They sat down with their breakfast and went over the reports. A logging truck had jackknifed, hurling topless, branchless pine trees all across Highway 224. Nobody was hurt.
Two men from Cathay had been arrested for operating a methamphetamine lab. A man from Merchantsville had complained that his common-law wife broke a lamp over his head, causing an injury that required 12 sutures. His common-law wife was charging him with theft, saying he took money she was saving for new kitchen appliances and bought an outboard motor.
“She ought to get her own savings account,” Hunter said.
“Yeah, that’s what Sam told her,” Taneesha said. “The man doesn’t even have a boat.”
A juvenile had been arrested for possession of marijuana with intent to sell. A man living in the Mimosa Corners community had reported that somebody had shot three of his goats. A man in Cathay was arrested after he drove his pickup truck into his neighbor’s swimming pool.
“DUI?”
“Yep”
“Sometimes, if you’d let us know, we could get a picture,” Hunter said.
“The truck’s still in there,” Taneesha said. “But I think they let the water out, so it’s not as good as it was at first. Anyway, we’ve got a third-time DUI, so I did bring you a pretty picture.
It was a grainy black and white shot of a woman who had decided to smile for the camera despite the fact that she was in serious trouble. Under Georgia law, her picture had to be published with a third arrest for Driving under the Influence.
“Habitual offender. No insurance. She had two kids in the car without seatbelts on, and it was three in the morning,” Taneesha said.
“Okay, I won’t feel sorry for her.” Hunter said.
Hunter finished her breakfast and said, “One more question. Is there anything at all on the investigation since last night?”
“No,” Taneesha said,” Sam said I could tell you that absolutely nothing of news value has transpired since the last night’s press conference. And one more thing…”
Hunter finished her last swallow of coffee.
“What’s that?”
He says we’ve got to have the chip from your digital camera, because T.J. said if that picture winds up as evidence, they’re going to have to be able to prove it wasn’t tampered with.”
“Well, I can understand that,” Hunter said, “because digital pictures really can be fooled around with, real easy, but does he know chips cost money?”
“I am but the messenger,” Taneesha said.
“I’ll bring it over later,” Hunter said. “All I’m saying is that if I know Tyler Bankston, he’s going to send Sam a bill.”
Then she grinned at Taneesha.
“So he thought the picture was interesting?”
“No comment,” Taneesha said with a grin.
Hunter got the sole laptop in the office, and moved to a back room to get her story written. There were people coming in and out, all wanting to talk, and while she usually could write in the middle of a hurricane, she needed some unbroken time.
“It’s not just the story, either. I’ve got the crime report to write, and that city council meeting story, with all the fuss about Marvis Flammonde and the conservatory has to be rewritten, since Mae-Lula Hilliard was quoted in it. I never had that writing problem before. So no phone calls unless it’s the sheriff, himself,” she told Novena.
After that it was non-stop– writing, proof reading, page layout, checking details – until 11:45 when her work was done.
Hunter came up for air, got a diet drink from the refrigerator and started going through her messages. There were two from T.J. Jackson. The sneezer.
The phone rang.
“You taking phone calls now?” Novena asked with a coy smile, holding her hand over the receiver. “This guy has come by once and called twice. I told him you’d probably be answering your calls by 11:30.”
It was T.J., from the D.A.’s office, sounding a bit like a high school kid taking a big risk.
He knew a really great place for seafood if Hunter was free on Saturday night.
Hunter was caught off guard, but she made a split-second decision and said, “That sounds like fun.”
He asked where she lived. She explained. They set a time.
“He’s a cute one,” Novena said when Hunter hung up. “He’s the detective, right? The one from the D.A.’s office? Where does he live? Down in Americus?”
Hunter wasn’t sure where he lived. She wasn’t sure that she had done the right thing or even that she liked the guy, but she really didn’t have anything to do on Saturday night. She hadn’t had anything to do on Saturday night since she moved to Merchantsville, except for the weekends she had gone back to Atlanta.
