Peaches And Screams (A Savannah Reid Mystery) (16 page)

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Authors: G. A. McKevett

BOOK: Peaches And Screams (A Savannah Reid Mystery)
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Savannah scanned the brief, but concise statement, written in crude, shaky penmanship and signed by Clifton Oprey.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” She thought of Bonnie and Alvin, and how much she had wanted to pin this killing on them. She also thought of Clifton, who had seemed old and broken to her the last time she had seen him . . . years ago.
But you didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth to see if his dentures fit. Her baby brother was getting sprung.
“Do Sheriff Mahoney and Mack Goodwin know about this yet?” she asked, dreading the answer which she was fairly certain she wouldn’t like.
“The sheriff knows. He’s the one who brought Clifton in. He’s gone out now to tell Mr. Goodwin in person.”
Tom looked up from his paperwork and held her eyes for a long moment. Finally, he said, “I gotta tell you, Mack ain’t gonna like it.”
She nodded. “So, maybe you’d better get that paperwork done.” She scooted her chair around next to his. “Need any help?”
Chapter 16
 
S
avannah and Tom finished the release papers in record time, but it still wasn’t fast enough. No sooner had Tom signed and dated the final form than the front door crashed open and Mack Goodwin rushed into the office.
The prosecutor didn’t look nearly as cool and collected as he had at the country club. His sports shirt and jeans looked as though he had slept in them, and his formerly perfect hair was a tangled mess.
Sheriff Mahoney followed close behind, appearing equally upset. Savannah had never seen Mahoney looking anything but bored or cocky. If
he
was worried, things weren’t going well for somebody.
Goodwin gave Savannah only a brief scowl as he swept past her and up the stairs to the jail above.
Mahoney paused at the desk and whispered, “We got trouble, Tom. Mack ain’t buying it.” He glanced down at the forms on the desk. “Ditch those papers. I don’t want him seeing them.”
When he, too, disappeared up the stairs, Tom slid the stack into a drawer and followed the two men without a word to Savannah.
Although she knew she should just quietly slip out the door, she couldn’t. Even if her brother’s life weren’t on the line, curiosity alone would have driven her up the steps.
Before she even got to the top, she heard Mack Goodwin saying, “We’re supposed to believe that you’re the one who killed the judge, huh? You? How old are you anyway, Clifton, seventy? Seventy-five?”
“I’m seventy-one, which is only a couple of years older than the fella I killed,” she heard Clifton Oprey reply. “Don’t you think I’m up to it? It don’t take a young man to pull a trigger.”
She reached the uppermost step and peered down the hallway that bisected the jail. Mack Goodwin was standing to the left, gripping the bars of a cell, red-faced and glowering at its occupant, who was out of Savannah’s line of vision.
“Okay, so
you
shot Judge Patterson,” Mack said in a sarcastic tone. “With what? You tell me, Cliff Oprey, with what, pray tell?”
“A twenty-two caliber pistol.”
That seemed to take Goodwin aback, but only for a second. “And where is the murder weapon? What did you do with it?”
“I threw it in the river, where nobody’s ever gonna find it.”
Goodwin grasped the bars even tighter. “Well, what if I told you that the gun that killed the judge was found, right there at the scene of the crime. Huh? What would you say to that?”
Savannah waited, breathless for the reply. It was a while coming. She could practically hear the wheels of Clifton’s brain whirring, spinning out an answer.
“You ain’t neither,” he finally said. “You may have a gun, but it’s not the one that did it. I told you, I shot him and I tossed the pistol out in the water. Way out.”
“We have the bullet from my father-in-law’s brain,” Mack told him. “It was analyzed in a lab in Atlanta, and they say it was fired from the gun that was left in the library close to the judge’s body. So, how could you have done it with another gun?”
“That’s not what I heard,” Clifton said. “I heard over at Whiskey Joe’s that the bullet was banged up so bad from bouncing around inside that bastard’s hard skull that you couldn’t get a match. That’s what I heard.”
Savannah perked up; there was a ring of conviction to Cliff’s words.
And the angry look on Goodwin’s face, along with the quick glance exchanged between the sheriff and Tom, told Savannah that Cliff had heard right.
“A match,” Tom had told her.
Oh, well,
she thought.
He’s not the first cop to lie in the course of an investigation.
A sense of relief—no matter how small—swept over her. No ballistics match to her brother’s gun.
That had to be good news, no matter what happened with Clifton Oprey.
“Don’t believe everything you hear at Whiskey Joe’s,” Mack told the old man. “I don’t. And I don’t believe that you killed Judge Patterson. I think you hated him, and you would have
liked
to shoot him. But you didn’t. You’re just bragging, trying to impress your buddies and some women there at the bar.”
“I wrote a statement—a real, official confession,” Cliff argued. “And I signed it, too. You ask Deputy Tom there. He’ll tell you.”
Mack turned to Tom, who gave a slight nod.
“Yeah, well, I’m going to get to the bottom of this,” Mack said, “and when I do, you’ll still be in jail, Cliff, but it won’t be for anything as sensational as killing a judge. It’ll be for obstructing justice, that’s all. And everybody at Whiskey Joe’s will be laughing at you. Just wait and see.”
Mack turned away from the cell, and Savannah decided it might be an excellent time to backtrack down the steps.
She did. Quickly. And by the time the prosecutor, the sheriff, and Tom were downstairs, she was sitting demurely in the folding chair beside Tom’s desk.
“I guess we’ll have to cut the Reid boy loose,” she heard Tom say over his shoulder.
“No way,” Mack replied. “We’ve got him for that stolen rug and light fixture. He’s not going anywhere. Reid and Oprey both stay right where they are until we figure out what’s going on.”
“Yeah, that’s what I think, too,” the sheriff added. “Reid can cool his heels a while longer.”
Suddenly, Mack Goodwin seemed aware of Savannah’s presence. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“Never mind what you’re doing,” the sheriff snapped, “just get the hell outta here.”
Savannah didn’t wait for him to tell her twice. But as she hurried past them, she paused just long enough to whisper, “Fingerprints. Desk drawer. Check ’em,” to Tom.
Then she was out the door, down the street, and in Waycross’s pickup. With the door locked.
No point in hanging around where you weren’t wanted.
She decided to check in at “home base” and let Gran know the latest news about Clifton. Years ago, Gran had been close friends with Cliff’s wife, Sally, and Savannah figured Gran would have a definite opinion about this turn of events.
 
