“That’s one thing.” Before I could tell him what else I wanted to ask about, the door opened and Burt came in.
He stopped when he saw Alice in her carrier, and whispered, “Is she asleep?”
“Soundly,” I said in a normal voice. “Don’t worry—it takes a lot to wake her up.”
“Okay,” he said, still whispering, and tiptoed toward us, stopping just for a second to smile at the sleeping baby. Then he took the chair we’d left for him.
“Michelle tells me you’ve been visiting the employees,” he said tentatively.
“We saw Mike Cooper, if that’s what you were wondering.”
He sighed. “I should have known that I couldn’t keep him away from you forever.”
“Yes, you should have,” I said bluntly. “As small as Byerly is, we were bound to see him sooner or later.”
“Later would have been fine,” he said with a tiny grin. “Are you going to tell Daddy?”
“Of course not. We promised not to. Michael—Mike being here doesn’t change that.”
He exhaled deeply. “That’s a relief. Daddy doesn’t need any more shocks, not with what’s going on right now.”
“You are planning to tell him someday, aren’t you?” I asked.
“I don’t know, Laurie Anne, I just can’t decide.”
“Why did you bring Mike here if you didn’t want Big Bill to know?”
“I didn’t plan to bring him here,” he said plaintively. “I ran into him by accident.”
“I thought he was in school in Raleigh.”
“He was, but he graduated and got a good job in the Research Triangle. Then he got downsized a few months back—you must know high-tech’s been hit pretty hard. I didn’t know about any of that beforehand, mind you. I was just looking for a new manager trainee and went to meet with folks at the NC State placement office. They’d set up some appointments for me to meet with graduates and alumni, but it never occurred to me that one of the candidates would be Mike.”
“Had you seen him before?” I asked.
“Only from a distance, but I knew it was him right away. Once I got over the shock of seeing him again, I was glad for the opportunity to talk. It turned out he really was qualified for the job—shoot, he’ll be ready to replace me in a few years. I just had to hire him.” At my quizzical look, he added, “I couldn’t leave my own nephew to walk the streets, could I?”
“I seem to recall that he’s got family to help him out,” I said.
“I’m his family,” Burt said.
“Does Michael know that?”
When Richard and I had met Michael before, he’d had no idea he was a Walters. In fact, he didn’t even know that the Walters family existed. Michael’s father started calling himself Leonard Cooper long before Michael was born, but the name everybody in Byerly had known him by was Small Bill Walters—Big Bill’s older son, and Burt’s big brother.
I’d never known the man as Small Bill or Leonard, but I could understand why he hadn’t been happy in Byerly. As the elder brother, he’d been destined to step into his father’s footsteps, or at least to follow along after them. But Small Bill hadn’t wanted to spend the rest of his life with his father’s portrait watching over him, and during a tour in Vietnam, he’d gotten his chance to escape.
His best buddy, the real Leonard Cooper, was killed, and Small Bill had switched dog tags with him. Leonard was shipped back to Byerly in a sealed coffin and buried as Small Bill, while Small Bill moved to Tennessee to become Leonard Cooper. Eventually he got married and had a son. Michael Cooper, who was calling himself Mike, was that son.
Many years later, Small Bill had come back to Byerly because of one of the secrets I hadn’t been able to tell Michelle about, and he’d been murdered. With a shiver, I remembered that he’d died in the very room where I was sitting, and I had an irrational urge to snatch up Alice and get her out of there.
Though Richard and I had figured out who killed Small Bill, the killer had committed suicide before being arrested. So Junior had officially closed the case, even though she knew that there were secrets left untold, including Leonard Cooper’s real identity and the existence of Mike.
Burt had known but couldn’t stand the idea of his father finding out that his favorite son had pretended to be dead rather than come home. For reasons dealing with secrets in my own family, Richard and I had promised to keep Burt’s secrets.
“Does Mike know?” I asked again. “About his father, I mean.”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. I haven’t told him—how else would he find out?”
