Over Troubled Water: A Hunter Jones Mystery

by Charlotte Moore

  “That was good,” Sam said to T.J. when they were on their way back to the courthouse. “You went after him the right way.”

  “And I’m not married to his nemesis,” T.J. said.

  “You really think it’s a practical joke?” Sam asked.

  “Probably,” T.J. said.

  “I hope he didn’t send that letter to all the media in the state,” Sam said.

  “They get plenty of crazy letters and calls,” T.J. said. “They’d call you before they used it.”

  A few minutes later they were parked in front of the Merchantsville Post Office.

  Sam called Shellie and said, “Tell everybody we need to postpone the meeting on the investigation for about half an hour. T.J. and I have to check out a lead.”

  “They’re already coming in,” Shellie said. “And media, too. We’ve got Channel 20 and some reporter from Atlanta here.

  “This won’t take all that long,” Sam said. “Tell them they’ve got time to go over to R&J’s and have some coffee. Ramona makes those cinnamon rolls on Wednesday morning. Tell the reporters T.J. and I will talk to them after our meeting. If they’ve got to have something, you can tell them that we re-opened Sumter Road last night.”

  “Oh, they know Sumter Road is open,” Shellie said. “Skeet says they’ve been out there taking pictures on the bridge. People have started leaving flowers out there.”

  At The Messenger, Mallory had already made a quick trip for cinnamon rolls and coffee, while Hunter called the Superintendent of Schools to get a statement about the school closing.

  Novena was at Hilliard House talking to Sunshine Chapman, who seemed to have been crying a lot over tea with Robin Hilliard. She said she had a wallet-sized studio portrait of her mother and rummaged around in her purse to find it.

  “It doesn’t capture her spirit,” she said, handing it to Novena. “It’s the one they took for the church directory, and one of those twits over there talked her into pulling her hair back and putting on some lipstick.”

  “Would you talk to the editor of the paper a little bit this morning?” Novena asked. “They’re trying to have a little story on each one of … you know..”

  “The ones that got shot,” Sunshine finished for her.

  “Right,” Novena said. “I mean if you’d say some things about your mother that they can quote. The paper’s going to press in a couple of hours, and they have something sweet that Rev. Hale said, but nothing that, like you said, captures her spirit.”

  Sunshine nodded and asked, “Can I just tell you?”

  Novena picked up her clipboard and said, “Of course you can.”

  Henry Burberry had been Postmaster of the Merchantsville Post Office for as long as Sam could remember. Sam remembered when he had dark hair, had seemed a normal height and was mostly notable for always wearing a bow tie. Now he was a bent-over gray-haired man, and he was still wearing a bow tie. From all Sam had ever heard, he ran a tight ship.

  He met Sam and T.J. at the front counter, and when they asked to speak privately, he walked around to a side door and let them in. They followed him to a small, sparsely furnished office where Sam explained that the questions they had were related to the investigation of the shootings on Foxtail Creek Bridge.

  T.J. opened his briefcase and took out the two plastic bags that held the envelopes and letters and placed them before him.

  “Is there any way you can tell us when these might have been mailed?” he asked.

  Henry looked down at them and said, “I don’t know that they were mailed at all. The stamp’s not canceled and the postage is insufficient.”

  “In both cases,” Sam said, “They were picked up here. Novena Baxter picked up the mail for The Messenger this morning, and Will Roy Johnston picked up the mail for the radio station shortly after that.”

  Henry got up and went to the doorway.

  “Maureen,” he said to a tall, thin woman with dyed black hair who was sorting mail, “Could you come into my office?”

  Maureen Hargreaves looked at the envelopes with the oversized writing in their sealed bags, and then at Sam Bailey.

  “Am I in trouble?” she asked.

  “No,” Henry said, managing a gentle smile, “Not at all. I think you may have some information that will help these gentlemen. This has to do with the shooting yesterday. I know you’re the only one here likely to put a piece of mail with insufficient postage into one of the boxes.”