“Hey, Tyler,” Novena called out, “Hunter’s got a date with that boy from the D.A.’s office.”
The press had started up, and Tyler rolled out so he could be heard.
“Good,” he yelled to Hunter. “Maybe you can get some information out of him. It’d be better if it was Sam Bailey, but see what you can get out of this one.”
Novena laughed.
“Tyler’s such a romantic!”
Hunter thumbed her nose at both of them and checked her e-mail.
She had a message from Nikki.
“Love the weird building. It would be better in b/w.”
Hunter hit reply, and attached her two of her pictures and the front page story about Mae-Lula Hilliard’s murder.
“Big story,” she wrote. “Unbelievable experience. Will write more from home.”
She sent the message and went back to watch the paper come off the press with the story of the decade.
After the paper was printed, Hunter went shopping for cat food, basic foods like ice cream and rotisserie chicken and a new pair of pantyhose. Then she headed home, but before she could get to the outside stairs that led to her apartment, Miss Rose was calling from her door, inviting her in.
“I’ve got somebody I want you to meet,” she said.
“Let me put my groceries away and see about the cat,” Hunter said. “I’ll be back down in a minute or two.”
The cat was still pregnant. She purred and rubbed against Hunter’s long skirt. Hunter poured fresh water for her, dumped some more cat food on a paper plate, sniffed the air, decided the litter box could wait to be emptied, and headed downstairs.
“Hunter,” Miss Rose said. “This is Robin Hilliard, Mae-Lula’s nephew. I want you to hear what he was just telling me.”
He got up to shake her hand. He was dark-haired and slightly built, not much taller than Hunter, and handsome in a poetic way. He looked as if he might have been crying.
He also looked, she thought, like someone who would be kind to a cat. Maybe he’d be willing to take the calico home with him.
“I’m so sorry about your aunt,” she said.
“Thank you,” Robin said. “I’m going to miss her.”
Miss Rose clearly had no time for social niceties at the moment. She pushed a plate of peanut butter cookies in Hunter’s direction and said, “Robin, tell Hunter what you told me about the phone call.”
Hunter took a cookie, poured herself a cup of tea and sat down in the window seat. Robin studied her and smiled.
“Would you look at her with the light behind her hair?” Robin said to Miss Rose, “She’s downright pre-Raphaelite. You didn’t tell me she was so not Merchantsville.”
“The phone call,” Miss Rose instructed him gently.
Hunter smiled at Robin.
“Thanks for the compliment, but I don’t think she’s going to give up on the phone call.”
“Right,” Robin said. “The phone call. I guess I’m just trying to think about some damn thing besides murder for a while.”
Miss Rose made a tsk-ing sound.
“Well, it has been so non-stop with Claire, Miss Rose,” he said. “I mean, of course she was just traumatized coming home and seeing all those cars and the crime tape and finding out tha
t way, but Keith and I were both trying to reach her and she had her cell phone turned off. So now she’s acting like it was just in real bad taste for Aunt Mae-Lula to get herself murdered, instead of just dying in her sleep like a lady. Well, you know Claire. I just had to get out of that house for a while.”
“Yes, I do know Claire, but this could be important,” Miss Rose said.
Robin sighed. Hunter gave him a sympathetic smile.
“That’s a great vest,” he said, changing the subject again, “Is it vintage?”
“No,” she said. “Macy’s.”
“Do you want to hear about the phone call?”
“Sure, if Miss Rose thinks it’s important.”
“In the first place, I live in Macon,” he said with a sigh, “and Aunt Mae-Lula calls, I mean she did call, me two or three times a week, I mean just about every time she was worked up about something.”
“He was her favorite,” Miss Rose told Hunter.
“I was the only member of the family who listened to her,” Robin said to Miss Rose. “Well, Claire would say she did, but you know Claire.”
“Back to the phone call,” Miss Rose prompted.
