Deep South Dead (A Hunter Jones Mystery Book 1) Page 12

  “One’s solid black. One’s black with some white. Two are calico.”

  “What’s calico?”

  “That’ like orange and black and white in spots,” Hunter said. “They’re like the mamma cat. She’s a calico, too.”

  “Could I have one of the kittens ?”

  “Well, only if your daddy says so,” Hunter said.

  “He’s coming back soon,” Bethie said. “Maybe we could get it today.”

  “No,” Hunter said, “They have to stay with their mama cat for about six weeks. They’re just babies and they don’t even have their eyes open, and the mama cat has to take care of them and teach them things.”

  “Could I just look at them and pick mine out so nobody else gets it first?”

  Hunter glanced at Taneesha, who was sitting at her desk with paperwork all around her.

  “What if I take Bethie to see the kittens,” Hunter said.

  Taneesha gave her a beseeching look.

  “This is just like Rapunzel’s castle,” Bethie said as they went up the stairs to Hunter’s apartment. “Did they have the Rapunzel story when you were a little girl?”

  “Sure,” Hunter said. “It’s a real old story.”

  “Have you got any children?”

  “No. I’m not married.”

  “You don’t have to be married,” Bethie said. “You could be divorced and have children. Are you going to get married?”

  “Maybe someday,” Hunter said, unlocking the door. “but not until my hair grows long enough for a prince to climb up it.”

  Bethie giggled.

  “He wouldn’t have to climb up your hair, silly!” she said, “because you’ve got stairs. In the Rapunzel story there weren’t any stairs to climb up so he has to say, ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel..”

  “You want to see the kittens?” Hunter asked. “Come on in.”

  A half hour later Hunter returned to Bethie to the courthouse .

  Sam and T.J. had collapsed in Sam’s office, where Taneesha was filling them in on the matter of the man who had been living in the Conservatory basement. Hunter stayed long enough to see that Bethie found her father, and left for home.

  “Guess what, Daddy!!” Bethie said, as soon as Hunter had left, “Miss Hunter took me to her house to see the kittens and they still have their eyes closed and she said I could have one but not until their mama cat has finished feeding them the way mama cats feed them and teaching them things they need to know to be cats and I want the black one with the white tail and we don’t know whether it’s a boy cat or a girl cat because Miss Hunter says she can’t tell the difference and…” she stopped for a deep breath, “and Miss Hunter lives in this place like Rapunzel except its got steps and she said she’s not going to get married until her hair grows long enough for a prince to climb up it, but I told her that it has STEPS and…”

  “Slow down, Bethie!” Sam said to his daughter. “Did you thank Miss Hunter?”

  Bethie slowed down to a halt.

  “Yes, Daddy, I did, I think I did anyway, and, Daddy, can I get my hair curly like Miss Hunter, cause she says she gets permanents and that’s why hers is so curly, because it’s really straight like mine down under the permanent.”

  “No,” Sam said, “your hair is fine just like it is.”

  “That’s what Miss Hunter said,” Bethie said. “Miss Hunter has these beautiful roses all over her bedroom walls.”

  “Go get your books together,” Sam said, “I’m going to drive you over to Grandma’s house. I’ve got to work late.”

  Bethie ran out, and Sam turned slowly around in his chair and rolled his eyes at Taneesha.

  “Speaking of Miss Hunter,” T.J. said suddenly. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, I’ve got a date with the gorgeous one tomorrow night.”

  Sam looked stunned. Then his eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.

  Taneesha looked back and forth at the two men, understood several things at once and thought Shut up T.J.

  “Well, I told you she wasn’t too young for me,” T.J. said with a grin.

  “Whatever,” Sam said without expression. “Just remember she’s a reporter and we’re in the middle of an investigation. Let’s get back to the man in the Conservatory. Do you think he could have gone into the mansion, maybe to steal something?”

  “Could be he’d trespass in one place if he’d trespass in another,” Taneesha jumped in, glad to have the talk about Hunter de-railed,. “but the main question I’d have is whether he could have done it. He’s a short little guy and he’s got a bad arm.”

