Deep South Dead (A Hunter Jones Mystery Book 1) Read online

  He got his bottle of water, went back to the porch and sat down.

  “You’re absolutely sure Skeet didn’t know what Tamlyn was doing?” Jaybird asked. “I mean about the money?”

  “Taneesha’s the one who talked to him. She’s dead sure.”

  “She gon’ go talkin’ all over town?”

  “No. She’s a professional.”

  “You think Skeet might come after me?”

  “I think he’s got a lot more on his mind right now, Jaybird, but I already called Anne Marie and told her not to tell anybody else where you are. And I think you ought to get yourself cold sober so you can think about what you’re doing and saying.”

  “How about shuttin’ up about my drinkin’,” Jaybird said. “I can hold my liquor, Sam.”

  “You’re drunk right now, Jaybird. If you weren’t drunk, you wouldn’t have told me all this trash you just told me. And how about Tuesday at the café? Weren’t you drunk then, when you started hollering at Hunter Jones and Taneesha, and your friends had to get you out of there? You don’t exactly get smarter when you get drunk.”

  Jaybird scowled like an angry teenager.

  “I’ve just had a lot of problems lately,” he said, “Nothin’s going right. I mean financially, like I got to meet a payroll and I got a mortgage and two kids in college, and I was countin’ on that deal workin’ out with Flammonde and that’s dead in the water now, if it wasn’t already with Aunt Mae-Lula startin’ all that uproar. Man, I’ve been havin’ a rough time.”

  “Right,” Sam said. “Real rough. You had your aunt messing up a financial deal, and you had Tamlyn taking $300 cash out of your pocket every week. I’m thinking you might be relieved that both of them are out of the way. Ann Marie might back you up about Tuesday night, but all you really got for Tuesday morning is riding round all over the county by yourself, and I still don’t know where you went to get drunk before lunchtime.”

  “I resent the hell out of your whole tone,” Jaybird said, getting red faced. He braced himself on the arms of the rocking chair and tried to stand up, missing once and making it the second time.

  “Get your ass off my property, Sam Bailey. You’re not in Magnolia County now, and you got no jurisdiction down here.”

  “No, Commissioner, I don’t,” Sam said amiably as he got up, “But I figured if I put the fear of God into you, you might get sobered up and start telling me something I can verify, like maybe who you were with all that time Tuesday morning, and don’t tell me that crap about going over to the development to see about the retention pond, ‘cause I already checked that one out, and you did that Monday, not Tuesday.”

  “Get off my property, Sam.”

  “I’m leaving,” Sam said from the steps, “but don’t even think about driving down to that convenience store until you’re sure you can pass a breathalyzer. I’m going to call Sheriff Tate’s office on my way out and tell him there’s a stone drunk out here who doesn’t have anything to drink but water.”

  Chapter 17

  T.J. ARRIVED FIVE MINUTES EARLY, AND Hunter, who was in the middle of a serious earring decision, invited him in.

  “I’ll be ready in a minute,” she said. “Just make yourself at home.”

  By the time she was back in her bedroom, she could hear the sneezing begin.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as she hurried out, “It must be the cat dander. I didn’t think about that. Let’s go.”

  “You’ve got cats?” he asked in a worried voice after they were safely in his car.

  “You make it sound like I’ve got smallpox,” Hunter said, laughing. “Well, sure, I’ve got that calico that was at Miss Mae-Lula’s house. I wasn’t going to let them put the poor thing in the shelter. And she’s had her kittens now. “

  “Cats,” T.J. said. “And I didn’t even bring my inhaler.”

  He exploded into another series of sneezes.

  They headed for Macon , some 50 miles away, where T.J. knew of a good steak and seafood restaurant.

  The sneezing subsided as the conversation wound from cats to allergies to the fact that T.J.’s ex-wife, Cynthia, had a cat that she had given away after their first date.

  That bit of information was followed by an awkward silence and some studied listening to radio music. Then T.J. picked up the conversational ball and asked Hunter, “How on earth did you wind up in Merchantsville?”

