Mike was nodding his head. ‘Reasonable deductions,’ he said and grinned at me. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but I feel sorta like Watson to your Sherlock.’
‘Sorry, no cocaine on me,’ I said.
By the time we got back to the table, a new bottle of wine was being passed around. We got there just in time. Everyone was in high spirits, except poor old Vern. Crystal was paying little attention to him, instead flirting with Esther’s date, Lance.
After Esther’s third glass of wine, she said, ‘Crystal, honey, I think you’d be doing more good taking care of your husband rather than trying to romance my shipboard romance!’
Crystal bristled and Lance laughed, leaning over and kissing Esther, who laughed with him.
‘You OK, baby?’ Crystal said to Vern.
‘I’m fine, honey,’ he said, patting her hand. ‘I think maybe I’ll go back to the cabin.’
‘You want me to go with you?’ Crystal asked. Her tone was saying, ‘No you don’t, no you don’t.’
‘Naw, honey, you stay. I’m gonna be fine, just need a little alone time.’ Vern stood up and wandered off.
To the rest of the table, Crystal said, ‘He’ll be OK. This has just been a real shock to him.’
Esther and Lance were still sucking face when I said, ‘Anybody come up with any ideas about who might have done in poor old Josh?’
‘Poor old Josh?’ Lucy said. ‘I don’t think that’s appropriate, Milt. I think it should be “that little shit Josh.”’
‘Now, honey—’ Mike started, but Lucy was having none of it.
‘He was trying to get our kids to steal! He did get some of them to!’ she said, looking at Rose.
Rose sighed, tears coming to her eyes. ‘Milt told me earlier that they’ve figured out from talking to the man who was mugged—’
‘Clifford Dunne,’ I said.
‘Mr Dunne, that Jacob was the one who actually took the money, egged on or bullied into it by Josh and my son Trip. Jacob stopped sucking his thumb when he was three. I caught him yesterday morning and this morning with his thumb in his mouth when he was still asleep. I couldn’t understand why until this all came out.’
Lucy reached over and took Rose’s hand. ‘I’m so sorry. I wasn’t trying to accuse you or your boys—’
‘But they did it,’ Rose said. She lifted her head high and said, ‘My father-in-law has told me that when we get back home he plans to take a more active role in the boys’ lives. Turn them into good little soldiers. I guess I’ll be moving out.’
We were all turned to Rose, hearing the shocking news, when there was a sound from across the table. Lance Turner was holding his throat and making a retching sound.
‘Lance?’ Esther said. ‘Lance, are you OK? Baby, what’s wrong?’
He tried to stand up, hit the table, backed into his chair, knocking it over, then collapsed on the floor. Everybody ran to him and Jean said, ‘Move out of the way. I’m a doctor. Milt, call for the medics.’
She got down on the floor and ripped Lance’s shirt open. Some kind of froth was emitting from his mouth. Jean checked his pulse. Then she leaned forward, as if to smell his breath.
‘Please, would someone help me up?’ I was still on the phone so Mike and Lucy got her to her feet. ‘Esther!’ she said.
‘Don’t stop!’ Esther cried. ‘Make him better! Do CPR!’
Jean grabbed Esther’s hand. ‘I’m sorry, Esther. He’s dead. Which wine glass was his?’
‘What? Dead? No, he can’t be dead!’
‘Which wine glass was his?’ Jean insisted. ‘Esther! It’s import-ant! Which wine glass was his?’
Esther shook her head, then looked at Jean. ‘Which wine glass?’ She looked around the table. ‘This one,’ she said, starting to pick it up.
‘Don’t!’ Jean said. Then she grabbed one of the cloth napkins still on the table and picked the wine glass up herself, holding it to her nose.
I finished my call and asked her, ‘What is it?’
‘Cyanide,’ she said.
I leaned down to smell the glass. ‘Bitter almonds,’ I said.
Meanwhile, Back In Prophesy County
Emmett radioed in to Holly and got a home address for Reba Sinclair, the principal at the Christian school. She lived within walking distance of the school, on Pine Bluff Drive, where there were no pines and not a bluff in sight. Her house was a typical seventies ranch, a three-bedroom MIL plan, with red brick veneer and newly painted white trim. It had a small front porch with hanging baskets of plants drooping from the eaves and big potted plants taking up most of the floor space. He made his way gingerly to the front door and rang the bell. He could hear movement inside the house, so waited. It only took a minute or two for the curtain on the glass of the front window to move slightly and expose one of Ms Sinclair’s myopic blue eyes. Seeing him, she opened the door.
