No Good Deed

by Lynn Hightower

  Two now.

  No Styrofoam white squares of take-home leftovers – did they ever eat out? Chauncey seemed to have the domestic front well in hand. Maybe he always cooked.

  Sonora set the glass of water on the counter. Opened the cabinet under the sink – child proof latch, each new design an IQ test, but she was an experienced mom, she had it open in no time, like an expert safe-cracker.

  No cleaners under the sink, which was good – there were small children in the house. The trash can was overwhelmed by a black plastic garbage bag, lawn and garden size, that hung down the sides, yellow ties threaded through the top seams for efficient disposal later on. It rested on a sticky plastic mat that would attract ants in the summertime. Sonora put a fingertip on the edge and tipped it forward.

  Coffee grounds, lumped and deposited on a filter that had gone from white to sepia brown. Apple peel, an empty spray bottle that still had a blue film of Windex, and a lone plastic glove, thin, stained reddish black.

  Sonora pulled the trash can out, looked at the glove. Not blood, surely? She rattled the bag, saw the box of Van Hale’s Shampoo-In Hair Color. shades of raven black.

  He had dyed his hair, that morning or the night before.

  She found a plastic evidence bag in her jacket pocket. Put a latex glove on, took the stained plastic glove and the box of hair dye, just for good measure. He had invited them into his home, and agreed she could get him water. She should be okay on this. Best make sure that was really hair dye and nothing else on the glove.

  Her pocket bulged, but Chauncey was not the type to make a challenge. And if he wondered and was nervous, so much the better.

  Sonora put the trash can back under the sink, took the glass of water off the counter. Grabbed a box of Puffs – hefty size – sitting in the kitchen window. Chauncey was crying steadily, she could hear him faintly over the grind of the dishwasher.

  It was going to be a long ride into town.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Inside the familiar corridors of the city morgue, Chauncey seemed to shrink and grow wooden. He walked between Sonora and Sam down the long linoleum corridor that led to the room with a view.

  It was very like a hospital corridor, hollow and impersonal, moderately clean. Not a happy place. There was no comfort to be had from block concrete walls, no matter how recently they had been painted.

  Chauncey surprised her. He had stopped crying when he talked to the children, handling them gently, rocking Kippie in his lap until a friend from work arrived to look after them for the duration. Mary Claire had sat stiffly by his side as he rocked her little sister, and all Sonora could do was look at the little girl and wonder who was going to rock her.

  He had cried quietly all the way into town, but as soon as they’d parked the Taurus and he’d looked out the window, as if to see that yes, indeed, what was happening was real, they were on their way to the morgue, the tears had dried.

  He was quiet now, head tucked down into the wings of his shoulder blades.

  Sonora watched him out of the corner of one eye. He had not asked how Joelle had died. Which could mean that he was in shock, that he was afraid to ask questions, that he was avoiding the knowledge, or that he already knew.

  With this man, any explanation could apply.

  Was he capable of such a brutal murder and disposal? A man who did exactly as he was told, whenever he was told?

  She’d interviewed men who had committed heinous crimes – men who were small, whippet thin and dorky. One of the worst killers she’d tracked had been a petite blonde with tiny soft hands. Sonora could still see her, smiling serenely in the interview room. It was not a vision she encouraged. It reminded her of people she did not want to think about. Not now, when she had to concentrate.

  They passed the ME’s office – Stella’s door was open. Sonora let Sam and Chauncey walk on ahead, and stuck her head in. The woman behind the desk was precision perfect – careful makeup, a tight chignon, crisply ironed hospital fatigues. Sonora had never seen Stella when she was not handling three things at once, but today she sat behind the desk, fingertips pressed into a black cork blotter pad, eyes squinted and dreamy. She had high cheekbones and her skin was a rich and flawless mocha brown.

  ‘Stella?’

  ‘Hello, Sonora. Was that him?’

  They had been on first-name basis for a couple of years now, a major concession from this very correct, meticulous superwoman, who handled job, children, husband and committee work with dedication, attention to detail and very little humor.

  ‘Yes,’ Sonora said.

