Hard Row Part 16

"I did?"

"That guy that stole the tractor and messed up a bunch of yards 'cause he didn't know how to lift the plows? Wasn't he in your court Friday?"

"That's her new boyfriend?"

"No, no. Mike was there to speak up for him, least that's what one of the bailiffs told me anyhow."

"Oh yes. I remember now. The Latino who said he'd see that the rest of the damage was repaired?"

"That's the one. It's real nice when people take care of their own, isn't it?"

I couldn't exactly recall Miguel Diaz's face, but I did retain an impression of responsibility and I remember being surprised by how fluent his English was.

"Mayleen says Mike felt so sorry for the man, what with all his troubles, that he's hired him on after he got kicked out of the camp he was staying at."

"That's right," I said, as more of the details came back to me. "His wife left him, didn't she?"

"Went right back to Mexico after their baby died." Faye looked around to make sure no one was near and leaned even closer. "I might not ought to be telling this, but Flip was on call that night and he helped deliver the baby and he said-"

Her phone rang then and, judging by the sudden professional seriousness of her voice, it sounded like an emergency for someone, so I gave her a catch-you-later wave because Reid walked past at that moment.

He held the door for me and we walked around to the stairs. When we reached the atrium on the ground floor that connects the old courthouse to the new additions, the marble tiles were slick where people had tracked in muddy water. A custodian brought out long runners and laid them down to cover the most direct paths from one doorway to another before tackling the floor with a mop.

We paused to speak to a couple of attorneys, then sat on the edge of one of the brick planters filled with lush green plants to finish our coffee and enjoy the rain that was sluicing down the sides of the soaring gla.s.s above us. At least, Reid was enjoying it. My agenda was to get him to tell me everything he'd told Dwight.

"I suppose his daughter scoops the lot? His housekeeper told Dwight that he was close to her. Poor Flame Smith."

"Not too poor," said Reid, half-distracted by the weather he was going to have to brave to keep an appointment back at his office. "The daughter's the residual beneficiary, but Flame'll get half a million. I don't suppose you've got an umbrella you could lend me? Flame took mine and John Claude keeps his locked up for some reason."

I had to laugh. I know exactly why John Claude keeps his umbrella in a locked closet and I immediately began to chant the exasperated verse our older cousin always quoted whenever he discovered that Reid had once again "borrowed" his umbrella: "The rain it raineth every day Upon the just and unjust fellow, But more upon the just, because The unjust hath the just's umbrella."

"Very funny," Reid said grumpily as he stood to dump our cups in the nearest trash bin. He spotted Portland Brewer coming up the marble steps outside and, ever the gentleman, he rushed over to hold the heavy outer door for her. Her small red umbrella hadn't warded off all the wet, but she was so angry, it's a wonder the raindrops didn't sizzle as soon as they touched any exposed skin. "Dammit, Deborah! I thought Bo and Dwight were going to take away all of James Braswell's guns!"

"Huh?" I said.

"He got out of jail yesterday morning and last night he shot up Karen's condo."

"What? Is she okay?"

"No, she's freaking not okay! She's scared out of her mind."

I made sympathetic noises, but Por was too wound up to be easily calmed. The rain had curled her black hair into tight little wire springs. Reid took her dripping umbrella and made a show of holding it over the green leaves.

"You in court this morning?" he asked her.

"After I get through blasting Dwight and Bo. Why?" Too riled to give him her full attention, she continued venting at me. "The only reason Karen's still alive is that she's been staying at her mother's. She could have been killed for all they care."

"Now wait a minute," I said. "That's not fair. They can't put a twenty-four-hour watch on her. And besides, how do you know it was Braswell?"

"Who else would it be? You think a sweet kid who works at a Bojangles and takes care of an invalid mother has that kind of enemies? Hey! Where're you going with my umbrella?" she called as Reid pushed open the door for one of our clerks and kept walking.

"I'll drop it off at your office," he called back and hurried down the marble steps and out into the unrelenting rain, Portland's umbrella a small circle of red over his head.