While at the school she’d been wearing a cream-colored suit, skirt to the knee, buttoned to the throat, sensible shoes. Her home attire was a tad different: Daisy Dukes and a tube top, and barefoot. One look and he could see why Darby Hunt might be interested; the woman may have been unattractive from the neck up, but damn if she didn’t have a body by Buick, Emmett thought.
‘Deputy?’ she said, hand on jutted-out hip, obviously aware of Emmett’s observation.
‘Ma’am, a few more questions, if you don’t mind,’ Emmett said.
‘But I do mind,’ she said, and started to close her door.
Emmett put out his foot to stop the door from closing. ‘Ma’am, I’ll be happy to wait out here while you call your lawyer to come over, but one way or the other, you and I are having a talk tonight.’
Reba Sinclair sighed heavily but let up her pressure on the door. Emmett wiggled his toes, hoping to get the circulation going again. Like her former future mother-in-law’s house, the front door led directly into the living room. Emmett couldn’t help noticing that the room was like Reba Sinclair herself: good bones, but unattractive. It was a big room with a nice fireplace and mantel, and an alcove above the mantel, which was empty. The room was brown on brown with some beige thrown in for, he supposed, color. Everything was old and all but used up, and the place smelled kind of funny to Emmett’s way of thinking.
The living room held a brown couch in that nubby material he hadn’t seen around since the eighties, a matching love seat and arm chair, and three matching Formica-topped tables – two end, one coffee. There were no pictures or anything else on the walls; no books or magazines on the tables, not even an ashtray. And that wasn’t the smell. It wasn’t stale cigarette smoke. It was something worse than that – a sad smell, a smell of failure, of dreams lost. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but it made him itchy – uncomfortable, ready to leave. Instead he sat down on the sofa as Reba Sinclair indicated.
‘What do you want?’ she asked him, perching on the tip of the arm chair. ‘I thought I answered all of your questions.’
‘Well, ma’am, it’s an ongoing investigation, so new questions keep coming up,’ Emmett said, realizing she had legs about seven miles long and shapely to boot. He tried looking elsewhere, and settled on her face.
‘Such as?’ she asked, lips pursed, back ramrod straight.
‘Such as, do you know any of Mr Hunt’s wife’s family who live here in Longbranch?’
‘No! Why would I?’
‘I don’t know that you would, ma’am. I’m just asking. His daughter’s a school teacher, perhaps you’ve met her?’
‘Didn’t I just say I hadn’t?’
‘I suppose you did,’ Emmett said, wishing he’d thought a little bit longer about things before he’d hightailed it over here. ‘Did Mr Hunt ever talk to you about them?’
‘Only to say they all hated him. Had since he and Cheryl were kids! He said Cheryl fell down one time and broke her nose, and they blamed him for it. So every time she got a boo-boo, she’d say it was him!’
Emmett felt his hands tightening on the clipboard in his hand. ‘
You wanna see the pictures of her the last time she got out of the hospital?’ he said through clinched teeth.
‘Ha!’ Reba Sinclair said. ‘He told me she faked some photos! She was very devious.’
‘But he didn’t deny killing her?’ Emmett asked.
‘The poor baby just had more than he could take! All the things she was saying about him, the way the family acted and the lies they told! And then taking his little girl away from him! It looked like the judge was going to grant Cheryl total custody – with Darby only getting supervised visitation! Now how would you take that, Deputy? Would you just sit still for that type of injustice or would you perhaps go just a little bit nuts and act out?’ She squared her shoulders and looked off into the distance. ‘That’s what happened to my Darby. He said he just lost it. Didn’t even know he’d done it until it was all over. He said it was like watching someone else doing that, not him.’
Jeez, Emmett thought, how many times had he heard that one? And the thing was, sometimes it was true. Didn’t make the perpetrator any less guilty, though. But this time? With Darby Hunt? Naw, he knew exactly what he was doing – just like every other time he hurt her.
