The Buzzard Table (6 page)

“Stage a house? What’s that mean?”

Dwight laughed. “Make it look like someone lives there. It’s good advertising for the store, and if the buyers want to keep some of the furniture, the store will give ’em a good price. The people who were going to buy the house wanted that couch till they saw all the blood.”

The waitress refilled Bo’s glass of iced tea and he thanked her with old-fashioned courtesy while Dwight continued to bring him up to speed on the investigation. As they scraped the last of the chili from their bowls, he said, “You talked to the husband yet?”

Dwight checked the clock above the sandwich shop’s main counter. “I better get moving. He’s due over at the office any minute now.”

“Do I need an attorney?” Dave Jowett asked when Dwight inquired if he objected to having their interview recorded.

“I don’t know,” Dwight said mildly. “Do you?”

“I’m not stupid,” Jowett said. “I know that when someone goes missing, the spouse is always the first suspect. So maybe I do need a lawyer.” He paused and gave a wry grin. “Except that the lawyer I know best is Rob.”

Dwight smiled back. “I think my brother only handles civil matters. Look, Mr. Jowett—”

“Dave,” he said.

He sat at the interview table across from Dwight and Mayleen Richards while another deputy fiddled with the video camera. Bo had hoped to squeeze enough money out of the county commissioners to set up a more modern system, but they had frozen his budget for the fourth year in a row and recording equipment ranked far below replacing worn-out patrol cars.

Like Rob, Dave Jowett was two years younger than Dwight. Back in high school, a two-year age difference meant that they had run in different crowds. Jowett had developed early male-pattern baldness and did not try to hide it with a toupee or elaborate comb-overs. What you saw was what you got, Dwight decided: an average-looking man comfortable with advancing middle age, but still in good shape.

“Look, Dave,” Dwight said. “We’re not looking to jam you up here and you’re certainly not under arrest. We only want to have a record of your weekend. If there’s a question you don’t want to answer, just say so. You’re free to stop talking at any point and to ask for an attorney. Okay?”

“Fair enough,” said Jowett and leaned forward with his hands clasped on the table in front of him. “Fire away.”

“When did you last see your wife?”

“Around three o’clock Friday afternoon. Some friends and I flew down to Shreveport for the weekend and Becca came out to say hey to the guy that picked me up, but it was starting to rain, so she saw us off from the porch.”

He gave them their names and phone numbers, which Richards wrote down for later confirmation, along with their takeoff time in a private plane from the county’s small airport.

“Was that the last time you spoke to her?”

He nodded. “I tried to call her Sunday afternoon to say I’d be home after dark, but it rang three times, then went straight to her voice mail.”

“Was this usual?”

Dave Jowett nodded. “She keeps her phone on vibrate if she’s with a client or in a meeting.” He took a deep breath, then added, “And let’s face it. Sometimes she just wouldn’t answer if it was someone she didn’t want to bother with.”

“Like you?”

He shrugged. “Your wife pick up every time you call?”

“Nope,” Dwight said.

Mayleen Richards suppressed a grin. She knew how it drove her boss nuts that the judge insisted that her phone was for her convenience and not anyone else’s and that it stayed in her purse switched off more often than in her pocket switched on.

“So when exactly did you miss her?”

“Not until Monday morning.” He explained that he and five other friends had formed a tight bond in college when they discovered they all had February birthdays. They continued to get together every year for a rotating birthday bash. “Even though we live at opposite ends of the country, three of them have their own planes and one of them will swing by for Brendan and me. Last year, it was Denver, this year, Shreveport. Brendan drove us out to Colleton International on Friday,” he said, using the tag that local wits had hung on the small airstrip, “and he dropped me off around six-thirty Sunday night.”

“Brendan?”

“Brendan Rehon.” He spelled the name for Richards and gave her a Raleigh address.

“He come inside?” Dwight asked.

Jowett shook his head. “We were both pretty beat.”

“Any sign of your wife?”

“The lights were on, like she’d just stepped out. I tried her phone a couple of times while I fixed myself a sandwich, and then I just fell into bed. Didn’t turn over till the alarm went off at six. When I went downstairs, I saw that the lights were still on and her bed hadn’t been slept in.”

He hesitated, looked embarrassed, then said, “No big secret that we have separate bedrooms. She says it’s my snoring, but…I don’t know. I guess it’s just a matter of time till we call it quits.”

“Is there someone else?”

