The Way of the Wicked (Hope Street Church Mysteries Book 2) (18 page)

“You are too, too much! And lunch is
my
treat,” Angela cooed to Emilio, the look of adoration that had disappeared last week having instantly resurfaced in her eyes.

Disgusted, Cooper ignored the pair and finished emptying the last copier from the van.

I need to have a chat with Mr. Farmer,
she thought.
Or Angela will end up heartbroken.
And
broke.

• • •

“Nervous?” Nathan asked when Cooper met him outside the Henrico County Sheriff’s Office.

Cooper glanced at a small placard set into the grass near the sidewalk. It had an arrow pointing to a set of double glass doors and simply read: JAIL. Cooper stared at the sign and tried to control the feeling of nausea that had plagued her since she’d pulled into the visitor parking lot.

“I’m terrified. I’ve gotten my share of speeding tickets, but that’s as far on the wrong side of the law as I’ve been.” She observed the stream of lawyers, uniformed deputies, and civilians marching in and out the door. “This is like a city within the city. It’s kind of overwhelming.”

“You only have an hour, so we should probably go in,” Nathan prodded gently.

“You’re right.” Cooper sighed. “Normally, I’d have asked Angela to cover for me in case I ran late, but she and I aren’t very close these days. She’s too focused on Emilio.”

Nathan held the door open and Cooper entered the lobby, where a long line of people waited to sign up for visitation. Those at the front of the line were asked to present their driver’s license to the woman behind the counter. Relieved to have something to do while they waited, Cooper removed her license from her wallet.

Nathan playfully snatched it from her and examined her picture.

“Did you spend all day at the DMV?” He laughed. “You look seriously disgusted.”

Grinning, Cooper reclaimed her license. “Seconds before the DMV employee took my picture, this guy walked by me and passed the most noxious gas I’ve ever smelled. No matter what I said, the woman operating the camera wouldn’t do a retake.”

“Ah, government agencies.” Nathan swept his arm around the room and then shot Cooper an inquisitive look. “So who’s Emilio?”

“Our new coworker. Thinks he’s God’s gift to women, and apparently Angela agrees,” Cooper replied sourly.

Nathan nudged her as the line moved forward. “And you don’t?”

“No way. I prefer guys who collect
Star Wars
figures,” Cooper whispered and was pleased to see a flush of pleasure color Nathan’s cheeks.

All too soon, they arrived at the front of the line. “We’re here to see Edward Crosby,” Cooper informed the young woman seated at the desk, repeating the name Lali had given her over the phone.

Without glancing up from her computer, the sheriff’s office receptionist stated, “Your identification, please.” She typed so quickly that it looked like she was playing a challenging piece on a concert piano.

Nathan handed her their driver’s licenses and leaned over the tall desk in order to see exactly what she was typing. Scowling at Nathan, the woman returned their IDs and called out, “Next!”

“Um.” Cooper edged closer to the desk. “What do we do now?”

The woman signaled for the next person to step forward. “Wait until the deputy calls Edward Crosby.”

“But what if Mr. Crosby isn’t expecting us?” Cooper persisted.

“They never know who their visitors are,” the woman explained while the other visitors grumbled with impatience. “They’re just told they have a visitor and are brought to the visiting area.”

“So he might not talk to us,” Cooper said to Nathan. “After all, he doesn’t know us from Adam.”

Too flustered to sit down, they stood close to the check-in desk, listening as the next woman in line launched into a tirade after being informed that the inmate she wished to see had lost his visitation rights.

“He’s in isolation again? He
told
me that y’all are persecutin’ him! He shouldn’t be here in the first place. The man’s innocent!” The woman placed one hand on her hip and pounded on the receptionist’s desk with the other. Within seconds, a sheriff’s deputy appeared and, gently taking hold of the woman’s elbow, steered her away from the line. No matter how much she ranted at him, the deputy remained quietly courteous. He made several attempts to calmly and succinctly describe the infraction that had resulted in her boyfriend being placed in isolation, but the woman was incapable of listening. At last, she threw up her arms in disgust and stormed out the front door, leaving a trail of expletives in her wake.

“I couldn’t have handled that woman half as well as he did,” Nathan murmured to Cooper. “But I guess these guys have seen and heard it all.”