  “Only one way to find out,” Sam said as T.J. came back in, “I’m going to grab some supper and I’ll be back by six. Then we’ll go over to the jail and meet him.”

  “The visitation for Tamlyn Borders is tonight,” Taneesha said. “Starts at 6.”

  Sam sighed.

  “Thanks. I’ll hit the funeral home at six and pay my respects and meet you two over at the jail around 6:30. “

  T.J. looked at Taneesha after Sam left.

  “Does that man ever think of anything but work?” he asked.

  He said his name was King Isaiah. Then he said it was Bellweather the Second.

  “What’d your Mama call you?” Sam asked, noticing that the old guy had a tremor. Cleaned up, he still looked scrappy, and the clothes they had given him were too big.

  “She always called me Jimmy B.”

  “Okay, Mr. Jimmy B.” Sam said, “I got a strength test I want you to take, and I got some questions. You want to do the test first or answer the questions first?”

  “You said it was a strength test?”

  “Yep!”

  “Bring it on, Praise the Lord. I know I ain’t tall as you Philistines, but I’m wiry and I ain’t had a hair cut in six months and the Lord God works through me.”

  Sam reached into a box he had brought into the interview room, and brought out a cast iron griddle Taneesha’s mother had provided.

  “I ain’t seen one of those in years,” Jimmy B. said. “Is it a portent?”

  “Nope,” Sam said cheerfully. “It’s a griddle.”

  Next he placed a large metal soup pan from the jail kitchen upside down on the table.

  “What I want you to do,” he said, “is take this griddle and swing it as hard as you can. See if you can knock the pan off the table.”

  “You do it first,” Jimmy B. said. “Then if there’s a bomb in there, it’ll blow you up, not me, Praise the Lord.”

  Taneesha kept a straight face.

  “You got it,” Sam said to Jimmy B., picking up the griddle. He swung with full force and knocked the pan straight toward Taneesha, who jumped backwards.

  “Now make her do it,” Jimmy B. said.

  Taneesha took her turn, slamming the pan across the room.

  “Now we want to see you do it,” she told Jimmy B. as Sam replaced the pan on the table.

  The old man reached out for the handle of the griddle with his left hand and lifted it almost to shoulder height, his hand shaking noticeably with the effort. He tried swinging it, lost his grip and caught the griddle in the crook of his right arm. He muttered a string of obscenities.

  “You want to try again?” Sam asked. “Just get a good grip on it and swing as hard as you can. You might want to turn kinda sideways since you’re a lefty.”

  “I’m no damn lefty!” Jimmy B. said. “I’m damn right-handed. Polio just got my right hand through the work of the Devil.”

  “Try again,” Sam said. “Just once. Use both hands.”

  Jimmy B. got a two handed grip on the griddle handle, turned sideways and studied the pan. He tried again and wound up losing his grip again. The griddle clattered to the floor, barely missing his right foot.

  “I ain’t doin’ that again,” he said. “You can just give me an F.”

  Sam patted him on the shoulder. “No, buddy, you passed the test with flying colors. I’m giving you an A+”

  “The Lord God works through me,” Jimmy B
. said. “Now what?”

  “Now, I got to ask you’ve ever seen these two guys,” Sam said, putting mug shots of Eric Bounds and Tripp Rocker on the table.

  Jimmy B. leaned over the pictures.

  “That there is King David and King Solomon,” he said. “Nice boys. Fine Christian boys. Saw ‘em just the other day. They had rings in their ears and they appeared like a vision and gave me two hundred thousand dollars.”

  “They told me it was two bucks,” Sam said.

  “Could be,” Jimmy B. said. “Could be I cast it upon the waters and multiplied it.”

  “Okay,” Sam said. “We’re going to let you spend the night here and have a good breakfast, and then we’ll get you up to Macon to the shelter there.

  “I got stuff over at the school,” Jimmy B. said. “I need to get back in there and get my stuff.”

  What school?” Sam asked.

  “You know, the school where I was stayin’, across from the old home place.”

  “I think he’s calling the Conservatory the school,” Taneesha said.

  “Okay,” Sam said. “What home place are you talking about?”

  “Where my grandma was born,” Jimmy B. said. “That brick one with the columns.”

