“A transient? How would you ever prove that?”
“That’s just it,” she admitted. “We probably can’t. But we got Liam to ask among the homeless community. Ten years ago, we didn’t know anything about those people. Now he does.”
“I’m not sure I get it. What are you asking Liam to do?”
“To ask around among people on the street. Ask them if they heard anything at the time or since. I know it’s a long shot, but it’s the only thing we’ve got. At the time, Jody — he’s our cop reporter — was convinced it was a family member. But I think the police would have found that out. And I sure don’t believe the other family members would have covered it up.”
Davison was silent for a moment. “That sounds pretty farfetched. Has Liam found out anything?”
Branigan told him about Liam’s call earlier in the week — that a man named Jess remembered Max Brody’s statement that “this evening’s drunk was courtesy of an old lady who had the good taste to get stabbed”.
“And so you’re going to talk to this Jess?” Davison asked.
“And I hope Max.”
Davison shook his head. “Brani G, you really do have an interesting job.”
“There was another man who lives at Jericho who mentioned a drunk woman talking about an old lady who got murdered. In fact, I think it’s your drunk woman.”
“My drunk woman? What?”
“You know, that Rita, with the shack under the bridge.”
Branigan turned to find Davison staring at her, horrified. She burst into laughter.
“Believe me, Rita isn’t ‘my woman’.” He shuddered. “I didn’t touch her. I’d be afraid to. Do you know how many men she’s been with?”
“Then why were you in her shack?”
“It had two beds — if you could call them that — and I slept in one. It’s not even Rita’s place. It was built by someone who’s in jail now. I went up there and fell asleep and she didn’t even come in ’til the middle of the night. And believe me, she doesn’t give sex for free. I was safe.”
“I have to say, I’m happy to hear that. I was worried about your... um... health.”
Davison shook his head again. “Sheesh. Please don’t share your overactive imagination with Mom.”
Branigan took the back roads to gargantuan Lake Hartwell, the reservoir playground shared by Georgia and South Carolina. It was only a forty-minute ride from Grambling to the cove where Amanda Resnick Brissey had a second home.
Of the Resnick family, she knew Amanda least. Amanda had been in college by the time Branigan entered kindergarten. She married right out of school — a private one, according to Jody’s notes — and then moved with her husband to Atlanta. Branigan knew from her parents that the couple traveled a great deal, had two children quickly, and Amanda, at least, spent half her time at their Lake Hartwell home. According to Branigan’s mom, Mrs Resnick and Amanda had a tense relationship. After her father’s death, Amanda came home only once a year — for the Fourth of July party. Branigan wouldn’t know her if she passed her on the street.
A couple of minutes outside Grambling, the two were in the countryside. Zoning was unheard of outside the city limits, so they passed lovely farms with decrepit trailers next door. They passed peach orchards and wildflower fields and shacks with high-flying Rebel flags. News of the Confederacy’s demise hadn’t reached every household in Georgia.
They crossed expanses of the sprawling lake twice. Davison and Branigan — and just about everyone who grew up in Grambling — were raised with boats and water skis, so the terrain was familiar.
Following the directions Amanda Brissey had emailed, Branigan pulled onto a bumpy road lined with pine trees, cedars and underbrush on one side and wooded lake lots on the other. Grand houses of stone and stucco sat beside fishing shacks with lavish sundecks. But there was no mistaking the only house on the cove owned by a Grambling heiress.
The Brissey house was three stories, with a circular driveway and fountain. Brick steps, twenty feet wide at the bottom, swept up to a second-floor entrance, where double oak doors were framed by windows of leaded glass. Whereas even the rich neighbors had used stone and stucco and vinyl siding, the Brisseys had chosen a reddish-purple brick. If this is what faced the humdrum road, Branigan couldn’t wait to see the house’s lake-facing side.
Davison agreed to walk Cleo while Branigan interviewed Amanda. The two of them started out on the rural road the way they had come, while she vigorously shook Cleo’s hair off her navy summer blazer. She pulled it over her cream-colored slacks and red-and-white-striped top. She had driven barefoot, so she stepped into her off-white mules. Straightened and ready, she slung a slouchy red purse over her shoulder and climbed the steps feeling like a character in a movie.