  “I thought it was probably some old person who had trouble seeing,” Maureen said. “Look at how big the writing is on the envelopes. Somebody who has to write that big, probably couldn’t tell that the stamps weren’t up to date, and there wasn’t a return address, and honestly, what difference does it make, Henry? It’s not as if we were delivering them by hand.”

  “Did you see who put these in the mail?” Sam asked.

  “No, when I saw the letters, they were both already in the insufficient postage tray, even though it was obvious that with no return address we were never going to get that three cents difference, so I just went ahead and put them in the boxes for the paper and the radio station.”

  “And when did you do that?” Sam asked. “I need to know exactly.”

  “I can tell you approximately,” she said. “It was yesterday morning a little after nine. I remember that because Novena Baxter had just come in the way she always does first thing in the morning. You know, if Jackie had just put the letter in their box instead of making a federal case of the postage stamp, it would have been delivered at no cost to anyone and they would have gotten it yesterday. People can send entire books over the internet free, and here we are stopping some old person’s letter forever over a stamp that happens to be a little out of date because the U.S. Postal Service keeps…”

  “That’s enough, Maureen,” Henry said, his voice breaking.

  Sam, who was still processing the time she said she had seen the letters, thought for a moment that Henry Burberry was crying, but he seemed to be stifling a laugh.

  T.J. gave Maureen a friendly smile, and said, “We’re going to need to take a written statement about all this later, and we could need for you to testify in court at some point. For now, we need to know if there were any similar letters, or just these two and if you’re quite sure about the time.”

  “Just these two,” she said. “I think you can see why I assumed it was somebody with a visual problem. And, yes, I’m quite sure it was yesterday morning between nine and nine-thirty. I may be close to retirement, but my memory is fine.”

  She straightened her shoulders and gave them a rebellious look.

  “However,” she said, “Since I violated USPS policy by seeing that the mail was actually delivered, I have no intention of signing anything or incriminating myself in court unless I have a lawyer present.”

  “Maureen, Maureen,” Henry said. “Four people were shot. You’re going to cooperate.”

  “Thank you, Miss Hargreaves,” Sam said. “We can set a time at the convenience of you and your attorney, and you’ve been a great help already. Henry, could we talk to this person named Jackie?”

  Jackie turned to be a bespectacled young man who took the time to finish serving his customers and let Maureen Hargreaves take his place before he came to the office.

  Yes, he said, he had seen the envelopes. They were noticeable because of the handwriting, but also because those stamps had been out of date since the first of the year and were insufficient postage, which meant they should be processed and returned to the sender.

  Yes, he said, he did remember the time he had first seen the letters. It was when he began sorting the mail at 8 a.m. on Tuesday. It had been in the bag from the outside mailbox, the one on the curb.

  “Still think it’s a joke?” Sam asked when they were on their way back to the courthouse.

  “I can’t believe it,” T.J. said. “Nobody else could have written and mailed those letters that soon. The shooter must have prepared them in advance and maile
d them right after he shot those people.”

  “More likely before the shooting,” Sam said. “If it were light already, somebody would have seen him, and this isn’t a person who wants to be seen. He just wants to be heard about.”

  “Or maybe there were two,” T.J. said.

  CHAPTER 3

  The meeting in the courthouse conference room went on for an hour and a half. The investigator from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation agreed to take custody of the letters from “Abomination” to see if any trace evidence could be found.

  “Let’s get to work,” Sam said. “We’ve got to look at this two ways. The first way is on the theory that we’ve got a psychopath out there who figured out a way to kill some people and get away fast. It may not have anything to do with who the victims were.”

  “The Abomination letter fits into that theory,” T.J. said. “And it sounds psychotic. The shooter could be delusional. He could also mean every word of it and be prepared to do more shootings. There’s no question that he planned everything very carefully, including getting away.”