  “What was your grandma’s name?” Sam asked Jimmy B.

  “Miss Florida,” Jimmy B. said proudly. “Like Miss America. Miss Florida Hilliard Bellweather, and she lived to be 485 years of age and she begat J.B. Bellweather the first, and he begat James Burton Bellweather the second and that’s me. Praise the Lord.”

  Chapter 15

  SAM WOKE UP SATURDAY MORNING AT seven, torn between wanting to keep on sleeping and wanting some thinking time. With coffee.

  With Bethie still sleeping, the idea of thinking time won out.

  The house was quiet. He started a pot of coffee and found a legal pad and a pen. Five minutes later there were no words on the pad at all.

  Instead he was thinking about Hunter going out with T.J. Was he jealous?

  Sam wasn’t sure what jealousy felt like. Mainly, he decided, he felt mad and he didn’t have time for the distraction.

  He got a cup of coffee, and, with some deliberation, started writing down a list of things he needed to do.

  He needed, for one thing, to call Skeet Borders and tell him that Rocker and Bounds weren’t suspects in his wife’s murder. He thought it might be interesting to call Marvis Flammonde and ask him what he had said that brought his daughter and his daughter’s friend home so fast. He needed to make a call to the developer of that subdivision Jaybird had said he visited Tuesday morning. He needed to take care of getting Jimmy B. Bellweather up to the Salvation Army in Macon.

  Thinking of Jimmy B. Bellweather made Sam feel better. He wished he could introduce the old guy to Claire Hilliard-Harrow and see her reaction to her long-lost cousin. But then he didn’t. Why put the man through that?

  Claire and Sam had the bond of having been classmates all the way through school. She was valedictorian. She was voted most likely to succeed, and she was pretty, too, but somehow nobody seemed to think of her as pretty because she was so formal, so serious, as if she had grown up at 12. He never would have thought she’d come back to Merchantsville, but she did, bringing her husband with her to set up practice in the office suite her father had built onto the old house.

  Did he think she could have killed Mae-Lula? He was glad she had an alibi, glad she wasn’t in town. He didn’t really know what she could do. On the other hand, he couldn’t really see her winning in an all-out struggle with Tamlyn Borders.

  He let the subject go, kept adding items to his list and then studied it, considering which things he had to do himself and which he could delegate.

  How, he wondered, could T.J. have just decided to have a date right in the middle of two ongoing investigations, as shorthanded as they were?

  The annoyance was back.

  He put his mind back on the list. There was something missing, a loose end.

  Ask the Harrows about the cat. Probably it didn’t matter, but he was curious. Did they have a cat? He hadn’t seen a cat at their house. They didn’t seem like people who would have a cat. Could it have been Mae-Lula’s cat, the one Hunter took home?

  He tried remembering what Mae-Lula’s cat looked like. Mainly he remembered people cursing and trying to catch it, and T.J. sneezing.

  T.J. sneezing. Hunter holding the cat, with that fierce look on her face, as if she were defending it against all harm. T.J. sneezing.

  He made a connection suddenly and laughed aloud.

  Well, he thought, so much for T.J. spending any time in Hunter’s apartment.

  “Hey, Daddy,” a small, sleepy voice said, “What are you laughing about?”

  “I just thought of something funny,” Sam said. “What do you want for breakfast, Bethie?.”

  “Waffles and bacon and apple juice, and remember that today is the day Grandma Carolyn and me are going to Wild Adventure.”

  Carolyn Ransom was Rhonda’s mother, a plain, kind woman who had happened to have a beautiful daughter. Sam liked her and always had, but he had learned to keep his own visits with her short and cheerful, because he found the house oppressive.

  It was a shrine to Rhonda. Portraits of Rhonda. Photographs of Rhonda. Rhonda and Sam at their Senior Prom.

  Rhonda and Sam as bride and groom. Rhonda’s pageant trophies everywhere. He wondered what Bethie thought of all that.

  Almost as if she were reading his mind, Bethie spoke up.

  “Grandma Carolyn said if I wanted to be in the Little Miss Cottonpatch Pageant Contest, she’d buy my dress and shoes and pay for the lessons on how to walk and stuff,” she said.

