Rituals of the Season Page 7

  “No surprises here,” the ME had said. “Blunt trauma to the head, resulting in intercranial hemorrhage and transtentorial herniation.”

  Now Jamison stood impassively as the ME finished his external examination of Tracy Johnson’s naked body and then nodded to the diener, whose job it was to open her up.

  The daycare center had proved just as fruitless as the interview with Marsha Frye, and Mayleen Richards’s Sunday morning drive to interview Nettie Surles down in Makely had not added much more.

  Mrs. Surles was slightly hard of hearing, but it was clear that Tracy Johnson had entrusted Mei to her care because she looked like everybody’s dream grandmother: white hair, merry eyes, a comfortable bosom made for cuddling babies, and a house that smelled of cinnamon and vanilla.

  “Are you sure you won’t have another sugar cookie,” she urged Richards.

  “No, ma’am, thank you.”

  “I hope you’re not doing that no-carbs thing they keep talking about. I’m sure so much meat and fat can’t be healthy. These are just made from good pure sugar, flour, and butter. Couldn’t hurt a flea.”

  “No, really,” Richards murmured. “I had a big breakfast.”

  “Oh, that’s good. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. That’s what I always tell Tracy. You make sure that baby gets her milk and fruit and oatmeal and she’ll grow up healthy as a horse.”

  The sudden memory that, no, little Mei was not going to grow up had Mrs. Surles in tears again.

  Between sniffles, she described how Tracy had called her on Friday morning. Mei had an earache. The doctor could see them late that afternoon if Tracy could get there before five, so could Mrs. Surles look after her that day? That way Tracy could drive straight to Raleigh without having to swing over to Dobbs to pick up Mei.

  “She gave me pain syrup for the baby, and after she was gone I put some warm sweet oil in Mei’s ear. I know it’s old-fashioned, but it does seem to help, and then I let her sleep on my heating pad. That’s what the poor little thing did most of the day. Just slept or watched television. Tracy came for her a little before four and bundled her up and took her out to the car. She cried when Tracy strapped her into the car seat. I know they save lives, but honestly! So uncomfortable for the little ones. Tracy said she’d probably go back to sleep the minute she started driving, but I can never help thinking they’d be better off if they could just stretch out across the seat the way my children used to do.”

  Eventually, Richards worked the conversation around to Tracy Johnson’s personal life.

  “Well, now, you know, I do think she might’ve had a fellow. Right before Halloween, she had on a pair of new earbobs. Not dimestore stuff either—real pretty gold and turquoise. Looked like Mexican or Southwest. Said a friend gave them to her and I said, ‘Friend? Or boyfriend?’ and the way she laughed, I could tell it was a boyfriend. ‘Just make sure he can love Mei as much as he says he loves you,’ I told her. ‘Oh, it’s nowhere close to that,’ she says. ‘Not yet anyhow.’”

  “‘Not yet’?” asked Richards.

  “‘Not yet,’” Nettie Surles said, giving a significant nod of her head.

  Now, as the hands of the clock on the office wall edged closer to eleven, Mayleen Richards began thumbing through the bank records they had taken from Tracy Johnson’s desk. So far, the only thing of interest were checks made out to Johnson’s cleaning woman, and she sighed as she added that name to her notes.

  Across the hall, Don Whitley, one of the department’s drug patrol, looked up from his own report at the sound of her sigh.

  “Tough morning?” he asked sympathetically.

  “Not really. Just coming up empty.” Richards crossed to stand in the open doorway of the deputies’ squad room and nodded to two uniformed officers who had just come from the magistrate’s office, where they had booked two DWIs.

  Whitley was mid-thirties and an inch or so taller than her own five-eight. He wasn’t movie star handsome, but he did possess a certain boyish appeal and Richards found herself giving him a second look. He had come on to her when she joined the department until she made it clear she wasn’t interested. Now, though . . . ? She wondered if maybe she’d been too hasty. Whitley was pretty solid. He was taking courses this fall at the community college. Going for an associate degree in criminal justice.