  Stella Bellair touched her bottom lip. ‘I gave the child a quick preliminary look before Lee got her draped for viewing.’

  Most MEs would have said vic. Victim. Subject.

  Sonora stepped into the office, lowered her voice. ‘I thought she was in a pretty advanced state of rigor for someone who was last seen at three o’clock yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘Yes, but she was buried in a manure pile. I talked to Mickey. That could have accelerated the process.’

  ‘I see.’

  Stella tapped an impossibly white fingernail on the edge of the desk. ‘This girl was how old?’

  ‘Fifteen.’ Probably about a year younger than Stella’s daughter, if Sonora remembered correctly. ‘Stella, do you think she was alive when the killer buried her?’

  Stella shook her head. ‘Way too early for me to comment. How’s the father holding up?’

  Sonora shrugged. That wasn’t what Stella was really asking. The woman wanted to know if he was under suspicion.

  ‘Not well. He’s here now, making the ID.’ Sonora wondered how Stella kept her office so clean. Did she come in after hours and scrub it herself? Or perhaps she just frightened the cleaning crew.

  Stella gave her a steady look. ‘You want me to get blood and hair samples for you? From the dad?’

  Sonora thought for a moment, nodded. ‘Yeah. That would help.’

  Lee Eversley was wearing a thick cable-knit fisherman’s sweater in a color that could be best described as Mercedes white. He was holding a hand up at Sam.

  ‘Give me thirty seconds.’ He glanced back down the hallway, saw Sonora and winked. His face had healed indifferently over the scourge of old acne scars, which gave him a rough, masculine look. He had big shoulders and Sonora always wanted to hug him. She wondered about his love life.

  She heard the door to the viewing room shut, a bolt slide into place, and she waited for the song and dance to begin. The procedure, developed by the age-old process of trial and error, was set in concrete.

  Sam and Dixon Chauncey waited, backs to the wall. The ring of a shower curtain sliding across an aluminum bar made everyone go tense. The curtains framed a rectangular window, six by two, coffin-sized, through which they would be able to see into the refrigerated room where Joelle Chauncey’s mortal remains rested on a thinly padded gurney.

  That there had to be a wall between the victim and his kin was established early by the understandable but evidence-compromising behavior of people who often flung themselves on the body of their loved ones. There were no doctors in sight, in the hope that relatives would feel inhibited about fainting or showing physical signs of distress.

  Sam pinched Chauncey’s elbow and encouraged him to move closer to the window. He nodded at Eversley, who pulled back the edge of the white sheet to show the small, vacant, blue-tinged face.

  Watching Chauncey made Sonora think of old Greek legends where vengeful gods turned men into stone. He grew silent and still in a way she had never seen before.

  ‘Is that Joelle?’ Sam asked softly.

  Chauncey nodded. It was understood by everyone that he would not be able to talk.

  Eversley glanced at Sonora; he was wearing his solemn look. She nodded. He put the sheet carefully back over Joelle’s face, and shut the curtains slowly and quietly.

  ‘Come on, Dixon,’ Sam said, leading him away.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven


  It had take only a hint that ‘he was needed’ for Dixon Chauncey to agree to go back with them to the bullpen.

  He sat in Interview One, hands between his knees. Sonora studied him across the chipped brown Formica table. There was no indication, from his expression, attitude or body language, that they were intruding when he needed time to grieve, that they were asking too much of a man who had just identified his daughter at the morgue. Nor was there any indication of the crusader, the burning rage of the newly bereaved, robbed of someone they love by deliberate hands, ready to put grief on hold till they exercise their anger on the responsible parties.

  Sonora reminded herself that it was unfair to harbor stereotypical expectations.

  Chauncey could be in shock, or, more likely, denial. He could be a difficult man to read. She remembered herself at her mother’s funeral, making arrangements, making jokes, grief like a storm at sea – you know it is coming and you do everything you can to prepare before it hits. But until it does hit, numb is a nice place to be.

  Sam set a can of Mountain Dew in front of Chauncey, sat next to him, on the left, took off his jacket and hung it over the back of the chair. Sonora turned on the recorder, stated the date, place and time. Chauncey had a straw in his Mountain Dew. Where had Sam come up with a straw? It was the kind with crinkles in the top, like they have in hospitals, so it made a little crook for easy sipping.