“He does know his father died in Byerly, right? Wasn’t he suspicious when you brought him to work here? Didn’t he have questions?”
“I told him what I thought Small Bill would want him to know. That his daddy came back here to settle a debt of honor from Vietnam, and that he was killed for it. Which is the truth, after all.”
“He was satisfied with that?”
Burt shrugged. “He seemed to be.”
“Really? Personally, I’d want to know a whole lot more details if my father had been murdered.”
“Most people aren’t as nos—as inquisitive as you are, Laurie Anne.”
I heard Richard stifle a chuckle, but ignored him. “Hasn’t anybody noticed how much Mike looks like a Walters? His chin alone is a dead giveaway.”
“Not everybody is as observant as you are, either,” Burt said. “And I’ve kept Mike away from Daddy so far.”
“How long can you keep that up? You’re sitting on a powder keg here.”
“I know, I know,” he said with a sigh. “I should never have let it happen, but when I met Mike… I’d missed him growing up already; I didn’t want to miss the rest of his life. Maybe it’s because I never had any children of my own, but I couldn’t stand to lose a chance to get to know my nephew.” He glanced over at Alice, snoring softly in her carrier. “Surely you can understand why.”
There was nothing I could say to argue with that. “I have one question. Was Mike at the party?”
“He was invited, but I told him it was going to be a bunch of boring old folks and that he’d have a better time somewhere else.”
“You’d better hope that Aunt Maggie never hears you say that,” Richard warned.
“I’m not that reckless,” Burt said. “Anyway, I didn’t see him there, so he must have believed me. Why?”
“Just curious,” I said, which was only partially true. To change the subject, I said, “By the way, do you know what folks are saying about you and Mike?”
“No. Why?”
When I told him, his reply promptly woke Alice up, and Aunt Maggie would have been mighty peeved if she’d heard the words he used in front of that baby.
Chapter 21
As soon as we got back in the car, Richard said, “At least we can write off the idea of Burt trying to kill Big Bill to hide his homosexuality. Unless he’s a better actor than Kenneth Branagh, he had no idea what people thought about his relationship with Mike.”
“True, but we have to add him back to the list in case he wanted to kill Big Bill to secure Mike’s inheritance. Burt’s out of the will now, anyway, but before, he was the main heir. If Big Bill had found out about Mike and realized that Burt knew about him all along, there’s no telling what he would have done. He might have rewritten his will to make sure neither of them got any of the money.”
“Would Burt kill for money?”
“Maybe not for money, but for his surrogate son’s future? You’re a daddy—what would you do for Alice?”
He considered it. “If she were starving, I might kill to feed her, but Mike isn’t anywhere close to that.”
“I don’t think it’s a strong possibility,” I said, “but I’ve got another angle, which is much ickier. What if Mike does know who he is?”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that if he knows he’s a Walters, then he probably r
ealizes that he’ll be Burt’s heir. Maybe he wanted to get rid of Big Bill before Big Bill could rewrite the will. Or maybe he just wanted Burt to get the money sooner, so he could get to it himself.”
“How could he have found out?”
“Small Bill could have left a journal, or something in his things for Mike to find. For all we know, Mike arranged to ‘accidentally’ run into Burt. I’ll lay odds Burt didn’t check into his references the way he would have for anybody else.”
“But Burt said Mike wasn’t at the party, so he couldn’t have poisoned the champagne.”
“Burt says he didn’t see Mike there. It was an awfully big party; if somebody had been trying to stay in the background, it wouldn’t have been too hard.”
“Would Mike kill his own grandfather?”
“He barely knows Big Bill. Maybe he’s a grandfather by blood, but I don’t know that that’s enough to stop somebody who’s willing to kill in the first place.”
“I suppose not.”
“Anyway, he’s worth checking out, and I’m sure Junior would be happy to have another name to investigate.”
“What are we going to tell her about Mike’s motive?”
