“Interesting,” Dwight said, “but—”
“Pat Hawkins thinks he might kill to keep that reputation, and he doesn’t have an alibi.”
Dwight shook his head. “Except that he does.”
“What?”
“The nurse that came up to him on the landing? Ray talked to her late this afternoon. She’s back from Iowa and she’s quite sure that he was with a patient during the relevant time. She even gave Ray the names of the patient’s parents and it all checks out. Sorry, shug.”
I felt like a balloon with all the air let out. “So Richard Howell gets to keep his untarnished reputation?”
“That’s up to you and Pat,” Dwight said. “I know how you feel about hypocrites and people who think they’re entitled to take what they want, and I’m sure if you told Amy, it would be around the hospital in ten seconds flat.”
“It would, wouldn’t it?” I said, momentarily tempted.
Hey, I can be as petty and mean-spirited as anybody else. I’ve never put myself up for sainthood like Howell has. Besides, it would give some long-overdue justice to Jannie Mayer and her two little girls.
Or would it?
Right now, they are innocent victims of fate in the eyes of all who know the public story. Telling the private story would turn them into victims of greed. Still innocent, but somehow diminished. Weigh that against all the good Howell had done to make up for his youthful selfishness. I’d be a hypocrite myself if I tried to deny that good. The pediatric wing, the burn unit, all the health workers that continue to be educated? Their names are in bronze and they are not forgotten. So if Richard Howell wants to pat himself on the back for all he’s done, if he wants to be remembered as a generous philanthropist, so what?
I sighed and Dwight smiled. He knows me well enough to know that my sigh meant I was going to keep my mouth shut about what I knew. Pat Hawkins would never go public either. While it could be argued that technically she had not breached her father’s attorney-client privilege for me, it still wasn’t something she would want known.
Cal finished his swim, wrapped himself in a towel, and came inside with us to sit cross-legged atop a wooden picnic table and play Angry Birds on Dwight’s cell phone.
“So who does that leave?” I asked.
“We’re still cross-checking alibis,” he said. “There are several left with opportunity, but we’ve run out of motives. Obvious motives, anyhow. We still haven’t verified the Reverend Snaveley’s alibi, for instance, and there are three or four others.”
We batted it around for a few more minutes as he drained his beer glass and I finished my soft drink.
“Any homework, honey?” I asked Cal, whose summer vacation wouldn’t start for another two weeks.
“Just a little,” he said, intent on the small screen in his hands.
“Better go take a shower and get on it,” I said.
“In a minute. I just have to get one more—”
Dwight waited two beats, then held out his hand for the phone. “Minute’s up, buddy.”
“Awww, man!” Reluctantly, he handed it over and let the screen door slam behind him a little harder than he needed as he trudged up the slope to the house and homework.
I smiled at Dwight. “Awww, man, you spoil everybody’s fun.”
“I reckon you both’ll get over it,” he said.
Cal came to the back door as we neared the house. “Aunt Zell’s on the phone, Mom. She wants to talk to you.”
“I hate to ask you, honey,” Aunt Zell said, “but my ox is in the ditch. Ash has gone fishing down at the coast and tonight’s the last visitation for one of my UDC friends over in Widdington. You know what my night vision’s like these days. I’ll be so glad when these cataracts are ripe enough to harvest. Portland was going to drive me, but Carolyn had her DPT shot yesterday and she’s running a little fever so—”
“Of course I’ll take you,” I said. “I’ll be over as soon as I can change.”
Which is how I wound up in a Widdington funeral home that night, looking down into the casket of a sweet-faced old woman and offering condolences to her children and grandchildren, none of whom I’d ever met before. A Confederate flag stood with the state and national flags and yes, it has negative connotations to most people.
Aunt Zell recognizes that. “All my life it’s distressed me that the KKK used it for hate and bigotry,” she said as we drove back to Dobbs that night. “But my great-grandfather and two of his brothers fought and died under that flag even though they never owned a single slave. South Carolina dragged us into that awful war, and we lost more than twice as many men as any other state, four times more than South Carolina. How can I not honor them?”
I patted her hand, remembering how the memorial service at the courthouse last Monday included our Confederate dead along with the casualties from all the other wars.
Aunt Zell sighed as the memory of one old UDC member called up the memory of another. “Tell me about Olive Jones’s daughter, Deborah. Such a shame about her silver tea service.”
I swore her to secrecy and she listened with amusement when she heard how Sally and Will had managed to get back most of the money Rusty Alexander had cheated Frances Jones out of. “Will she be able to keep the house?”
“I’m afraid not. She’s about decided that’s not a bad thing, though. The house needs so much work and the neighborhood’s gone down a lot in the last few years. She’s moved in with her niece. They seem very fond of each other. It’s just too bad that they couldn’t find her mother’s jewelry.”
“Jewelry?”
“She told us that her mother owned some very expensive pieces from Tiffany.”