  The conversation moved through their life stories as they took the 30-mile drive to the seafood and steak place T.J. had picked out.

  Hunter’s story, nicely edited, dealt briefly with an engagement that got broken, and then, more at length, because there was some humor it in, with her series of really bad roommates in Atlanta. Finally, she explained her frustrations with a newspaper job that chewed up all her time and kept her from her “real writing.”

  “And then,” she wrapped up, “I saw the ad for this job on the Georgia Press Association Web site. I don’t know if you realize this or not, but Tyler Bankston is one of the legends of Georgia journalism, who just happened to want to marry a woman who didn’t happen to want to leave Magnolia County. Anyway, it sounded like a great way to get out of the rat race in Atlanta. I’m working on a novel at home, and down here I can afford a quiet place of my own.”

  She didn’t mention that she hadn’t written a word on the novel in weeks.

  T.J.’s life story seemed to be mostly about Cynthia. He had moved to Americus because Cynthia got a job teaching there. Cynthia was younger than he was and had just finished college two years ago. Cynthia was teaching first grade. Now, Cynthia was thinking about moving back to Columbus, if she could get a job there next year.

  “That’s where her family lives..,” T.J. finished up. “I just found that out this afternoon. She’s still got stuff in the apartment and she came over this afternoon to pack some of it up, and we were just talking, you know.”

  “I hope I’m not talking too much about Cynthia,” T.J. said later over lobster. “You could get the impression that I’m not over her.”

  “Well, you’re not,” Hunter said, “but that’s okay.”

  T.J. started to protest, but gave up.

  “I guess you’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Hey,” Hunter said with a smile, “Nothing to be sorry about.. Now, if I’d given my cat away for you, and then found out you weren’t over Cynthia, I might look at it differently.”

  She meant it to lighten the mood, but T.J. sat silently staring at wine glass.

  “Okay,” Hunter said, “Was it your fault or hers or both?”

  “Mine,” he said morosely, “I fooled around on her, and she found out and moved out.”

  “Serves you right” Hunter said. “Is that why we’re in Macon? So she won’t find out?”

  He looked so miserable that she got up, walked to the other side of the table and hugged him. The waiter beamed.

  “Now let me explain Cynthia to you,” she said when their key lime pie arrived. “Because I’m beginning to really like Cynthia.”

  “You really would like her,” T.J. said. “She’d like you, too.”

  “The first thing,” Hunter said, “is that if she was finished completely with you, she would have gotten her stuff out of the apartment a long time ago, and she wouldn’t be hanging around talking on a Saturday afternoon and telling you that she’s thinking about moving, and all that stuff.”

  “You sure?”

  “Ninety seven percent sure,” Hunter said. “But you’ve got to take the risk even if I’m not right. What you need to do is call her tomorrow and maybe ask her out to dinner, and then you need to tell her that you love her and how sorry you are for everything and how much you miss her and how you’d give anything to have her back.”

  “What I’d really like to do is ask her to marry me again,” he said.

  “Not all in the same evening,” Hunter said after a moment’s pondering. “You know what the lawyers say. Never ask a question that you don’t already
know the answer to. The point here isn’t to get married again anyway. It’s to get back together and then figure out the married thing after you’ve got the trust thing worked out. “

  “That makes sense,” T.J. said.

  “But you need to get right on it,” Hunter said, “because it sounds to me like she was kind of checking you out, trying to get your reaction to her moving, and all that stuff. She’s probably about ready to get on with her life one way or another.”

  “Right.” T.J. said, looking worried. “You know, I think that’s what she was doing, but I just didn’t pick up on it, because I sort of had my eye on the clock and I didn’t want her to figure out that I was going out, you know..”

  “Eye on the clock? I think you’d better call her tonight, T.J.”

  “Now?” he reached for his cell phone.

  “No! Not now, unless you’re going to lie about where you are. Take me home first, and then you can do it from Merchantsville, but don’t lie.”