According to her Rambler buddy Jody, this was the daughter who had killed Mrs Resnick.
Amanda Brissey had to be fifty-five, but looked fifteen years younger. She answered the door in jeans that had a slight rip in one knee, a white tunic and black flip-flops. Her hair was a tousled auburn, cropped short: there wasn’t a trace of gray. She greeted Branigan warmly, handing over a mug of coffee without asking.
“So you’re the Powerses’ daughter,” she said. “Where did you get those stunning eyes? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that shade of green.”
Branigan heard such comments frequently, and never knew how to answer. “Thank you,” she said weakly.
Amanda stepped aside to let Branigan enter. “I can’t believe we’ve never met.”
“From what Mom told me, you’ve been traveling a lot.”
“Yes, and now I’m ready to sit tight for awhile,” she said with an airy wave to indicate her choice for sitting tight. She led Branigan into a lakeside sunroom that ran the width of the house. The sofas, chairs and valences sported vibrant fabrics in blue, white and yellow, but it was the view that caught Branigan’s breath. An impressive lawn sloped to the water’s edge. A double-armed dock stretched far into the water, with a pontoon boat moored in the middle, and a speedboat tied to one side. The lake was peaceful and smooth this time of the morning, with none of the weekend boat traffic that would churn it up tomorrow.
“The boys are grown,” she continued, “and Bennett can get up here only on weekends.” She reached for an ornately framed photo on a side table. Bennett Brissey was older than Amanda, Branigan could see at once. Or at least his silver hair made him look it. He had one arm around her. The couple were flanked by two handsome sons in their early thirties.
“That’s Bennett Jr,” she said, pointing to one. “He practices in New York. And that’s Drew. He works with Bennett Sr’s firm in Atlanta. All attorneys, all the time.”
She drew in a breath, as if bracing herself. “So. Mother?”
Branigan gave her practiced speech, never sure if family members would welcome this story or find it an intrusive reminder of a horrible time.
“As you may know,” she began, “this is the only unsolved murder in the city of Grambling — if you don’t count the recent hit-and-run of a homeless man. The newspaper wants to explore how it could have gone unsolved this long.”
Amanda looked skeptical, so Branigan dialed the rhetoric down a notch. “There’s a lot of interest in this,” she said more frankly. “I grew up two blocks away. My brother Davison and I really liked your mother.”
Amanda Brissey nodded. “How can I help you?”
“Let’s go over that July 4. Tell me about the entire day, and I’ll interrupt if I don’t understand something.”
“Father and Mother always had a Fourth of July party — since before I was born. When Father died — that was eight years before Mother — we children persuaded her to carry it on.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “I don’t know how much you know about my mother’s later years, Branigan. But she had... problems.”
Branigan kept quiet, but looked up attentively.
“She was depressed about my father’s death. Nothing odd about that. But then she developed sym
ptoms of paranoia. We couldn’t tell if it was due to the anti-depressants she was taking or if it was something else. Did you know she wouldn’t let Ramsey and Heath do any pruning or cutting back in her yard?”
Branigan nodded. “I did know that.”
“She said the landscapers were in cahoots with a realtor who wanted to get her house. They wanted to butcher the landscaping so she’d be forced to sell.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Tell me about it. It was that kind of stuff all the time. People were listening to her phone conversations. People were walking through her property at all hours. People were sneaking into her house and garage while she was at church.” Amanda raised her shoulders in an exaggerated shrug.
“I had no idea,” Branigan said. “Poor Mrs Resnick.”
“Poor Mrs Resnick nothing,” Amanda said vehemently. “Poor Ramsey. He was the one who had to listen to that. And Heath, to some extent.” She laughed suddenly. “But I have to admit — we were wrong about the guy in the pool house. At first, we assumed it was more of Mother’s imaginings. When Ramsey found that man actually living in her pool house, you could’ve knocked me over.”