“Oh, she did,” said Aunt Zell. “I’ve never quite understood why someone would spend that much money on things that really aren’t appropriate for daily wear, but I must admit they were quite lovely. Her engagement ring! A huge square diamond surrounded by more diamonds almost as big as the one in the engagement ring Ash gave me. And there was a necklace. Pearls and emeralds and more diamonds. She wore that to the banquet the year she was state president of the UDC, but my stars! What that necklace must have cost! I suppose Carlton sold it after she died?”
“Not according to their daughter. In fact, she says he hid the necklace and the ring and at least one pair of very valuable earrings somewhere in the house. Sally and some friends helped them search the place right down to the floorboards before Frances had to turn the keys over to the bank, but they never found the jewelry.”
By now we were approaching Dobbs in full darkness and Aunt Zell said, “Did they know about the secret hiding place in the mantelpiece?”
“It was empty.”
“What about the one behind it?”
“Behind what?” I asked as we turned into her street.
“It was a double secret,” she said. “Olive showed it to me after one of our meetings. I had told her about Ash’s grandmother’s desk. You’ve seen it. Remember? Even after you open the secret cubbyhole, there’s another space behind that. She swore me to secrecy because Carlton didn’t want anyone to know, but surely their daughter knew?”
“I don’t think so, Aunt Zell. Do you remember how it worked?”
“Oh yes. You press one of the rosettes to open the first one, then you have to reach inside and press two other places at the same time and another little door swings up. Carlton’s father hid gold coins in it when President Roosevelt took us off the gold standard and made it illegal to own them unless they were rare and worth more to collectors than face value. Carlton still had two or three of them when Olive showed me that secret compartment.”
Sitting in Aunt Zell’s driveway, I said, “Feel like a little breaking and entering?”
“Oh, Deborah, I don’t think we should do that. Can’t we call the bank tomorrow and ask Roger Junior to let us into the house?”
Roger Junior, the son of one of the bank’s founders, is in his sixties and, as I recalled, a by-the-book businessman.
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br /> “What if he says no? What if he decides that everything still in the house now belongs to the bank? What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Besides, we can be in and out in five minutes if you can remember how to open that compartment.”
“Can’t I just tell you how it works?”
“Sure,” I said. “And then when I can’t get it open, we’ll just forget about it and Frances Jones can go on welfare.”
To my surprise, she giggled. “You sounded just like Sue, then. She could always manipulate me into doing things against my better judgment. You have to promise not to ever tell Ash.”
“Only if you promise never to tell Dwight.”
“And you also have to promise not to scratch up Ash’s crowbar. You know how he is about his tools.”
“Crowbar?”
“Well how else are we going to get in? I’m too old to crawl through a window and you’re not dressed for it either,” she said tartly.
“Credit card,” I said blithely. “They do it all the time on TV.”
“I’ll get the crowbar,” she said. “Wait here.”
The Jones house was located on a side street that had seen better days. Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be much traffic and we saw no one out on the sidewalks. All the same, I parked around the next corner. No point in advertising our presence. The lawns were deep, but one was strewn with large plastic play sets, another had a car up on cement blocks, while a third looked as if no one had cut the grass or pruned the shrubs in years. I took a small flashlight from the glove compartment as we got out of the car and Aunt Zell slid the crowbar up the sleeve of her jacket and let the curved part rest in her hand.
“Have you done this before?” I asked.
“With your mother,” she murmured.
She led me to a large two-story buff-colored brick house with hipped roof dormers in the attic and a simple portico floored with flagstones. Like the surrounding houses, it was set back from the street amid oaks and magnolias. The front entrance was a pair of French doors that did not yield to my credit card and we decided that if we were going to use the crowbar, perhaps we should pick a side entrance where bushes would screen us from the street.
“I don’t understand it,” I said ten minutes later. “It looks so easy on television. The guy slides his credit card down the door frame and he’s in like Flynn.”
“Hey, Judge!” said a voice behind us.
Aunt Zell and I both jumped. I turned to see in the shadows a black teenager smiling at me in happy friendliness.
“Marcus?” I said. “Marcus Williams?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
This man-child had stood in front of me more than once in the last two years. Light-fingered and the bane of convenience stores, but unfailingly polite and with an inner core of sweetness that always melted my heart. He reminded me so much of some of my nephews that I could never throw the book at him. Besides, he always promised that he was going to stop doing whatever it was that had brought him into my court that day, and so far it was never the exact same infraction.
“Can I help y’all?” he asked now.
“We need to get inside,” I said, “and I forgot to get a key.”
“I thought the bank owned this house now.”
“They do.”
“And they said it was okay for you to go in?”
“I’m a judge, Marcus. Do you really think—?”
He held up his hands in protest. “Hey, I’m just asking.”
“What are you doing here anyhow?”
“I live here. You parked your car in front of my house and I sorta like to know what goes on around here. I’ve got two little sisters.”
I suddenly remembered that he’d shoplifted a couple of preteen dresses from the local Walmart.
“So you want me to do that for you?”
He took my credit card and after a few deft movements, the knob turned in his hand and the door opened. I could have hugged him.
