Barbara Graham - Quilted 05 - Murder by Sunlight (15 page)

Tony couldn’t disagree with his statement. Except the tarps were not both still on top. “Alvin’s mom died.”

Claude’s head drooped. “That poor beggar.” He squinted through the windshield. “That kid’s had nothing but sorrow and bad luck. First losing his grandparents, and then having to try to live on his own and raise his mom. He inside, back from camp?”

“No.” Tony cleared a sudden clog from his throat. “I gave him the news this morning. He’s staying at camp until we have a better idea what happened. Neither of us saw any reason for him to come back yet.”

“So I guess there’s no date for the funeral?”

“No.” Tony hesitated. “There needs to be a full investigation first.”

Hearing “investigation,” Claude turned his head to meet Tony’s gaze. “What happened?”

Tony saw kindness, curiosity, and honesty mixed with compassion. It was the compassion that made him ask. “What do you know about the Tibbleses?”

“I can tell you there’s several of us who pay Candy each month. Cash on the first. We drop the money into the mailbox. It’s a great one for secret drops, with the lock and all.”

“How many? How much?” Blackmail? Tony stifled a groan. He wasn’t sure he understood Claude’s comments about the mailbox. He’d have to examine it later.

“I don’t know how many, for sure. I’d say at least three, maybe four, maybe even more than that.” Claude shook his head. “I swear I don’t know who else is paying. I never really thought Alvin might be mine, but he could be. Anyhow, I had the money and couldn’t bear thinking of him being hungry or cold. So I paid. Three hundred dollars a month.”

“Does Katti know?” Once again, just when Tony thought he knew what his electors were up to, he was wrong.

“That I pay blackmail? Yes. Does she know Candy?” Claude thought about it. “I don’t think so.” He absently scratched his hairy belly where the shirt didn’t quite meet his jeans. “Katti understands that I was a randy teenage boy and Candy was giving it away.”

“Blackmail is a dirty word.” Tony frowned. “Why do you think she was blackmailing someone besides you?”

“The mailbox is only part of the reason.” Claude Marmot scratched his hairy belly again. “It’s like a secret drop-off.”

“Really?”

“Come, I’ll show you.” Claude didn’t wait, but turned and walked briskly in the other direction.

Tony and Wade followed Claude from the highway, down to the gravel road, avoiding getting close to the house as they walked past. Four homes shared the stretch of unpaved road, two on either side. The Tibbles home and the one facing it were the closest to the highway. Each house sat on an approximately two-acre wooded lot.

As soon as Tony saw the mailbox on its post, he understood what Claude meant. There was a slot for mail to go in, but then it dropped into a lower box, one needing a key to allow someone to retrieve it. Unlike all the other rural mailboxes in the area, Candy Tibbles, as lax a person regarding security and personal safety as he’d ever met, had a locking mailbox. And not just a locking mailbox; a large one.

It wasn’t shaped like the average rounded-top mailbox with a hinged door. This was a white box about a foot wide and high, and maybe a foot and a half deep sitting on a sturdy pedestal. The small red flag looked undersized.

Claude laughed, Tony assumed at his expression.

“See what I mean?” said Claude.

“Any other reason you suspect others are being blackmailed?” Tony opened the door covering the mail-slot opening, but saw nothing sticking out of it.

“I saw her pull three envelopes out one day when I was picking up the garbage. It looked like there was nothing written on any of them, and the mail lady—you know, the one who wants to be called a ‘postal carrier’—was just turning off the highway on her way to make her deliveries.” Claude scratched again. “Unless it was mail from the day before.”

“Want a job in my department?” Tony offered. He didn’t know why or who was involved, but he was firmly convinced Claude was onto something. He was also convinced Claude wasn’t telling him the whole story. Tony pulled on the neck of the protective vest he wore under his shirt. A wave of hot, moist air rose from his chest, hitting his face. He sighed.

Claude roared, laughing, sending his belly bouncing up and down like a fleece-covered basketball under his too-short t-shirt. “No way. Look at you, Sheriff, it’s got to be a hundred degrees and your shirttail’s tucked in. You’ve got sweat stains on everything from your hat to your shoes, and if you say a cuss word, every old lady in this town is all over your case and writing letters of complaint.” Claude looked right at a passing driver and spat on the street, then waved and smiled at the clearly irritated driver. “Bet
you
can’t even spit without your voters calling you out about it.”

