Designated Daughters (17 page)

I
t was still raining the next morning when we sat down to breakfast and, according to the Weather Channel, rain was due to continue off and on throughout the day. Cal was disappointed. Rain meant no baseball practice, but Dwight was pleased for the garden. “As long as it stops by Friday.”

“What happens on Friday?” I asked, passing Cal a bowl of freshly sliced strawberries and bananas. He scattered some over the top of his bran flakes and reached for the sugar bowl.

“The lumber yard’s supposed to deliver the two-by-fours and the plywood for the pond shelter,” Dwight said. “Hey, easy on the sugar there, buddy.”

“The strawberries are sour,” Cal argued even though he hadn’t yet tasted them, but he passed the sugar on to Dwight, who likes to sweeten his cereal and fruit, too.

“If the rain holds off this weekend and everybody shows up with hammers and saws, we could come close to getting it finished by Saturday night.”

“Really?”

“Everything except for running a water line down for a shower and patching in the electricity.”

“Annie Sue said that wouldn’t take long.” My niece had installed weatherproof outlets along the pier railing when she and her brother wired a multicolored geyser out in the pond as a Christmas present to us. Although they had buried the wire, she had marked its location so that they could splice into it when we built the shelter all the younger family members seemed to think we needed.

While Cal went to get ready for school, Dwight described his visit out to Aunt Rachel’s old house yesterday, pledging me to secrecy about the cowbird story Jay-Jay had confided.

“The Collins girl really is a goldfinch, isn’t she?” I said, remembering the pretty young blonde I’d run into in the empty hospice room and how her pearl necklace had broken. That reminded me that I still had one of her pearls, but my mind was drawing a blank on what I’d done with it.

“What about the neighbors?” I asked. “Did you talk to Mr. Byrd and his wife?”

“Don’t know that they were much help,” he said vaguely and told me what Mayleen had learned about Letha McAllister over in Widdington and why none of her family seemed concerned about that thrice-married woman’s reputation.

“Did you get a picture of her when she was young? Was she as hot as Jacob and Jed thought she was?”

“Mayleen said her daughter dug out an old snapshot, but I haven’t seen it yet. I was thinking that a picture might jog Billy Thornton’s memory.”

That reminded me of the program I’d listened to on my way home. “I don’t suppose you know what kind of music he likes?”

“I’d guess country. That’s what the radio was playing when I got there.”

I glanced at the clock.

“Yeah, I’d better get moving, too,” he said, and took a final swallow of coffee before going off to brush his teeth.

Ten minutes later, he and Cal were out the door, but I had an extra hour, so I went to the computer and soon had a list of some thirty songs that had topped the charts sixty-five years ago. As I suspected, they were raw, nasal voices backed by unamplified guitars and fiddles. They sang of lost or unrequited love, hurting and cheating, and aching loneliness. Hillbilly and bluegrass flourished, together with gospel. Ernest Tubb, the Carter Family, and Roy Acuff. But the popular songs that would have been played on WPTF’s late-night request programs were the lovesick ballads from Eddy Arnold, Bing Crosby, and Gene Autry. I didn’t have time to download all the songs just then, but I stuck my iPod in my shoulder bag. There’s always some downtime when ADAs separate out defendants who intend to plead guilty from those who want to argue the charges. By lunchtime, I had put together forty minutes of iconic songs that should certainly touch that old man’s memory, and I carried my iPod down to Dwight’s office.

He wasn’t there, but Mayleen Richards was. Or rather Mayleen Diaz, as her name tag now reads. When I first knew her, there had been some awkward stiffness between us. For this past year, though, we were on a first-name basis, even if she did sometimes slip and throw in a “ma’am.” I explained what I’d done so that she could show Dwight when he got back.

“He said you had a picture of that Letha McAllister when she was a girl?”

“Oh yeah. Want to see?”

She opened a folder and handed me a small shiny black-and-white photo of a young woman in a one-piece white bathing suit, one hand on her hip, the other holding a cigarette. Even though the suit was cut high at the top and low at the bottom in keeping with the style of the day, her pose left very little to the imagination. She had half turned away from the camera so as to show off her assets—full breasts, provocatively thrust forward, a tiny waist, and what looked like a nicely rounded bottom. Her dark shoulder-length hair was worn in a pageboy, her eyebrows had been plucked into arches, and her lips gleamed in what must have been a thick application of bright red lipstick.

