Death's Half Acre dk-14 Read online

  “It’s not a big deal,” I said, and explained how Will had come into possession of Linsey Thomas’s files and how some of them were clearly meant to be the basis for future Ledger stories. “For some reason he linked Grayson Village to you and Sassy Solutions both.”

  “So? We both submitted proposals,” Jamie said, sipping from the salt-rimmed glass before her. “Wonder why he thought that would make a story?”

  “You tell me. There was an arrow from your agency to Grayson Village, but the arrows to Sassy came from Danny and Candace.”

  “I still don’t see why Linsey would care that we were competing for the same client. Happens all the time. They’ve got some sharp people working for them and we’ve come up with almost the same identical ideas at times, darn ’em! That’s how I missed landing Grayson Village. I thought I had a unique angle on a marketing approach and darned if they didn’t have the same angle, but with a slightly different spin.”

  “Why’d he have a file on you and Mr. Kezzie?” Portland asked.

  “Oh, you know how people always think it’s funny that a reformed bootlegger has a judge for a daughter. He probably thought it might make an amusing sidebar to another story.”

  “So who else did he have files on?” asked Jamie as she delicately licked a grain of salt from her fingertip.

  I lifted my own margarita for a first taste of its sour sweetness to give myself time to think about the affair Barbara Laughlin was supposedly having with Harvey Underwood, about Greg Turner’s flirtation with embezzlement, and a couple of implied acts of malfeasance on the part of the commissioners. Although it’s always fun to dish, I could wait until Terry’s people decided if there was anything that could be prosecuted. Portland and Jamie would be discreet if I asked them, but if I couldn’t hold my own tongue when it was part of Dwight’s investigation, how could I expect them to hold theirs?

  So I shrugged and said, “I didn’t see anything except largely unsubstantiated allegations and Dwight’s turned it all over to the SBI.”

  “Not to Doug Woodall’s office?”

  “Doug’s too busy running for governor,” I said and talk turned to county politics until the waitress brought our food. I keep thinking I’m going to order fajitas or the quesadilla of the day because I like them when Dwight lets me put my fork in his, but somehow I always wind up ordering the taco salad. I’m hooked on guacamole and sour cream.

  “We got the word that the Republican party’s voted to have Barry Dupree replace Candace,” Jamie said.

  “Who’s Barry Dupree?” Portland asked.

  “A go-along, get-along farmer from down near Makely, who’ll no doubt vote with the majority.”

  “So now you’re our only woman commissioner.”

  Jamie nodded. “It really bugged Candace when I came on the board. She was a Susie Sharpe clone.”

  Susie Sharpe was our first female supreme court judge. She broke many of the gender barriers during her long career, but she was no feminist—in fact, she actively opposed ERA and swayed our then-senators to oppose it, too—and she certainly wasn’t interested in welcoming other members of her sex to the state’s highest bench. She was one of those pull-the-ladder-up-behind-me types. She liked being unique and thought she did it all on her own merits. Like Candace.

  “We also got the word that the question of slowing growth is going to go to the voters this fall,” said Jamie. “For all the good that’ll do. The other commissioners didn’t like the recommendations of the planning board, so they’re going to put it to the public as to whether we get a transfer tax or a higher property tax.”

  “No choice about an impact tax that the developers would have to pay?”

  “Bite your tongue,” Jamie told Portland. “Not that it matters. Candace was already saying that it didn’t matter what the electorate said, they weren’t going to implement it.”

  “Unless the electorate voted against the taxes, right?” I asked.

  “You got it, kid. Then and only then will they say they’re bowing to the wishes of the people.”

  Our food arrived and the guacamole came the way I like it with little lumps of avocado. As I began to mix up the salad inside its taco shell, a woman passed our table and Portland nudged us both with a significant cut of her eyes.

  “What?” we asked when she joined three women at a far table.

  “Don’t stare!” Portland said under her breath.

  So we glanced aimlessly around the room as if looking for our waitress and let our eyes slide over that table without pausing.