“Did you ever see him?”
Branigan pulled the photo of Billy from her purse. Amanda studied it closely.
“No,” she said, handing it back. “The police showed me a picture too, but I’d never seen him. I came to Grambling only once a year after Father died. I’m not proud of that. But I... I... my mother and I weren’t close. She was....” She closed her eyes, searching for a word. “Imperial,” she said finally. “Do you know what I mean?”
Branigan had a sudden memory of a sultry summer day when she and Davison were nine. They were riding bikes in front of Mrs Resnick’s house, and Branigan hit a piece of raised sidewalk where an ancient oak had buckled it. She pitched over her handlebars, dragging her right arm across the sidewalk, ripping skin, before landing in Mrs Resnick’s hostas. A wail rose to her throat.
Mrs Resnick was getting into her car, dressed in a yellow summer suit, white gloves, and straw hat.
“My lands, child!” she said. Branigan waited for her to bend down and comfort her, as her mom or gran would have done. Instead, she turned on her heel and called, “Tabitha!”
Tabitha came running, and she and Davison helped carry Branigan, still bawling, to the front porch. There Tabitha bathed her arm in warm soapy water, then applied antiseptic and a large gauze bandage, murmuring gently the whole time. Mrs Resnick got into her car and drove away. Branigan could imagine her lunch companions tsk-tsking about the inconsiderate child who had almost made her late.
She smiled now at Amanda. “Yes, I do know what you mean.”
Branigan prompted Amanda to continue with details from July 4.
She ticked off the family members who had come for the party — Ramsey, his wife Dale, his grown son Armand, and teenage daughters Carlisle and Ashley; Heath, his wife Serena, and their thirteen-year-old daughter Caroline; herself, Bennett, Bennett Jr and Drew. “Twelve of us, plus Mother.”
“And the guests?”
“Oh, my Lord! Who knows? I’m sure the police had a guest list. There were probably fifty or sixty people — neighbors, Father’s old business partners, other mill owners, Mother’s bridge ladies. In the old days, we had pool parties, but the pool area wasn’t nice enough for that any more — even without Billy,” she added with a laugh.
“How late did the party go on?”
“Not terribly late. So many of the guests were older. We all went outside to watch fireworks around 9:30. A lot of people left after that. Some of the grandkids’ friends stayed late and braved the pool. I remember Drew telling me later that they found a snake in it.”
“Yikes. But the whole family didn’t stay overnight?”
“Oh, no. Bennett would never stay there. We had two hotel rooms, one for us and one for the boys. But I did end up spending the night at Mother’s. She asked me to.”
“May I ask why?” Branigan knew this was the point that had stuck in Jody’s mind.
Amanda didn’t hesitate. “She wanted to talk about her will.”
“What about it?”
“Well, she had been going on about making a new will. She first told me on the afternoon of July 4. I guess I didn’t respond quickly enough because she asked me to stay overnight and had another run at me the next morning. She said she was eighty, her heart was weakened, and she knew she didn’t have much time left. And she wanted to cut Heath out.”
Jody had told Branigan this much, though the information didn’t make the stories that The Rambler printed. “Did she say why?”
“She did, but I thought it was more of her paranoia. She said Heath was trying to get her to sell the house and move her into a nursing home. She accused him of everything from trying to ruin her landscaping to wanting to develop her two acres as an apartment complex — as if the city would allow that.”
“What did you say?”
“I told her I didn’t think she should do it. And if she did, she didn’t need me. Her lawyer was right there in Grambling. To be honest with you, I thought I was seeing signs of dementia.”
To be honest with you. The words of Branigan’s first editor came back to her. They’d been sitting over beers on a long-ago election night. Someone had already uttered the well worn, “How can you tell when a politician is lying? [Pause.] His lips are moving.”
Over the laughter and groans that followed, her editor leaned in. “Seriously,” he said, “watch it when someone looks you in the eye and says, ‘To be honest with you. To be honest with you, Branigan, I did not sleep with that woman.’”