“Back to the phone call,” Robin said, giving Hunter a disarming smile. “It was yesterday. Lord, it seems like a year ago. Aunt Mae-Lula called and our office manager answered. Aunt Mae-Lula was telling her it was an emergency. She wanted to talk to me right then, and I was trying to leave, but then I came to the phone and she wouldn’t answer. I mean that’s what I thought – that she wasn’t speaking and then she hung up. It wasn’t disconnected, just quiet. And then she hung up.”
“Or somebody hung up for her,” Miss Rose said, her voice full of portent.
“What time was that?” Hunter asked.
“It was right before noon,” he said. “I was trying to get out the door to go meet my friend Colin for lunch, and I was already running late. Anyway, I thought Aunt Mae-Lula was just being a primadonna because I took too long to get to the phone. At first I wasn’t even going to call her back, but then I did and I let it ring and ring, but there was no answer.”
“So he was thinking she had gone out or that she was calling from somewhere else than home,” Miss Rose filled in.
“But now I know from what Keith says that she was probably home the whole time. Anyway, I called her back again when I got back to the shop after lunch,” Robin continued, “and nobody answered that time either.”
That, Hunter thought, must have been the call she was trying to answer when she found Mae-Lula Hilliard’s body.
“What I’m thinking,” Miss Rose said to Hunter, “is that maybe Mae-Lula was making that call to Robin when the killer was in the house.”
“Wouldn’t she have called 911?” Hunter asked. “I mean if she knew somebody was in the house.”
“Well, maybe she didn’t know,” Miss Rose said, “As deaf as she was.”
“She never would wear her hearing aid around the house,” Robin said to Hunter. “That’s why we put that amplifier on the telephone for her. Made it sound like a civil defense warning. But what I’m saying is the same thing you’re saying, Hunter. Aunt Mae-Lula wasn’t dumb. If she had known somebody was in the house, she wouldn’t have called me in Macon about that. And if she didn’t know somebody was in the house, what was the emergency?”
“Well, you can let Sam figure that out,” Miss Rose said.
“Can you believe Sam Bailey being so totally in charge of everything?” Robin said, sidetracking again. “And Taneesha Martin in that uniform?”
“Robin, you have to tell the sheriff about the call,” Hunter said.
“I did tell him,” he said. He looked suddenly downcast. “I just wish I had come to the phone the first time.”
Miss Rose patted his hand.
“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” she said.
“You know she was so good to me. I know you couldn’t stand her, Miss Rose, but I…”
“Robin, sugar!” Miss Rose said. “None of it’s your fault. And I’m not about to sit here and say I liked Mae-Lula, any more than she would be sitting over there saying she liked me, if the shoe was on the other foot, but I do know how kind she was to you and how she tried so hard with Claire, and I always appreciated her for that. Here, have another cookie.”
Robin took a monogrammed handkerchief out of his hip pocket and brushed the tears away. He looked at Hunter and managed a crooked grin.
“Don’t you love Merchantsville?” he said, taking the cookie. “You cry. They give you a cookie. The world comes to an end. They bring you congealed salads and chicken casseroles. You wouldn’t believe the food they were bringing in last night, and the cakes. Lord, the cakes!”
He turned to Miss Rose, “And there’s Keith turning up his nose at all of it and eating his tofu and shredded carrots, and Claire just about living on chocolate and chardonnay.”
“Oh, that reminds me!” Miss Rose said. “Hunter, tell him what you told me about Mae-Lula baking a cake! Oops, there’s the phone. I’ll be right back.”
“Aunt Mae-Lula baked a cake? Not possible.”
Hunter told him about the mixers, the chocolate smell, and the cake mix.
“Well, it would have had to be a mix,” he said.
Hunter had another subject to cover.
“You know, I took Miss Mae-Lula’s cat home, and I’ve got her upstairs, and I was wondering, if you…”
“You mean Katie?”
“The calico. She’s pregnant.”
“I told her to get that cat fixed,” Robin said, “Oh, my lord, Miss Rose, what is it?”
Miss Rose was back in the kitchen, looking pale.
“That was Saranell Aycock,” she said. “She says somebody killed Tamlyn Borders, Skeet’s wife. They’ve got Old River Road blocked off.”