“It’s bull pucky. Pure and simple.” Gran stood at the kitchen counter, dragging pieces of raw chicken through a dish of buttermilk and then rolling them in another plate of flour, salt, and pepper. “Clifton’s had a hard time of it since Sally died, but not so hard that he’d lose his mind entirely and murder somebody.”
At the table, Alma sat, quietly putting together a jigsaw puzzle of the New York City skyline. “Mr. Oprey’s real sweet,” she added. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly, no matter what he’s said in the past about hating the judge’s guts.”
Gran shot her a warning look over the plate of chicken parts. “You might want to keep that sorta talk to yourself, sugar. Till this whole thing’s settled, we don’t need to be the ones throwing the oil of gossip onto the fire. There’s plenty around who’ll be more than happy to do that.”
Savannah reached for a paring knife and the bowl of potatoes in the sink.
“No, you don’t,” Gran told her, slapping her hands away. “You’ve got more important work to do than peeling potatoes. Your friend, Dirk, called a while ago.”
“Dirk? What did he want?”
“He’s at Whiskey Joe’s,” Alma said, snapping one of her pieces in place with a little grin of satisfaction. “He wants you to come over there soon as you can.”
Savannah silently groaned and placed the knife back in the drawer. The last thing she needed right now was another walk down family lane with Shirley Reid. She had actually hoped to leave town without bumping elbows with her mom again.
But, since Dirk was well aware of her feelings, she knew he must have a good reason for asking her to drop by.
“Maybe she won’t be there,” Gran said softly.
Savannah looked up to see her grandmother watching her, eyes full of sympathy.
“She’ll be there,” Alma added without glancing up from her puzzle. “She’s always there.”
 
