Designated Daughters (19 page)

“Sorry,” she said, “but you know how dads worry.”

“Sure,” said Mayleen, whose own dad hadn’t cared enough to come to her wedding and who would probably make comments about half-breeds when he heard about the baby.

Again, she explained about the need for cross-checking alibis and gave Amanda the form she had devised.

“I’m sorry,” the girl said again, “but I really didn’t know any of these people, just Miss Rachel. See, what happened was, my car was burning oil, so I drove it down to the dealership in Fayetteville and Dad was going to drive me back to school.”

“Meredith College, right?”

“Yes, ma’am. I sort of wanted to go to Appalachian, but Dad talked me into staying closer to home for my first year and he was right. I would’ve been so homesick way off there in the mountains.”

Her smile was rueful. “I guess I really am a daddy’s girl. And with Mom and Talmadge both gone, he would’ve been homesick for me as well, so this lets us do it gradually.”

“Talmadge?”

“My brother. He’s a musician. Lives in Glasgow so we don’t get to see much of him except when Dad has business there.”

“You must miss him,” Mayleen said sympathetically.

“Dad does.” A shadow passed over that pretty face. “He’s sixteen years older and we were never very close. Actually, he thinks I’m a spoiled brat and I think he’s a jerk.”

She looked down at the paper in her hand. “I’m really no help here. Dad and I were about to leave when somebody spilled a drink on poor Miss Rachel and we all cleared out. He stopped to talk to somebody out in the vestibule for a few minutes—a Dr. Howell?—and then he wanted to go downstairs to ask somebody’s opinion about who the governor’s going to back to replace our state representative.” Her tone turned indulgent. “Dad’s a political junkie, and since I didn’t know any of those people I told him I’d meet him back at the car. He swore he’d only be a few minutes, but it was more like half an hour. We didn’t hear about Miss Rachel till the next day.”

“How did y’all know her?”

“My school was near Dad’s work and he drove me back and forth, so we passed by her vegetable stand on our way home. He grew up on a farm and he loved to sit and talk to her. He liked for me to hear her, too. Dad’s always been big on family and heritage and since all my own grandparents were gone, I guess he thought Miss Rachel could give me an idea of what his mother had been like.” She twisted a strand of bright gold hair into a tight coil and her blue eyes were sad. “She was so sweet to me. Fed me strawberries in the spring, then sent me blueberries and watermelons in the summer. It was a real shock when Dad told me what had happened.”

“You say you saw Dr. Howell out in the vestibule. Did he go downstairs with your dad?”

She shook her head and that coil of bright hair slowly unwound itself. “No, ma’am. A nurse came to ask him something and he went down the other hall with her.”

The
ma’am
s were starting to make Mayleen feel ancient. “Did you see anyone from the hospice room when you were leaving?”

“I saw a woman in the restroom across the hall, but like I said, I didn’t know any of them. Just Miss Rachel. Well, I had met her son and daughter back when I was a kid, but I think they went downstairs when the others did. I just sat in the car and waited for Dad. My friends and I were texting back and forth.”

“What about this man?” Mayleen showed her a picture of Furman Snaveley.

Amanda Collins shook her head. “Sorry. I’m afraid I was looking at my screen the whole time. You know how it is.”

Dwight returned from Cotton Grove as Amanda Collins was leaving. Ray McLamb and Tub Greene rolled in a few minutes later so that the four of them were able to bring each other up to date on what they’d learned from their interviews.

Most interesting to the three deputies was to hear that Billy Thornton had probably cut the rope swing and caused Jacob Knott to fall to his death.

“I’ll talk to the DA tomorrow,” Dwight said, “but I’m pretty sure he’ll agree that it would be pointless to arrest a man who can’t remember what he had for breakfast.”

“So Rachel Morton’s death had nothing to do with her brother’s?” asked Tub, trying to get it straight in his head.

“Doesn’t look like it. Did you two get an alibi for that preacher?”

Ray shook his head. “He confirms that the Byrds left immediately after the drink was spilled, but he did go back inside to use the facilities. He gave us the name of a man who was at the next urinal and we’ll go talk to him tomorrow if you like, but that guy went upstairs to meet his first great-g
randso
n and Snaveley says he went out to his car without seeing anyone he recognized.

“We asked him about those other things on the list. He couldn’t tell us about a debt or a wife-beater. He’s known some cases where fathers were raising kids that weren’t theirs, but he wouldn’t name names.”

“Tell him about Dr. Howell,” Tub said.

“He’s the one paying for Snaveley’s cushy retirement place,” said Ray, and repeated everything that the old man had told them about Richard Howell’s crushing guilt after his sister’s death.