“Tamlyn?” Robin said, looking astonished. “You know she was working for Keith?”
“No, I didn’t,” Miss Rose said. “Last I knew, she was working for Jaybird. I thought she stopped working when she had the baby. That’s what Skeet said, that he didn’t want her working after she had the baby.”
Hunter was already up and heading for her car.
Chapter 9
“SORRY, M’AM. SHERIFF’S ORDERS.”
Hunter smiled at the rescue unit volunteers — a scrawny middle-aged man who had donned an orange vest over a camouflage tee shirt and a younger man with a crew cut on top and long hair down his back. The younger one looked barely out of his teens and was so big that his vest was bunched up under his arms.
The older man had a whistle on a chain around his neck and was blasting it at any passing motorists who slowed down or put on their turn signals.
“Keep it movin’. Keep it movin’.”
Hunter had turned onto the dirt road anyway and pulled over to the side. She got out and showed him her Georgia Press Association card just to look official.
“I’m Hunter Jones from the paper. All I want to do is take some pictures. “
“M’am, I know who you are, but Sheriff Bailey said nobody but law enforcement. There’s barely room to pass on the road anyways, and he don’ want people just drivin’ by to look and then all turnin’ around at the landin’. If I wasn’t movin’ ‘em on, half of Merchantsville’d be down there right now.”
Good, she thought. A talker.
“Well, let me take your picture, then, if this is as close as I’m going to get.”
He beamed and waved to younger man to come over. They stood by the sawhorses smiling self-consciously at the camera. She took three pictures in rapid sequence.
“Names?” Hunter had her notebook out.
“I’m Sonny Willcox and this is my son, Sonny Junior. Everbody calls him Little Sonny, but it you’re puttin’ it in the paper, it’s Sonny Willcox comma Junior.”
“That’s capital J and a little r and a period,” Little Sonny said. “Don’t spell it out. I don’t want people mixing me up with Junior Aycock.
�
��And be sure and put that we’re with the Magnolia County Rescue Unit,” the older Sonny said.
“That one of them digitals?” Little Sonny asked.
“Sure is. You want to see the picture?”
The older man blasted his whistle at a car that had slowed down.
“Keep it movin’! Keep it movin’! Sheriff’s orders. Road closed!”
“What’s happening down there anyway?” Hunter asked Little Sonny as she angled her camera to let him see his picture on the tiny screen.
“You din know? Skeet Borders’ wife got herself killed. Everybody’s down there, just about. Sheriff Bailey and all his folks, and some GBI and the District Attorney too. He came to town to get up to date about Miss Mae-Lula, and somebody else goes and gets murdered. Lord he must think we’re crazy here.”
He opened a pack of bubble gum and popped a piece in his mouth.
“Bub Williston said she was strangled,” he went on, chewing as he talked “Said they found her car all busted into, and she was stone-cold dead when they found her, stiff as a board, and her baby hollerin’ in the crib with a dirty diaper on and hungry. Wasn’t nobody there with the baby that whole time and they had to break the door down. You know, Skeet’s one of them long haul truckers. Here they’re trying to catch up with him to tell him and he’s somewhere way up north of New York City.”
“Whoever done it better hope the sheriff catches him ‘fore Skeet does,” the older Sonny said.
“I don’t know, Daddy,” Little Sonny said, shifting the bubble gum to the other cheek. “Davonne said they didn’t get along that good. That’s what she said soon as I told her why I had to come over here. She said she bet Skeet just finally couldn’t take any more, between the credit cards and her…”
“Hush up, boy!” his father cut him off. “And you call Davonne right now and tell her to hush up, too. Skeet’s gon’ have trouble enough without people talkin’ trash like that.”
“Davonne’s Skeet’s cousin, Daddy. I don’t reckon she’s trying to make trouble for him. But, she never did think much of Tamlyn.”
“You hush.”
Little Sonny looked red-faced and belligerent, but Hunter noticed that he was already pulling a cell phone out of his hip pocket.
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