Tony couldn’t dispute anything Claude had said. It was all true. If he hit his thumb with a hammer and displayed some of his swearing prowess, someone would write a letter to the editor. And, since the editor hated his guts, she’d print it. “You’re a free spirit Claude. No wonder Katti thinks you’re a keeper.”

Claude chuckled all the way to his truck. It was blocking the mail delivery van, and the chubby mail carrier didn’t look very happy. Claude swore a blue streak, just to show he could, until he saw Katti drive up in her bright pink Cadillac. Suddenly, his vocabulary took a change for the cleaner.

Tony laughed. Claude might be a free spirit, but Katti owned him. This time, though, Katti actually ignored her blasphemous spouse and climbed awkwardly from the convertible before heading toward Tony. Under her maternity top, a festival of pinks, her belly was growing, but she still had some months before her baby was due. Tony bet her belly would pass her husband’s in size before then. He was also fairly certain she’d frown every time Claude used a word she deemed inappropriate. On some level, Katti had an advantage. She could swear in her native Russian, and as long as she smiled, they’d never know.

“Can I help you, Katti?” Tony met her halfway. He could see residents watching from windows and porches. Investigation: a performance art. If he’d been in a better mood, he might wave and take a bow.

“You, I help, you.” Katti’s command of English slipped when she was excited. “I know who is in big fight with poor lady.”

“What big fight?” Tony led Katti back to her car.

Katti waved her arms. “Is in parking lot at food store.”

Tony hadn’t heard about this. “When?”

Katti looked confused for a moment. “Is second. My Claude is working on truck so I go for apples and bread. I come out, and lady is very angry with man who does not pay. She say ‘Money due on first,’ and you no pay.”

“Do you know the man?” Tony considered two blackmail stories to be the equivalent of a flashing sign saying “investigate here.”

“Yes, yes,” Katti pointed toward the convenience store. “Is owner.”

“Thank you, Katti.” Tony shepherded her back to her car. “You ought to get out of this sun.” She obligingly climbed into the convertible, and with a wave to Claude, headed back toward town.

Claude whispered, “Can I water the garden?”

Tony looked at Claude, surprised he was still there. Tony shook his head. “I can’t have you walking around the property until the tape is taken down.”

“I understand.” Claude stared toward the back of the house. “It’s awful hot. How about you throwing some water on the boy’s garden? Can you do that? There’s a hose and sprinkler already in place, all you’d have to do is turn ’em on.”

Tony thought the least they could do for Alvin was save the boy’s precious plants. “How long should I let the water run?”

Claude wiped a line of sweat from his cheek. “Feels like at least a half hour, maybe forty-five. If it goes a bit longer, it’ll be all right.”

“We can handle it.” Tony made a few notes.

As Claude drove off, Tony looked at his deputy. “Any guesses who else has been paying sixteen years of blackmail? Our list seems to be getting longer.”

“And maybe someone finally decided it was time to stop?” Wade shook his head. “I can’t say I’m surprised, but I don’t have any names to suggest.”

“I’m going to start watering,” said Tony. “Then we are going back to Kirk’s. You might want to watch and see if he tries to run.”

Kirk stood facing Tony, his expression unreadable. He had elected to have his second interview outside, away from his employee’s radar. Standing in the shade cast by the building, Tony’s new vantage let him see not only the right side and most of the front of the Tibbles’s home but about the same amount of Kirk’s home.

“There’s been some talk about you and your relationship with Candy Tibbles and something pretty nasty. Blackmail.” Tony barely got the words out before Kirk planted his fists on his hips and leaned closer.

“Shut up.” Spittle flew from his mouth, along with the words.

Tony wrote Kirk’s statement in his notebook. “Anything you’d like to add?” Kirk looked like he’d like to add a fist to it. Just before he swung, reality intervened and he dropped his hands.

“Sorry, Sheriff.”

Tony waited.

“I paid that woman for years. I heard she was dead, so I thought, why pay?”

As lies went, it was a poorly thought-out one. “I have a witness who saw your argument with Candy one day after your payment was apparently due.” Tony shifted positions slightly, moving the notebook up higher. “Any comment?”