“You ever gonna tell us why Snaveley’s in the running?” asked Mayleen.

“I’m not trying to shut y’all out,” Dwight said, “but it’s something embarrassing that happened forty or fifty years ago and no point in repeating it till it’s relevant. If you can’t definitely alibi him and nobody else looks good for it, then we’ll zero in on him. In the meantime, do we have alibis for Howell and Collins?”

“Judge Knott and her cousin Sally Crenshaw alibi Collins,” said Mayleen, “and she saw his daughter leave.” She gave them the details. “As for Howell, both Mrs. Crenshaw and the Collins girl say he never went down to the family room because a nurse snagged him at the top of the stairs and they went over to the other side of the hospital.”

“Write it all up,” Dwight told them, “and let’s keep checking all the alibis.”

“What about family?” asked Ray. “I don’t mean to be out of line, but—” He gave a hands-out shrug.

“No, you’re right, Ray. Everyone’s a suspect. Except that they all were down in the family room, according to my wife. Some of the kids left early, but none of them drove away alone.”

He turned to leave, then remembered the other cases they were working. “That flash drive you got from one of the break-in victims. Any luck with that picture?”

“Not yet, Boss. I gave copies to the uniforms and they’re canvassing the Black Creek area.”

R
ain was still falling when I left court on Wednesday afternoon. As soon as I got home, Dwight and I drove over to the homeplace. Dwight had given me the bare bones of his interview with Billy Thornton and the response he’d gotten with the music I’d downloaded (who knew Bing Crosby ever sang country?), but over at the homeplace, he fleshed out the story of Jacob’s death for Daddy, who listened grimly.

“Billy cut the rope so he could have Letha to himself?”

“I’m afraid so, Mr. Kezzie.”

“Now he’s senile and Letha’s dead.”

“Yessir.”

“And you’re sure none of their people had anything to do with killing Rachel?”

“The only one with a link to either of them that we can find was that orderly I told you about. Letha’s grandson. He says he didn’t know she had any connection to Miss Rachel and I believe him. Besides, at least four different witnesses saw him delivering dinner trays in a hall at the other end of the hospital during the relevant time.”

“Well, I’m real sorry nobody’s gonna go to prison for what they done to Jacob, but I sure hope it ain’t gonna be another sixty years before we know what happened to Rachel.”

“It won’t,” Dwight said firmly. “Back then, you thought Jacob’s death was an accident. We know for a fact that this is murder.”

Daddy stood up and reached for the straw Panama he wears from April to October. “I appreciate y’all coming and telling me, Dwight, Deb’rah. Now I reckon I better go let Sister know.”

“Want me to come with you?” I asked.

“Naw. I expect her and me’ll want to do some long remembering about Jacob and Jedidiah.”

“It’s supposed to keep raining till morning,” I argued.

“I been driving in rain for seventy years,” he said harshly. “
And
at night.”

“Daddy—”

He cut off my apology with a softened tone. “Don’t worry, daughter. If it’s dark and raining real hard, I’ll just stay the night with her.”

I stood on tiptoes to kiss his leathery cheek, then Dwight and I walked out with him and we hurried through the rain to our trucks. Dwight turned his toward a lane that would lead back to our house, while Daddy headed for the road toward Fuquay.

“It’s okay,” Dwight said as the windshield wipers slapped back and forth. “He’s got the eyesight of a hawk.”

“Hawks don’t fly at night,” I said bleakly. “Or in the rain.”

“He’ll be fine, honey. Seth’ll let us know when it’s time to start hiding his keys.”

“You think?”

“I know. Somebody follows him home at night about twice a month.”

That surprised me. “They do?”

He reached over and squeezed my hand. “You’re not the only one living out here that worries about him.”

Thursday and Friday passed uneventfully. Uneventfully for Dwight, anyhow. His deputies were out canvassing every name on the master list. Mayleen had drawn up a large chart to cross-reference who was where after Lois Boone left Aunt Rachel. Black lines had been drawn through the names that had at least two separate confirmations but it was slow work.

And no luck, so far, on that photo that one of the break-in victims had given Ray McLamb.

As for me, the rains finally stopped on Thursday, the sun came out, and on Friday, Portland sent a message up to my courtroom urgently asking me to come to her office during my lunch break. “Salads on the deck,” she’d written.

When I got there, she and a clerk were in the process of sorting through fifteen years’ worth of client files, deciding which she and Avery would take with them and which would go into storage.

Like Lee & Stephenson, Brewer & Brewer occupied a remodeled house. Theirs was plain vanilla brick, though, vintage 1960, and more than a block away from the courthouse.