  When they pulled into the driveway behind Miss Rose’s old house an hour later they had moved from first date behavior to kidding around like old friends.

  “You want to come up for some coffee and see the kittens?” Hunter asked.

  T.J. laughed and shook his head.

  “See,” Hunter said. “Between your head being full of Cynthia and my apartment being full of cats, we were doomed from the beginning.”

  And they hugged.

  Before she went to bed, Hunter decided to bring Nikki up to date.

  Hi Nikki, Date report. It turned out to be more of a therapy session with lobster for pay, because the guy is still in love with his ex, and I think probably from what he was saying, she hasn’t quite written him off either. Which is all okay with me because (1) he’s allergic to cats and I’ve decided to keep Katie, and (2) he is absolutely not anybody I’d get more interested in, which should be obvious if I prefer feline company.

  No, to answer your question, I don’t think it made Sheriff Gunsmoke jealous. I doubt he even knew or he’d care if he did know.

  Your show sounds like it’s going to be great. I can’t wait to see it. I keep thinking I’m doing pretty good with the digital until I remember your photographs. What are you going to wear for the opening? And don’t say jeans. You can borrow my infamous little black dress that you liked so much. In fact, I am going to bring it up there and give it to you. I wore it the other night and it was fine standing up, but I knew I’d better not sit down. It would probably fit you like a dream.

  Incidentally, I met Sam’s daughter yesterday. She came over to see Katie’s kittens. Her name is Bethany but they all call her Bethie for some reason, and she, I hate to say this, reminds me of me when I was that age. She says her mom is allergic to cats, but now her dad is telling her she can get one, so I guess that’s sort of like closure.

  Also, Taneesha (the deputy) says that Sam (the sheriff) isn’t really crazy about his ex at all, and I guess she knows better than our lifestyle editor. Also re all the women who went after him before, she says she doesn’t think he liked being chased, which I guess would fit in with the gun-sheriff-deer-hunting-machismo thing. Not that any of this matters to me one way or the other.

  My landlady (you really would love her) has invited me to Sunday dinner, along with this really nice gay guy that she is trying to set me up with. If you need somebody to do a photographic study of, he would be a good one.

  I have decided to start getting up at 5 a.m. to work on the novel before I get burned out by newspaper writing.

  Hope your love life is better than mine.

  — H

  Chapter 18

  AT ST. PAUL’S C.M.E. CHURCH, THE sanctuary was packed. Taneesha stood at church between her Uncle James and Aunt Ramona singing “Blessed Assurance.”

  It was one of her favorites, and she loved singing next to Uncle James because they had this way of testing each other to see who had to look at the hymnal. Then the last verse came, Uncle James put his hymnbook down on the pew while he kept on singing. Taneesha closed hers and held it with one hand. Neither of them missed a word.

  They remained standing for the morning prayer.

  Then came the offering.

  Taneesha got out a $20 bill. It was more than she usually put in the plate, but then she hadn’t been for a week or two. She was glad Aunt Ramona had just about dragged her out of bed this morning.

  “You need to have something better on your mind than all that ugliness you work with,” her aunt had said. “We’re dedicating the new fellowship hall, so don’t be thinking you’re getting out of it. And besides that, you can show off that new hairdo. I like those soft curls better than the way you had it before.”

  Curls. Stockings and heels. A dress. She had looked at herself in the mirror right before leaving for church, and almost didn’t know who that was looking back at her.

  They stood up to sing again. This time it was “The Old Rugged Cross.” She smiled at Uncle James, and they sang together from memory.

  During the sermon, which did go on a while, she found herself wondering if Tamlyn Borders went to church.

  Well, sure, she was married in church and got buried at the church, but was she going to church all that time she was messing with Jaybird Hilliard’s head and taking his money and using her own body and her own baby and her own husband in a scam just to get more money to go shopping with. Somebody who’d do that would probably kill somebody, too.

