“I like that,” Herron said. “Maybe I can put that on my web site with the picture.” As he sat down in front of his computer and started pressing keys, he said. “It’s a site about Mama.”
Somehow I wasn’t surprised. “Kipling?” I whispered to Richard.
“The Bard didn’t have much to say about mothers,” he said, “and the only other quote I have is ‘A boy’s best friend is his mother.’ ”
“That’s nice.”
“It’s from Psycho, so I thought it might not be appropriate.”
Then again, maybe it was a little too appropriate. I forced myself to turn away from Sandie’s wall of tribute and said, “Let’s see what we can do with that scanner.”
The problem turned out to be fairly easy to fix. The software that had come with Sandie’s scanner wasn’t compatible with his system, so all I had to do was download the right version from the manufacturer’s web site and install it. Once that was done, Sandie wasted no time in scanning the photo and ad from the church memory book and printing them out to add to the wall of pictures.
“The resolution still isn’t as good as it should be,” he said critically, “but I guess it will do.”
“If you like, I could ask Aunt Nora to track down the original photo,” I said. “You’d get a much clearer image that way.”
“You think you could? I sure would appreciate that.” He beamed just like Opie had when offered a big piece of apple pie. “Do you want to see my web site?”
“Sure,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I should applaud the Internet for letting a man retain some contact with the world, even in isolation, or complain that it was allowing him to maintain his isolation. Then again, I didn’t figure that Sandie would have been a people person whether he had a computer or not.
Once he got the site open, he took us on a virtual tour of his mother’s life, from pictures of his grandmother pregnant with her to shots of the flowers surrounding her coffin. “I need to figure out when this new one of her was taken, so I can put it in chronologically.” He looked delighted at the prospect. “I’ll give you the URL so you can come back and take a look later.” Judging from the low numbers on the site’s “Number of visitors” counter, we were likely the only ones other than Sandie who would ever visit it. He said, “I’ll warn you, it’s a pretty big site. It takes me forever to open it, but of course, I can’t get broadband out here.”
“That’s one of the advantages of living in Boston,” I said. “We get these things pretty early on.”
“I guess you would at that.”
Sandie and I started talking about file compression utilities, and I saw that Richard had lost interest and gone back to look at the pictures of Sandie’s mother. That reminded me that we hadn’t come by to indulge in a geekfest. I’d managed to get comfortable with Sandie. Now I was ready to try asking him some questions.
“You know,” I said, “with all the new development going on, maybe they will get broadband out here. Didn’t Big Bill Walters just break ground on a new project?” I didn’t know if Big Bill was doing anything nearby, but considering his history, it seemed like a fair bet.
Sandie’s face darkened, and he glowered at me, for the first time looking like the Crazy Sandie I’d imagined. “Don’t talk to me about that son of a bitch!”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Do you know Big Bill?” I knew he did, but I figured asking it that way didn’t count as a lie.
“I don’t need to know him—I know what he did to Mama.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, but Sandie needed no further prompting to pour out the story.
“I was away from home when it happened,” he said, leaving out the fact that he’d been gone for years. “Mama was bad sick, and she needed money, but Big Bill Walters wouldn’t loan it to her like a decent man. No, he wanted her land, land that had been in our family for generations. Even though she didn’t want to sell, he badgered her and badgered her, and finally she didn’t have any other choice. She had to go to some home to live out the rest of her days among strangers, and she died alone.” He inhaled raggedly. “You’d think the law would be able to do something to a man like that, but he’s smart; I’ll give him that. He put up a bunch of cracker-box houses on Mama’s land and started raking in the money. The bastard wouldn’t so much as talk to me when I went to tell him what I think about him, and he doesn’t even have the decency to answer my letters.”
Having read those letters, I didn’t see what Big Bill could have said in reply, but I didn’t think it would be a smart thing to say, so I made sympathetic sounds. Richard had rejoined us, and I knew he was trying to figure out what to do if Sandie lost control.
Sandie growled, “If that man was on fire, I wouldn’t bother to piss on him to put it out!” Then he shook himself. “Pardon my French. Mama never wanted me to cuss, but it’s a hard habit to break.” He looked fondly at the wall of pictures, as if apologizing to his dead mother.
“That’s all right,” I said with a weak smile.
Richard said, “Well, I think Laura and I need to be going. We’ve got some more stops to make.”
“We sure do,” I agreed, edging toward the door. “Very nice meeting you, Sandie.”
“Y’all, too. I sure appreciate your help with my scanner.”
“Any time.” I thought about giving him my e-mail address in case he needed help again, but remembered the expression on his face when he talked about Big Bill, and decided against it. “You take care.”
He walked us out the few steps to the door and waved as we went to the car. The last thing he said as we climbed in was, “You’ll ask your aunt about that picture of Mama, won’t you?”
“You bet,” I assured him. He had his front door closed tightly before I even had time to turn the car around.
“That was scary,” I said as we drove out. “Remember how you said Sandie was like a hermit without the religion? Well, he does have a religion after all. He worships his mother.”
“What do you think? Guilt over not being here when she got sick?”