As Por stormed off in one direction, I was joined on my walk upstairs by Ally Mycroft, a prisspot clerk who had pointedly worn my opponent's b.u.t.ton during the last election whenever she had to work my courtroom.

Making polite chatter, I asked, "You working for Judge Parker today?"

"No," she said, with equally phony politeness. "I'll be with you today."

I made a mental note to drop by Ellis Glover's office sometime today, see if it was me our Clerk of Court was annoyed with or Ally Mycroft.

"In fact," Ally said, "Mr. Glover has a.s.signed me to your courtroom for the rest of the week."

In my head, Brook Benton began singing his world-weary "Rainy Night in Georgia."

"Lord, I feel like it's rainin' all over the world."

CHAPTER 22.

I've got an old mare who will quit a good pasture to go into a poor one, and it's just because she got into a habit of letting the bars down.

-Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890 DEPUTIES MCLAMB AND DALTON.

TUESDAY MORNING, MARCH 7.

"Better not block the driveway," Deputy Raeford McLamb said and Sam Dalton, the department's newest detective trainee, parked at the curb in front of a shabby little house in sad need of paint. A white Honda stood in the driveway. On the small porch, a young man in a UNC hoodie with a black-and-silver backpack dangling from his shoulder shifted his weight from one foot to the other as an older woman carrying a big red-and-green striped umbrella came out and locked the door behind her. He held out his hand and she gave him the keys. Both of them looked at the detectives suspiciously as McLamb got out of the prowl car and approached in the pouring rain.

"Mrs. Stone?"

"Yes?" A heavyset, middle-aged black woman, she wore a clear plastic rain bonnet over her graying hair.

"Colleton County Sheriff's Department, ma'am. Could we step inside and talk a minute?"

Mrs. Stone shook her head. "Is this about my daddy again?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"What is it?"

"Ma'am-"

"I'm really sorry, Officer, but if I don't go on now, I'm gonna be late for work and they told me if I'm late again, they're gonna lay me off. Whatever you got to say's just gonna have to wait till this evening. I'll be back at five."

"Where do you work? Maybe we could drive you?"

She paused indecisively and the teenager jingled the keys impatiently. "Let 'em drive you, Mom. I'm gonna be late for school myself if you don't."

"All right," she said, but as the boy dashed through the rain to the Honda, she called after him. "You better be on time picking me up today, you hear? You not there when I come out, you're not getting the car for a week. You hear me, Ennis?"

But he was already backing out of the drive and into the street.

"Boys!" she said, shaking her head. "Soon as they turn sixteen, they start climbing Fool's Hill. Let 'em get to talking to their friends, flirting around with the girls, and they forget all about what they're supposed to be doing and where they're supposed to be. I believe to goodness he had more sense when he was six than he's got now that he's sixteen."

McLamb smiled, having heard the same words from his own mother when he first started driving. He motioned to Dalton, who drove up to the porch so that they wouldn't get too wet. McLamb helped Mrs. Stone into the front seat and he climbed in back.

"So what's this about?" Mrs. Stone asked after she had told them where she worked and they were under way.

As gently as possible, McLamb told her that the medical examiner over in Chapel Hill was pretty sure that her father's hand had been detached from his wrist not by an animal, but by human intervention.

Mrs. Stone turned in the seat and faced him, her face outraged. "Somebody cut off my daddy's hand?"

"Well, not the way you're probably thinking. Mostly they say the flesh was so-" He searched for an inoffensive word that would not sicken the woman. "-so degraded, that the hand probably pretty much pulled loose by itself when it was lifted, but there was a ligament that was holding it on and when the pathologist looked at the edges under a microscope, he could tell that it was definitely a recent cut. You're his only relative, right?"

"Me and Ennis, yes."

"Can you think of anyone who might have wanted your dad dead?"

Mrs. Stone shook her head. "The only person who couldn't get along with him was my mother and she pa.s.sed six years ago, come June. You can let me out right here," she said and opened the door as soon as Dalton slowed the car to a stop in front of the motel where she worked.

