Hard Row Part 8

"Well, she needs to get out of his way till he gets over her. Give him time to get interested in another woman or something. And that's what Bo and I told Portland."

I could just imagine what her response to that had been.

When I got to Aunt Zell's that night, I found that she had taken pity on my cousin Reid and invited him to join us. He claims not to know how to boil water and he's always glad to accept the offer of a home-cooked meal. The grilled trout were hot and crispy and Aunt Zell had made cornbread the way Mother and Maidie often did it: a mush of cornmeal, chopped onions, and milk poured into a black iron skillet after a little oil's heated to the smoking point, then baked at 400 till the bottom is crusty brown. Turned onto a plate and cut into pie wedges, it doesn't need b.u.t.ter to melt in your mouth.

Uncle Ash is tall and slim. Like his brother, who is Portland's dad, he had the Smith family's tight curly hair, only his was now completely white. He had brought home a copy of the High Country Courier because it carried a story about a murder that had taken place when I was up there last October. One killer had been sentenced to twelve years after pleading guilty. The other was going to walk away free.

No surprises there.

We caught up on family news. Uncle Ash's whole career had been with the marketing side of tobacco and he was interested to hear that my brothers were going to tread water by growing it on contract for another year.

"But if they're really interested in doing something different, the first cars ran on alcohol, you know," he said with a sly grin. "Kezzie say anything about y'all maybe distilling a little motor fuel?"

"Oh, Ash," said Aunt Zell, who is always embarra.s.sed for me whenever anyone alludes to Daddy's former profession.

"Now, Uncle Ash, you know well and good that my daddy wouldn't do anything illegal like that," I said, unable to control my own grin. "Besides, to run a car, it'd have to be a hundred-and-ninety proof, almost pure alcohol. I don't think he ever got anything that pure."

"Would they really legalize the home brewing of something that potent?" asked Reid, helping himself to another wedge of cornbread.

"If gas keeps going up, who knows?" said Uncle Ash. "Soon as you mention alcohol, though, lawmakers get nervous. It's like when they made farmers quit growing hemp about seventy years ago."

Industrial hemp was one of Uncle Ash's favorite hobby horses and he was off and riding.

"We spend millions importing something that we could grow right in our own country, right here in Colleton County. You can make dozens of useful things from it-paper, food, paint, medicine, even fuel. And they say that hemp seed oil is one of the most balanced in the world for the ratio of omega-sixes to omega-threes. It's friendly to the environment, doesn't take a lot of water or fertilizer to grow, and it's easy to harvest. But those spineless jellyfish who call themselves statesmen? Soon as they see the word 'hemp,' they're afraid their voters will see 'cannabis.'"

"Ash, dear, you're raising your voice again," said Aunt Zell.

"Sorry," he said sheepishly and got up to help her make coffee and bring in the pecan pie I had seen cooling in the kitchen earlier.

"So what's with you and Flame Smith?" I asked Reid as I set out coffee cups.

"You know her?"

"Not me. Portland. She ran into us at lunch yesterday. Just before you got there. Please tell me you're not putting the moves on your client's girlfriend."

His blue eyes widened innocently. "It was strictly business and excuse me, Your Honor, but should we be having this ex parte discussion?"

I hate it when he scores a legal point off my curiosity.

I was home by nine and immediately switched on the hockey game. Amazing how much easier it was to follow now that I'd attended an actual game. During the commercials, I managed to wash and dry two loads of laundry and had piles of folded underwear on the couch beside me by the time Dwight and Cal returned. The game had been a blowout. Unfortunately, it was the Canes that got stomped.

Aunt Zell had sent the rest of the pie home for them and Cal had taken his into the living room to watch WRAL' s recap of the game when Dwight's phone rang. He listened intently, then said, "I'm on my way."

I quit pouring his milk. "What's happened?"

Dwight reached for his jacket with a grim face. "They just found another d.a.m.n hand."

CHAPTER 12.

While money making is one of the great desiderata with most men, it is not the chief good in life, neither does it const.i.tute the sum total to earthly happiness as men, by their lives, seem to regard it.

-Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890 DWIGHT BRYANT.

FRIDAY NIGHT, MARCH 3.

Ward Dairy Road again, but this time it was not a dog or a human who found a body part.

It was a buzzard.

"d.a.m.nedest thing," said the man who had called them. "My wife and I were running late this morning and as we headed out to the car, there were some buzzards over there in those weeds at the edge of the field. One of them flew up with something when I started the engine and then I heard a clunk on the top of the car. Sounded almost like a rock, only not as heavy, you know? My wife saw it bounce way under the holly bushes over there but we didn't have time to stop and see what it was. After work, we went out to supper and a movie, but as soon as we got home, my wife wanted me to take the shovel and find whatever it was before we let the dogs out and they got into something nasty. They're bad for rolling in roadkill."