Well, he thought, in for a penny, in for a pound. ‘Ma’am, I’m just wondering if maybe when he got out, you two got together and he wasn’t the man you thought he was—’
‘I haven’t even seen him yet, Deputy!’ she said in a high, loud voice. ‘I sent him those presents and he was going to come see me, tonight, as a matter of fact. Tonight we would have consummated our eighteen-month love affair.’ She put her face in her hands and began to sob.
Emmett didn’t truck with bawling women, so he excused himself and headed back to the shop. Wondering if he actually believed her – or anyone else in this case, truth be known.
Once back at his – Milt’s – desk, he picked up the phone and called the state police, asking for the whereabouts of Steve McDaniel, Dave McDaniel’s oldest son who used to work for Emmett at the police department in Longbranch. After a bit of a runaround, he was finally put through to Steve.
‘Goddam,’ Steve said, ‘is this really Emmett Hopkins of Longbranch, Oklahoma?’
‘In the flesh,’ Emmett said, then, ‘well, maybe not the flesh, but it’s my voice.’
‘Getting too literal for me, Emmett. How the hell are you? Calling about Darby Hunt, I betcha,’ Steve said.
‘I’m fine. And, yeah, I’m calling about Darby Hunt.’
‘I didn’t kill him,’ Steve said. ‘If I coulda guaranteed I’d never get caught, I’da done it in a heartbeat, but can’t get any guarantees on murdering somebody. Even somebody as evil as Darby Hunt.’
‘You think somebody in your family did it?’ Emmett asked.
Steve hooted with laughter. ‘Jeez, Emmett, what a question! If I did, you think I’d tell you? No, I don’t think somebody in my family did it, and you wanna know why?’
‘Why?’ Emmett asked.
‘’Cause nobody in my family is that stupid. That asshole gets killed, and who’re the first people you look at? My family, that’s who!’
‘Your cousin Malcolm didn’t seem all that bright,’ Emmett offered.
‘Malcolm? Shit, Emmett, he’s a little light in the loafers, but there’s not a mean bone in that boy’s body. He’s a good kid with a homophobe for a dad. Don’t make him out to be a murderer, for God’s sake! Actually, he’s the least likely in my family to do it, and I don’t believe we’re living an Agatha Christie novel here,’ Steve said.
‘Huh?’
‘Don’t you read? Agatha Christie, the great English mystery writer? It was always the least likely suspect who did it.’ He sighed at Emmett’s ignorance. ‘Anyway, Malcolm didn’t do it.’
‘OK, who’s the most likely suspect?’ Emmett asked.
‘Well, me, of course!’ Steve laughed. ‘Look, Emmett, it’s been a blast talking to you and all, but I got a shit-pile of work here. Good luck. When you find the hero who did this, let’s pin a medal on him, OK?’ And with that, he hung up.
Dalton needed to go do a security check at the little mall in Jasper. One of the stores’ alarms had gone off in the middle of the night but when Anthony had responded to the alarm (he’d been on-call), nothing was out of the way. Emmett told Anthony to go on home and that he’d have it checked out the next day. Well, today was the next day and Dalton was the one doing the checking. He wasn’t crazy about this particular chore, since he wasn’t that up on electronic things, but he’d do it, and stay on it until it was done right, even if it took a day or two.
Once at the mall – a square of shops opening on to an open-air courtyard with a fountain, with parking at the back of the stores – the first thing Dalton saw was a jewelry store. With that incentive, he was able to fix the problem with the alarm in less than an hour, and five minutes later was standing in front of a cabinet full of engagement rings.
‘She’s got real small hands,’ Dalton said in answer to the clerk’s question of what size his soon-to-be fiancée wore. Dalton looked at the ring of ring sizes, comparing them to his own large hand. He’d looked at her fingers entwined with his enough to know exactly what size they were. He picked it out first try. Then the clerk, a woman even older than his mother, wanted to know what size diamond.
‘Well, I want it big enough to show off, but not so big it looks showy, you know?’
‘How’s this?’ the clerk asked, holding up a one-and-a-half-karat pear-shaped solitaire already set in a gold band. ‘Very traditional,’ she said.