“I guess.” I shuddered. I thought a lot of my late mother, but I’d never considered papering the walls with her pictures. “Richard, I want Alice to love me and respect me, but if she ever starts to act like that…”
“I’ll have her in therapy before you can say Oedipus Rex.”
Chapter 13
“So,” Richard said as we drove, “do you think it was him?”
‘He sure hates Big Bill enough, but he doesn’t fit all that well. He could have handled the attempted shooting, assuming he has a gun…”
“I saw a rack in his pickup truck,” Richard said, “and a box of ammunition mixed in with the canned goods.”
“Good catch. Then he could easily have done that part, and Big Bill did say it was a pickup that nearly ran him over. Since Sandie apparently built that house of his, he’d probably have been able to rig the trap at the apartment complex. The problem is, how could he have known where Big Bill was going to be?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Richard said. “I suppose he could have followed him.”
“No way. People would have started talking if they’d seen Crazy Sandie around town.”
“If they recognized him,” Richard pointed out. “You’d never seen him before.”
“True. I bet most people don’t know what he looks like. Which means that he could even have snuck into the party. He could have found out about that in the Byerly Gazette—even if he doesn’t get the paper, there’s an online version. I think I’d remember him if I’d seen him, but I’m sure there were people I didn’t see.”
“So he stays on the list?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Okay, but if it comes to that, we’re letting Junior arrest him. That guy makes me nervous.”
“You and me both,” I said. “Where to now?”
“What about the desperate divorcée?” Richard said. “Marlyn Roberts.”
“That might be worthwhile
. Miz Duffield says she comes over to the Walters house a lot, which would have given her the opportunity to check on Big Bill’s schedule. And I bet she was at the party, too. Do we have her address?”
“It’s on her letters,” Richard said, “but do you think we should just barge in on her?”
“Probably not.” I frequently use my aunts and cousins to help me find my way into strangers’ houses, but none of them traveled in Mrs. Roberts’s social circle. Fortunately, I knew somebody who did. “Richard, why don’t you get the cell phone out of my pocketbook and call Dorcas? She might be able to set something up for us.”
“Don’t you think using a murder suspect to approach another suspect is, well, suspect?”
“If Dorcas is innocent and really wants to protect Big Bill, she’ll be happy to do it. If she’s guilty, then she’ll be happy to point us in the wrong direction. Either way, we’ll get a chance to talk to Marlyn Roberts.”
Richard called the Walters house and explained the situation to Dorcas. For whichever reason, she was willing to help, and since she was going to a committee meeting at Marlyn’s house the next morning, she suggested that Richard and I meet her there.
By the time that was all arranged, it was too late in the day to go after anybody else. “Should we sneak back to Aunt Maggie’s house?” I asked Richard with a leer.
“Tempting, but we might run into Aunt Maggie. Dorcas said she had gone over there to pick up some things for the white elephant sale.”
“Rats!” I was about ready to head back to Aunt Nora’s to get Alice when I had a thought and made a sudden turn, catching the poor guy in the Taurus behind us by surprise.
“How about a little warning next time?” Richard said, picking up the papers my sudden turn had flipped into the floor.
“Sorry. I was just thinking that we should go visit Junior. She said she’d share information if we would. What we’ve got is fairly useless, but she might have something better.”
Byerly’s station was a far cry from the massive police complex in Boston. The front room held two desks, one for Junior and one for her deputies to share, a photocopier, and the radio equipment. As I knew from previous visits, the room’s closed door led to the two cells and a large storage closet I assumed was used for weapons, evidence, and such.
Junior’s new deputy, Belva, was at her desk, and had just hung up the phone when Richard and I walked in. Though Belva wasn’t the prettiest woman I’d ever seen, I did envy her those soft blond curls.
“Hey there, Deputy Tucker,” I said.
“Mrs. Fleming, Mr. Fleming. What can I do for y’all?”
“We were looking for Junior,” I said. “Is she around?”
“No, she’s taking the afternoon off. Is there anything I can help you with?”
“I’m not sure.” Though Belva and I had disagreed in the past, she was working for Junior now, and it only made sense for me to make nice with her. “I don’t know if Junior told you, but Richard and I are kind of investigating the Big Bill Walters case on our own.”
“She did tell me, and she also said that I was to share information with you, as long as it isn’t too sensitive.”
“Really? Great.”
“The thing is, I’m not supposed to tell you anything until after you tell me what you’ve got.” She chuckled. “The chief sure does have a suspicious mind.”
“That’s why she’s the chief.” I took a seat and, with Richard adding pieces as I forgot them, told Belva what we’d been doing and who we suspected. “It’s not much,” I admitted once I was done.
“It gives us some more backgrounds and alibis to check, so that’s something. The fact is, we don’t have a whole lot, either. Lab reports verify that the isopropanol was in Mr. Walters’s cup, not the champagne bottle, so he was definitely the target. Results on Mrs. Walters’s cup were inconclusive—that housekeeper did too good a job of washing. No useful fingerprints anywhere, and we can’t find the bottle you saw in the kitchen. We questioned purt near everybody at the party, but we still aren’t sure who poured the champagne, and nobody saw anybody doing anything suspicious.”
