Over Troubled Water: A Hunter Jones Mystery (21 page)

“Head hurts. Leg’s killing me,” Ricky said. “This guy’s hurting my leg.”

“Let’s go back to the black bag. Are you sure it’s a garbage bag?”

“Yes, a garbage bag. Big one. Plastic.”

“Where was it?”

“On the guard rail. Over the rail. Moving around.”

“Did you see anybody near the bridge? Anybody but your friends?”

“No.”

She went over it with him three more times, and there was no more information to be gained.

“Sometimes when people lose consciousness, memories of what happened just don’t get formed,” she said to Sam an hour later. “He just doesn’t have any memories from the time he saw the black bag and Annie Chapman asked ‘What’s that?’ until the pain of the tourniquet woke him up briefly.”

Sam sighed.

“You knew about the black bag?” she asked.

“We found two of them near the site,” Sam said. “I’m thinking the shooter could have been keeping the rifle wrapped in them.”

“Why are you so sure this was a man?” she asked.

“I know it could be either,” he said, “The last person I arrested for homicide was a woman. It’s just a way of speaking.”

Nikki Daniello was Hunter’s opposite at the moment: skinny and full of energy. Her thick dark hair was cropped close to her head and she was wearing a pink cotton blouse with a short denim skirt and sandals. She arrived loaded down with camera bags and a care package of spiced tea, fruits, vegetables and baked goods from the DeKalb Farmers Market.

On her second trip to her car, she emerged with a fluffy stuffed kangaroo for Baby Bailey, an Atlanta Braves tee shirt for Bethie, and a pair of teal blue embroidered satin pajamas for Hunter.

“Oh, they’re beautiful,” Hunter said, “But I’ll never get into them.”

“They’re for inspiration, “Nikki said, “Now have any other disasters happened since yesterday?”

Fifty miles away in Macon, Garth Thurlow was in a rage.

“I told you he’d pull another stunt,” he said to Sunshine. “Didn’t I tell you not to let him back in that house? Now we’ve got another whole round of changing the locks, and there’s no telling what he’s stockpiling in there. We could have that house on the market already if you’d left well enough alone. Now what are you going to do about it?”

Sunshine was getting a headache.

“I’m just going to let it be,” she said. “I told him he had a month to find another place, and I’ll get Jeremy Hayes to write him a letter reminding him of that. I wasn’t planning to go down there anyway. We can get the locks changed if he won’t give up the keys, and if he doesn’t move out, I’ll have him evicted, but I don’t want to do it that way.”

“This is going to hold up selling it,” Garth said. “You know a house has to be ready to sell. Everything needs to be moved out. It needs to be cleaned up. Maybe some rooms need painting. We need him out of there so we can start going down there on weekends and getting it ready. This whole thing could wind up taking months, and we need the money now.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Sunshine said. “I’ll call Jeremy on Monday. I have to handle this my own way, Garth.”

“Your own way is just to let that crazy brother of yours have his own way,” Garth said, his voice rising. “You let me talk to the lawyer. I’ll tell him we want your brother out of that house now, or I’ll go down there and throw him out myself.”

Sunshine would remember later that as she stood there listening to Garth yelling, she had a moment of clarity, or what her mother would have called an epiphany.

She realized that Garth saw her inheritance as a way out of his own financial troubles.

He had stopped yelling, and she tuned back in.

“I’ve got to get outta here,” he said, snatching his motorcycle helmet from the kitchen table. “I don’t need this stress.”

“I don’t either,” she said to the empty room after he had slammed the door.

Nancy Whitchell’s feet were hurting. As usual, she was the last employee standing at the Cut ’n’ Curl Boutique. The owner, Twila Morris, had taken care of her favorites and left the others to Nancy.

She glanced at the clock and saw that she only had an hour to go. Frances Butcher had her newly-colored red hair set in small rollers and was under the dryer reading the same romance she had brought with her every week for the last month.