From the far left corner, a bass voice boomed out, “Edward Crosby!”

Nathan grabbed Cooper’s hand and pulled her to the other side of the room.

A brawny deputy holding a clipboard gestured at them to follow him. As they entered the long, narrow room filled with twenty cubicles, the deputy pointed at the fourth chair facing the room-length wall of glass. “Thirty minutes,” he said and then turned to collect more visitors.

Cooper took a moment to digest the significance of the large glass wall, the mounted black telephone handset, and the empty chair on the other side of the wall. Feeling very ill at ease, she glanced at the cameras jutting out from the ceiling corners and the baby stroller parked behind the cubicle at the very end of the row. Behind her, a toddler began to push two Matchbox cars across the carpet while his mother hissed into the phone at a young man wearing a blank expression.

A buzzer sounded and a diminutive Hispanic man wearing white scrubs entered the room from a hallway obscured from view. His face immediately broke into a jubilant smile when his wife held a sleeping infant up to the glass. The man held up an index finger to his son’s face, making it clear that he longed to stroke the soft skin. As he gazed at the baby, his smile dissipated and was replaced by an expression of sorrow and regret. His wife shifted their son to her right arm and, after picking up the handset with her left, began to release a torrent of Spanish into the phone. The man wouldn’t meet her eyes. He rubbed the tattoo on his forearm, stretching the black script “Rosa,” which was enclosed by a circle of red, thorny flowers. Beneath the largest bloom was the name Alfonso. Multihued sun rays and a soaring eagle surrounded the name of his infant son.

While Cooper continued to absorb her surroundings, an elderly African-American woman entered the room and was seated in the neighboring cubicle.

“You sure I can’t give Dwayne his glasses?” she asked the deputy directing her to the correct chair. “My boy likes to read right much, but he can’t see without his glasses.”

“I’ll send them to medical, ma’am. If they think he needs them, he’ll get them,” the deputy assured her.

“Please tell them to hurry. He can’t even read his Bible.” She fiddled with her purse, her eyes growing moist. “If he’d only taken the commandments to heart, he wouldn’t be here in the first place!”

Cooper stared at the concerned mother until a Caucasian man in his mid-thirties wearing beige scrubs entered the inmates’ side of the room. He looked around, perplexed, and passed his palm over his buzz cut until the deputy on duty directed him to the cubicle where Cooper was supposed to be sitting.

“Do you want me to talk to him?” Nathan whispered from behind Cooper’s shoulder. “There’s only room for one person in that cubbyhole.”

Cooper waved off his offer with a grateful smile and then took a seat in the rose-colored chair. Removing the black phone from its cradle, she met Edward Crosby’s confused gaze. Slowly, he lowered himself into his chair and picked up his handset.

“Who are you?” he demanded tersely, studying her face as though he wanted to capture it forever in his memory.

The intensity of his stare almost made Cooper flinch, but she squeezed the handset instead and the firmness of the cold metal calmed her. “I’m a volunteer with Door-2-Door Dinners. Your daddy got his meals from them. I . . . I saw him just a few days before he died.”

Grief flashed in the man’s gunmetal gray eyes but it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. “So? What do you want from me?”

“First, I want to offer my condolences. I only met your daddy once but . . .” Cooper searched for something nice to say about Frank Crosby, but nothing came to mind.

“He didn’t impress you much, did he? When you showed up, he was probably sitting around in his skivvies, watching football on that piece-of-crap TV, and going off about yellow this and yellow that. Nobody’s going to miss the guy. So I’ll ask you again. What do you want?”

Cooper had known that Frank’s son might not be overwrought by his father’s death, but Edward’s callousness moved her to anger. “Whatever he did or didn’t do, he was still your father, Edward, and I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Don’t you
ever
call me by that name!” A palm slapped against the glass in front of her face and Cooper let loose a startled cry. “My
name
is the Colonel. You got that?
The Colonel!
Now say it!”

“The Colonel,” Cooper whispered, her heart in her throat.

The belligerence seeped from the Colonel’s face and he relaxed in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “The old man is dead. Not much I can do about it.” He bowed his head and began to rub the stubble. Cooper noticed that the flag of Dixie had been tattooed across the width of his scalp. “Me and the old man weren’t exactly tight. And since you didn’t know him at all, why are you sitting in that chair?”