 
“Oh, goody,” Savannah muttered to herself when she saw Marietta’s Chevy pull into the driveway beside Waycross’s truck. “So close, but no escape.”
A freshly coifed, but slightly tipsy Marietta got out of the car and headed straight for Savannah, or as straight as she could considering her inebriation.
“Hey, big sister, I want to have a word with you. Right now!”
“Well, I don’t want a word with you, except to mention that you shouldn’t drive when you’ve been drinking, Mari. You’ll kill some innocent person.”
“There you go again, sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong, giving advice that wasn’t asked for!”
“Come on, Marietta, and I’ll give you a ride home.”
“I don’t want to go home. I came here to see you, to give you the chance to apologize for the way you acted last night.”
Savannah sighed and shook her head. “Apologize, huh? Get in the truck, and I’ll drop you by your shop. We can talk on the way.”
Marietta wavered, teetering on her high-heeled slides. “Since I’m here, I might as well stay for supper.”
“I don’t want Gran to see you drunk. Get in the truck.”
“But my boys are going to show up any minute now. Them and me, we usually eat over here of an evening.”
Taking her by the arm and leading her to the pickup, Savannah said, “Yeah. We’re gonna talk about that, too. I’m going to give you some more advice that you don’t want. Like, grow up and stop taking advantage of a kind old lady who loves you.”
 
Whiskey Joe’s happy hour customers were in fine form when Savannah arrived.
Nothing like half-priced drinks to make fools out of a roomful of local yokels
, she thought as she entered the door and dodged a flying swizzle stick with a lemon twist.
The television, mounted on the wall behind the bar, was blaring the early edition of the regional news. She was just in time to hear the end of the story about Clifton Oprey’s arrest with all the pathetic details of Clifton’s previous losses and his public vows of vengeance.
As the weatherman took over the broadcast, the room erupted in arguments about Cliff’s guilt or innocence.
Without taking an official poll, judging on pure volume and passion alone, Savannah would have to say that the “guilties” had it. That was a scary thought, she decided, considering that this was the pool from which any impartial jury might be drawn to try either Clifton Oprey or her own brother.
Glancing around the room, she quickly spotted Dirk, hovering near the pool tables with a mug of beer in hand and a bored look on his face.
Of course, there was no way to actually tell if he was bored or not, as that was Dirk’s usual expression—the only exceptions being when free food was within reach or when reading a suspect his rights. Then his mood soared to the lofty heights of “mildly interested.”
As she headed toward him, he saw her and met her halfway.
“Gran said you wanted me to come by,” she told him, her mouth close to his ear so she could be heard above the tumult. “You got something?”
“No. I tried to talk to your mom over there . . .” He nodded toward the perpetually occupied stool beneath the Elvis photo. “And she basically told me to shove it. Guess she doesn’t like my face.”
“Naw, it’s not your face,” she assured him. “You’ve got a great face, considering how many times it’s been planted in the dirt and dragged on the asphalt and pummeled into a bloody pulp and—”
“Okay already!”
“She just hates cops.”
He quirked one eyebrow. “Oh, yeah? She must have been thrilled when you joined the department.”
Savannah studied the woman in the corner, who didn’t seem to be aware of her arrival. Although she must have, Shirley didn’t appear to have moved from that spot since the last time Savannah had seen her.
For a moment, Savannah entertained the question of whether someone could sleep while sitting, drinking, and smoking.
“My mom hasn’t been thrilled about anything I’ve done since the day I was born,” she said.
“Sorry, Van.”
She turned back to Dirk and saw him giving her a much more sympathetic look than she would have thought him capable of.
Smiling at him, she said, “Don’t be sorry, really. It’s okay. Gran was wonderful to us. Most kids growing up with moms like Shirley don’t have the blessing of a grandmother like mine. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
He offered her a drink of his beer, but she shook her head. “Thanks anyway. What were you trying to get out of Shirley when she basically told you to file it in the realms of the nether world?”
“I heard that farmer, Clifton Oprey, was talking to her right before he confessed to the judge’s killing. But when I asked her about it, she bristled like one of your cats when I yank its tail.”
“You yank my cats’ tails?”

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