Nancy finished shampooing Sara Lou Whittaker’s skimpy white hair and was getting ready to cut and blow dry.

“Just the same way as always,” Sara Lou said. “Except maybe a tiny bit longer in the front than you did it last time and not shaped so much in the back – more like I use to have it before I had that permanent that didn’t work and had to let it all grow out.”

Nancy managed a smile. She would give the old lady her usual haircut and blow dry, and it would look nice when she left.

“So what do you hear about that terrible shooting?” Sara Lou asked. “I heard it was your husband who found them all there and that he saved Ricky Richards from bleeding out. That’s what my daughter said –she said he would have bled out and died. You know Doris, don’t you? She works at the hospital. She’s an LPN, but let me tell you, she knows as much as those RNs and all the nurses know more than some of those doctors.”

Nancy had heard this before. She smiled and snipped. “I’m sure they know more than the last doctor I went to,” she said. “Let me go check Miss Frances’ hair.”

When she returned, Sara Lou said, “Did you know that China Carson?”

“Only to say hello,” Nancy said.

“She’s not any relative of yours is she? I know your Mama was a Jackson.”

“Different family,” Nancy said. “My mother was from Bleckley County. None of her folks lived here.”

She knew that Sara Lou was building up to saying something about China Jackson Carson that might not go over well with one of her friends of relatives.

“I don’t know that I could have told her from her sister,” she said. “What I don’t understand about her, not to speak ill of her or anything, is what she was doing riding a bicycle if she was expecting?”

Sara Lou sat up straighter, looking triumphant.

“That’s not the big question,” she said. “The big question is who the daddy was?”

Nancy frowned.

“I heard her husband was all broken up about her getting’ shot,” she said.

“He was,” Sara Lou said, lowering her voice, “And between me and you and the lamppost, his sister was worried that he might even kill himself, but he still stood by her even after hearing about the baby. See, the thing is that he couldn’t make a baby. He was like, you know, well, I’m not sure what the word is, but he had mumps when he was in high school, and it made him not able to make a baby.”

“I never heard of such a thing,” Nancy said honestly, clipping away.

“Well, it’s true. I can’t tell you where I heard it, but it’s true and I’ll swear it on a stack of Bibles. I don’t believe in judging others but on the good side, you got to give that young man credit for standing right up there by her casket after that funeral and hearing all those kind things said about her and the baby, and knowing the whole time it wasn’t his. Now that’s forgiveness.”

Nancy turned on the blow dryer and thought to herself that it was the craziest story she’d heard in a while, but, true or not true, she was sure going to have something to tell Aaron.

Sam stopped by the Save-Mart and bought a bag of charcoal, steaks, fresh corn, salad ingredients, ice cream, beer and red wine. Then, unsure whether Nikki ate red meat, he circled around and bought fresh shrimp to steam.

He flinched at the check-out counter, thinking he might have done better to take everybody out to dinner.

All the same, though, he found something satisfying in arriving home like a mighty hunter and starting the coals in the old grill.

“I love steak,” Nikki said. “Rare, please.”

“I’ll steam the shrimp,” Hunter said, ‘but everybody has to peel their own.”

It was a fine meal, followed by a futile effort not to talk about the investigation. Sam told them that the hypnosis had yielded nothing much from Ricky Richards.

“He’s the good looking rascal?” Nikki asked.

When Sam and Hunter looked surprised, she said, “I’m just going by the pictures that were on the website. The one I really noticed was the ladies’ man with the curly hair.

“Yes,” Hunter said. “Ricky Richards has curly hair. I never thought of him as a rascal, though.”

Sam laughed and said, “Nikki’s right, but I think his rascal days are over.”

“Was he hurt that bad?” Nikki asked.

“No, he’s going to mend,” Sam said, “I mean he’s happily married now.”

Nikki raised an eyebrow.

Hunter went and got a copy of the paper that came out right after the shooting.

“Now,” she said to Nikki, “Give us your assessment of the others.”

