Death Over the Dam (A Hunter Jones Mystery Book 2) (14 page)

“Wow.” Hunter said.

“Yeah Wow,” Taneesha said. “Anyway, another reason he took me along was to be a witness. Judge Patterson agreed with Sam that Rhonda could only visit with Hunter in Merchantsville, and I am one of the few people who knows this, so if he decides to tell you some day, you haven’t heard it before. I just thought you should know it, so you wouldn’t worry about Rhonda coming between you and Sam.”

“Had she been that bad a mom before?” Hunter asked.

“I don’t think she was ever mean or anything like that, and Bethie used to all dressed up like a doll or something, but of course Rhonda had her mom and Sam’s mom both for babysitters. Rhonda’s just all about Rhonda.”

It was a lot for Hunter to take in, and they sat there for a while, not saying anything.

Hunter was just going to get more ice cream when she heard footsteps on the stairs and the doorbell rang.

“Miss Hunter,” a child’s voice called out. “I’m back!”

She opened the door and was tackled with a hug from Bethie as Sam stood behind his daughter, smiling and holding a pizza.

“Come on in,” she said, laughing. “Taneesha and I have already stuffed ourselves with chicken, but there’s a little ice cream left.”

“Miss Hunter,” Bethie said, “My mom’s coming here to sing and raise money for the people who were in the flood!”

“I know,” Hunter said, smiling back. “It’s going to be in the paper.”

“Are those the roses I sent you?” Sam asked. “*I’m going to have to talk to Sue Ellen.”

“Her cats got them,” Taneesha said, getting up to leave, “and, Sam, get Hunter to tell you what she found out today.”

“Oh, sit back down, Taneesha,” Sam said, collapsing on the sofa. “I’ve had a whole day away from Magnolia County. You know I won’t be able to go to sleep without knowing everything that happened while I was gone.”

“Not much,” Taneesha said, moving to the bentwood rocker Hunter had by the sofa, “A log truck jackknifed on that bad curve out at Mimosa Corners, and we had some traffic problems for a while.”

“What else?” Sam asked, reaching out to take a plate full of pizza from Hunter.

“It looks like Ned Thigpen bought a painting by Dee Dee Bennett while he was in Cathay that day. Hunter talked to a Mennonite man and he told her all about it. Thigpen showed it to him. Hunter got his phone number.”

Sam ate his first piece of pizza before he responded.

“And yesterday she was telling you the only reason she knew he knew Dee Dee was because of what Skeet told Grady,” he said, “I guess this could be a piece of the puzzle, but I sure don’t know how it would fit in. I guess you’d better talk to Sharon again.”

Taneesha groaned, and then brightened up.

“We think we may have a good lead on the casket,” she said in a low voice. “A man named J.T. Collingsworth who disappeared about five years ago, had two girlfriends that we know of and a crazy wife with pit bulls who said she shot at him but didn’t kill him. He didn’t show up for work after that. Skeet’s thinking you could ask Social Security to look into it once they get the number from the kaolin plant. Collingsworth used to work out there.

Sam looked pleased. “Great,” he said. “We can’t do anything about that until Monday, but it sounds promising.”

Meanwhile, Bethie was sitting at the table with Hunter, telling her all about 4-H camp as she pulled pieces of pepperoni off her pizza to give to the cats.

CHAPTER 16

O
N
S
UNDAY MORNING,
H
UNTER WOKE UP
with Katie Calico meowing and Mister Marmalade patting her face with his paw.

She got up to get her feline friends some fresh food and water, and then went straight back to bed, but not to sleep. Instead, she found herself wondering about Deirdre Donagan, or—as she was now known—Dee Dee Bennett.

How did an Atlanta girl who was used to buying her clothes in Buckhead wind up married to Grady Bennett and living in such isolation that some people didn’t even know Grady was married.

She finally got up again and put on a pot of coffee. It was 10 a.m., not too early, she decided, to call Nikki.

