Barbara Graham - Quilted 05 - Murder by Sunlight (20 page)

“What do you think?” Tony said.

“I’d say we might want to have a chat with the happy Stuart couple. Either one of them could have had a motive to clobber Candy.”

If either Mr. “Cheater” Stuart or his wife, the Enforcer, killed Candy, they were not only covering for the other one, but doing it in style.

Tony had carefully separated the pair so he and Wade could keep them from copying off the other’s paper. “Ladies first.”

Mrs. Stuart was in her mid-forties, attractive, well groomed. The only thing preventing her from being lovely was a mouth with an unfortunate shape. Even when she smiled, her lips turned downward, giving her an unpleasant expression. “What’s this about?”

“Candy Tibbles.”

If possible, the downturned mouth became even less attractive. “Yes?” She looked neither curious nor interested. “What about her?”

“Do you know her?” Tony was careful not to suggest there was anything amiss with Candy. The up side to having no daily paper was not everyone had heard the news.

“We’ve met.” Frost edged her words. “Why?”

“Can you tell us when you last saw her?” Wade made sure she could see him writing down her words.

“Maybe a month ago, or it could have been six weeks.” Mrs. Stuart continued, “We—that is, my husband and I—saw her at the Riverview. We were having dinner, and she was out in the parking lot, screaming at our mayor.” Her smile was bitter. “It looked like he was positively rude to her. It makes me believe I’ll vote for him the next time he’s up for reelection.”

When it was his turn to be interviewed, Mr. Stuart told them essentially the same story. He did have to tell them about his fleeting relationship with Candy, but it was nothing they hadn’t heard before. No one mentioned the rumored black eye.

“Hot enough for you?” Ruby welcomed Tony and Wade to her café. The large white apron wrapped around her didn’t disguise her pregnancy, but it made her look larger than she really was. The men settled into shaded chairs on the back deck, and she gave each of them a tall glass of ice water.

“I’m starting with a gallon of iced tea, please.” Tony waved away her offer of a menu. “Then a double apple pie with ice cream.” He lowered his voice. “Is Blossom still mad at me?”

Wade started choking on his water. “You two have a spat?”

“Not exactly.” Tony gave him a glare. “I don’t want her suffering from a misunderstanding and sharing it with all her friends and family. Since the Flowers are legion, they’re an important group in an election year.”

Ruby patted Wade between the shoulder blades even as she answered Tony’s question. “I explained you were not making a social call. At first I didn’t think she believed me, but she’s solidly behind you again. If necessary, the Flowers will swing the vote in your favor.”

“Thank you.” Tony’s thanks were sincere. “I meant to ask, have you ever had trouble with Candy Tibbles? Your name, along with everyone else’s in the county, has crossed my desk.”

“Really, was she complaining about me?” Ruby’s eyes flashed. “I threw her out and told her to stay away.”

“When was this?” Tony retrieved his notebook.

Ruby’s mouth dropped open. “Is there something I should know?”

Tony merely waited.

“It was maybe a month ago. She was harassing a customer, asking for money. The next thing I knew, she punched him in the face and starting swearing a blue streak.” Ruby was breathing hard. “I threw her out and told her never to come back into my café. I might have thrown your name into the threat along with Mike’s.” She fidgeted a bit with her apron strings. “Sorry.”

“Did it sound like a panhandling situation, or maybe something else?”

Ruby considered his question for several minutes. “It was definitely something else. Like she’d been expecting money and hadn’t gotten it.”

“I don’t suppose you remember who the customer was?”

Ruby shook her head. “I’ll call if it comes to me.”

After she left them, Tony and Wade sat not talking, just eating pie and guzzling more water and iced tea. Sitting at the next table was a young man in low-hanging jeans, half of his underwear showing, and myriad tattoos exposed by his muscle shirt. He had a ring in his nose and a chain connecting it to the ring in his ear. It was his educated, articulate telephone voice that captured Tony’s attention as he chatted on his cell phone with what might have been a client—something to do with computers.

“Can’t tell anything by the wrapper, can you?” Wade slid his sunglasses down from their perch on the top of his head to cover his eyes.

“Nope,” Tony agreed. “I’d have expected the conversation to be more, or rather less, well spoken.” Tony watched a few people walking up the zigzag path away from the highway and over the hill to downtown Silersville.

Wade said, “I ran into Matt Barney this morning.” Tension tightened the skin over his cheekbones. “The man would set law enforcement back about a hundred years if he’s elected.”

Tony couldn’t disagree. Barney might even take it further back than that. He wasn’t completely convinced the man could read. It irritated him to think how much valuable time he’d had to spend defending his own actions in the past four years. “He actually called our county Murder Central.”

“What will you do if you lose the election?” Wade shifted in his chair.

Tony sighed, suddenly tempted to withdraw from the election and let Barney have the job. Tony could be a stay-at-home dad and spend the entire day with his baby girls and enjoy the quality time and intelligent conversation. Only the spector of chaos and more crime to follow his departure made him hesitate. “If I lose the election or quit, will you stay on the job, Wade?”

Intelligent dark blue eyes turned to meet his gaze. Wade’s shock was obvious. “Are you kidding?” His head was moving from side to side. “I’d end up in our jail. The temptation to shoot him would be too much for me to handle. You could fit his whole brain into one of those little pimento jars and have room to spare.”

Unable to suppress a smile, Tony said, “I probably shouldn’t use your description in my campaign, no matter how true it is.”