  “The other possibility,” Sam said, “is that the shooter was just after one of those cyclists and the rest were killed because he didn’t want any witnesses. We know that the schedule and the route were both on the gym’s website. That line of investigation means looking into the backgrounds of the victims and anybody who might have wished one of them harm. My staff is experienced with that kind of investigation, and we’ve already begun.”

  “How does the Abomination letter fit into that theory?” District Attorney Sanders Beale asked, looking skeptical.

  “It could be part of a plan to make the killing look like the victims were randomly chosen,” Sam said. “A sane person trying to create the idea of an insane mass shooter.”

  “I think that’s far-fetched,” Beale said. “The letter sounds like the writer is mentally ill.”

  “Well, I don’t have much experience with letters from Abominations,” Sam said, “And if anybody had told me day-before-yesterday that there was going to be a shooting at Foxtail Creek, I’d have called that far-fetched. The main thing about the letter is that if we catch the person who wrote it, we’ve got our murderer, crazy or not. Anyway, let’s start with individual reports. Lt. Hays has some information on Ricky Richards.”

  Taneesha said, “Ricky Richards is awake and alert, and his doctors are expecting him to make a full recovery. He’s going to need physical therapy, but he’s exceptionally fit.”

  There was a round of clapping.

  “But,” she said, “The bad news is that he doesn’t remember anything about the shooting. The last thing he remembers is coming to the top of the hill and seeing the bridge down below. He says they were cheering China Carson because it was her first ride with the cycling team, and that hill is a tough one. But that’s where his memory of the ride stops. When he came out of the anesthesia from the surgery, he had to be told he had been shot, and then later when he was told about the deaths, he was shocked and grieved.”

  “Is it possible that he’ll regain some memory?” District Attorney Beale asked. “Would a psychiatrist help? Could we try hypnosis?”

  “I think he’ll be willing to try anything to help,” Taneesha said.

  “We’ll check on getting a psychiatrist who can do the hypnosis,” Dirk Wells, the GBI investigator said.

  “Don’t get a kook,” Sanders Beale said. “I’ll need somebody that jurors will believe.”

  “I’ll try not to get a kook,” Dirk Wells said with an edge to his voice.

  “Skeet?” Sam said. “Anything on China Carson?”

  “Taneesha and I are going out to talk with her husband after the meeting,’ Skeet said. “His sister says he’s calmed down since yesterday when Taneesha was out there, but now he’s so quiet she’s worried about his emotional state, and she’s making sure somebody’s staying in the house with him all the time.”

  “I talked to China’s sister, India Jackson, yesterday,” Taneesha said. “She says that China spent Monday night at their mother’s house.”

  “Trouble in paradise?” T.J. asked.

  “No,” Taneesha said, giving T.J. a slight frown. “Their mother has had a bad stroke. She’s mentally disoriented and can’t do anything for herself. They’re taking care of her at her home. They’ve got a full-time caregiver, and their aunt helps out at times, but two or three times a week either India or China has been spending the night. They take turns at it. India said it was her turn, but China said she’d do it because she could get the bike and start from there. It’s a lot closer to the gym than where she and her husband live.”

  “What did she mean by getting the bike?” Sam asked. “Wasn’t it hers?”

  “She was riding Sasha Richards’ bike,” Taneesha said. “Wearing her helmet and gear, too. Sasha and Ricky both got bikes a couple of years ago, but Sasha said she never really got into cycling. Anyway, China was borrowing it for the first time.”

  “Does Sasha work at the gym, too?” T.J. asked.

  “Yes,” Taneesha said. “She’s trained in nutrition and leads the weight loss program. Ricky does the fitness side.”

  “What about Annie Chapman?” T.J. asked.

  “She’s been teaching a yoga class,” Bub Williston said. “She’s been riding her bike all over town for at least a couple of years, so it wasn’t anything new for her, except for the distance.”

  “How far were they riding?” Sam asked.

  “Their route to the county line and back was about 14 miles,” Bub said. “The idea was that when the Cycle Georgia group came through Magnolia County, all those out-of-town cyclists would make a rest stop at the gym, and then Ricky and this local team would ride with them to the county line.”