Dalton peaked at the price tag. ‘Maybe a one karat, forget about the half?’ he suggested to the clerk. ‘She’s not traditional, and she doesn’t wear a lot of gold. Mostly she wears silver.’
‘How about this?’ the clerk said, pulling out a baguette one karat. ‘This is platinum rather than silver, but they match in color.’
It was really beautiful, Dalton thought, but it just wasn’t Holly. And then he saw it. It was in another case, the one next to the engagement rings. ‘That one!’ he said.
The clerk raised her eyebrows. ‘This one?’ she said, going to the next display case and opening it. She put her hand on the ring and Dalton nodded. ‘Son, this isn’t a traditional engagement ring—’
‘Holly’s not traditional,’ he said, smiling at the clerk. ‘She’s one of a kind.’
The clerk smiled back. ‘Well, so is this ring. It was made by the owner’s son and it’s been in that display cabinet for five years.’ She brought it out and handed it to Dalton. Pointing out each facet, she said, ‘The center stone is a two-karat ruby, and the surrounding stones are emeralds and diamonds, with opals and other precious stones.’
The stones were in a mound shape, with smaller stones cascading down the silver band. ‘This is it,’ he said.
The clerk told him a number, and he didn’t even flinch. The number was higher than the one-and-a-half-karat diamond, but it didn’t matter. This was the one.
NINE
Milt – Day Six
Chief Heinrich had Lance Turner taken down to the medical facility and put in the one locker they had for a possible dead body. Unfortunately he had to share accommodations with Josh Weaver. Jean and Lucy went to get the kids from the children’s pavilion. Lucy had volunteered to take Lyssa to their cabin with Janna, while Jean had volunteered to take Rose’s youngest, Jacob to our cabin with Johnny Mac and Early so that Rose could go to Esther’s cabin with her. Esther was pretty broken up.
I went with Heinrich to interview Esther, and it wasn’t pretty.
‘I’m so sorry to bother you at a time like this,’ Heinrich said to a still-sobbing Esther, ‘but we need to talk.’
Esther used half a box of Kleenex to stop the flow, hiccupped a few times and finally said, ‘Whatever.’
Rose sat beside her, her arm around Esther’s shoulders.
‘Did you see anyone put anything in Mr Turner’s glass?’ Heinrich asked.
Esther shook her head.
‘Was there anyo
ne in a position to do so?’ he asked.
She shrugged. ‘Me, I guess, and Crystal on the other side of him. She was flirting with him something fierce!’ she said, lifting her face up to glare at the chief. ‘She probably did it because he wanted to be with me and not her!’ Which brought on the sobs again. Then she turned on me. ‘And your wife! She could have saved him if she tried! She didn’t even try! What kind of doctor is she anyway? Not to even try!’
I started to speak in my lady’s defense, but Heinrich put a staying hand on my arm and said, ‘When Doctor Kovak’ (not what she goes by, but I let it slide), ‘smelled the cyanide on Mr Turner’s breath, she knew CPR would do no good. Actually, it could have done harm to her – if the poison was on his lips, she could have been poisoned herself. But there would be no way of reviving him from this poison. Do you understand, Mrs Monte?’
Esther gulped in air, steadied herself and said, ‘It’s Ms Monte. And no, I don’t understand. Why would someone do this? What did he ever do to anyone to merit this? He was such a nice guy! You know how hard it is to find a nice guy nowadays? Impossible! Right, Rose?’
Rose just patted her back.
‘What did you know about him, Ms Monte?’ Heinrich asked.
‘Oh, hell, call me Esther. It’s easier.’ She shrugged and was silent for a moment, then said, ‘I don’t know. Not much, I guess. He was from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he said. Never married. Said he was an engineer.’ Again she shrugged. She looked up at Heinrich. ‘I guess that’s not much, huh?’
‘It’s a start, Esther. Thank you,’ Heinrich said, standing up. I followed suit.
As we headed toward the door, Esther said, ‘Milt, I’m sorry for what I said about Jean. I didn’t even know she was a doctor until she said it when – when . . .’
‘No problem, Esther. You get some rest,’ I said, and Heinrich and I headed out and back down to the security suite.
He gave Clive Lance Turner’s name, his hometown of Baton Rouge, and asked him to do a computer search for next of kin. Then we went in Heinrich’s office and took our usual spots.
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