“With all the people around, I’d have thought somebody would have seen something,” I said.
But Belva said, “Sometimes it works out that the bigger the group is, the less likely anybody is to notice anything. Too much confusion makes details like pouring champagne nigh onto impossible to keep up with.”
“I can see that,” Richard said. “Lately, I don’t seem to notice anything but what Alice is up to.”
Belva went on. “So basically, we’ve got zip from the party. The chief and I checked out the other places where Mr. Walters says he was attacked, but there was nothing we could use. We couldn’t find the bullet from where somebody shot at him, so that lets out ballistics, and any tire tracks that might have been left from when he was nearly run down are long gone. As for the trap at the apartment complex, we talked to everybody who lives in that neighborhood or who had business there, but nobody saw anything useful. The materials used in the trap all came from the site, and they’ve all been moved around since then, anyway.
“We checked out the alibis for the most obvious suspects, Mr. Walters’s son and daughter-in-law, but they’re not in the clear for any of the times we were interested in. Mr. Walters can’t come up with anybody else who might want him harmed, which is why I’m glad to have those other names to check into.”
“I’m glad we could help,” I said, “but I swear it seems like this many intelligent people could come up with something better. At this rate, we may as well wait for whoever it is to try again.”
Belva just shrugged, and I suspected she was thinking the same thing.
“Thanks for your time, Deputy,” I said as I got up, and Richard added, “May I say that it’s much more pleasant to work with you than against you.”
“I hear that. But call me Belva.”
“Gladly. I’m Richard.”
I started to tell her to call me Laura, but figured I might as well bow to the inevitable. “You can call me Laurie Anne.”
“All right. Y’all take care, and I’ll pass on what y’all told me to the chief.”
Since we were all being so friendly, as we started to leave I said, “You know, this is probably none of my business, but Junior really doesn’t like you to call her ‘Chief.’ ”
Belva’s face broke into a wide grin. “I know. I’m just waiting to see how long it’s going to take for her to tell me that herself.”
I grinned back. Belva and Junior were going to get along just fine.
Chapter 14
Since Mrs. Roberts traveled in more elevated circles than Sandie Herron did or, admittedly, than I did myself, the next morning I abandoned my jeans for a nice pair of black slacks and a purple knit top. Richard was wearing his usual khakis, but he had dressed them up with a button-down shirt. Alice was more casual in a pair of green overalls with a polka-dot T-shirt, but since she was spending the day with Aunt Nellie and Uncle Ruben, she was perfectly in style.
The Robertses’ house wasn’t as big as the Walterses’ place, but it looked a lot nicer than any house I ever expected to live in, at least from a distance. As Richard and I walked up the sidewalk, I noticed that the place could have used a coat of paint, and while the lawn had been mowed, it didn’t have the look of having been weeded with a pair of eyebrow tweezers that the neighboring yards had. The two cars in the driveway were high-end Saabs but looked at least a couple of years old. Maybe Richard’s description of Marlyn as a desperate divorcée was more accurate than we’d realized.
There was no counterpart to Miz Duffield, either. Instead, a teenaged girl in jeans, an oversized PowerPuff Girls T-shirt, and clunky clogs answered the door. She had a backpack slung over one shoulder.
“Hi, I’m Laura Fleming and this is my husband, Richard,” I said. “We’re here to help out with the Halloween carnival.”
“My mother’s expecting you,” she said politely, and like an
y other teenager in America would have done, she turned and yelled, “Mom! Some people are here to help with the posters. I’ve got to go—I’m meeting Brittany at the mall!”
She held the door for us to come in. “Mom will be here in a minute.” Then she clomped down the sidewalk and climbed into the more beat-up of the cars in the driveway.
“Tell them I’ll be right there,” said a voice from upstairs, and a minute later, a woman dressed in a perfectly pressed pair of tan slacks and a rose blouse came down. Her hair was a lovely shade of ash blond that matched her daughter’s, but from the lines in her face, I had a hunch that she’d had help keeping it that way.
She smiled graciously when she saw us. “I’m sorry. Did Katelyn just leave y’all standing there?”
“No problem,” Richard said. “She said she had to meet Brittany at the mall.”
The woman rolled her eyes and sighed. “The mall isn’t even open yet, so I don’t know what difference another two minutes would have made.” She held her hand out to me. “I’m Marlyn Roberts. I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Laura Fleming,” I said, taking her hand, and murmured that I was pleased to meet her, though I’d just realized where I’d seen her before. She was the woman who’d called Aunt Maggie a battle-ax at the party. I immediately moved her to the top of my mental list of suspects, just out of spite. Then I introduced Richard. “Dorcas Walters asked us to come—she said y’all were a little short of help. I hope we’re not too early.”
“Oh, the others will be along. Volunteers always come late, or even change their minds about helping at the last minute, but what can we do? It’s not like we can fire them.” She started down the hall. “We’ll be working in the kitchen, so we don’t have to worry about the mess. Come on in and get comfortable.”
We’d just passed the doorway to the living room when the doorbell rang again. “Go on ahead, and I’ll get that,” Marlyn said.
Richard obediently went into the kitchen, but I was feeling nosy and stopped to peek into the living room.
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