  “I guess that won’t happen now,” Sam said, “And just in case this lunatic’s real problem is with people on bicycles, we need to ask the Cycle Georgia group to set a new route.”

  At Hilliard House, another meeting was going on over lemon-ginger tea and scones. Sunshine Chapman was just back from her second effort to get into her family home.

  “Andy didn’t go to work,” she told Robin and Colin. “He’s got a locksmith over there changing the locks and he came out on the porch and yelled at me to go away. I tried to tell him that we needed to talk about Mom’s funeral, and he put his hands over his ears and yelled, ‘Shut up!’ the same way he did when we were kids.”

  “You need a lawyer,” Robin said. “Or you need to find out if your mother had a lawyer. If I were you, I wouldn’t give up that beautiful house without a fight.”

  “Which one is it?” Colin asked.

  “The Queen Anne house on Hollowbrook Circle,” Robin said. “Slate blue. Stained glass transom over the front door. Great yard, too. Sunshine, does it have any of the original furniture?”

  “Just the dining room and living room furniture,” Sunshine said. “All dark mahogany. I never have cared much for it. And I don’t know if Mom had a lawyer. She never mentioned if she had made a will either, but I don’t think she would have left the house to Andy if she had. They were barely speaking. She tried to get Andy to pay his share of the utility costs and taxes or move out, and he wouldn’t. Then when his car broke down, he just took her extra set of keys and started using her car to commute to work. Of course she was a fitness freak, so she liked riding the bike, except she wound up having to wait until the weekends to do grocery shopping.”

  “Why did she put up with that?” Colin asked. “Was she afraid of him?”

  “No, she just couldn’t do anything with him. Dad could, but after he died, Andy just decided to make his own rules. Oh, she’d complain to me,” Sunshine said, “but I think he had given up on him, and of course, she was his mother so she wasn’t going to throw him out. Most of the time, it was like they had their separate sides of the house and were just ignoring each other. She had her books, and she taught yoga at the gym and had her church activities. He has this giant television set in the
front bedroom, and he’s turned the old nursery into an office of some sort. He mostly bought his meals out or made sandwiches, because she was a vegan.”

  “How old is Andy now?” Robin asked, remembering him from high school as a big guy who appeared to be pathologically shy, but occasionally got into arm-swinging, cursing tantrums.

  “Thirty,” Sunshine said. “Honestly, he’s always been weird, but he’s smart, and I think he must do okay on the job. Mom said she thought he made pretty good money. He’s in civil service, does accounting work. I tried to get him in a conversation about it once, and he just said, ‘It’s okay. They don’t ask me questions all the time like you do.” I pointed out that we hadn’t had a conversation for about twenty years, and he yelled at me to shut up.”

  “Do you think he could be dangerous?” Colin asked.

  “Physically?” she asked. “No. He just has these temper fits. Yelling and cursing and banging his head on the wall. You know.”

  “No, I don’t know,” Colin said gently. “He sounds out of control to me.”

  “He’s controlling himself at work, or he wouldn’t have a job,” Robin said, “You need a lawyer.”

  At a little after eleven that morning, Aaron Twitchell filled the tank of his truck at the Super Star, using part of the mileage money Sam had gotten Shelley to give him in cash. He had gone home to change into his regular jeans, t-shirt and work boots, and was thankful that Nancy was at her job. He’d tell her, he thought, but not until he saw how it was going.

  John Thomas Tyson, better known as J.T., put down his brand new copy of the Magnolia County Messenger, took the cash, and said, “I just read where you were the one who came up on that shootin’ on the creek bridge. That must have been a horrible sight.”

  Aaron said, “Worst thing I ever saw.”

  J.T. waited for details and got none.

  “Who do you think it was?” he finally asked.

  “Some crazy lunatic,’ Aaron said. “Whoever it was had an assault rifle. They were pickin’ up bullets all over the bridge.”