He changed the subject. “Sounds to me like Candy’s been a busy blackmailer.”

“Yes, it does.” Wade leaned back in his seat. “I know there has been a fair amount of rumor and speculation surrounding her lifestyle, but there is a definite pattern here.”

“Suddenly people have stopped paying her.” Tony drained his glass of tea. “Why not? Why would you suddenly stop paying blackmail you’ve been paying for sixteen years?”

“If you broke down and confessed, got it off your conscience.” Wade shoveled pie into his mouth. “You wouldn’t need to keep her quiet anymore.”

Tony nodded. “Or your marriage disintegrated and there was no further need to try to cover up the affair.” He tried to remember if any of the names they’d heard belonged to someone recently divorced.

Wade said, “What if the blackmailed person simply moved away?”

“Or you’re too broke to pay.” Tony crunched a few pieces of ice. “Maybe he recently lost his job and Candy wouldn’t cut him any slack, even after sixteen years of payment.”

“Maybe the father’s decided he’d been supporting the boy, not the mom, and Alvin has moved out, so the payments stopped.” Wade lifted an eyebrow. “Any chance Alvin’s started receiving money that used to go to his mom?”

Tony moaned with frustration and loathing. “Can we even guess how many people have been sending or delivering cash? And for how long?” The vision he had in his mind developed nightmare implications.

“And why?” Wade looked confused. “Surely there aren’t that many men who could have fathered the boy. In a town this size?”

“A few older men, some younger men, boys her age.” Tony gripped the edge of the table. “I don’t want to consider all the possible choices. I’m feeling lucky I can scratch myself off the list.”

“Me too.” Wade laughed, but it was humorless. “That’s two, as long as neither of us is lying.”

Tony said, “She was definitely getting money for Alvin. And I suspect we can add in a category for ‘cheating spouses.’ ”

“Drug dealers.” Wade suggested. “That one’s a two-way street though.”

From the highway came a series of honking horns, and they turned to see a caravan of antique cars winding down the hillside, near Not Bob’s home. The last Tony heard, the man had been moved from intensive care but was still not nearly well enough to go home.

“I talked to Alvin this morning.” Tony rubbed his temples with his thumbs, hoping to relieve some of the tension growing there. “He told me where to find the second mailbox key. Let’s go to the house and see what we can learn. Knowing Candy’s energy level and low-level imagination, I’ll bet she has a simple system for keeping track.”

“Names, phone numbers, if everyone was expected to pay the same amount on the same day.” Tony stood, put his money on the table, and trudged around the side of the café. “I hope we’re jumping to the wrong conclusion.”

Tony had seen a few mailboxes similar to Candy’s on other rural routes. There were several different brands and styles but with each kind, the mail was slipped through a slot, then it dropped into another portion of the box requiring a key to open it. It prevented someone from stealing the mail, or having it blow out if the door opened, and it allowed the mail to accumulate without anyone being aware that no one was collecting it. Alvin’s key unlocked the mail storage compartment below the outgoing mail shelf and incoming mail slot. The small door covering those did not require a key.

“Alvin told me that his mom said he always had to guard his mailbox key, protect it with his life. For a woman who seemed to care nothing about anyone or anything, I find that interesting, don’t you?”

Wade agreed, studying the outside of the box, as he pulled gloves on. “Let’s see what she has.”

With a turn of the key, the front panel opened, exposing a moderate accumulation of mail. Tony imagined the upper layer of mail would be the most recent deliveries. There were a few advertising flyers and a coupon book. No magazines, but why get magazines if you have no interests? There were also two sealed envelopes with “Candy” printed on the front. No stamps.

Tony wondered how they had been delivered. Obviously not through the U.S. Mail without a stamp, unless the postal carrier was one of the blackmailed persons and dropped them in with the rest of the delivery, which was possible. Anyone could drop an envelope in the box. But how likely was it that none of the three sets of neighbors would not have seen it done over a period of sixteen years? Not very. Even if the delivery happened at three in the morning, someone would very possibly be up ill, or with a child, or on a bathroom trip, or hushing a barking dog. Get up in the night, look out the window, and see a strange vehicle next to the box. Seen a second time, it would form a pattern, not an oddity.

With gloved hands, Tony held the box they’d brought along for the job, while Wade carefully removed the contents, his own hands in gloves. “This mail on top is loose and looks like it fell in naturally. The bottom stuff is neatly stacked, like she’s been storing it in here.”

Tony pulled a bag from his pocket. “Put the stack in here.”

“Out of curiosity, do you see a flip-flop?” Wade asked. He illuminated the inside of the box with his flashlight while Tony looked over his shoulder.

“No.” Tony looked in the top, toward the back of the outgoing mail shelf. It looked like something might be blocking the light. “Wait. This mailbox is huge. I think I can see it, jammed all the way against the back. There’s a kind of silhouette. Let’s see if the key will open the box’s back door.”

Sure enough, when they opened the large back panel, a purple flip-flop, complete with attached flower, was lodged into the space. “Let’s get this bagged and tagged and see what, if any, fingerprints or skin or whatever we can find to nail the SOB.”

A cursory examination of the neatly stacked envelopes made Tony think of a filing system. Envelopes presumably filled with cash were labeled with handwritten or typed names on each envelope. Fun names like “Blue Cow” and “Yellow Buzzard” couldn’t disguise the smell of extortion. Sorted by name, the system looked more organized than they would have expected from Candy. This was her passion.