Summer of the Dead (19 page)

It was Saturday morning, one day after the dedication ceremony at the hospital. Just after nine, Bell had picked up Rhonda at the courthouse in her Explorer. Twenty-five minutes later, they crossed the Raythune county line, and fifteen minutes after that, reached the trailer park listed in court records as the home address of Jed and Tiffany Stark and their daughter, Guinivere.

Bell would have preferred to work on the Arnett and Frank cases. Leads, though, were frustratingly few, and were being pursued by others. Deputy Harrison was reinterviewing one of the hitchhikers, who had called the sheriff's office to say that maybe he recalled something, after all, and that maybe he'd seen a man in the woods that night, wearing a long coat, close to the spot along Godown Road where Charlie Frank died of his wounds. He couldn't be sure—but maybe. Maybe he'd seen that. And Sheriff Fogelsong was meeting with a specialist from the state crime lab; he wanted help in consulting more extensive databases, checking for crimes with similar weapons and methodologies in surrounding counties. Digging deeper.

When Rhonda had proposed a trip to the Stark trailer, Bell was silently grateful. She wanted to be in motion today, just as she'd wanted to be in motion last night. She needed to keep one step ahead of her grief over Carla's absence. And if she and Rhonda weren't working on the homicides in their own jurisdiction, then they might as well be exploring the question that now needled Rhonda almost as much as it did Bell: Why would a man like Jed Stark be doing business with a New York lawyer?

Their conversation as they drove that morning had been mostly superficial, and mostly it emanated from Rhonda: The sky. The heat. The new youth minister at Rhonda's church. The goatee that Deputy Mathers was trying to grow, the one that made him look like he'd been two-fisting Oreos and ought to bother wiping his face every once in a while. The hip replacement surgery that Rhonda's mother would undergo next month.

Bell pulled into an unmarked lane. The Explorer bounced like a pogo stick across the pothole-pocked road until they reached a dead end. Clustered around the dirt-packed circle, radiating out from it like the spokes of a prone wheel, were some twenty house trailers. Each trailer had a rickety lawn chair on its stoop, a chair that took up most of the space; next to the chair on many of the stoops was an old metal coffee can, overflowing with cigarette butts. Sunlight glinted off the flimsy-looking trailer frames. Only a few had cars parked alongside them. Bell read the bumper stickers:
KEEP HONKING. I'M RELOADING
was one.
PROUD WIFE OF A COAL MINER
, another.

There had been no sign along the road to designate the trailer park. Bell's ability to locate it quickly and efficiently came from Rhonda's preliminary work. The assistant prosecutor had called her uncle Cam in Steppe County, told him the address, and gleaned the particulars: Dirt road, just after the turnoff for Muddy Hollow. If you get to the intersection that hooks up with Route 147, you've gone too far.

Rhonda shifted in her seat, peering around. “Kinda odd that there's nobody outside. Nice morning like this.” She thought about it. “Well—maybe not. This's not the kind of place that welcomes strangers, I guess. 'Specially not now.”

The Explorer had surely been spotted before they even made the turn off the main road, and the warning had spread via an informal network that couldn't be pinned down to a conduit as specific as a phone call or a text or even a yell, a network that moved as mysteriously as the wind. Unexpected visitors generally meant trouble. Might be somebody from the propane company, waving an unpaid bill. Or the bank or the sheriff's office. Could be a disgruntled ex-husband or a spurned girlfriend or a cousin who'd lent money against his better judgment and now wanted it back. Plus interest.

These days, it could be somebody with a sledgehammer or a knife.

After a single glimpse of Bell's vehicle from a side window, doubtless the word had gone up and down this dirt road, flicking into each trailer like a snake's tongue:
Keep quiet. Stay low.

“Over there,” Bell said.

The third trailer on the left-hand side was the one they were looking for. It was turd-shaped and dilapidated, brown with silver trim. Somebody had tried to make it look a little better by planting annuals in a half-moon track around the stoop. The heat had turned the tiny blooms into a damp wilted mess.

While Rhonda waited a few feet away, Bell went to the door. There wasn't room on the stoop for both of them. She knocked. Fatigue made her arm feel unusually heavy, as if she were moving in slow motion, fighting invisible pressure. She'd had, by her most optimistic estimate, about two hours of sleep between the moment she arrived home from her driving marathon to her departure for the courthouse. Shirley had stayed away all night; there was no word from her, either.