  Divorced, of course, and what else was new? More than half the people in the department had been divorced. The job was notoriously hard on marriages. The constantly changing shifts, the opportunities to fool around, the difficulty of leaving the work at work. Jack Jamison seemed to be handling it okay, but he’d only been married what? Two years?

  So maybe Major Bryant’s second marriage wouldn’t last either.

  Appalled by where her thoughts had once again strayed, Richards said, “Is Castleman around?”

  Mike Castleman, also on the drug interdiction squad, had been one of the responding officers in Friday night’s crash.

  “Comes on at four,” Whitley said.

  “I wanted to ask him if he saw a Palm Pilot lying around at the scene Friday night.”

  “You missing one?”

  “Not me. We can’t find Tracy Johnson’s.”

  “You know for a fact she had one?”

  “That’s what they tell us in Woodall’s office. We haven’t found it yet. Sure will help if she interfaced it with her office computer.” She glanced across the room to the heavier of the uniforms. “Hey, Greene? Weren’t you one of the ROs Friday night?”

  Tub Greene looked up from his paperwork. “Got there right behind Castleman.”

  “You happen to see her Palm Pilot?”

  “Sorry. A bunch of people were milling around, though. We took their names. Y’all contacted all of them yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  Whitley leaned back in his chair and Richards noticed the dark circles under his eyes and the thick textbook on his desk. Between shift work and college, he was probably carrying a killer schedule.

  “What about her house?” he asked. “You check it out to see if she had a computer there?”

  “Yeah, but somebody beat us to it. Pulled all the memory.”

  “The hell you say!” he said, sitting upright. “When?”

  Richards shrugged. “Probably sometime between when she left on Friday morning and when we got there yesterday morning.”

  “Denning check it out?” he asked, referring to their crime scene specialist.

  She shook her head and described the ease with which the break-in had occurred. “Didn’t seem worth calling him for a full workup.”

  Don Whitley jerked his head toward Major Bryant’s office further along the hall. “He know about her computer yet?”

  Before she could answer, she heard voices and turned to see Bryant and Jamison. Bryant gestured for her to join them and held the door of his office till she was inside, then took his chair behind the wide desk.

  “So what do y’all have?” he asked.

  Richards started to speak, but Jamison interrupted her.

  “I just got back from Chapel Hill,” he said, his voice urgent with excitement. “The autopsy. She was pregnant, Major. The ME estimates about six weeks.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Professional or business men, when with ladies, generally wish for miscellaneous subjects of conversation, and, as their visits are for recreation, they will feel excessively annoyed if obliged to “talk shop.”

  Florence Hartley, The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, 1873

  I walked out to the car with Cyl a few minutes before eleven. We both hated to say good-bye, but duty’s always out there, isn’t it? Standing with its hands on its hips, yelling at us to get over here right this minute and tend to business? Cyl was due at her grandmother’s church. I was due at Aunt Zell’s. All the same, we lingered for a long moment in the mild December sunshine with clasped hands.

  “Next time I see you, you’ll be a married lady,” Cyl said.

  “And you won’t be
far behind me. Knock ’em dead in Wisconsin, okay?”

  “I’ll try. And you be happy, you hear?”

  “I hear.”

  We hugged again, then she looked at her watch, yelped like the White Rabbit, and was gone.

  I walked back into the house, loaded the dishwasher, wiped down the stove and countertops, then went into the bedroom to change into Sundayish clothes—pantyhose, heels, and something with a skirt—which would imply that I’d attended church even if I hadn’t. Not that Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash would care, nor Brix Junior either for that matter. But Jane was a separate case. Even though she’s not particularly religious, Reid’s mother always does the correct thing, and unless one is sick enough for a doctor, that means church on Sunday. I’m cowardly enough not to risk her raised eyebrow by arriving at Aunt Zell’s looking as if I’d obviously skipped.

  Instead, I struggled into opaque black tights, a black turtleneck jersey dress with a short skirt that showed off my legs, two-inch heels (ditto), and a red cardigan banded in narrow black velvet. Gold earrings and a thin gold chain. All I needed was a halo of tinsel to look like an ornament on a Sunday School Christmas tree.