She paused now, thinking maybe Jody was on to something. This was the first statement that didn’t ring true. She couldn’t picture Amanda Brissey brutally stabbing her mother to death. But why would she lie about a suspicion of dementia? That was innocent enough. Wasn’t it?
“So what happened next?”
“Nothing, really. Ramsey took her to the doctor. I ran by that store on South Main that sells crafts made by women in Third World countries. Mother asked me to pick out earrings for Caroline and Ashley. I did and left them there to be wrapped and held for pick-up.”
Branigan had read in the files that police had indeed found the gifts at the store, purchased by Amanda at 2:10 p.m. on July 5. Officers had followed her timeline carefully.
“Was it the girls’ birthdays?”
“No, they had spent the night, and Mother liked to give them little treats. To be honest with you, they were her favorites. It was fine. The other grandchildren were old enough not to mind.”
There it was again. To be honest with you.
Amanda continued. “Then I got the boys from the hotel and we drove home to Atlanta. Bennett Sr stayed to play golf with some clients. He had barely left Grambling when I reached him on his cell to tell him to turn around and meet me at Mother’s. We’d gotten word of her... death.”
“When did you tell Heath about your mother’s plan to cut him out of her will?”
“Late, late, late on the night of the murder. I tried to reach him right after I talked to the police. I wanted to tell him myself before they questioned him. But they whisked him away. In retrospect, I’m sure it was on purpose. They wanted to see his reaction.”
They talked for another thirty minutes. As Branigan suspected, she wasn’t getting new information so much as a feel for the players before writing her story. Amanda had “reluctantly”, according to one detective, shared her mother’s comments about Heath, which made the younger brother a prime suspect for a few days. Officers had investigated the finances of all three Resnick children. Alone among them, Heath’s fortunes had been up and down. Being cut from his mother’s will would have been a blow. But Heath swore he had no idea his mother intended to disinherit him, and Ramsey and Amanda backed him up.
Branigan was no detective, but it was hard for her to picture Jody’s scenario. He contended that the police had o
nly Amanda’s word that Mrs Resnick intended to cut Heath from her will. What if Mrs Resnick really confided that she was cutting Amanda out of the will? That left Amanda — not to mention Bennett, Bennett Jr or Drew — in town to stab Mrs Resnick before she had the chance to do so.
Branigan knew that Jody had floated his theory to the police, who had looked into the Brissey family finances. But Bennett Brissey, an Atlanta attorney, wasn’t having money troubles. The family seemed quite comfortable even without inheriting the Resnick fortune.
Of course, she thought, you can’t measure greed. How much is enough? That varies from person to person. Heaven knows she’d heard Liam preach that message often enough. Bennett Jr and Drew had been in college, headed to law school, a decade earlier. Their grandmother’s early death meant graduating debt-free and living a non-student-like lifestyle. And from everything she’d heard, Ben Jr was quite the party guy.
She took one more look at the photo of Amanda’s handsome family, and repacked her purse. As Amanda showed her out, she asked her parting question. “Anything else that I forgot to ask?”
“I was surprised,” Amanda said promptly, “that police suspected the family. You know that from books and movies, but it honestly shocked me that anyone could think that.”
“Who do you think killed your mother?”
“Some kind of hobo,” she answered. “It had to be.”
Davison was leaning against the car as Cleo nosed around the Brisseys’ front yard.
“How’d it go?” he asked. “Catch your murderer?”
“I’d be very surprised,” Branigan said, kicking off her heels and removing her jacket for the ride to the beach. “But something’s up with her.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Malachi gazed at the painting he had tugged from the trash pile underneath the bridge. There were a few coffee grounds on it, but they wiped off easily.
He had liked Vesuvius, and he liked this painting — oil on a piece of thin plywood. He propped it against the fabric wall of his tent. Its colors were muted, realistic. The brooding landscape showed a pond at night, the moon lighting its surface to a creamy yellow, encircling trees in shades of darkest green and brown and black.
The Cantaloupe Thief Page 11