In fact, it was too early, but Nikki struggled out of sleep, and asked, “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter?” Hunter said. “I just wanted to ask you a favor.”

“How about my calling you back when I get the sleep out of my eyes?” her friend asked. “Even better, how about my calling you back from the coffee shop? Give me a half hour. I’ll call you back.”

Hunter got her own coffee, a notebook and a pen, thinking of the difference in city life and small town life, in her life and Nikki’s life.

It struck her that for the last week her life had probably been more exciting than it had ever been in Atlanta —from flying over a flood to getting a new title (raise or not) to identifying a murder victim, to getting a dozen pink roses. It would just be nice, she thought, if Merchantsville had a coffee shop.

She began to make notes. Talking with Nikki tended to be a ramble and she wanted to make sure she didn’t forget the main point.

Finally, the phone rang.

“So, what’s the favor?” Nikki asked.

“Do you know any photographer up there named Donagan? It’s Mike, I think.”

“Michael Donagan? I know his work. He does nature photography. Really good stuff. Why?”

Hunter told her, about Mike Donagan’s being dead, and about Ned Thigpen being a friend of Donagan’s, but not having heard he was dead.

“I didn’t know he was dead either,” Nikki said. “It’s hard to see how Donagan would have died without Thigpen knowing it,” Nikki said. “They were more the same age and social group, but then it’s had to see how I could have completely missed it. He was outstanding, and gave classes sometimes, but I think he did something else for a living. Wait a minute …. You said he had a daughter who paints?”

“Right. She’s the one I called you about who could only shop at that one boutique.”

“What is it you want to know from me about all this?” Nikki asked. “It sounds like you know more than I do.”

“I don’t know,” Hunter admitted. “I just think there’s something odd about Deirdre Donagan being down here with this, well, nice but real country husband. I’m going out to their place Tuesday to get my paintings repaired, and I’m hoping to do a story about her if I can make friends. I guess I just want to know how she wound up down here.

“I’ll ask around, and maybe I’ll drop by Meredith’s in Buckhead.” Nikki said. “I want to see the clothes there, anyway.

“You are wonderful!” Hunter said.

A half hour later at Merchantsville First United Methodist Church, Rose Tyndale was in a deep conversation with Tyler Bankston’s wife, Ellie, when they both looked up to see Sam Bailey arriving at his usual pew with his mother and his daughter.

“But you see my point,” Miss Rose said to Miss Ellie as the first notes of the organ began.

“Yes, I do,” the editor’s wife said, “And, don’t look now, but more trouble just walked in.’

It was Rhonda Ransom, wearing a simple yellow dress with high-heeled sandals to match. It was her “church look.” She had pulled her dark auburn hair into a chignon with a yellow bow, and was wearing pearl earrings. She carried a white Bible with her yellow purse.

She made an entrance down the center aisle, stopping to smile and greet everyone in a soft voice, kissing a few, hugging a few, until she made it to the pew where the Bailey family sat and took her place beside Bethie, who looked up with a surprised smile. Sam, who was seated on Bethie’s other side, looked startled, nodded crisply to his ex-wife and then looked straight ahead. His mother studied her bulletin as if it contained important answers to urgent questions.

The organ signaled the opening of the service.

Skeet Borders was lying on the sofa in the small living room of his prefabricated home, trying to think about the investigations as his daughter repeatedly covered his face with her favorite blanket, a blue one left over from her baby days. She had already stacked most of her stuffed toys on top of him.

“Undivided attention,” he remembered reading. “Give your child the gift of your undivided attention.”

He pulled the blanket off his face and dropped it over her head, which made her laugh.

“What do you want for lunch?” he asked.

“Peanutbutterjellysammich,” she said.

“Me too,” he answered. “Let’s go make some.”

As he put the sandwiches together and cut the crusts from Madison’s, his mind was on the bones in the old coffin. It certainly did add up to J.T. Collingsworth. The dogs barking, the shotgun fire, and then he was never heard of again. He had left his car behind, left with nothing but the clothes on his back, running, no doubt.