  By now it was well past twelve and I was running on automatic. I pulled out clothes to wear to court next day and wondered if I would need to get gas before driving back to Makely. My overnight case was nearly packed before I remembered that it was dinner at Jerry’s again, which meant we’d be sleeping here tonight. Hard to keep it all straight.

  Only a few days ago, Dwight had said, “You know what’s gonna happen before it’s all over, don’t you? You’re gonna be in my apartment, wondering where the hell I am, and I’m gonna be out here thinking the same thing.”

  Ten more days, I told myself, as I returned my toiletries to the bathroom cabinet and my lingerie to the dresser drawer.

  Ten more days.

  Shortly before one o’clock, I let myself into Aunt Zell’s kitchen over in Dobbs. She had the oven door open to check on the rolls, and the smell of hot yeast mingled with the aroma of caramelized onions and a well-browned pork roast. The heat of the oven had left her with pink cheeks, and damp white curls wreathed her sweet face.

  As soon as she saw me, she smiled. “Oh, good. You’re just in time to help me bring everything to the table. Hang your coat on the back of that chair, honey, and fix the tea, would you?”

  Aunt Zell is my mother with the edges knocked off. She even looks like Mother—a slender erect build, blue eyes, firm jawline. But her tongue was never as tart and she suffers fools a little more willingly. God knows, she suffered me willingly enough. After I came back to Dobbs, before Daddy and I made up and before I moved back to the farm, I had lived upstairs in the apartment that they’d originally built for Uncle Ash’s mother. Until he retired last year, Uncle Ash’s job had kept him traveling all over the western hemisphere and both of them professed themselves so pleased that I was there to keep Aunt Zell company while he was gone that they wouldn’t let me pay rent.

  I filled the glasses with ice, poured warm sugared tea over the ice, and carried the tray through the swinging door into the dining room. Through the arches of the front entry hall, I saw Jane and Brix Junior in the living room. Reid was there. Dwight, too.

  He hadn’t changed into a white shirt, but he looked fine in a dark blue one that harmonized nicely with a blue-and-gray tie and his charcoal gray jacket. Our eyes met and my heart turned a somersault. I still wasn’t used to it. How could a man I’ve known forever, a man I’d taken as much for granted as air and water, suddenly turn into someone whose smile could make my knees go weak? His smile was as familiar as my own face in the mirror, so why should it now flush me with hot desire?

  “Ah, Deborah,” said Uncle Ash. “Is it time for me to carve the roast?”

  “I think so,” I told him.

  He gave me a welcoming hug before going out into the kitchen, and Jane followed to see if she could help, so I left them to it and joined the others in the living room.

  Much as I wanted to go put my arms around Dwight, I restrained myself and smiled at Brix Junior. “Dwight ask you about Martha Hurst yet?”

  Dwight shook his head and grinned at my cousins. “What did I tell you?”

  “What?” I asked when Brix Junior nodded in amused agreement.

  “Dwight said you’d probably ask about her before we sat down to dinner.”

  I refused to be embarrassed. “Does that mean you’ve already discussed it?”

  “And I’ve told Reid to give him all the files. There’s nothing in them that wasn’t said at the trial. She fired me immediately afterwards and petitioned the court for a different attorney.”

  “Was she guilty, Brix?”

  “All my clients were innocent,” he said. “Except those who told me to bargain for a deal.”

  “Did Martha Hurst want a deal?”

  “One was never offered. Doug Woodall had enough to convict and Judge Corwin was bad for giving the death penalty. It was his last one before he retired.”

  “But was she guilty?” I asked again.

  He shrugged. “Who knows?”

  “You should,” I said tartly. “It was a capital case. Did you let Doug roll over you without a fight?”

  Brix Junior drew himself up and frowned at me. “Are you implying that I gave that woman a less than adequate defense?”

  That woman. I heard the distaste in his patrician tones.

  “She qualified for a court-appointed attorney and that was you, right?”

  He gave a frosty nod.

  “So it wasn’t as if you could go out and hire enough expert witnesses to confuse the jury.”