  And while Sonora murmured into the recorder, Chauncey pulled the drink forward and sucked on the straw in a way that made her give him a second look. He was like a hungry baby taking a bottle.

  She moved her chair a little further away.

  ‘Let’s start with yesterday.’ Sonora leaned forward, elbows on the desk. ‘Do you get the kids off to school, or do they get up on their own?’ She thought of her own morning routine, a weird mix of both. Her intention was always to get up earlier than the kids, but the older they got, the less successful she was.

  Chauncey met Sonora’s eyes, then looked away. ‘I, uh, I get up early. Around six. Get them cereal and juice and pack lunch for all of us.’

  ‘Anything unusual about your routine yesterday morning?’

  ‘No.’

  Silence settled. Chauncey sucked at the straw.

  ‘So you got them breakfast …’ Sam prompted.

  ‘Joelle gets up first, then the little ones, Mary Claire and Kippie. Mary Claire helps Kippie get ready. Joelle’s kind of slow. She won’t eat breakfast any more, either, but I set her out a cereal bowl just in case. She worries … she was always worrying about her weight.’

  The child wrapped in the blanket had seemed so small. But Sonora did not take issue. Even Heather, in the third grade and underweight for her height, was weirdly concerned with her thighs. Rare was the teenage girl who did not weigh in and worry.

  Sonora glanced at Sam. He shrugged. Chauncey was not bubbling over with information. Maybe a tactical change?

  ‘Mr Chauncey …’ Sonora licked her bottom lip. ‘Was Joelle dating yet?’

  He was drinking when she asked, sucking that straw. He swallowed in a panic, choking a little, like people do when they’re out to dinner and the waiter asks them if they need something when their mouths are full.

  Chauncey shook his head. ‘No, ma’am, not that I know of.’

  ‘Would you know?’ Sonora had a teenager. She knew there was a lot of stuff you might not know.

  Chauncey leaned close. ‘I keep good track of my girls. As much as I can. I try not to work overtime or double shifts so I can head right home. But I am a single dad. It’s kind of hard.’

  His eyes were flinty, like hard little buttons. He did not look away, as Sonora expected, but returned her gaze as if he were hungry for the contact. She watched him, thinking that this was what a martyr looked like, in the actual flesh.

  ‘I think she liked one of the boys at school, but she wouldn’t ever talk to me about those things.’

  ‘Were boys calling the house?’

  ‘Oh, no, ma’am.’ He took an unopened packet of Wrigley’s spearmint gum out of his left front pocket. He was wearing a maroon-and-green plaid shirt, and it looked new, the cotton-polyester blend stiff and uncomfortable.

  ‘Gum?’ he asked.

  Sonora looked at Sam. She shook her head, and Sam took a piece. Southern graciousness, she thought.

  Sam tapped a finger on the edge of the desk. Chauncey swiveled his head in the direction of the small and irritating noise.

  ‘Mr Chauncey, what’s going on out there at Donna Delaney’s farm?’

  Chauncey frowned. ‘Funny business. That’s what you mean?’

  ‘That’s what I mean.’ Sam kept up the rhythm with the finger.

  ‘Sometimes … there are people out there that … How should I put this? I don’t like the looks of ’em.’ He leaned close. Ready to confide. ‘Ms Delaney does a lot of business she doesn’t explain about. Horses come and go without warning. Sometimes she says she’s bought them, but how could that be, if she doesn’t even pay her bills?’

  ‘How do you know she doesn’t pay her bills?’ This from Sonora.

  ‘They’re always cutting off the water or the electricity and she has to go down and make a deposit to get them to turn things back on. I myself would be embarrassed.’ He retreated to the back of his chair. ‘That’s only me, of course. I shouldn’t judge.’

  He’d actually dared to give an opinion, Sonora thought. Followed by immediate retreat and discomfort.

  Sam leaned back in his chair. ‘Who’s she do business with? You know any names?’