The date written on the back was two years after Jacob’s death.

“Wow!” I said. “If she looked anything like this two years earlier, no wonder those boys fought over her.”

“Liked herself, too, didn’t she?” Mayleen said.

I looked again and saw the complacent self-satisfied smile on her pretty face. “Well, in all fairness, she had a lot to like, didn’t she?”

I handed the snapshot back. “Neither of us would stop a clock, Mayleen, but let’s face it: most men wouldn’t give us a second look if someone like this was in the room.”

“Major Bryant would,” she said loyally.

I laughed. “And I’m sure Mike would, too.” Then I took that second look. “So when’s the baby due?”

One hand immediately flew to her trim waistline and her freckles disappeared into the blush that flooded her face. “I didn’t think I was showing yet.”

“You’re not,” I assured her. “But there’s something about your face. With so many sisters-in-law, I’ve had a lot of practice spotting early pregnancies.”

“It’s not due till Thanksgiving and we haven’t told anyone yet.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “He won’t hear it from me.” I didn’t feel one bit disloyal. After all, give her another month or two and everyone in the courthouse would have figured it out.

Even Dwight.

Back on the first floor, I ran into my cousin Sally, who was furling a large wet golf umbrella outside the clerk of court’s office. Today’s wig was a completely natural-looking brown that barely brushed the collar of a man-styled white shirt. She was pushing a wheelchair with a frail old woman who gave me what would be a bright smile of recognition had she truly recognized me.

“Hello, Mrs. Ashton,” I said.

“Well, hey there, honey!” she said. “I’m so glad you could come along with us.”

“I’m giving Charles a little break,” Sally explained. “He hasn’t had a day off in weeks and I needed to do some paperwork here about Mama’s house. She never made a will, you know, so there’s a ton of forms to fill out and file, and Charlotte likes to get out, too, don’t you, sweetie?”

Mrs. Ashton held out her hands to me, palms down. “We got our nails done.”

Her nails shone with a soft rose polish.

“It matches your dress, too,” I said.

“I know. Jean and I went shopping and I found the exact same color. On sale, too!” She beamed and smoothed down the front of a pink cotton dress that had clearly been washed a time or two.

“Charlotte loves to shop and she has a good eye for bargains,” Sally said. “We always check by that dress store next to the Cut ’n’ Curl.”

Dress store? Beside the beauty parlor?

“But that’s—”

“—a wonderful place to shop,” Sally interrupted me firmly and her eyes flashed a warning.

“Oh, it is,” I hastily agreed.

Hey, if Mrs. Ashton thought that the Goodwill store was a ladies’ dress shop, who was I to disillusion her? Aunt Zell is right, I thought. Sally might act like a flake at times, but she has a good heart.

Here at midday, the hallway was busy with people coming and going into Ellis Glover’s office, hoping to take care of some paperwork on their lunch hour. Every other person seemed to know Sally or me, so we moved further down the hall out of the flow and Sally positioned Mrs. Ashton’s chair so as to partially block us from view, yet let Mrs. Ashton watch the passing parade.

“Who’s Jean?” I whispered.

“Her older sister. She’s in a rest home in Tennessee.” She sighed. “Don’t let’s get old, Deb’rah.”

“I won’t if you won’t,” I said, looking at her firm chin line and trim body. Really, the only thing that gave away her true age were the faint brown spots on the back of her hands. She still moved with the ease of someone twenty years younger.

I realized she was examining my face, too. “You turn forty in August, right? Want the name of my plastic surgeon?”

“Not yet,” I said and she grinned, hearing the “Not never” in my voice.

“Dwight told me he saw you and Jay-Jay down at the farm yesterday.”

“Yeah, but we weren’t able to tell him anything that would help say who did that to Mama. I’m beginning to think we’ll never know.”

“Don’t give up yet,” I said. “It’s only been a week and so many of the things your mother said could have touched on stuff someone didn’t want known. Not just Jacob’s death, but like that money someone lent that was never paid back or the wife-beater.”

“Or who ate all the chocolates in both Easter baskets?” she said sarcastically. “Now
there’s
a secret worth killing for. Unless it was somebody still lusting after whoever it was in that transparent bathing suit.”

“I think Daddy and that neighbor of y’all’s—Sam Byrd?—were the only men old enough to remember that,” I said.

“Or Mr. Snaveley, who used to preach at our church.”