He had left his find on the shovel by the holly bushes and their flashlights showed a large and presumably male left hand, much the worse for wear. It seemed to be frozen solid, yet flesh had been pecked from the bones and several finger joints were missing. If the third finger had ever worn a wedding band, there was no sign of one now. Dwight was surprised the buzzard hadn't come back for it. Unless there was something else out there beyond their flashlights?

They would have to wait for the ME's determination, but it looked to him like the mate to the first hand they had found exactly one week ago.

A full week and they were no nearer an ident.i.ty.

The man indicated the general area where he had first seen the buzzards and they approached gingerly, sweeping the ground before them with their lights. They saw nothing of interest in the weeds and nothing on the shoulder of the road, but when they walked in the opposite direction, shining their flashlights in the ditches, Detective Jack Jamison noticed that water had ponded up and frozen solid behind a clogged culvert. He started to walk on, but something seemed to be embedded in the dirty ice.

"I think it's the other arm!" he called.

The others quickly joined him on the edge of the road. Three flashlights focused on the ice, and the shape was so similar to what they hoped to find that it took a poke with the shovel to confirm that the object was only part of a tree branch that had broken off and lodged there.

Disappointed, they walked on.

"At least it's on a line with the other parts," Deputy Richards said. Despite a red nose and cheeks, her cold seemed to be drying up and she had turned out when Dwight paged her, even though technically not on duty.

There was something different about her tonight, Dwight thought. She wore jeans instead of her usual utilitarian slacks and the turtleneck sweater peeping out of her black suede jacket was a soft pink. And was that perfume drifting on the chill night air?

He gave himself a mental kick in the pants. Of course! Friday night? Young single woman?

"Sorry for messing up your evening," he said.

She shrugged. "That's okay. Goes with the job, doesn't it?"

And that was something else new. Heretofore, whenever he addressed a personal remark to Richards, she usually turned a fiery red. He realized now that it had not happened in the last few weeks. She was a good officer, but he had begun to think she was never going to be able to join in the department's easy give-and-take, yet she had finally adapted and he had not even noticed.

Just as Dwight was ready to call it a night, Jamison's light caught something amid a curtain of dead kudzu vines that entangled a clump of young pines growing on the ditchbank. He thought at first that it was an old weatherstained cardboard box. Nevertheless, he walked over to check it out.

"Oh dear Lord in the morning!" said Richards, who had crossed the road to shine her own light on his find.

There, hidden from casual view was a naked torso that was armless, legless, and headless as well. Because it was lying on its back, it took them a moment to orient themselves, to realize that the three black stumps nearest them were probably the neck and what was left of the upper arms, which meant that the opposite end should have been the s.e.x organs. It was probably male like the earlier parts they had found. There was a mat of hair between the flat b.r.e.a.s.t.s, but nothing was left in the genital area except a dark ugly gouge.

Denning drove the crime scene van down to the site and set up his floodlights. As he surveyed what was left of the body before taking pictures, he shook his head and said to Dwight, "You know something, Major? We got ourselves one p.i.s.sed-off killer."

Every man in the group felt a painful twinge of sympathetic horror as they gazed down at the mutilated victim. Dwight, too. Once again, he thought of the church sign where they had found the first hand.

With what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.

What the h.e.l.l had the guy done to wind up like this, with his personal parts strewn across the county?

At the other end of the state, Flame Smith turned off the main highway and shifted to low gear. The engine protested against the steep climb ahead and her tires spun against the loose gravel, before they gained traction and began to inch upward.

Tree branches brushed either side of the car. Normally she enjoyed the roller-coaster effect of this drive, but that was in daylight. Tonight, the sky was overcast. No moon. No stars. Only her headlights to illuminate the opening between the trees. Driving up here to Buck Harris's mountain retreat had been an impulse fueled by bourbon and anger.

That he could be so cavalier as to go off to sulk about the money he was going to have to give up in this divorce settlement! Did he really think that staying away from court would somehow make that fat greedy wife of his settle for less? And even if she did wind up with a full half of their a.s.sets, how much money did a person need? As someone who had been forced to scrabble for every dime, Flame was ready to settle down and be taken care of by a man with an ample bank account. It did not have to be billions. A modest five or six million invested at six percent would do just fine. She could live very happily on that.

But land and money were how men like Buck kept score. The sale of Harris Farms, if it came to that, would leave him cash rich. He could keep his yacht, buy two more houses to replace the two he would have to give up, and still have enough spare change to fly first cla.s.s to Europe or Hawaii whenever he wanted. Nevertheless, it galled him to know that Suzu Harris could, if she chose, force the sale of the land they had so painstakingly acquired in their early years. Could even hold his feet to the fire over their first tomato field, the thirty acres that had been in his family since before the Civil War.