  Chauncey looked at his feet. Looked sideways. ‘I know she does some kind of business with those people out at Bisky Farms.’

  Sonora watched him. He had all the mannerisms of a man who is about to lie, but the business dealings with Bisky Farms had been suspected and confirmed by Hal McCarty. So Chauncey was telling the truth.

  ‘What do you know about Bisky Farms?’ she asked.

  ‘Who, me? I’m a line worker at Procter & Gamble. These folks are too high up for a guy like me.’ He shifted sideways in his chair. ‘’Course now, some of these types they hire to do the barn work, they look like rough types to me. Not that they’ve ever bothered me personally, I’ve just seen them out there. If I was Donna, you know, if it was my farm, and all those kids out there, I wouldn’t let people like that come around.’ He curled his fingertips on the edge of the table, leaned forward, shoulders hunched together.

  ‘Did any of “those people” bother you, Dixon? Come to your door? Talk to Joelle, maybe?’

  Chauncey pressed his fingers deeper into the table, as if to bury them in wood. ‘No, never. We’re far enough from the barn, we don’t get bothered that way.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Pretty sure. I can’t be there every minute. A man’s got to earn a living. But I don’t know of anything. Not for sure.’

  He looked down again, then off to the side. Sonora couldn’t figure him out. Was there something he was afraid to talk about?

  She remembered the envelope, full of the faces of missing children. What or who was Joelle looking for? Herself?

  ‘I noticed that she had an interest in missing children, kidnapping, children finding their birth mother.’

  Chauncey blinked. Stared at her. Made no comment.

  Sonora looked down at her nails. ‘Didn’t she ever discuss this with you, Mr Chauncey? Was Joelle afraid of being kidnapped?’

  ‘Not that I know of. She never said anything about it that I heard.’

  ‘Where’s Joelle’s mother?’

  He looked up, mouth sagging. ‘Her mama? She’s not around. I mean, she died. She had cancer, breast cancer, when Joelle was just a toddler.’

  ‘So the other children—’

  ‘She made it through the first bout, but she was sick a lot. Chemo. We almost went under with the medical bills. She got a lot better, even went back to work. Then Mary Claire came along, and a couple years later Kippie. It came back, the cancer did,
when Kippie was a baby. It took her real fast then.’ His eyes turned red and watery, like he was grieving or smoking pot. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without my girls, my three musketeers.’

  It was not clear that it had dawned on him that the musketeers were now two.

  ‘How well do you know Donna Delaney?’ Sam asked.

  Chauncey wiped his eyes with a thick knuckle. ‘I guess pretty well, you know how you do. I’ve lived next door to the woman, her barn anyway, for a couple of years now. I’d say we’re pretty close. Not real close, but tight, you know. We see each other every day, so I’d guess that we know each other pretty well.’

  ‘You’re friends, then?’

  ‘Sure, we’re friends. Donna doesn’t talk to me a whole lot, but she’s not all that talkative anyway. She lets my kids ride the horses. Joelle, anyway. Mary Claire’s just nine, and Kippie is only seven. You can see how she’d have a problem with the little ones under her feet.’

  ‘I’m a little unclear about your arrangements with Donna. Do you work for her, or pay her rent, or how does that go?’ Sonora glanced at the recorder. Plenty of tape.

  Chauncey scrubbed his knees with his fists. ‘She likes having somebody out there, living out there. It’s just better for the horses. So I only pay her a little bit of rent. I pay my own utilities, of course, that would only be fair. And what I do in return is I get up early and do the stalls before I go on shift at P&G. Help out if she’s got a fence board down, a loose post or something. You know horses, they chew the wood or even kick.’

  Sam nodded, man to man. ‘Keeping that fence from falling down’s about a full-time job in itself.’

  Chauncey laughed, too hard, sounding forced, with something very like gratitude.

  Sonora folded her arms. ‘Mr Chauncey, do you have any personal theories about what happened to your daughter?’

  The smile faded. That it had ever been there surprised Sonora a little. But not a lot. Grief took time to absorb. Sometimes the mind and body resist. She had seen months pass before the enormity of a loss hit home. Had it happen to her in exactly the same way.