“Not for me. For her?” Jowett gave a palms-up gesture. “They say the husband’s always the last to know. I tried her cell phone again, then called her mother, a couple of her friends, her office. I even spoke to the neighbors, but no one’s seen her since Saturday, so that’s when I called you people. Her purse is still on the dining table. Her cosmetic bag’s still in the bathroom. All the suitcases are in our storage closet. I don’t know if any clothes are missing, but her running shoes are gone and Shep Gessner—he’s our neighbor across the street—Shep says he saw her go running Saturday night. How could she just disappear off the streets of Dobbs, Dwight? Where is she? Her mother’s going crazy and her sister—”

Before Dwight could answer, Jowett’s phone rang. He looked at the screen. “Her sister,” he said, and immediately held the phone to his ear. “Yeah, Jen? Any word?…Huh? Where?”

A minute later, he clicked off and glared at the two officers. “Someone told her sister that y’all found blood in a house Becca was showing. When were you going to tell me that my wife’s been killed?”

Sigrid Harald—Wednesday afternoon

“—and the porcelain clock came from Gilead, too. English. Probably 1840. More of Matilda Louise’s frivolous tastes. She almost bankrupted the family, building and furnishing Gilead. I’m told that her husband could deny her nothing.”

Sigrid glanced at the dainty little clock that graced the mantel in her grandmother’s bedroom, then entered its description on her laptop:
approx. 10" tall, pale green and white porcelain, sprigged with pink and yellow flowers, English ca. 1840
. “Does it still work?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” Mrs. Lattimore said. “It did the last time I wound it, but that must have been thirty years ago. I much prefer my electric alarm clock.” She lay back against the pillows that let her sit upright in the old four-poster bed and looked at the lighted dial on the bedside stand. “Is that everything?”

“What about the rug?” The oriental pattern looked bright and unfaded.

“No value,” her grandmother said. “I bought it on sale for less than four hundred dollars in the nineteen-nineties.”

Sigrid dutifully listed it and gestured to three small leather and wood cases ranged on some shelves beneath the window. “Anything in those jewelry boxes?”

“A few pearls and garnets,” Mrs. Lattimore said. “Mostly it’s just costume things. Before we start on the jewelry, though, perhaps you can go to the bank and bring me whatever’s in my box? There’s a Tiffany brooch that Mother always meant for Ferrabee to have, along with an onyx signet ring I’d like to give to Martin as well. It belonged to my father. And I suppose I ought to go ahead and give the diamond pieces to Elizabeth and Mary. Heaven knows they’ve hinted for them enough times these last few years. Unless…do you think Anne—?”

“Earrings, perhaps,” Sigrid said. “I’ve never seen her wear anything else except her wedding ring.”

“You either?”

Sigrid shrugged and Mrs. Lattimore shook her head ruefully. Small gold studs gleamed in the younger woman’s ears. Hard to imagine diamonds and sapphires dangling there. At least the child now wore colors. Instead of the shapeless beige and black clothes that once filled her closet, she had finally begun to dress in the rich jewel tones Mrs. Lattimore had urged on her from girlhood. Today’s cardigan was a vibrant turquoise over black slacks and a silk top patterned in deep blues and greens. With her dark hair cut short, lipstick, and a smudge of mascara, this odd duckling had morphed into—if not a swan, certainly into a woman who could hold her own among the more conventionally beautiful women of the family.

Remembering a pair of relatively simple emerald earrings in her bank box, Mrs. Lattimore smiled at this granddaughter she had come to value more than ever in the last month. With Sigrid she didn’t have to sugarcoat her condition or keep up a pretense of being pain-free. Sigrid didn’t fuss or moan or avoid the subject of impending death.

“Tired?” Sigrid asked now, closing her laptop.

“A little, but on the whole I’m rather enjoying this. It’s giving me a feeling of lightness. Only two more rooms to go. All my life I’ve had the weight of these possessions on my shoulders, keeping them safe for the next generation, worrying about breakages or scratches. You must have hated visiting here when you were a child. It probably felt like visiting a museum.”

“At times,” Sigrid agreed. “But the rules were clear, and when the other cousins were here, you didn’t seem to mind what we did outside or up in the attic playroom.”

“And when there were no cousins? When your mother dumped you on me for your school holidays and went wandering off to the four corners of the earth?”

“She was working, Grandmother. She had to take those assignments.”

“But?”

“But I didn’t think you liked me very much because I was so homely.”