By the time she reached Wilkesboro, Flame was stone cold sober and beginning to think that running Buck into the shallows was probably a mistake. She had played him like a fish these last two years, giving him enough line to let him think it was his idea to come to her. Start reeling in too hard and she was liable to have him break the line or spit out the hook. As long as she had come this far, though, it was easier to go on than turn back.

"Thank G.o.d it's not icy," she muttered as she steered to avoid a hole where the gravel had washed out and almost sc.r.a.ped the car on an outcropping of solid rock. Another quarter-mile and the drive ended in a circle in front of a large rustic lodge built of undressed logs. She did not see his car, but the garage was on the far side of the house. Nor were there any lights. Not that she expected any. Not at-she pressed a b.u.t.ton on the side of her watch and the little dial lit up. Not at one-thirty in the morning.

The front door was locked and she rang the bell long and hard until she could hear it echo from within.

To her surprise, the interior remained dark.

She rang again, leaning on the bell so long that no one inside could possibly sleep through it.

Nothing.

A long low porch ran the full length of the house and she retrieved a door key that was kept beneath the second ceramic pot. Within minutes, she was inside the lodge, fumbling for the light switches.

"Buck, honey? You here?" she called.

No answer.

With growing apprehension, she mounted the ma.s.sive staircase that led to the bedrooms above.

In the small hours of Sat.u.r.day morning, Detective Mayleen Richards drove through the deserted streets of Dobbs. The only other person out at that time was a town police officer, who gave her a friendly wave from his cruiser that indicated he'd be glad to share a cup of coffee from his Thermos and kill some boring time. Another night and she might have. Tonight though, she merely waved back and continued on to her apartment, a one-bedroom over a garage on the outskirts of Dobbs where town and suburbs merged.

The elderly couple who lived in the main house spent their winters in Florida and were glad to have a sheriff's deputy there to keep an eye on things. Richards was glad for the privacy their absence gave her. Even when the owners were in residence, they went to bed early and seemed singularly uninterested in their tenant's irregular comings and goings.

Not that there had been anything very irregular about her personal life before this. She pulled her shifts. She attended a Spanish language course two nights a week out at Colleton Community College. She visited her family down in Black Creek almost every weekend. She harbored no regrets for ditching either that dull computer programming job out at the Research Triangle nor the equally dull marriage to her highschool sweetheart who had achieved his life's goal when he traded farm life for a desk job. Except for fancying herself in love with Major Bryant, law enforcement had absorbed and satisfied her.

Richards could smile to herself now and see that recent adolescent crush for what it was-attraction to an alpha male, generated by proximity and nothing more than the needs of a healthy body that had slept alone for way too long.

She coasted to a stop beside a shiny gray pickup with an extended crew cab and cut the ignition, then hurried up the wooden steps that led to a deck and to the man who waited inside.

"I thought you'd be gone," she said, absurdly happy that her p.r.i.c.kly reaction to his first overtures had not sent him away.

"No." He carefully unzipped her jacket and eased the soft pink sweater over her head, then buried his face in the waves of her dark red hair as his hands unhooked her bra.

"Muy hermosa," he murmured.

Later, lying beside him in her bed, brown legs next to white, she was almost on the brink of sleep when she remembered. "McLamb said he saw you at the courthouse today?"

Miguel Diaz nodded, one hand lazily moving across her body. "One of the men from the village next to my village back home. He took a tractor and I was there to speak for him."

"Tractor? Was he the guy who plowed up a stretch of yards out toward Cotton Grove?"

"Ummm," he murmured, kissing her shoulder.

"He works for you?"

"For now. The other place, they fired him when he took the tractor."

Mayleen Richards laughed, remembering the jokes the uniformed deputies had made. "What was he thinking? Where was he trying to go?"

She felt him shrug. "Who knows? It was the tequila driving. Maybe he thought he could get to his woman."

"She's in Dobbs?"

"No. Their baby died and she went back to Mexico."

"Oh, Mike, that's so sad."

"Yes. But our babies will be strong and healthy."

"Our babies?" This was only their third time together and he was already talking babies?

"Our red-haired, brown-skinned babies," he said as he gently stroked her stomach.

The image delighted her, but then she thought of her parents, of her family's att.i.tude toward Latinos, and she sighed.

Intuitively, he seemed to understand. "Don't worry, querida. Once the babies come, your family will grow to like me."

CHAPTER 13.

A man can't throw off his habits as he does his coat; if contracted in youth they will stick in manhood and old age, whether they be good or bad.

-Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890 DEBORAH KNOTT.