McLamb hopped out to hold the door for her. She handed him her umbrella and waited for him to open it.

"Mrs. Stone-"

"I told you. I can't be late today!" she snapped and hurried inside.

"You didn't ask for her alibi," Dalton said, handing him some paper towels to mop the worst of the rain from his jacket.

"Yeah, I know. Looks like we have to catch her this evening after all."

From Mrs. Stone's place of work to Sunset Meadows Rest Home at the southern edge of Black Creek was just over ten minutes and Dalton parked the car as close as he could get it to the wide porch that ran the full width of the building.

"Here's good," said McLamb. A slender man of medium height, he prided himself on staying in shape and usually looked for opportunities to take a few extra steps, but not when it was raining this hard. His navy blue nylon jacket had COLLETON CO. SHERIFF'S DEPT. stenciled in white on the back and he pulled the hood low over his face before making a dash for it.

Dalton followed close behind in an identical jacket. Younger and chunkier than McLamb, at twenty-four, he was still kid enough to be excited by his recent promotion to the detective squad. "Provisional promotion," he reminded himself as he took a good look at the facility accused of letting one of its patients wander off to drown back before Christmas.

"Don't just look at what's there," McLamb had told him on the drive out. "Look at what's not there, too."

Although certified and licensed by the state, the nursing home had begun as a mom-and-pop operation and was a drab place at best. Built of cinder blocks, the utilitarian beige exterior was at least three years overdue for a new coat of paint. The shades and curtains looked sun-faded, and the uninspired shrubs that lined the porch needed work, too. Cutting them back to waist height would make them bush up at the base and would also allow anyone standing at the doorway an un.o.bstructed view of the parking lot. As it was, the privet hedge was so tall and straggly that a casual observer might overlook someone leaving without authorization, especially if it was getting on for dark on one of the shortest days of the year.

The porch was a ten-foot-wide concrete slab set flush with both the paved entrance walk and the sills of the double front doors beyond. Easy wheelchair access, thought Dalton, but also easy for unsteady old feet to walk off without stumbling.

The fifteen or so rocking chairs that were grouped along the porch were worn and weather stained, but they were a thoughtful amenity for men and women who had grown up when porches were a place for socializing, for sh.e.l.ling beans, for watching children play, for resting after lunch in the middle of a busy day. Indeed, despite the cool spring morning and the pouring rain, three of the rockers were occupied by residents swaddled in blankets from head to toe who watched their approach with bright-eyed interest.

Not a lot of money to spread around on paint and gardeners, thought Dalton, but enough money to pay for staff who would help their patients out to the porch and make sure they were warm enough to enjoy the fresh air, even to tucking the blankets around their feet. The nursing home where his grandmother had recovered from her hip replacement was beautifully landscaped and maintained, but there had been a persistent stench of urine on her hall and she complained that her feet were always cold. Somehow he was not surprised to follow McLamb into the building and smell nothing more than a slight medicinal odor overlaid with the pungency of a pine-scented floor cleaner.

Immediately in front of them was a reception area that doubled as a nursing station. Long halls on either side led away from the entrance lobby with a shorter hall behind. Sam Dalton soon learned that Sunset Meadows Rest Home was basically one long rectangle topped by a square in back of the middle section to accommodate a dining room, lounge, kitchen, and laundry. Each of the forty "guest" rooms held two or three beds and there was a waiting list.

"Does that sound like we're careless and neglectful?" demanded Mrs. Belinda Franks, the owner-manager. A large black woman of late middle age, her hair had been left natural and was clipped short. She wore red earrings, black slacks, and a bright red zippered sweater over a white turtleneck. The sweater made a cheerful splash of color in this otherwise drab setting. She possessed a warm smile but that had been replaced by a look of indignation as she glared up at the two deputies from her chair behind the tall counter.

"Would people be lining up to put their loved ones here if they thought we were going to let them come to harm?"

"No, ma'am," Raeford McLamb a.s.sured her. "And we're not here to find fault or put the blame on you or your people, Mrs. Franks. We came to ask for your help."

