men.

  “Daddy offered to rent a tux,” I said, “but I just couldn’t picture him in one, could you?”

  “Actually, I can,” she said. “Kezzie Knott’s always been a fine-looking man from the first time I saw him, way back when my grandfather was still practicing law.”

  I knew from family lore that Daddy had retained Brix Senior the first time he was charged with possession of untaxed liquor, but I hadn’t realized that this was where he and Mother first saw each other.

  “Oh, Sue didn’t see him then,” said Aunt Zell. “She was in school. I was five and Grandmother had baked a fresh coconut cake and she had me take a piece over to the courthouse for Granddad’s lunch. Everybody knew me, of course, and the bailiff let me sit next to him in the jury box till Granddad finished arguing his case. It was your father he was defending. Got him off, too. Not that I understood what was actually going on, but Granddad introduced me to him out in the hall and I remember thinking those were the bluest eyes I’d ever seen.”

  “Forget-me-Knott blue,” I murmured and Aunt Zell smiled.

  “That’s what Sue always said. Come with me, honey.”

  I followed her down the hallway to the master bedroom and sat on the edge of their bed to watch as she took two white boxes from the drawer of her dressing table. Handing me the smaller box, she said, “This is the last one. I brought a handful home from England years ago to give to family brides and I was down to two when Minnie married Seth. I was saving this one for you, but I almost gave it to Portland when she and Avery got married.”

  “Didn’t think I’d ever make it to an altar?” I teased.

  “That did cross my mind,” she said dryly.

  I opened the box and there was a little silver sixpence, the face of King George V engraved on the front and crisp oak leaves and acorns on the back, just as I remembered. “I can’t believe you still have this. Didn’t you lend it to Portland?”

  She nodded.

  “That makes it even more special,” I said. I’m not superstitious, but this coin that Portland had worn in her shoe on her wedding day felt like an omen that maybe Dwight and I really could build a marriage as strong as hers and Avery’s.

  “And this is something else I’ve been keeping for the right moment,” said Aunt Zell.

  Inside the second box was a flat black velvet jeweler’s box that bore the name of a store that had gone out of business several years ago. I lifted the hinged lid and found the most beautiful bracelet I’d ever seen. Each delicate gold link was a small blue enameled flower no bigger than the nail on my little finger, and each five-petaled flower was centered with a tiny drop of shining gold. “Oh, Aunt Zell! How long have you had it and why haven’t I ever seen you wear it?”

  “It was never mine to wear,” she said gently. “Sue had it made up when she knew she was dying. She told me to keep it for you till the time was right. She said I’d know. ‘If nothing else, it can be her something blue,’ she told me.”

  We sat there on the edge of the bed with tears rolling down our faces as she fastened the bracelet on my wrist.

  Forget-me-nots.

  As if I ever could.

  “I meant what I said Sunday,” she said. “She would have been so happy that you were marrying Dwight.”

  “Here, now,” said Uncle Ash, who had come to see what we were up to. “What’s all this sniffling about? Dwight hasn’t run off with a dancing girl, has he?”

  I jumped up to show him my bracelet and he gave a nod of bittersweet recognition. “I remember the day you came back from Sue’s with that and put it in that drawer, Miss Ozella.”

  I waited for him to elaborate as their eyes locked in wordless communication, but all he said was “That was a sad time all right, but this is supposed to be a happy one. Come on, ladies, shake a leg! Sallie’s expecting us.”

  I put the little box with the sixpence beside the satin slippers I would wear next week and joined them downstairs to walk the half-block to Miss Sallie’s house.

  Despite my missing groom, ten of us sat down to dinner—the Reverend Carlyle Yelvington, the minister of First Baptist and the man who was going to perform the ceremony Wednesday, had been pressed into service to balance the table. As expected, the others were Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash’s age, men and women who had known me since I was a scabby-kneed tomboy whose mother despaired of ever turning her into a proper young Stephenson lady.

  “Not that your mother was much of one either,” Miss Sallie said tartly as her part-time cook and housekeeper brought in an elaborate crown roast of pork filled with a flavorful concoction of tender shrimp and creamy grits. “Marrying a scalawag like Kezzie Knott. Broke your grandmother’s heart when she announced their engagement. She cried for a week.”

  “Broke more than just Catherine’s heart,” said David Smith, Uncle Ash’s brother and Portland’s father. “Half the boys in this county went into mourning, too.”

  “Oh it was a seven-day wonder all right,” said Miss Abby Jernigan, who had given me her late husband’s robe when I was first elected. “Richard Stephenson’s granddaughter marrying a moonshiner with a houseful of motherless boys?”

  I didn’t take offense. Their smiles were too indulgent and reminiscent of bygone youth and high romance. I’ve always loved hearing how people met and fell in love, and I made each of them tell me their stories, from the Smiths, who literally ran into each other when she was learning to roller-skate, to Bonnie and Ken Knowles, who met when they both signed up for flying lessons from the same instructor back in the late sixties. Even after all these years, there was wonder in their voices at the miracle of finding each other out of all the whole world over. I just wished Dwight could have been there to hear.

  One of the benefits of dining with a bunch of very senior citizens is that everyone’s ready to go home to bed by nine-thirty. When I got to Dwight’s apartment, he was in bed himself, watching an old World War II comedy on television.

  I dropped my clothes on the nearest chair and snuggled in beside him.

  He noticed my new bracelet right away and was touched by the story that went with it. “You’re a lot like her, you know.”

  “Am I?” I asked, pleased.

  “Why do you think I fell in love with you?”

  “Tell me,” I said.

  CHAPTER 22

  The pleasure of your guests, as well as the beauty of the rooms, will be increased by the elegance of your arrangements; and by the judicious management of wreaths, bouquets, baskets, and flowering plants in moss-covered pots, a scene of fairy-like illusion may be produced.

  Florence Hartley, The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, 1873


  Now that we were into single digits—seven days and counting—the next three days passed in a blur. Two luncheons and another dinner. Friday was my last day of court until after the Christmas break; and with the investigation of Tracy’s death and Don Whitley’s suicide winding down, Dwight, too, was finally able to give more attention to our wedding. It hurt him to know that one of his deputies had fallen to the same temptation of easy money that had overtaken one of my own colleagues, a temptation coupled with the rationalization that drug money, like insurance money, was there for the taking and therefore wasn’t quite like stealing.

  Now Russell Moore was disbarred and sentenced to three years of hard time, and Don Whitley was dead by his own hand.

  The only bright spot for the sheriff’s department was that the media, ignorant of any subtext, were treating Whitley’s acts as motivated solely by passion. Unfortunately, men killing their women and then themselves is so commonplace these days that the story barely made it through a full news cycle.

  Dwight and Bo planned to reorganize the drug interdiction procedures after the first of the year, but for now, Bo had told Dwight to go act like a man who’s getting married.

  Accordingly, Seth, Reese, and Andrew drove their pickups over to Dobbs Friday evening to finish moving him out to the farm—lock, stock, and nice leather furniture that would replace the ratty castoffs April had given me when I first moved into my new house.

  I drove on ahead to clear space in the garage for his boxes. The temperature had dropped again and the house was like ice when I got there. I quickly pushed the thermostat up, built a fire in the living room, and sprinkled cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg into a small pan of hot water, then turned the flame on low so that it would simmer and fill the house with a spicy aroma. Yeah, yeah, I know that’s cheating, but I wanted it to smell like home to Dwight and I really did plan to bake next week.