“You were never homely, honey. I just thought you weren’t trying.”

Sigrid smiled. “I wasn’t. I didn’t see the point.”

There was a moment of silence as Jane Lattimore closed her eyes and waited for a wave of pain to subside. According to the clock, Chloe Adams was due to arrive with her next pills in eleven minutes and she was determined to last till then.

With her eyes still closed, she said, “Was he good to you?”

“Nauman?”

“Yes.” She opened her eyes and said, “I think he was good
for
you, but
to
you?”

Sigrid was silent. Oscar Nauman had exploded into her life, shaken up her habits, and made love to her as no one ever had. Then he’d died in a car crash and left her his entire estate—a house in Connecticut and a body of work that had made him one of the leading artists of the twentieth century while he was still young enough to enjoy it. He had also left her more desolate than she could ever have imagined and his loss was a continuing ache. Despite all the changes that short year had brought, she had not overcome the reserve that made it difficult for her to speak of her most private feelings.

“Yes,” she said at last.

Mrs. Lattimore did not press her for more. She merely said, “Good.”

“What about Grandfather?” Sigrid crossed to the chest on the other side of the bed and lifted the small silver-framed photograph of a young man standing with one arm around the neck of the bronze deer that guarded the side lawn downstairs. “You’ve never talked about him. At least not to me. And you never remarried.”

“When people ask, I usually say that once you’ve dwelled in Eden, you don’t care for suburbia.” She gave a wry smile and reached for the picture in Sigrid’s hand. “Does that sound too fanciful?”

“Did Eden come before he died or after?”

Mrs. Lattimore’s cool eyes warmed with amusement. “I always knew you were my most intelligent grandchild. You’re the first to ask me that.” She looked down at the photograph. “I adored him. I went from my father’s house directly to this house when I was nineteen years old. I never lived alone, I never worked for wages, and I never had my own money. I only had to ask to be given anything I wanted.”

She paused.

“But you always had to ask?” Sigrid said, filling in the pause.

Her grandmother nodded. “Benjamin was witty, charming, attentive, and, so far as I know, utterly faithful, but he went to his grave believing that if you put your wife up on a pedestal, she should never step down and try to be your equal. As much as I loved him, I had no desire to yoke myself to another man of his generation and upbringing.”

She handed the picture back to Sigrid. “Would you have married your artist had he lived?”

“Probably not,” Sigrid said, setting the picture so that her grandmother could see it with a turn of her head. “He was larger than life in so many ways. He took up so much space. And I
had
lived alone.”

They looked up as Chloe Adams entered the bedroom with a lunch tray and the pills that dulled the worst of the pain.

She was followed by Anne Harald, whose cheeks were red from the chilly February wind. She still wore her fleece-lined jacket and boots and her lips were cold when she bent to kiss her mother. “How are you feeling?” she asked, automatically trying to fluff the pillows and straighten the covers.

“I’m fine,” Mrs. Lattimore said, patiently bearing her daughter’s attempts to make her more comfortable. “I’ve spent the morning boring Sigrid to death. Why don’t you take her out to lunch and show her the wonders of Cotton Grove?” She waved a thin hand toward the nightstand. “The key to my safety deposit box is in the top drawer if you’re passing the bank. I’ll call and tell them to expect you.”

“Bank?” Anne asked.

“Sigrid knows.” She swallowed the pills, then lay back against the pillows and closed her eyes. “Y’all go on now. Chloe will take care of me.”

Helplessly, Anne allowed herself to be shepherded from the room. As the door closed, they heard the nurse say, “You may not be hungry, Miss Jane, but you know you have to take a little bit of food with those pills.”

Anne paused at the top of the stairs and looked down at the wide entrance hall, lined with antique chests and gilt-framed portraits.

“Thanks for doing the inventory, honey.” Tears glistened in her eyes and turned them the color of unpolished pewter. “I don’t think I could bear it. She’s being so brave about leaving all this.”

“Not a problem,” Sigrid said. “I’m glad I could do it for her and I like hearing the family stories attached to the pieces.”

Privately, she thought her grandmother was very wise in trying to make her coming death easier on her three daughters. “They say you never know someone until you share an inheritance with them,” she had told Sigrid. “Some of these things are quite valuable and I don’t want my girls to wind up squabbling over them.”

She had held up her hand when Sigrid started to protest that Anne would never squabble. “I’m not talking about your mother,” she had said dryly.