Both of us stood quietly for a moment, remembering all the names that Aunt Rachel had called that last afternoon.

“Do you remember Annie Ruth?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Not really. I do remember going to her funeral and being told all those little boys were my cousins.”

“Y’all weren’t close?”

“Not really.”

“But the way Aunt Rachel kept talking about her?”

Sally frowned. “Did she?”

The flow of people had slowed to a trickle and Mrs. Ashton turned in her chair. “Jean, dear, don’t you think we ought to go in now? I’m sure the movie’s about to start and I want some popcorn.”

Dwight Bryant—Wednesday afternoon

Y
our wife was here, Major,” Mayleen said when Dwight stuck his head into the squad room after lunch. She handed him the iPod and showed him where Deborah had grouped the selections. “She said this was music that was popular around the time Jacob Knott drowned, thought it might help jar the Thornton man’s memory.”

“Thanks, Mayleen. Got anything pressing on your docket this afternoon?”

“Just the usual. Something you need?”

“One of the men in that hospice room was a Jim Collins. See if you can arrange a meeting with him.”

She was puzzled. “Isn’t he too young to have had anything to do with that drowning?”

“Yeah, but remember that remark about a cowbird egg?”

Mayleen nodded and Dwight repeated what Jay-Jay had told him the day before. When he’d finished, she frowned.

“You want me to go ask the CEO of Mediway Technology if his daughter’s not really his daughter?”

“Is that who he is?”

“Yessir. And he was one of Sheriff Poole’s biggest supporters last fall, so shouldn’t you be the one to talk to him?”

“I don’t think so. Something like this? He’d take it easier coming from a woman.”

Mayleen was shaking her head in dismay, but Dwight said, “Look, it’s either you or Ray and how tactful you think he’d be? Where is he, anyhow?”

“You sent him and Tub to see if that preacher—Mr. Snaveley?—had an alibi for the time of Mrs. Morton’s death.”

“Oh, right.” He started back to his office, then paused and said, “Look, if you can absolutely alibi Collins for the relevant time without saying why we think he might have a motive, fine. I saw Sally Crenshaw up in Ellis Glover’s office a few minutes ago. Do you have her cell number? Maybe you can still catch her and see if she remembers when Collins and his daughter left. And do it without letting Sally know there’s a question of paternity.”

Back in his own office, Dwight called Billy Thornton’s daughter and asked if it would be convenient for him to come out.

“Actually, this is a pretty good time,” Mrs. Sterling said. “He’s as clear-minded today as I’ve seen him all week.”

“Have you and your brother had a chance to talk about that drowning?”

“Davis was over here yesterday, but really, Major, we lost track of the people we knew before we moved to Benson. Both of us were still in grade school. If Mom or Dad ever mentioned the Knotts, we don’t remember it. Davis didn’t remember ever hearing them talk about a Letha either. I guess I could try again since Dad seems lucid today.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you’d wait and let me ask him,” Dwight said. “I have a picture of her and I’d really like to see his reaction.”

“You must be getting tired of all the questions,” Mayleen told Sally Crenshaw after she’d been introduced to Mrs. Ashton. She moved a cardboard file box out of the way so that the wheelchair could be maneuvered through the squad room.

“That’s okay,” Sally said. “I just wish Mama hadn’t been so careful about naming names.”

“People might not have trusted her as much.”

“Would’ve been fine with me,” said Sally. She set the brake on the wheelchair and then pulled her own chair close to Mrs. Ashton, who reached for her hand. “What is it this time?”

Mayleen held out a copy of all the names they had collated. “We’re trying to eliminate everyone there who could have had an opportunity to slip back to the room.”

Mrs. Ashton’s eyes had closed. The chair had a reclining back, and before taking the paper, Sally positioned a small pillow under her chin so that she wouldn’t wake with a stiff neck.

The first column beside the names was to indicate if a person was in the room before Mrs. Morton quit talking. The second was whether they could definitely be placed in the family waiting room when the aide came down to join them. “Check it if you remember them being there and put a question mark if you can’t be absolutely sure one way or the other.”

“Even family members?”

“Even family members.”

When Sally handed the list back a few minutes later, Mayleen saw that Collins and his daughter had check marks for the room but Amanda’s had a question mark for the waiting room. Hers was not the only name with a question mark. Three of the Knott grandchildren had question marks as well and so did Furman Snaveley, among others.