“I’ll keep a watch out for y’all,” he said.
Before I could tell him not to bother and send him on his way, Aunt Zell said, “Thank you, Marcus. That’s very kind of you.”
“They turned the lights off day before yesterday, but I guess the bank told you that.”
I gave him a sharp look. “Have you been in this house before?”
“Well, sure, Judge. Miss Jones used to watch my sisters. Their school lets out about an hour before mine does.”
“No, I mean since Miss Jones left.”
“Well…I might’ve walked through. Just to see if they forgot anything,” he said sheepishly.
It took Aunt Zell a few minutes to orient herself. “Everything’s so different without furniture.”
I gave her the flashlight and she set it shining around the walls and windows. I immediately grabbed it back. “Not the windows, Aunt Zell!”
“Oops!” she said. “I wasn’t thinking. This was the dining room, I believe, and across the hall should be the living room.”
It was. She went straight to the fireplace and pressed one of the carved rosettes in the surround. Immediately, I heard a click and a little door popped open. She shined the light into the cavity. “Empty. Now as best I recall…”
She put her hand inside and a moment later exclaimed, “Oh, my stars! There is something here. Hold the light, honey.”
While I watched, she pulled out several small velvet pouches.
“You take a look, Deborah. Make sure I didn’t miss anything.”
Even shining the light directly into that second cavity, I couldn’t see anything else.
“Psssst!” Marcus was signaling us from the hallway. “Hey, Judge! A police car just pulled up out front!”
“Oh dear,” said Aunt Zell and rushed toward the side door. “Hurry, Deborah!”
I gave one final sweep with my hand and my fingers closed around two small heavy objects. I quickly shut both little openings and followed Aunt Zell and Marcus into the dining room just as a strong flashlight beam at those French doors lit up the hall from the portico. Another half second and I’d have been caught in that light.
“Hurry, hurry!” Marcus urged. He shoved me through the side door and locked it behind him before pushing us past the overgrown shrubbery into the next yard and on into the yard after that. Somewhere a dog barked and I heard the crackle of the cruiser’s radio.
“Bet it was old man Walker called them on us,” Marcus said when he felt it was safe to talk. “He’s scared of his own shadow.”
Two minutes later, we cut through his backyard and out to my car.
“Thank you, Marcus,” I said. “That could have been awkward.”
He grinned. “And you a judge? With permission to be there?”
“Oh dear!” said Aunt Zell. “Ash’s crowbar! I left it inside.”
“I’ll buy you another one,” I told her.
“But he’ll know!” she protested. “It’ll be the wrong size or a different brand.”
“Well, if you really want me to go back and get it,” I said.
Marcus was laughing so hard even Aunt Zell saw the humor.
“No, no,” she said. “I’ll just pretend I don’t have a clue. Maybe he’ll think he misplaced it himself.”
We were halfway back to her house and she had just said for the second time what a nice young man Marcus was when it finally struck me. “Oh, shit!”
“Deborah?”
“Sorry, Aunt Zell. I just remembered that Marcus didn’t give me back my credit card.”
“Never mind, dear. Wait until tomorrow to cancel it and I’ll take care of any charges he puts on it. A workman is worthy of his hire, don’t you think?”
Next day, I tapped at Aunt Zell’s kitchen door about five minutes after I recessed at noon. She had called Sally and invited her and the current Designated Daughters to come for lunch and I wanted to be there for the presentation. Unfortunately, Marillyn Mulholland’s mother-in-law had taken a turn for the worse and she was unable to attend, but
the others arrived on schedule. I helped Aunt Zell serve lunch in the garden, which was wheelchair-accessible, something the house itself wasn’t.
“So far, the stairs and steps aren’t a problem,” she said, “but Ash and I will have to think about adding ramps if we stay here, and they can be so ugly.”
Sally knew something was up but she hadn’t figured out what it was. The others were unsuspicious and thought Aunt Zell had invited them because she was one of the earlier Daughters herself. Frances Jones remembered her from her mother’s UDC days and felt compelled to tell her how she’d lost the Georgian tea service.
“But Deborah tells me that you-all managed to avenge it with a duck decoy.”
“Yes, but I can’t really justify spending that money to get the set back.”
Aunt Zell smiled. “Deborah?”
I laid two gold coins on the table. “Maybe these will help?”
Wide-eyed, Frances reached out a timid finger. “Are these my grandfather’s twenty-dollar gold coins? Where on earth—?”
Aunt Zell handed her the little velvet bags.
“Mama’s ring?” Frances whispered. “Mama’s earrings?” Crying now, she opened the last bag and the ornate necklace slid onto the tablecloth. Sunlight caught the facets of emeralds and diamonds with gleaming pearls. “Where were they? We looked everywhere.”
Aunt Zell explained about the second secret compartment. No one thought to question how she got into the house and retrieved them, but Sally’s Botoxed lips stretched into an evil grin. “Well, damn!” she said to me. “Not so tight-assed after all.”
Back at the courthouse, I zipped up my robe and hurried into the courtroom.
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