"Like how?"

"We're now treating Mr. Mitchiner's demise as a suspicious death."

"Suspicious?" Her brow furrowed. "Somebody took that sweet old man off and killed him?"

"Too soon to say for sure, but someone did disturb his body after he was dead, and we need to find out who and why. I know you and your staff gave statements at the time, but if we could just go over them again?"

Mrs. Franks sighed and rolled her chair back to a bank of filing cabinets, from which she extracted a manila folder.

Standing with his elbows on the counter between them, McLamb looked in both directions. The front edge of the counter was on a line with the inner walls of the hall. Although he could clearly see the exit doors at the end of each hallway, there was no way someone behind the desk could.

"I know, I know," Mrs. Franks said wearily when McLamb voiced that observation. "We're going to curve this desk further out into the lobby this spring when we get a little ahead so that anybody on duty can see these three doors. Right now, though, we had to borrow money to set up the monitor cameras."

She motioned to the men to come around back of the counter where a split screen showed the three doors now under electronic watch.

"What about a back door?"

"That's kept locked all the time now except when somebody's actually using it."

"But it used to be unlocked before Mr. Mitchiner walked off?"

She nodded. "You have to understand that we're not a skilled nursing facility. Most of our people are just old and a little forgetful and not able to keep living by themselves, and we have a few with special problems. My first daughter was a Downs baby and we couldn't find a place that would treat her right. That's how my husband and I started this home. We wanted to take care of Benitha right here and have a little help once she got too big for us to handle. We still have a couple of Downs folks, the ones who can't live on their own, but mostly it's old people who come to us. We see that everybody takes the medications their doctors have prescribed and we keep them clean and dry, but we're not equipped for serious problems and we only have one LPN on staff. The rest are aides who have had first aid training, CPR, that sort of thing. We wouldn't have kept Mr. Mitchiner here except that his family was always in and out to help with him and he had a sweet nature. Eventually, he would have had to transfer into a place with a higher level of care. They knew that. But this was convenient for now. His grandson could ride his bicycle over after school and his daughter could stop in before or after work."

"Who last saw him that day?" asked McLamb.

"We just don't know," the woman said, with exasperation both for the question and her lack of a definitive answer. "We don't make visitors sign in and out. We want people to feel free to come in and sit with their loved ones, bring them a piece of watermelon in the summertime or some hot homemade soup in the winter. Put pretty sheets on their bed. Bring them a new pair of bedroom slippers. I think it makes them feel good to know that they can pop in any time to check up on us because we have nothing to hide. It's just like they were running in and out of their grandmother's house, you know?"

The men nodded encouragingly and Dalton said, "Sounds like a friendly place."

"It is a friendly place. You ask anybody. The only person with any complaints is Miss Letty Harper. She says our cook scrambles the eggs too dry, but that's because she always wants a fried egg with a runny yolk. All the same, Ramsey'll cook one like that for her if he's not too jammed up."

She opened the folder and took out copies of the statements she and her staff had given back in December. "Mary Rowe. She's due back any minute. She gave him his heart pills that morning. Then Ennis Stone. That's his grandson. He just got his driver's license around Thanksgiving and he took Mr. Mitchiner out for a ride and got him a cheeseburger for lunch. That man did love cheeseburgers. Then Ennis brought him back here and put him in his room for a nap. His room was down there on the end and Ennis usually came in that end 'cause it's closer. He could park right next to the door. His roommate, Mr. Thomas Bell, says Mr. Mitchiner was asleep on the bed when he came back to take a nap himself; but he wasn't there when he woke up."

"No one else saw Mitchiner that afternoon?" Dalton asked, thumbing through the statements McLamb had read back in December.

"Not to remember. But it's not like anyone would unless it was his family. He was in his own world most of the time, so he didn't have any special friends here. A real nice, easygoing man, but you couldn't carry on much of a conversation with him. He kept thinking Mr. Bell was his cousin and he's white as you are."