  “Expert witnesses would have been irrelevant. It was open and shut, Deborah. The victim was her stepson. They fought constantly. It was her baseball bat that viciously mutilated his genitals after she split his head open and left him so battered and bloody that his own mother couldn’t identify him at first.”

  I had forgotten the details of the murder, but now it was coming back. “Didn’t Doug claim that they’d been lovers and that she killed him because he dumped her and was seeing someone else?”

  “That was part of the case against her. My client did admit that they’d once had a relationship, but she swore that she was the one who broke it off because he was dealing drugs and was violent towards her. When she married his father, he continued to cause trouble. He lived with them off and on and witnesses heard her threaten to beat his brains out because he was stealing from them.”

  “He sounds like a real piece of work,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Brix Junior agreed.

  “Someone who would have made a lot of enemies?”

  “I was told he had a rough sort of charm that could defuse anger,” he said, neatly rebutting the argument I hadn’t yet made.

  “So once they had Martha Hurst, they didn’t bother to look for anyone else?”

  Until then, Dwight and Reid had listened in silence. Now Dwight said, “Didn’t Bo look to put anybody else in the picture?”

  “There were, of course, others with whom he’d fought, and we did put that fact before the jury, but the two most probable had alibis and the rest were tangential.”

  Brix Junior left the partnership shortly after I joined it, and we didn’t work together long enough for me to be familiar with his courtroom procedures. I myself always wanted to know if my clients did what they were accused of. Some attorneys, though, feel they do a better job if they can maintain at least a pro forma belief in their client’s innocence, so unless said client insists on pleading guilty, they don’t want to be told differently. I hadn’t realized that Brix Junior fell into that category.

  Dwight was looking skeptical. “So you never asked her?”

  “About other suspects?”

  “No. About whether or not she killed him?”

  “That’s not the way I worked.”

  “But you thought she did it,” I said.

  “Her guilt or innocence was i
rrelevant to the defense we presented.”

  “Oh come off it, Brix,” I said impatiently. “You’re not in practice any longer, but she was your client and she got death. The execution’s scheduled for next month. If she really was guilty, what was Tracy Johnson’s interest and why the hell won’t you give us a straight answer?”

  “Good luck,” Reid muttered from behind me.

  Making sure that I was aware that he was totally annoyed with me, Brix Junior swallowed the last of his pre-lunch sherry and set his glass firmly down on the buffet tray. “I though we were up this weekend to celebrate your forthcoming wedding, Deborah. I was not aware that I’d be facing an inquisition.”

  “And Tracy wasn’t aware that she was going to be killed,” I retorted.

  “Do you seriously think the two are related?” His question wasn’t for me, but for Dwight, who shrugged and said, “Too early to tell. It might be coincidence, but then again—”

  “Oh, very well,” said my cousin, turning back to me with a petulant air. “Do I think that Martha Hurst did, with malice aforethought, take her baseball bat to Clarence Hurst and beat him to a pulp fore and aft? Damn straight. Never once—during the trial or before—did she show any remorse or regret. No, she didn’t confess, but she did say more than once that he needed killing and that whoever did it did the world a service. Unfortunately, ‘needed killing’ quit being a defense in this state around the turn of the last century.”

  As Jane, Aunt Zell, and Uncle Ash brought in bowls and platters of steaming food, Brix Junior said, “And now could we please drop this subject and talk about more pleasant things? Do you play golf, Dwight?”

  Sunday dinner proceeded decorously and cordially after that. Butter wouldn’t have melted in my mouth when I told Aunt Zell that the minister out at Sweetwater Church had asked after them. And so he had when I ran into him at a gas station in Cotton Grove two days earlier. Dwight kept a straight face while Jane gave me an approving smile and inquired about the arrangements for our champagne reception at the Dobbs country club. The check she and Brix Junior had given us as a wedding gift had been specifically earmarked for decent French champagne instead of the sparkling California wine Dwight and I had originally budgeted for, and wedding talk carried us safely through coffee and Aunt Zell’s warm apple crisp.