“Both of these are standard studio stuff,” she said, pointing to the pictures of Annie Chapman and Jim Jordan. “You can’t tell a thing about them.”

Then she pointed to China Carson.

“She was happy,” she said. “That makes it sadder, doesn’t it?”

An hour later when Sam and Nikki were cleaning up the kitchen and Hunter was half asleep on the sofa, Sam’s phone rang.

“Sorry to bother you, Sir,” the dispatcher said, “It’s a home invasion report. Andy Chapman called from 128 Clearview Circle, says some man is in his house yelling at him. He’s barricaded himself in his bedroom. Deputy Williston is on his way over there.”

CHAPTER 18

When Sam arrived at the Chapman home, Taneesha was right behind him. Bub was holding Garth Thurlow at gunpoint at the bottom of the back steps. Thurlow’s hands were clasped behind his head. His motorcycle was by the garage.

“I don’t know if he’s armed,” Bub said to Sam without taking his eyes off Thurlow, “I told him if he lowered either arm, I was going to shoot him.”

“I’ve got a handgun under my belt on the right side,” Thurlow said in a surly voice. “Got a permit for it, too.”

Sam came closer and removed the gun carefully, nodding to Taneesha, who moved in with handcuffs.

“Put your hands behind your back,” Sam said to Thurlow. “You’re under arrest for breaking and entering.”

“You’re the Sheriff, right? You know me,” Thurlow said to Sam. “I’m Sunshine Chapman’s fiancée. Remember? We met at the funeral. I just came down to check on the house for her and to talk to her brother about moving out. He got the locks changed again today. Did you know that?”

“He got in through the dining room window,” Bub said to Sam. “He was upstairs yelling threats at Andy Chapman when I got inside. Andy’s locked in his bedroom. I figured it was just as well to leave him there.”

“This is crazy,” Thurlow said, “You need to call Sunshine Chapman right now before you wind up getting sued for false arrest. She’s got a lawyer down here. He’ll tell you about it. It’s her house.”

“But it’s not your house, “Sam said.

After Taneesha and Bub had taken Thurlow off, Sam found the opened window and climbed through it.

“Andy,” he called out when he got halfway up the stairs. “It’s Sheriff Bailey. We’ve arrested the intruder, and he’s been taken away. You can come out. It’s safe now.”

He had to repeat the same words at the door several times before he heard the sound of a chest of drawers being shoved sideways, and Andy Chapman opened the door.

He looked pale and shaken.

“Who was that?” he asked.

“It’s okay. We’ve got him,” Sam said. “He’s going to jail right now.”

Nancy Twitchell knew her husband well enough to keep her story short, and then fill in the details when she had his interest.

“That baby China Carson was going to have couldn’t have been Russell’s,” she said.

“How would you know that?” Aaron asked.

“Miz Sara Lou Whittaker told me that Russell was sterile because he had mumps in high school, and it got to his private parts. I never heard of that before.

“I’ve heard of it,” Aaron said. “Remember when we went to that doctor? He asked me if I’d had mumps.”

The Twitchells had long since resolved themselves to being childless, and they both knew that the problem was Nancy’s. It was a subject they were at peace with, and one of the few things they had never fought about.

“How’d Miz Sara Lou get that kind of information?” he asked.

“Her daughter, Doris, is a friend of Rondelle Carson,” Nancy said, “They work at the hospital together. Rondelle told her a while back, like a year or two before all this happened. Miz Sarah Lou said Doris said that Rondelle was all worked up at the time because Russell had found out for sure from the doctor, but he wasn’t tellin’ China. Anyway, China was goin’ on and on’ about wantin’ a baby when it wasn’t gonna happen, and Rondelle was thinkin’ about telling China herself. Miz Sara Lou didn’t know how it turned out..”

“Russell should’ve told her,” Aaron said, frowning.

“Well, maybe he finally did,” Nancy said. “But the thing is that if she was pregnant when she got shot, it wasn’t his –or probably wasn’t. I mean, there could have been a miracle or something.”