“I remember that Mr. Collins was there on the staircase talking to Richard Howell when we left Mama’s room. Then a nurse came over from the other wing with a message for Richard. He went off with her and Mr. Collins went on down to speak to Deborah. I don’t remember seeing Amanda or Emma or Jess, but they must have been there. If I saw Mr. Snaveley, I don’t remember.”

As the interview ended, Sally’s face was bleak. “The worst of this is knowing it had to be somebody Mama knew and liked. Maybe even loved. Maybe even someone in our own family.”

Mayleen showed them out, holding open the double doors out by the dispatcher’s desk for the wheelchair and then ringing for the elevator. When the doors closed behind them, she took the stairs to the second floor where Judge Knott was holding court and slid into a seat next to an attorney waiting for his case to be called. At the next break in the proceedings, Deborah motioned for her to come up. “You wanted to ask me something?”

“I’m trying to verify some alibis,” Mayleen said. “Your cousin Sally says that you spoke with a Jim Collins right before your aunt was killed?” She started to show a picture of him, but the judge was evidently more politically aware than Major Bryant, because she brushed the picture aside.

“Yes, we talked for a few minutes.”

“Was his daughter there?”

Deborah thought a minute, then said, “Sorry, Mayleen. I can’t remember. We used the same restroom, but I didn’t see her after that. I think she probably left.”

“Did you see anyone at all go back upstairs?”

“Not up the staircase, but the elevator wasn’t visible from the waiting room. If it’s any help, though, Collins was still talking to my sister-in-law Minnie a little while after Aunt Rachel’s aide came down to eat, so I really doubt he’s who you’re looking for.”

“What about these two nieces of yours?”

“Emma and Jess? They were there, but I think they left early before we knew about Aunt Rachel.”

“And Furman Snaveley?”

“Who? Oh, the preacher. I don’t remember seeing him downstairs.”

Armed with a photograph of the Reverend Furman Snaveley that Mayleen had printed from the DVD, Raeford McLamb and Tub Greene parked the cruiser under the hospital’s covered entryway out of the rain. Major Bryant had not told them why the old man might have a motive for murder, merely that he wanted to know if Snaveley had an alibi. They knew that Snaveley had left the hospice room with the Byrds and had walked out of the hospital through the main doors, then immediately returned, ostensibly to use the restroom.

A friendly middle-aged black woman sat behind the information counter opposite those doors. “Yes, I was here last Wednesday afternoon,” she told them, and looked long and hard at the picture they showed her.

“Yes,” she said at last. “I remember him now. That tie he’s wearing. You can’t really tell in this picture, but it was dark red, embroidered with little tiny gold crosses, and I was thinking a tie like that would make a good Father’s Day present for my dad. He asked me where the men’s room was and I told him down that hall, first door on the right.”

She gestured toward her left, in the opposite direction from the hospice wing.

“Did you see him come back?”

She shook her head. “Sorry.”

“But you saw him start down that hall?”

“That’s right.”

“Where’s the nearest elevator from here?” they asked.

“Besides that one?” She gestured toward an elevator that was in her line of sight near the front entrance.

“Do you think you would’ve noticed if he got on it?” McLamb asked.

“Maybe. Especially if he had to wait, because that surely is the slowest elevator in the building.”

“What about down that hall past the restroom? Where’s the next elevator that way?”

“Not too far. See the second crossing down yonder? If you turn left, you’ll walk right into it.”

They thanked her and started timing the walk.

“You reckon he’d walk this fast?” asked Tub Greene, who still carried an extra thirty pounds of baby fat and sometimes had trouble keeping up with McLamb, who was lean and fit.

“He would if he was in a hurry to put a pillow over somebody’s face,” McLamb said. But he slowed his steps. The elevator arrived and they went up to the third floor, then walked down branching corridors toward the hospice wing. Four and a half minutes. Again, they were lucky. Two nurses sat at that last station in the newer hall making notations on their electronic charts, one a young blue-eyed white woman, the other an older brown-eyed man of Japanese descent. Both had been on duty the previous Wednesday. But there the luck ended. Neither of them recognized Snaveley’s picture.

“We were right busy that afternoon,” said the senior nurse. McLamb was disconcerted to hear the nurse’s Southern drawl when he was expecting a foreign accent. “A lot of coming and going. We had a code about that time. One of our patients down on C Hall went into cardiac arrest and his wife freaked out. I thought we were going to have to sedate her before we could get him stabilized. A marching band could have gone past this station for all I know.”