“Found a buyer yet?” I asked as Portland took two clear plastic containers from the refrigerator in the kitchen and we went out to the shady back deck, which was furnished with white patio furniture. The air was still humid and it frizzled her short dark hair into tight little curls all over her head.

“One strong nibble,” she said. “Joyce Mitchell and her partners are interested.”

Normally this would merit a good ten minutes dissecting Joyce and her law practice and which rung they occupied in the local bar’s pecking order, but Portland seemed distracted. She had brought out silverware but forgot drinks and napkins.

I fetched the pitcher of iced tea. “What’s up? Avery’s not joining us?”

He often did when we had lunch on the deck. Dwight, too, if he could get away.

“He had to go to Charlotte. I don’t want to tell him anyhow. In fact, I really shouldn’t even be talking to you about this, but my head’s going to explode if I don’t tell somebody.”

I didn’t remind her that we’ve always trusted each other with our deepest secrets, even up to the point of technically breaching attorney-client confidentiality if it was something troubling. Instead, I snapped the lid off my salad and drizzled raspberry vinaigrette over the baby spinach, blue cheese, walnuts, and dried cranberries. “Tell me what?”

“Tuesday night. Remember I said that Mrs. McElveen’s rewriting her will because her niece, the one that stayed with her after her car accident, had died?”

I nodded.

“And you remember how Avery said if Mrs. McElveen had executed a durable power of attorney for financial management, her niece didn’t have to die for her to keep control?”

“So?”

“So he was right, even though that’s not what he meant. She probably wouldn’t have died.”

“Huh?”

“I think Mrs. McElveen killed her.”

“What?”

“Shh,” Portland said. “Keep your voice down. The whole neighborhood doesn’t have to know and certainly not our clerks.”

“She killed her caregiver? Her own niece? She told you this?”

“Not in those words, but yes. I think so.”

“
Think?
” My voice was rising again. I couldn’t help it. This was one of the leading citizens of Dobbs. This was Laurel Foster McElveen, a woman who sat on half the important boards in town.

“You remember how she seemed to be losing it? Stopped going to board meetings? Quit going to therapy for her legs? Acted depressed? Drifting in a fog?”

I nodded.

“Then the niece died.”

“I remember.”

“When I saw Mrs. McElveen after the funeral last week, she was back in the land of the living. Cogent, sharp, ready to whip this town into shape. And the first thing she wanted to do was rewrite her will, disinherit the remaining nieces and a nephew.”

“Nothing odd about that,” I said.

“Right. But when Avery said what he did, it got me thinking. Because she told me last week that her niece had wanted her to sign an irrevocable POA and that if Evelyn hadn’t died so
fortuitously
, she might have done it because she’d almost lost her ability to concentrate and make decisions.”

“Fortuitously?” I asked, trying to spear a walnut with my fork.

“Fortuitously.”

“Okay, not the term most people would use for the death of a niece, Por, but hardly grounds to suspect murder.”

Portland brushed away a curious yellow jacket that had buzzed over to land on a melon cube in her fruit salad. “I know, I know. But there was something about the way she said it. Her niece did have heart problems. In fact, she was due to get a stent put in next month, which is probably why her doctor signed the death certificate without an autopsy. Her mother died young, too. Heart attack for both of them, Mrs. McElveen said. Today, though, she asked if you can tell someone’s been poisoned once the body was cremated, and I told her no. You can’t, can you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“So then I flat-out asked her if she thought her niece had been murdered, and guess what she said?”

“You’re fired?”

Portland didn’t smile. “No, she said it was probably an unintentional suicide. ‘Because’—and I quote—‘surely it isn’t murder if someone switches drinks with the person who poured them.’”

I nearly choked on my salad. “She
didn’t
!”

“She did. So what do I do now, Deborah? Even if I wanted to violate attorney-client privilege and told Dwight, what could he do?”

I was stumped. There are hundreds of substances that can cloud a person’s cognitive powers, thousands that can kill someone with a weak heart, but unless it’s something commonly used, like ethanol or a heavy metal, testing for an unknown is like trying to catch lightning bugs blindfolded. And that’s if you have a body.

“Cremated?” I asked.

“Cremated,” Portland said. “
And
the ashes are going to be scattered tomorrow.”

“Wow!” I said. “That’s fast.”

We batted it around for another twenty minutes while finishing lunch, but in the end, there was really nothing that could be done. Even if Dwight were to get another judge to sign a search warrant and turn Mrs. McElveen’s house inside out, even if he were to find the poison, if poison it was and not a prescription for something as innocuous as sleeping pills or allergy medicine, there would be no way to prove anything without a body.

“You going to keep her on as a client?” I asked.

“Why not? Do you know how much we bill her for every year? Thank God she’s never asked us over for drinks.”