“Your daddy’s death was suspicious. Did anyone tell you that?”

The Colonel looked bored. “Probably overdosed on some meds. Lots of old farts do that. Can’t read the label or they do it on purpose because they’re ready to check out. End of story.”

“Frank wasn’t on any medication,” Cooper said tersely. “And someone has been poisoning Door-2-Door clients and then stealing from them. This person is probably a volunteer. I’m here to ask you what valuables could have been taken from your daddy’s house. He was
very
upset about a ‘secret’ being stolen.” Cooper leaned toward the glass. “He acted like his heart was broken when he discovered that this thing was missing. He was completely inconsolable. Do you know what it was?”

The Colonel waited until the inmate two chairs over murmured a cryptic good-bye to the woman with the toddler. The child turned away from his toy cars and began to wail, giant tears rolling down his cheeks as the man disappeared into the unseen depths of the jail.

“Some whack job is taking out old folks?” The Colonel’s gray eyes narrowed. “That ain’t right. Me? I sell drugs. But I don’t sell to kids or to pregnant women. There are still rules. I sell to losers and punks who can’t stay off the stuff. It’s easy money and I was no good at school, so I made my choice.” His eyes turned cold. “The old man knew what I did. Told me a millions times that I brought shame on our house. He was big into shame.”

Cooper shifted her grip on the phone. “What do you mean?”

“Some relative who fought in the Civil War acted like a pansy and Frank never got over it. Read everything he could about the guy and the battles he was in. Waste of fu—” He cut himself off, passing his palm over his head while his mouth turned down in a grimace. “Look. We ain’t seen each other for years, but the old man had this soldier’s sword and some special book. A diary or something. He kept the sword in his closet. He liked to take it out now and again. Polish it up and stuff.”

Glancing at her watch, Cooper noted that her time with the Colonel was quickly running out. “I guess a sword from the Civil War could be valuable.”

“Damn straight it was!” the Colonel spat indignantly. “I could’ve used that money. Could’ve started my own business! A legit business. I had a killer idea but I needed start-up cash. Would the old man give it to me? No. So I found my own way to make money. He didn’t even post my bail when I landed in here the first time.” He pounded the counter in front of him. “Screw this trip down memory lane.” The deputy monitoring the inmates rose to his feet, casting a fierce glance at the Colonel.

“Sorry, Sergeant.” The Colonel held up his arms in submission and the deputy issued a curt nod and then resumed his seat, his gaze still fixed on their cubicle.

Cooper heard a whisper from the bench behind her back.

“You still okay?” Nathan asked.

She nodded, never breaking eye contact with the Colonel. “I’m sorry to bring up bad memories,” she told him sincerely. “But I hope you understand that I can’t sit by while someone harms innocent seniors.”

The Colonel indicated that he understood her motivation by jerking his thumb in the air. “That’s right. There are rules,” he muttered. “There are things you just don’t do, no matter how bad it gets.”

Grateful for his affirmation, Cooper asked, “Do you know where he kept the diary?”

The Colonel shook his head at first, but then closed his eyes and absently rubbed his head back and forth in a hypnotizing rhythm. Cooper felt that he was walking through his father’s house as a boy, not as the incarcerated drug trafficker he had become.

“I bet it’s in my mama’s rocker,” the Colonel said, suddenly raising his head. “Nasty old cushioned thing that I could never sit on. Even our damn cat couldn’t go on there, which never made sense, seeing as it was all ripped and stained anyhow. I never saw the book. I only heard about it when I got one of Frank’s lectures about honor.” He shrugged. “If it ain’t there, then it’s gone. Feel free to poke around the place. The lock on the back door’s been broken since I was a kid. I doubt the old man bothered to fix it.”

Retrieving a small pad of paper from her purse, Cooper wrote “check rocking chair for diary” on the first line and then held her pen aloft.

“Was he always . . . freaked out by the color yellow?”

“Wasn’t allowed in the house. Ever.” The Colonel scowled. “How’d you like to grow up with a nutcase like that?”

Ignoring the question, Cooper pointed at the bench behind her. “My friend Nathan told me it might take eight weeks to get the lab results detailing which drug poisoned your daddy. If I told you the symptoms, do you think you could identify the drug?”