  Taneesha thought, remembering her college teacher talking about sociopaths, and how some people just didn’t have any remorse in them. It wasn’t that they didn’t know right from wrong. They just didn’t care, as long as they got what they were after. And what was Tamlyn Borders after? Money to shop with.

  The preacher’s voice rose, Uncle James said, “Amen” and Taneesha’s attention snapped back to the service. She could smell the food being heated up in the big shiny new kitchen.

  Then they were standing for the final hymn.

  It was that old one, “Come Thou Font of Every Blessing.”

  She knew the first verse and part of the second. Then she had to look at her hymnal. Uncle James won.

  The dedication of the new fellowship hall was brief, which was a good thing, Taneesha thought, with all that food waiting – all that turkey with dressing, all that fried chicken, all that meat loaf, all that ham, and six different kinds of broccoli casserole and five different kinds of squash casserole, and mountains of potato salad.

  And then there was the dessert table, with the pies and the cakes. Aunt Ramona had brought a fresh coconut cake.

  “Well, would you look who’s here,” Uncle James said. “It’s Marissa Coleman.”

  “You never listen to a thing I say,” Aunt Ramona said to him. “I told you yesterday she’d be here.”

  “No you didn’t. You told me she came back for the funeral and that Mae-Lula Hilliard left her a nice amount of money, but you didn’t tell me she was coming to church.”

  “I did, too. You just never listen.”

  “Well, I hope she made that chocolate cake of hers.”

  Ramona raised an eyebrow.

  “Not that it’s any better than yours,” her husband said.

  “Well, why are you hoping she made it, then. We’ve got chocolate cake every single day at the café, and I don’t see you cuttin’ yourself a slice.”

  “You two better behave,” Taneesha said, laughing.

  “I’m glad you came with us,” James said, smiling at her. “I haven’t heard you laugh like that for a while. You need to get your mind off all that mess in town.”

  Taneesha smiled back, but a second or two later, the words “chocolate cake” rang a bell. She decided that it might be a good idea to talk with Marissa Coleman, but not, she thought, here at church. In due time, she knew, when the eating was done, there would be socializing, and her uncle and aunt would wind up visiting with the elderly Mrs. Coleman.

  “A deputy sheriff? You don’t look like any de
puty sheriff to me,” Marissa Coleman said, looking up and smiling at Taneesha. “What kind of job is that for a pretty young woman? You’re the one who won all those tennis trophies, aren’t you? I thought you were going to be a teacher and a tennis coach. That’s what you said when they had that story about you in the paper.”

  Yes m’am,” Taneesha said, astonished that Mrs. Coleman remembered a long-ago article in the Messenger, “That’s what I was thinking then.”

  “Well, you sit down right here,” the old lady said, “because if you’re with the law, I want to know what you and that Sam Bailey are doing to find out who went and killed my Mae-Lula?”

  “If you’re going to be here tomorrow,” Taneesha said, “I could come over and talk with you. You might be able to help us a little, too.”

  “Honey, tomorrow, I’m going to be flying out of Atlanta. Why don’t we just talk now. Let’s just find us a quiet place.”

  Taneesha gave her uncle and aunt a helpless “What else can I do?” look, when, in fact, she couldn’t believe her luck.

  “Why don’t we go back into the sanctuary?” she said.

  She brought Marissa Coleman up to date on the investigation as far as she could, realizing as she did so that it probably didn’t sound like much progress at all to someone with an attachment to Mae-Lula Hilliard.

  “Can you think of anybody that would want her dead?” Taneesha asked. “I mean anybody you know of who’d have it in for her that bad?”

  “No, honey,” Mrs. Coleman said. “Not anybody who’d kill her. I reckon plenty of people didn’t like her for one reason or another. She wanted her own way all the time, and she’d get like a little old bulldog, like when she tried to stop Dr. Will Hilliard from building that office onto his house, and he got real mad at her, but she didn’t win anyway, and that’s all water over the bridge”

  “What about Jaybird Hilliard?”