  Three of the four women wore print dresses with modestly cut sleeves, high necklines, and hems that stopped at the calf, not the knee. The woman Portland had pointed out wore a loose white tee under a shapeless beige cotton jumper that buttoned down the front. Her brown hair was shoulder-length and held away from her face with a mock tortoiseshell headband. No apparent makeup. No jewelry that we could see from where we sat.

  “That’s Marian McKinney.”

  “Who’s Marian McKinney?” I asked.

  “The wife of the preacher at Christ Eternal. The one who drank her husband’s spit water.”

  I almost gagged on my margarita and Jamie was looking vaguely nauseated, too.

  “Did she leave him yet?”

  “No, and she doesn’t plan to. She told her prayer group that she was proud to serve as an example of selflessness for the other women who might question God’s commandments. Even though my cleaning woman quit that church, she still hears what’s going on there. Y’all know Nancy Wolfe?”

  We both shook our heads.

  “She’s the office nurse for Dr. Linda Maloof over in Cotton Grove.”

  I know Dr. Maloof by hearsay. She’s Minnie’s GP in the medical group that she and Seth go to, but I’d never heard Minnie mention a Nancy Wolfe.

  “And her husband works at the farmer’s market.”

  At that far table, the waitress had brought four glasses of iced tea—“Lips that touch wine shall never touch mine”?—and we watched as the women joined hands and bowed their heads.

  “Which one is Nancy Wolfe?” asked Jamie.

  “She’s not there. Besides, Nancy wears slacks,” Portland said with a grin. “And makeup.”

  “I thought that wasn’t allowed,” I protested.

  “It isn’t encouraged,” Portland corrected me. “According to Rena, Nancy wasn’t all that thrilled to leave the old church and follow McKinney, but it was what her husband wanted. And their teenage daughter was the only one in the breakaway congregation that could play the piano, so that was another reason to come. But Rena says that Nancy walked out of that church Easter morning before the service ended and she’s told her husband he’s welcome to stay there if he wants to but she’s never going back and neither is their daughter.”

  “Good for her,” said Jamie.

  I was in complete agreement. “Why on earth would any woman stay in such a church?” I wondered. But then I thought of Nadine, brought up in a patriarchal family where the husband is God’s chosen head of the household. Her father had been a kindly man and my brother Herman is easy enough to manipulate, so any self-imposed gender yoke must rest lightly on her shoulders.

  And Daddy certainly considered himself the undisputed head of his household, as do his sons, no matter how much evidence to the contrary their wives give them.

  Occasionally, when she thought I was getting too hardheaded and confrontational, Mother would tell me about her grandmother, who did not see the necessity of women’s rights. In her world, any woman who was worth her salt could always get her own way by manipulating her man with a combination of sex and sweet talk.

  “But I’ve seen you and Daddy fight,” I once protested.

  “Only when I intend to let him win,” she had said with a knowing grin.

  I savored another taste of my lumpy guacamole and said, “I guess there’s a comfort in knowing your place in the universe.”

  “ ‘He for God only, she for God in h
im,’ ” Jamie said, wrapping a warm tortilla around her steak and peppers.

  “Shakespeare?” I asked.

  “Milton.”

  I laughed. “No wonder you got on Candace Bradshaw’s nerves. I bet she never even heard of Milton.”

  “A whole bunch of women never heard of Milton, sweetie,” she said. “And that didn’t drive ’em into Danny Creedmore’s bed.”

  “Anyhow,” said Portland, “my cleaning woman says that Marian McKinney’s taking piano lessons so her husband will never again have to depend on some uppity woman.”

  Back at the courthouse, I was happy to hear that the civil case over the smashed swimming pool had settled amicably. The insurance company would pay for a new pool and fence and for filling half the pool. The pool owner dropped his claims for punitive damages.

  I seemed to have hit the trifecta that day. Two cases asked for continuances with legitimate reasons and two more settled. By two-thirty, I was technically done for the day. I suppose I could have asked some of my colleagues if they wanted help, but before I could get involved in something else, I called Will and asked if he’d spoken to his friend at the consignment shop about that earring I’d seen in Daddy’s hand on Friday.