“Let her think he and Burt are lovers, like everybody else. If Junior’s okay with Belva and Wynette, the idea of Burt being gay won’t freak her out.”
For once, Junior was in the office with Belva, though Junior was on the phone and waved us over toward her deputy.
“Hey there, Laurie Anne, Richard,” Belva said. “This must be Alice—I didn’t get a chance to see her the other other night.” She reached for her. “May I?”
“Sure,” Richard said, and handed her over.
“I figure I need the practice,” she said with a cute smile.
“I don’t know,” I said, “it looks like you’ve already had practice.” Though I would have thought a baby in Belva’s arms would look incongruous, especially when she was wearing her uniform, she did look pretty comfortable. Though she was going to have to quit wearing that gun all the time.
Belva said, “My, uh—Wynette told me you and your husband stopped by yesterday.”
“Yes, we did,” I said sheepishly. “You remember we told you that we’d been tracking down people who wrote threatening letters to Big Bill Walters? Well, Wynette’s late aunt sent a couple. We wouldn’t have bothered checking them out if we’d known about you two.”
“That’s all right. I understand you’ve got to go where the trail leads; it’s one of the things a cop learns.”
“Good,” I said, relieved.
“It’s just that—not everybody knows…”
“About y’all being together?”
She nodded. “It’s not that I’m ashamed of it or anything, but…”
“I understand. Folks had a hard time accepting Richard at first, too. Him being a Yankee and all.”
Belva chuckled. “Yeah, at least Wynette is a Southerner.”
“So, are you looking forward to being a mama?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, it’s just that babies are a lot of work, aren’t they?” she said, concerned again. “Wynette is going to be staying home with her—we know she’s having a girl—but I’m still worried about how we’re going to handle it. Me working crazy hours, and all.”
“I wish I could tell you it’s going to be easy,” I said with a sigh, “but it is hard to get everything done. Heck, some days it’s hard to get anything done. People swear to me that it gets better, but I don’t know if I believe them or not.” I stopped; I wasn’t helping Belva a bit. “Fortunately, it’s worth it. The first time you hold those little hands…” I realized I was echoing something Aunt Nora had said at my baby shower. It had irritated me when Aunt Nora said it, but darned if she hadn’t been right on the money. “Having Alice around has been so much fun, Belva. You’ll see. Forget about the housework and laundry and all that junk—just enjoy that baby.”
She looked a little more cheerful.
“Have you two picked out names?” Richard asked.
“We’ve narrowed it down to four: Charlaine, Aurora, Lily, and Sookie.”
“An interesting range of choices,” he said diplomatically.
“Family names,” Belva said, and Richard and I nodded in understanding. Both Southerners and New Englanders are frequently afflicted with family names.
We talked about vaccinations and disposable diapers until Junior got off the phone and announced, “I don’t want to hear one word about potty training—I’ve been through it with my sisters’ kids, and that’s enough for anybody.”
“Don’t worry, Chief, Alice is too young for potty training,” Belva said.
“Not according to my aunts,” I said glumly. “Aunt Ruby Lee said she had Clifford trained by the time he was—”
Junior cleared her throat loudly. “I just said that we aren’t having this discussion, Laurie Anne.”
“Sorry. I get carried away.”
“So what do y’all have for me?” Junior said.
“I was going to ask you the same question.”
She looked disgusted. “All I’ve got is a big helping of nothing. Only a couple of people have enough of an alibi to help us.”
“We can’t eliminate anybody?” I said.
“Just a couple.” She pulled out a pad covered with notes. “Now, leaving out the party, because everybody and his kid brother were there, we’ve got three events to track. The attempted shooting, the attempted hit-and-run, and the attempted electrocution. Are you following?”
We all nodded, except Alice, who cooed.
“Our first suspect is Burt Walters. He was home the nights of the shooting and the hit-and-run, but nobody can verify he was there the whole time, because Dorcas was at committee meetings both nights. He was out of town on business the day of the electrocution, but since that was set up ahead of time, that’s no help.