Once everything in the house was described and listed on Sigrid’s laptop, her plan was to give a copy to two appraisers and hire them to price each item. Sigrid was surprised to hear that one of the appraisers was Deborah Knott’s brother, the owner of an auction house over in Dobbs, the county seat. The other was a Grayson Gallery in Raleigh. The lower appraisal would be the base value and the total figure would be split among the three daughters. At that point, Anne and her sisters could take what they wanted, but the monetary value of their choices would be deducted from their third. If two of them wanted the same object, then they would have to bid on it, and again, the winning bid would be deducted from their third. Whatever remained in the house would be sold, as would the house itself, and the proceeds split three ways.

“Your Aunt Elizabeth wanted to know what would happen if Mary made her bid ten thousand for a sideboard appraised at five,” Mrs. Lattimore had said when she explained her plans to Sigrid. “She was not happy to hear that this meant she had ten thousand less to bid with unless she wanted to pay her sisters twenty-five hundred each.”

Sigrid had laughed and Mrs. Lattimore looked pleased. “I do hope you’ll come back for the fun, honey.”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Sigrid assured her.

Anne had received a phone call from Dwight Bryant’s mother before breakfast and had left the house before Sigrid came down.

“Where have you been all morning and what did Mrs. Bryant want?” Sigrid asked now as she buckled her seat belt and Anne turned the ignition key of Mrs. Lattimore’s Lincoln.

“You know she’s the principal of West Colleton High School?”

Sigrid nodded.

“She wanted me to look at some photographs one of her students had taken and I made the mistake of saying they showed talent.” Anne fastened her own seat belt and turned the heater fan on high. “Next thing I knew, I was sitting in Deborah Knott’s courtroom and had volunteered to help a youth minister structure the kid’s community service.”

“You did
what
?”

“That woman is a force of nature,” Anne said with a rueful shake of her head. “She could probably sell scuba lessons to Eskimos.”

Sigrid was shaking her own head as her mother described Jeremy Harper and how he had been charged with trespassing.

“An airfield for rendition flights?”

“Yeah, that surprised me, too,” her mother said as she drove through the tall iron gate and turned onto the street. “But I guess they have to be somewhere. We’re not very far from Fort Bragg, you know. And Blackwater did have its beginning up in the northeast part of the state.”

“I thought that was disbanded.”

“Who knows?” Anne said cynically. “I long ago quit trusting what the CIA tells us.”

“You’re not going to get involved with that, are you?”

“Don’t worry, honey. My days of reporting on dangerous situations are over. I’m way too old for it. Somalia was my swan song. It cured me of thinking I was invulnerable.” She shivered, remembering how close she’d been to coming home in a body bag. “I’ve promised Mac that I’ll do only human interest stories and cute babies from here on out.”

It had been awkward when Sigrid first learned that her former boss and her mother were seeing each other. His retirement had made the new relationship easier to take; and, mirabile dictu, after years of restlessly changing apartments more often than most women rearranged their furniture, Anne had settled into Mac’s place and showed no signs of ever moving again.

“Barbecue or shrimp and grits?” Anne asked, slowing the car to a crawl along Cotton Grove’s main street.

Sigrid was amused by how quickly her mother went native each time she returned to her hometown. In Manhattan, she was an adventurous gourmet who delighted in sampling the ethnic cuisines of the city’s many cultures. Down here, it was chili dogs with coleslaw, fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits drenched in redeye gravy.

“Salad,” Sigrid said firmly.

“Good idea,” Anne said. “I haven’t had any of The Rosebud’s chicken salad since I got back. They use toasted pecans and lots of Duke’s mayonnaise.”

Sighing, Sigrid followed her mother into the tearoom next to a hardware store.

Over lunch, Anne told her about the community service options she and Richard Williams had discussed for the boy. “Of course, Deborah Knott was the judge who sentenced him, and she has to approve. And we have to get Jeremy on board, too. He’s so hung up on the airstrip and who the planes are ferrying in and out of the country that it may be hard to get him to do something more mundane. He thinks that proving who’s changing fuselage numbers would be a national service, not just community.”

“Are his pictures any good?” Sigrid asked.

“Not bad for high school,” Anne said, spearing a toasted pecan half with her fork. “He has a good eye for details, but he’s all over the map when it comes to knowing the focus of the story he’s trying to tell with his camera.”

“So what have you and this youth minister come up with?”