The young white nurse agreed.

McLamb thanked them and went on down the corridor and around the corner to the elevator that serviced the old wing. The desk there was unstaffed, as it had been last week.

“Okay,” said Ray McLamb. “Snaveley and the Byrds left the room with the others. They then took the elevator down to the ground floor and walked through the halls to the main entrance, where their cars were parked.”

“And don’t forget that they would be talking as they went,” said Tub. He looked at his watch. “Say ten minutes to get down and outside, then another five or six minutes for him to get in and back up, and that’s not counting if he really did have to use the men’s room. Yet nobody saw him.”

“So I guess we drive over to Raleigh and ask him if
he
saw anybody after he left the Byrds,” said Ray.

It was still raining when Dwight got to the Sterling home, but Billy Thornton was seated on the porch swing as before and seemed to be enjoying the sound of rain as it drummed on the roof and sluiced down onto the late azaleas that lined the foundation of the house with bright red blossoms.

“Daddy, this is Major Bryant from the Sheriff’s Department,” said Mrs. Sterling.

“Come to arrest me, young man?” he asked jovially.

Encouraged, Dwight said, “No, I brought you some music to listen to.”

“Do you want me to stay?” his daughter asked. “I never know if I’m a help or a hindrance at times like this.”

“Why don’t I call you if I need you?” Dwight said, relieved that he wouldn’t have to sugarcoat what he planned to ask.

“I’ll leave the door open,” she said and disappeared inside.

Dwight cued up the first song on Deborah’s playlist, Ernest Tubb’s “Walking the Floor Over You.” A few bars into the song, Billy Thornton began to tap his foot in time with the music.

“Yeah, I like this one,” he said with a happy smile on his face.

Next came a short Eddie Arnold cut, then a warm baritone voice began to sing about racing with the moon and Dwight realized that Deborah had chosen period love songs of adolescent loss and longing. He lowered the volume a little and softly asked, “You have a girlfriend?”

Thornton shrugged.

“C’mon, Billy. There must be someone special. Is it Letha?”

Dwight held up the snapshot of Letha McAllister that Mayleen had enlarged. “Remember, Billy?”

“Letha!” He reached for the picture and held it in both hands. Tears filled his rheumy eyes. “Letha,” he whispered, then looked at Dwight angrily. “Where’d you get her picture?”

“Jacob Knott gave it to me,” Dwight said. “She gave it to him.”

“The hell you say!” His eyes went back to the photograph and resentment faded from his face, replaced by wonder. “Lord, but she was something else, won’t she? You remember how she laughed?”

“Real pretty,” Dwight said, realizing that the old man thought he was someone from out of a shared past. “But she liked Jacob best, didn’t she?”

Thornton didn’t answer.

“Down at Possum Creek, Billy. You and Jacob and Letha. Did you hit Jacob?”

“We all…me, Ransom, Jed. She let us all kiss her, but Jacob…She let Jacob—”

“How did Jacob die, Billy?” Dwight asked, his voice barely audible above the music.

“Always showing off, won’t he? Swinging out on that rope, flipping off like he was Tarzan on a jungle vine. Laughing at me and Ransom ’cause we couldn’t do it as good. And Letha looking at him like he was made out of sugar candy.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “She saw me.”

“Saw you doing what?”

“He fell. The rope broke.”

“And you hit him with a rock because he wanted Letha, too.”

“No! I didn’t.”

“What did she see you do, Billy?”

“She didn’t know I was up there when she— She went right into the water and let him put his hand— She never let me touch her like that. She saw me out on that limb. Her and Jacob. They thought I was using my knife to pull the knot tighter.”

Bing Crosby’s mellow voice gently caressed a lovesick lyric.

“I didn’t mean for him to get hurt so bad, but he wouldn’t quit trying to take her away from me.”

“So you cut the rope,” Dwight said softly.

“She’s
my
girl, dammit!
Mine!
It was all her fault!” His fingers clinched around the edges of the enlarged photograph and his eyes seemed to focus on the sexy image. “Letha,” he whimpered.

“Tell me about Jacob,” Dwight said, but Thornton sat mutely through two more songs that had been popular when he and Letha McAllister and Jacob Knott had been young and reckless.