  When Will heard I had the afternoon free, he said he’d swing by in his van and pick me up and tell me all about it on the way out to Candace Bradshaw’s house.

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Dwight and his people have finished with it, so Cameron Bradshaw called me and asked if I’d go take a look at the place, see about maybe making him an offer on the contents of the house, which is what Dee wanted me to do. But first he wants me to box up her dollhouse. He’s going to donate it to the shelter for battered women so the children can play with it.”

  Okay, okay. I really shouldn’t have agreed to this, but I admit that I was curious about the house Candace had bought herself and if, as Will had assured me, Dwight and his people had finished with it, I wouldn’t be compromising anything.

  As we drove out to the development, Will told me what he’d learned from his talk with Dave Carter.

  “I swear, sometimes I think Daddy’s had dealings with everybody in the whole damn county,” he said, leaning on his horn for a motorist who seemed to have fallen asleep at the light. “Dave says Daddy floated a loan for his mother to start the business. She was a widow with nothing more than good taste and a network of elderly aunts who had some family jewelry they needed to sell. He wouldn’t talk till he made me promise it wouldn’t get back to Daddy, so you gotta keep your mouth shut, too, okay?”

  “Hey, I’m the one told you and Amy and Dwight not to go blabbing this around the family, okay?”

  “Okay. And yeah, they were real diamonds. He told me that if the matching earring was the same quality, he could offer Daddy twenty thousand for the pair. The stones were absolutely flawless and set in platinum. Circa 1920. That seemed to be important to Daddy, for some reason.”

  “That the diamonds were flawless or that the earring was old?”

  “That it was definitely old and that any competent appraiser would recognize that it was old from the way the diamonds were cut and set.”

  “Where on earth did he get it, Will?”

  “He didn’t tell Dave. Or if he did, Dave’s not telling me.”

  “Which?”

  My brother shrugged. “Daddy’s always played his cards close to his chest, so I’d say Dave’s telling the truth.”

  “Did Daddy want to sell it to him?”

  “Nope. Just wanted to know how much it was worth and if it was really old.”

  We kicked it back and forth until we got to the upscale development where Candace’s house was one of those in a far corner of the site, surrounded on the roadside and the back by thick privacy hedges. Candace’s lot looked to be no more than a half acre here, so she had practiced what she preached: lots of rooftops on small lots.

  Many trees had been carefully spared when the sites were cleared, and banks of azaleas bloomed beneath the dogwoods and pines. Thick rows of yellow and pink pansies edged the circular driveway.

  “Nice,” I said, when Will stopped his van behind a dark blue Lincoln.

  “And you’ll note that this is one of the smaller houses,” he said.

  Cameron Bradshaw must have been watching from inside, because the door opened before Will could ring the bell.

  He wore what was probably casual dress for a man of his background—dark slacks, tie and white shirt, and a maroon cardigan. Despite a warm smile, his face was haggard as he welcomed us with old-fashioned courtesy.

  Although they had spoken over the phone, he and my brother had never met, nor had I met him, so there were introductions all around and I told him how sorry we were for his double loss. Bradshaw knew who I was and seemed a bit confused as to why I was there.

  “She’s going to help me pack up the dollhouse,” Will said breezily as he pulled flattened cardboard boxes and a roll of strapping tape from the back of the van.

  This was news to me, but no surprise. Around the courthouse, I’m treated with a modicum of respect as a district court judge. It’s “yes, ma’am” this and “Your Honor” that and “Permission to approach?” But to my brothers, I’m still the kid sister who can be ordered around and told what to do.

  Bradshaw walked us through the house to give Will an overall view before getting down to details, pointing out along the way the history of various ornaments and knickknacks that Candace had valued. Although decorated in an excessively feminine style with lots of floral upholstery, it was a bright and cheerful place. Daylight flooded the rooms through large windows and artfully placed skylights and bounced off the white carpet. The overall impression was of frothy pink and red and white.

  Until we got to Candace’s bathroom.

  “Wow!” I said.