The door opened. A young woman peeked out. Dirty blond hair was teased up into a fragile swirl that topped her narrow face like cotton candy on a stick. Mid- to late twenties, Bell estimated.

“Yeah?”

“Morning.” Bell had her ID ready and held it up. “I'm Belfa Elkins, prosecuting attorney of Raythune County. I'd like to talk to you for a moment or so about Jed. You're Tiffany, right?”

The woman blinked. “Yeah. Okay.” She seemed hungry for company, a hunger that superseded any suspicions or hesitations. Opening the door wider, she spotted Rhonda in the yard. “You can come on in, too, hon.”

The interior of the trailer smelled like cigarettes and soon-to-be-sour milk and socks that had gone too long without a washing, and, as a top note, a cheap air freshener, the plastic cone-shaped kind that you activated by sliding up the cover, a little at a time. Ocean Breeze—that was the name of the scent. Bell recognized it. It was a smell from her childhood. And the name was a joke, given the smells it was trying to cover. Impossible fight on its hands.

Ocean Breeze, my ass,
she thought.

Bell and Rhonda had to move aside an impressive pile of toys to make room to sit on the red-plaid corduroy couch. The living room was small, so constricted that Bell felt slightly short of breath. The heat didn't help. There was no AC. No fan. Throw in the cloying fake-sweetness of Ocean Breeze, and Bell wasn't sure how long she'd be able to last in here.

While Rhonda and Bell methodically relocated a toy xylophone, the scattered accoutrements of a Barbie Country Camper, a seriously warped copy of
Goodnight Moon
that looked as if it had been dropped repeatedly in a wading pool and then left to dry in the yard, a colored-on Candy Land game board, a plastic pail and shovel, an upside-down carton of baby wipes, a sparkly tiara, and dozens of tiny sticks and sprockets from an Erector Set, Tiffany watched them. She lit a cigarette. She lifted her shoulders as she acquired a passionate lungful. Blew it out in a rich plume. Then she waved away the smoke with a spasm of impatience, as if somebody else had produced it.

“You all want sumpin' to drink?” she said. She sat down across from them, on a wooden chair that didn't match any other furniture in the room. “I got Mountain Dew and Pabst.” She was barefoot, and wore cutoff shorts and a sleeveless pink blouse. Her arms and legs were very thin and looked, Bell thought, a lot like the sticks in the Erector Set they'd just relocated.

“We're fine,” Bell answered. Rhonda nodded, backing her up.

“Okay, well. Guinivere'll be getting up after while. She sleeps pretty late. Still don't understand what happened to her daddy. Asks about him all the time. I just say, ‘He's with Jesus.' Figure that'll cover it pretty good. Till she's older.” Tiffany shrugged and leaned forward, utilizing the orange plastic ashtray on the glass-topped coffee table. The glass was smudged with dozens of overlapping fingerprints and a long-ago spill of something brown and thick that had hardened into a kidney-shaped glaze.

“We're very sorry for your loss,” Bell said. “How long had you and Jed been married?”

“Three years is all. We was together a long time before that, though. Years and years. Tied the knot when I knew I was having Guinivere.”

“Pretty name,” Rhonda said.

“It's from
Camelot
. She was the queen. The one married to King Arthur, till she ruint it all by falling in love with the wrong guy.” Tiffany grinned, an act that revealed the unfortunate fate of the majority of her teeth. “Trouble is,” she went on, “my mama keeps callin' her Gwen when we're out in public. Which makes people think I named her after Gwen Stefani. As
if.
” Energized by outrage, she took another long suck on her cigarette. She exhaled and then flailed again at the smoke, as if still mystified about its origins.

“Well,” Rhonda said, “you can set them straight.”

Tiffany nodded. “And so can Guinivere, once she's old enough. She'll speak up for herself. Gonna be a good strong girl. Go her own way. Just like her daddy. He never took no shit from nobody.”

Bell noticed how easily Tiffany had adopted the past tense. And she noticed, too, the total absence of anything resembling grief in the young woman's breezy demeanor. Yet Bell always cautioned her staff not to read too much into an individual's response to the loss of a loved one, and never to assume that it implied complicity in a homicide. Shock could make some people seem indifferent, even callous. Everyone grieved in her or his own way.