  Sam managed not shout, “Over my dead body.”

  Instead he asked, as off-handedly as he could, “Is that something you want to do?”

  Bethie shook her head and said, “Not really, so I asked her if we could just go to Wild Kingdom instead, and she said okay, and that’s why we’re going.”

  Sam smiled. At least some things were going right, he thought.

  The phone rang.

  “Sam, this is Taneesha. I’m down at the café and I heard something you ought to know about. Skeet took a swing at Jaybird Hilliard last night at the visitation and knocked him down. Annelle said he could have broken Jaybird’s jaw.”

  “He did this in the funeral home?”

  “No, outside. It was after we were there, when things were winding down. Nobody knows what it was all about. Annelle says Billy was there, and he said Skeet just knocked Jaybird down, and then he went back into the funeral home and took the baby from his mother-in-law and just went out to his truck and left. Jaybird was bleeding from his mouth, wouldn’t take any help from anybody. He just got himself up, holding his jaw and got in his Cadillac and drove off.”

  “Not after Skeet, I hope.”

  “No, Annelle said Billy said they went in different directions. He said he thought Jaybird was heading home, but he should’ve gone to the hospital.”

  Sam sighed.

  “This town has lost its mind,” he said.

  They were both silent as Sam thought it out.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “I’ve got to fix Bethie some breakfast and take her over to her grandmother’s house. How ‘bout you going out to see Skeet and you can tell him while you’re out there that Rocker and Bounds aren’t suspects. Just ask him about the business with Jaybird and let him talk. Find out what you can. I’ll go see Jaybird.”

  A minute later, he was dialing Jaybird Hilliard’s home.

  He was glad when Anne Marie answered. They were old friends.

  “Sam,” she said, in a conspiratorial tone, “I’m gonna tell you the truth, but you don’t go telling him I said this. He’s got to get some emergency dental work done Monday. He had to put on brakes real fast for a deer and would you believe he broke a front tooth? Well anyway, he can’t get it fixed until Monday and you know how vain he is. He’s down at our lake hou
se fishing, and hiding out.”

  “Y’all got a phone down there?”

  “No, but I’ll give you Jaybird’s cell phone number. I’m not guaranteeing he’ll answer it though. He’s in a real mood, bless his heart.”

  Sam decided not to call. He knew where the lake house was.

  Taneesha called the number listed for Bo and Arlene Borders, and told them she needed to come out and talk with Skeet.

  “Is he up yet?”

  “Yeah, he’s been out and come back,” Arlene said, “Let me go talk to him.”

  She was back in a minute.

  “Come on out,” she said. “If you don’t care how the house looks.”

  The house, which was in a tightly-packed subdivision just beyond the city limits, looked fine.

  Skeet seemed weary, almost indifferent.

  Taneesha took time to speak to Chipper, who was all smiles, remembering her from her visit with Tamlyn. He chattered until his dad came and said, “Come on, boy. Let’s go get us some chicken biscuits.”

  “You heard from Jaybird Hilliard yet?” Skeet asked, when they were alone. “He pressing charges?”

  “Haven’t heard a word from him,” Taneesha said, “We just heard you hit him and Sam wanted me to come out and hear your side of it while he goes and talks to Jaybird.”

  “Why? He didn’t think he could talk to me?”

  “That’s not the issue,” Taneesha said, “Sam can make Jaybird talk. I don’t know that I could. He’d probably ask me to go get him some ice tea.”

  “You got that right,” Skeet said. “Or hit on you more likely. Anyway, I’m gonna tell you what happened, but let’s go outside so I can smoke.”

  Once they were outdoors, sitting on metal patio chairs, Taneesha explained about Rocker and Bounds not being suspects in Tamlyn’s death.

  Skeet nodded. “Well, I figured it wasn’t them. I’m thinking it was Jaybird, to tell you the truth.”

  He said it with all the emotion of a man commenting on the weather.

  Taneesha took a deep breath and asked, “Why are you saying that, Skeet?”

  He took a drag from his cigarette, dropped it on the flagstones and ground it out with his foot.