  Bradshaw looked a little embarrassed. “This was her favorite place in the house. She used to say that hot water was our country’s greatest achievement.”

  He must have seen my raised eyebrows because he said, “You and I may take hot water for granted, Judge Knott, but we have to remember that Candace grew up without it. That’s why she treated herself to this.”

  “This” was a room where almost every single surface was mirrored. Walls, countertops, cabinet doors, shower stall, even the ceiling. Only the rose-patterned floor tiles and ceramic sink and the rose toilet were exempt.

  I’m comfortable with my body and Dwight seems to like it, too, but damn! How could any woman love her body so much that she’d want to see it reflected every hour of the day from groggy early morning to exhausted night? I knew Candace seemed to think she was hot stuff, but looking at this altar to vanity, she must have thought she sizzled. She was what? Early forties? How much would she have liked this room when she hit sixty and everything began to sag?

  The other two bedrooms and bath lay at the far end of the house. Dee’s bedroom was a shambles—clothes and shoes flung everywhere, the mattress half off its box springs, the coverlet and pillows tossed, the drawers and closet doors ajar.

  “She was starting to pack up her things,” Cameron Bradshaw said defensively. He touched the lacy white camisole that hung from the doorknob, then his fingers convulsed around it and for a minute, I thought he was going to break down.

  Tears moistened my own eyes and I reached out to him impulsively. “We’re so sorry, Mr. Bradshaw.”

  With a visible effort, he reined in his emotions and closed the door on his daughter’s room, then showed us into Candace’s immaculate and blatantly feminine office—frothy white sheers under rose damask drapes, a floral-patterned area rug atop the white Berber carpet.

  Like the rest of the house, there were no books on these shelves either. Instead, they held numerous brightly colored porcelain flowers, the kind of “collectible” sold to people with more money than taste.

  “The SBI agents took her computer and most of the file folders from the cabinet there,” said Bradshaw. “And that’s the
dollhouse. She loved it so much that Dee wanted to keep it. I just hope that some scared little girls can lose themselves in it, too.”

  The dollhouse was at least three feet tall and looked like Tara. It sat on a wooden base that had been painted green and decorated to look like a lawn with flowering shrubs and pots of flowers on the porch. Beneath were casters that let the whole house be easily moved. Some tiny pots and pans lay on the floor next to a shoebox, along with a kitchen butcher’s block and some bar stools, all to the same scale. I assumed Dee had begun to take the house apart in preparation for its move.

  Will taped together some small cartons and handed me a thick stack of tissue paper and a handful of pint-sized plastic zip bags. I was given instructions to wrap the delicate furniture and carefully place the items in the boxes so they wouldn’t smash. I meekly agreed, but as soon as he and Bradshaw left to look at the rest of the house, I was right over to the file cabinet, where I paused to look at the silver-framed photographs on top of it. All of them seemed to feature Candace looking up adoringly to whichever man of power stood next to her—the movers and shakers of the region and, as Jamie Jacobson had pointed out, no women. I was amused to see that she had her hand on G. Hooks Talbert’s as they cut the ribbon to open the Grayson Village Inn.

  Unfortunately though, the SBI agents had been way too thorough. Anything of interest once held by those four drawers must now be at the SBI headquarters in Garner. Ditto the desk.

  There was nothing for it but to dismantle the three-story dollhouse. I knelt down on the rose-patterned rug that overlay the white carpet and began with the nursery on the top floor. A spindly rocking chair, a crib with a tiny baby doll inside, a high chair—each piece was soon nested into its own cocoon of tissue. The child’s bedroom followed, then the master bedroom. I was amazed to see that the lamps even had tiny wires and realized that there was a small transformer that stepped down regular house current so that the lamps and chandeliers in the dollhouse could actually light up. I couldn’t resist rolling it over to a nearby socket and plugging it in. Some of the furnishings were truly exquisite: there was a mahogany grandfather clock that showed the correct time, ticking away with the help of a watch battery. A gilded birdcage held a pair of lovebirds and a silver tea service sat on the dining room buffet.