“Next is Dorcas Walters. She was at the aforementioned committee meetings, but the timing is loose enough that she could have skipped out, and she was in town during the electrocution.”
“What if the two of them were in it together?” I asked.
Junior made a face. “I thought of that. If they were in it together, I don’t know that I’ll ever catch them.”
It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but I don’t imagine she liked saying it, either.
“Then we’ve got Irene Duffield. Off duty the two nights in question, and could easily have gotten away to set up the electrocution. Maggie Burnette Walters—”
“Hey!” I said indignantly.
“Everybody involved is a suspect until proven otherwise,” Junior said.
“You talked to Wynette,” Belva reminded me.
“They’re right,” Richard said, and I reluctantly nodded.
“Fortunately for our working relationship,” Junior said, “the new Mrs. Walters has a good alibi. She was with a man named Red Clark at the very moment when somebody tried to run down Big Bill. So she’s in the clear.”
“Glad to hear it,” I said stiffly.
Junior grinned. “Come on, Laurie Anne. You know I never thought it was her, but I’ve got to cover all the bases. Speaking of bases, we’ve got your friend Troy Wilson, a.k.a. Pudd’nhead. He’s got no criminal record to speak of, unless you want to count a drunk-and-disorderly from thirty years ago. He didn’t check into the Holiday Inn in Hickory until after the first three attempts, so he looks clean.”
“What if he was staying at a different hotel before then?” I asked.
“We thought of that,” Junior said, “so poor Belva called every hotel in the area to check, using the name and the description, but nobody remembered him. I’m keeping him as a long shot, mostly because of the way he was following you two around.”
“He’s stopped that,” I said, “at least, as far as we can tell.”
“Then we’ve got your threatening letters,” Junior said. “Sandie Herron.” She shook her head. “Not the first hint of an alibi, and he wouldn’t talk to
me or Belva. He’s a strange one, but even though he had some wild times when he was younger, he’s been pretty quiet for a long time. Another long shot.
“Marlyn Roberts is the only other person I’ve eliminated with any degree of certainty. She was working at a fund-raiser at the high school the night of the hit-and-run.”
“Those things can be awfully disorganized,” I objected. “How can anybody be sure she didn’t sneak out.”
“Because the fund-raiser was a fashion show, and Marlyn was the announcer.”
“Good enough,” I said, glad to be able to cross somebody off our list.
“Last but not least,” Junior said, “we’ve got Belva here.”
I’d been kind of wondering about Belva’s alibi myself, but hadn’t thought it would be polite to say so, especially not when she was holding my baby.
“The hell you say!” Belva said, but lowered her voice when Alice whimpered. “Why am I a suspect?”
“Because Big Bill almost prevented you from being hired, and is still making me keep you on probation,” Junior said matter-of-factly. “No offense, Belva, but after what happened with my old deputy, I’m not taking anything for granted.”
“I guess I can understand that,” Belva said.
“Fortunately for my piece of mind, you’ve got solid alibis for two of the attempts. On the night of the shooting, you and Wynette were eating dinner with Wynette’s sister. Not only does the sister vouch for you, but her neighbor saw you, too. The night of the hit-and-run, you were working security for that fashion show at the high school, and Marlyn Roberts would surely have squawked if you’d left early.”
“So I’m in the clear, right, Chief?”
“That’s right.” Junior turned to Richard and me. “Can you add anything useful?”
“I wish I could,” I said, “but all I’ve got is another possibility.”
“Who?”
“Mike Cooper.”
“Burt’s new employee?” Junior said. “Does this mean that you’ve confirmed that he and Burt are an item?”
“Not necessarily,” I said, “but there might be more to him than meets the eye.” I was going to leave it at that, but I should have known better.
Toni L.P. Kelner - Laura Fleming 08 - Wed and Buried Page 17