Kirk blew out a breath and looked away. “You ever do anything stupid, Sheriff?”

Tony just raised his eyebrows.

Kirk turned back. “I was lucky I could build my store here, right across the road from our house. I could walk to work. I could see the kids over lunch. It was perfect.” He sighed. “I’ve known the Tibbleses forever, I guess. I lost all track of the years. Candy seemed way mature for her age. My wife was out of town. Candy was working here and . . . well, you know. It was just the one time.”

Tony thought he should write “stupid” next to Kirk’s name. “And then the blackmail began?”

Kirk said, “The next thing I knew, Candy was claiming she was pregnant, and she’d keep quiet about my involvement if I’d give her money every month. So every month I had an envelope with cash in it that she’d pick up at the store. After her folks died”—Kirk paused and looked up—“I really don’t think her folks knew anything about the blackmail, and I really don’t think I was the father. Well, anyway, she had a new mailbox put up and I dropped the money in it every month.”

“Until this month,” Wade said. “Why not pay this month?”

“We went off on a family vacation and didn’t get home until the second. We no more than pulled into town when I had to stop for a few things over at the grocery store. Next thing I know, here comes Candy, traipsing across the parking lot while waving that stupid pink notebook at me and shouting, ‘Where’s the money?’ ” Kirk stared across the road at his house. “I told her to go home, and I’d be over about lunchtime and give her the cash. I told her I’d put it right in her grubby hand.”

“But you didn’t.” Tony guessed. “What happened?”

Kirk swallowed convulsively, like he was fighting his lunch back down. “It was quite a bit later than I promised when I finally went over there, maybe about three. She was dead, in the greenhouse, but I swear I had nothing to do with her death.”

“You didn’t call anyone?” Tony’s first thought was to lock Kirk up and throw away the key. That kind of behavior was so stupid, it had to be illegal. “Not report her death? Really? Who does something like that?”

Kirk hesitated for a moment. “I’m telling you, Sheriff, she was dead, and nothing was going to change that, so I left. I turned on her radio, even louder than she usually played it, and thought I’d let someone else complain about the noise and then Candy would be found.” Kirk’s voice rose. “Leave me out of it.”

“Did you take anything?” Tony thought about the missing flip-flop.

“God, no.”

Tony thought Kirk’s revulsion was honest.

“Please don’t tell my wife. She doesn’t need to know, does she?”

Tony almost felt sorry for the man. One stupid moment sixteen years ago, coming back to haunt him. Almost. “I have to talk to her. As far as telling her about your adventure with Candy, I don’t intend to, but I’ll not lie for you.” He walked away from Kirk, headed for Kirk’s house.

Almost as if she was waiting and watching for him, Kirk’s wife, Elizabeth, came outside to meet Tony on the sidewalk in front of her house. “Let me guess, my husband’s done something amazingly stupid.”

Tony nodded. “Do you know what it is?”

“Not really.” Kirk’s wife was a pleasant-looking woman, whose years of teaching elementary school seemed to have given her a perpetually childlike expression. “If this is about Candy, well, Kirk’s been paying her blackmail for years.”

“You knew?”

She nodded. “He thinks I don’t know, but really, how dumb does he think I am? He trots across the road to her mailbox on the first of each month with an envelope. Candy yells over to remind him a payment is due. If the whole thing didn’t make me mad enough to spit, it could almost be amusing.”

Tony thought
amused
was not the expression he saw. The set of her jaw spoke volumes of hurt and old anger. “Why not tell him to stop?”

“If the boy is Kirk’s, he deserves the money. But it hurts our children and their futures. Education costs. The price of everything is going up.” A tear slid down her cheek. “Kirk is stupid, but not a killer.”

Until Tony had more details, facts, and a solid time of death, he was fishing without bait. He said goodbye and wandered back toward Candy’s house, wondering if Kirk’s wife could have been involved in the killing herself.

Theo slipped through the crowd in her shop. The national magazine publicity, coupled with holiday traffic, was creating a banner day. She made her way over to Gretchen. Her only full-time employee was smiling, but she looked worn out. Strands of blond hair stuck out of her normally neatly braided coronet.

“I’ll cut fabric for a while. You go take a breather.” Theo reached for the rotary cutter. “Thank you for bringing your daughter to work. She’s great with the girls.”