He shuddered, imagining that the dogs had caught Collingsworth, and that the wife had to call her sons to help her hide the remains. He wondered if the pathologist had looked for tooth marks on the bones.

It seemed like a good lead, and one that could be proved if they could figure out what dentist he used. They already knew it wasn’t one of the three dentists in Magnolia County, which had been a simple matter of making three phone calls.

He poured Madison a cup of milk, and got himself a glass of iced tea.

Of course, he had to admit, that the bones in the casket weren’t the priority case. The big one was finding out who shot that photographer.

And why on earth was a guy from Marietta way out there on the road to Bubba Shipley’s hangar and airstrip?

After Madison went down for her nap, Skeet went back to the sofa and let his mind idle, trying to think through every possibility that would have gotten Ned Thigpen out to that road to be shot.

At about 3 p.m., Shellie Carstairs hung up her phone and turned to her husband.

“John Robert, can you believe that Ronda Ransom pranced into the Methodist church this morning and sat right down with Sam and his family? That was Lilly Parsons. She says Rhonda was all dressed up in yellow and carrying a Bible and that the preacher made a special deal of welcoming her and then she tried to out sing the choir. She said Sam just looked straight ahead through the whole service.”

“Wonder if anybody heard the sermon,” John Robert said before going back to watching golf on television.

At about the same time, Sam Bailey got a call at home from Tyler Bankston.

“Sam,” he said, “I’ll get straight to the point. I want to know what your intentions are toward my Associate Editor. I have had a soap opera going on in my home ever since church let out, and I don’t want to have one at work all week. When are you going to ask that lovely young woman to marry you?”

Sam pondered the option of telling Tyler Bankston it was none of his business.

“And don’t tell me it’s none of my business,” Tyler said. “It’s very much my business. Ellie is after me to retire, and Hunter is the only employee I have ever had who is capable of running the paper the way it should be run, and I do not like having her distracted by all this nonsense with Rhonda. She’s worth twenty Rhondas. At the very least, she should have a ring on her finger. In my day..”

“I have the ring, already, Tyler,” Sam cut in. “And it isn’t any of your business but I was planning to take her out and ask her Thursday night, before our party on Friday night, which you and Miss Ellie are invited to. I’ve been planning it for some time.”

Tyler didn’t let up at all.

“So we have to have a whole week of melodrama at work while Rhonda behaves like the returning wife and mother, and you make restaurant reservations and party plans?

Sam was silent for a moment, and then fell back on courtesy.

“Tyler,” he said, “I appreciate your concern, and I’m sure you will be one of the first to know when Hunter makes her decision. I’ve got to go now.”

Two minutes after he hung up, his phone rang again.

“Sam? This is Rose Tyndale.”

“Miss Rose,” he said, laughing, “Tyler Bankston has already given me instructions.

“Well, I’m quite sure his main concern is for the paper,” she said, “but what I think you ought to know is that Hunter’s staying here, for the long run, depends entirely on how things go with her relationship with you. “

“Miss Rose,” Sam said, “I believe I have managed my life so far without having you and Tyler Bankston giving me marching orders.”

“Just trying to help,” Miss Rose said sweetly. “Tyler and I may have been wrong about the flood, but we are right about this.”

At 5 p.m., after some serious thought, Sam left Bethie with his ex-wife at the home of his ex-mother-in-law, where she was to spend the night. They were to leave the next morning for a shopping trip in Macon.

“My little girl has got to have something just beautiful to wear to the concert,” Rhonda said sweetly to Sam and, he thought, to some larger invisible audience she occasionally spoke to, “and so has Mama, and so have I.”

“Sam, won’t you stay for supper,” Rhonda’s mother asked. “I’ve made that pot roast you like so much.”

“Thank you,” he said with a genuine smile, “but I’ve got a date.”