Still, Tiffany's response was a bit surprising. This woman had just lost her husband, the father of her child, and presumably the family's sole breadwinner—and lost him in a silly bar fight, to boot, inspired by his pursuit of another woman—and she seemed relaxed and casual. Not even especially perturbed. Was it significant?
Hell if I know,
Bell thought.
But maybe it's time I found out.

“As I said, Mrs. Stark, I'm the prosecutor over in Raythune County. I was sorry to hear about your husband's passing. Wanted to know more about him. How'd he make his living?”

“Little of this, little of that.”

“So he didn't have regular employment?”

“Not Jed.” Pride flashed in Tiffany's voice. “He said he was too smart for that. Too smart to work for somebody else and break his back all day long so's they'd get the profit and he'd get nothing but the scraps. He wasn't no fool.”

Rhonda scooted forward on the couch. She'd sensed where Bell was heading and wanted to help steer. “So how'd he support you and Guinivere? I mean—” Rhonda leaned over and picked up a plush lime green tyrannosaurus from the floor in front of the couch and waved it in the air, smiling. “—how'd he pay for all these cute toys you got here for your little girl? If you don't mind my asking?”

“Errands.”

They waited. When Tiffany didn't go on, Rhonda said, “Errands? Like, what kind of errands?”

“Well, you know. Somebody needed something taken somewhere. Or picked up. Or somebody needed to send a message to somebody else—like, ‘Back off' or ‘Gimme what's mine.' Or whatever. See, Jed was real good at doing what needed to be done. No questions asked. I mean—sure, he'd get hisself in trouble sometimes. He couldn't pass a bar without stopping in for a cold one. But he took care of business. Believe you me.” With a forward bolt and a hard tap, Tiffany eliminated the lagging ash from her cigarette. She perched her cheek on the hand that held it, and the frowsy smoke headed into her hair.

“So what kind of errand was he doing for Sampson Voorhees?” Bell said.

“Who?”

“Voorhees. His business card was found in your husband's belongings. He's an attorney based in New York City.”

“Voorhees. Voorhees.” Tiffany, thinking hard, scrunched up her face. Shook her head. “Nope. Never hearda that name. No, ma'am.”

“There was another name on the card, too,” Bell said. “Looked like your husband had written it himself, maybe to remember it. Odell Crabtree.”

Tiffany, pulling her hand away from her cheek, studied the tip of the cigarette. She crossed her right leg over her left knee. Before that, she'd had her left leg crossed over her right knee. “That one don't ring no bell, neither. Sorry, folks. Sorry you made your trip for nothin'.”

“So you have no idea what your husband's last job was about—or who it was for?” Bell said.

“Nope.”

“He didn't mention Voorhees? Or Crabtree? Say, before he left home that night?”

“Not a peep.”

“And you didn't—?”

Before Bell could finish her sentence, Tiffany was up on her feet again, leaning over and mashing what was left of her cigarette into the ashtray. “Look, I got stuff to do, okay? I told you what I know—which ain't much—and now I gotta get some cleaning done before Guinivere gets up. If you all don't mind—”

“Mama.”

All three turned toward the sound, a kittenish mew as much as a word. Guinivere stood in the doorway of the trailer's sole bedroom, tiny face blurred with recent sleep, blond hair mussed and matted. She wore white shorts at least a size and a half too big—hand-me-downs from an older relative, Bell guessed—and a T-shirt with
FUTURE HEARTBREAKER
printed across a pair of plump red lips.

“Baby! You come on over here, honey, and let Mommy hold you.” Tiffany spread out her arms and waited for her daughter, still dazed with sleep, to stumble forward. Tiffany then scooped up the warm bundle of limbs and torso and hair and fell back into the chair, nuzzling the girl's nose with her own. “How's my baby? How's mommy's little punkin?”

“What a sweetie,” Rhonda said, nodding and smiling. “Just like an angel.” There was a note of gushing in her tone that irritated Bell—until she realized it was entirely strategic. “Tell me something, Tiffany,” Rhonda went on. Her voice had dropped to a just-between-us hush. “I don't mean to pry, but—aren't you just the teensiest little bit worried about keeping up payments on the trailer and making a nice home for that precious little child? Now that's Jed gone—well, I'm right concerned for the two of you. If you have to get a job, then who's going to watch her during the—?”