by Nene Adams
Jun? Mackenzie wrote, underlining the name twice.
“I don’t know where Jun’s buried,” Veronica said after glancing at the notepad. “You’d think DuPeret wouldn’t go to the trouble of digging two graves, even in an unused field. Maybe Jun’s still out there, about to become part of Renaissance Three’s foundation.” She stood and scooped her plate off the coffee table. “Let me put this bagel away for later and we’ll head out to the temple.” She paused. “You know, Mac, you might want to wear something a little more…” She made a vague gesture at her front and left for the kitchen.
Mackenzie looked down at herself. Nothing wrong with running shorts, spaghetti strap tank top and ratty old trainers. All the naughty bits were decently covered. Maybe Buddhists had something against the female form or showing too much skin. She’d listen to Veronica’s advice and not take a chance on causing offense.
She went to the bedroom and changed into a deep red blouse. A look in the mirror showed the color flattered her cinnamon complexion and darkened her amber eyes to bronze—not that she expected monks to notice. Shaking her head over her own vanity, she donned a pair of jeans worn to bleached thinness, scraped her thick, coarse black curls into a ponytail at the nape of her neck and shoved her feet into sandals.
“Hey, Mac, you ready to go?” Veronica called from the living room. “Never mind, don’t answer,” she added hastily. “I just—” She broke off when a knock sounded on the front door. “Are you expecting somebody? Never mind, don’t answer. I’ll get it.”
Mackenzie wondered who was at the door. Sarah Grace? No, Mama hardly ever came by the apartment. Her landlord, Bakery Sam? She’d given him a wave on the way to her car earlier that morning and the rent wasn’t due for two more weeks.
She moved to the living room to find her cousin James Maynard standing in front of the bookcase with his hands in his pants pockets, looking like a dark and sour vulture in his Brooks Brothers suit. “Kenzie,” he said without wasting any time on pleasantries, “you need to come to the police station now.”
“Is Mac under arrest?” Veronica asked in the same mild, reasonable sounding tone she used on suspects about to resist arrest. The woman’s body language read relaxed, her expression pleasant, her gaze untroubled, but the warning in her voice came through as loudly and clearly as a lioness’s roar.
What’s going on? Mackenzie wrote in her notepad. She showed the question to Maynard, hoping to prevent a situation where her cousin, the homicide detective, got punched by her angry deputy lover, which would be the brown icing on a big ol’ slice of crap cake.
“It’s no longer my decision to make, Deputy Birdwell.” Maynard stared at Veronica, ignoring the notepad Mackenzie waved in front of him.
“Who took the case?”
“McCarty.”
“An arson investigator from Macon has no authority in this jurisdiction.”
“He does if Sheriff Newberry, Chief Irvine and the DA give it to him ’cause he’s a man who gets results. I have no control over what McCarty believes or the DA thinks he can prove in court.” Maynard turned to regard Mackenzie. “Rosalyn Parker and Turner Erskine claim you were part of a conspiracy to help them defraud the insurance company. Looks like McCarty might buy Parker’s line, so you need to go voluntarily to the station with your lawyer,” he emphasized, giving her a significant glance. “Goddamn it, Kenzie, I’m talking as your cousin, not a detective—don’t blow this off, don’t laugh it off and don’t piss McCarty off. Okay? For once in your life, do as you’re told and use some sense.”
She nodded reluctantly.
Muttering about mule-headed females, Maynard left the apartment. He called a parting shot over his shoulder, “Don’t make me have to tell Aunt Sarah Grace you’re in jail.”
Mackenzie wrote on the notepad: shit fire and spare the matches!
Veronica nodded. “My sentiments exactly, Mac.”
Recalling the business card Maynard had given her when they’d met at Straightaway Shopping Center, Mackenzie sprinted to the bedroom to check the clothes she’d worn that day. She returned to the living room with the card in hand.
“I’ve heard of him, he’s good,” Veronica replied after glancing at the business card. Some healthy pink color returned to her face. “Where’d you get Darcy’s card?”
Cousin Jimmy, other day at the mall, Mackenzie wrote.
“I’ll call Darcy right now, tell him it’s an emergency. Meanwhile, you head over to the police station. I guess I don’t need to remind you about your right to remain silent.”
Mackenzie reached up and stroked her thumb over the worried crease in the middle of Veronica’s brow. No problem, she scrawled on the pad. Her breath caught when Veronica leaned closer and gave her a soft kiss. Their lips clung together as if reluctant to part.
Why did it feel like Veronica was telling her goodbye?
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Do you need anything, Ms. Cross?” asked Bob McCarty, settling into the other bright orange plastic chair in the interview room. “A cold Coca-Cola, maybe?”
Mackenzie shook her head. She’d been kept waiting a half hour for McCarty to start the interview, while at the same time feeling certain the arson investigator loitered on the other side of the two-way mirror watching her. Probably hoping to make her nervous enough to confess as soon as he deigned to grace her with his presence. She curled her upper lip. He didn’t know her. More to the point, he didn’t know Sarah Grace. Her mother could give a trained interrogator a run for his money and then some.
McCarty peered at her with soft, moist brown eyes, but she wasn’t fooled by the harmless puppy dog look. He fiddled with a few papers in a manila folder. “I understand you’re acquainted with the accused?”
Unable to ask who he meant, she shrugged a shoulder. The desk sergeant had relieved her of the notepad as soon as she entered the interview room. Probably afraid she might attack McCarty and paper cut him to death, she thought with an inner snort.
“Ms. Cross, there’s no need to make things unpleasant.” McCarty ran a hand over his balding head, making the straggling wisps of his sandy blond hair stand straight on end. “This is just a friendly chat between you and me.”
And this year’s pre-bacon supply just became hazards to air traffic. She pointed at the legal pad McCarty carried and made an exaggerated writing gesture.
His expression betrayed surprised pleasure. “You want to write a confession?”
Hurriedly, she shook her head.
After twenty minutes of fruitless questioning, McCarty’s benign manner cracked. He slapped an open palm on his thigh. “You know, Ms. Cross, staying quiet like that is mighty suspicious.” He gave her a hard look. “Makes me wonder what secrets you’re keeping.”
The interview room door opened, admitting a tall, tanned gentleman in a very well-tailored suit. “Good afternoon, Ms. Cross,” he said, his smooth-as-warmed-butter accent proclaimed his origin as somewhere in the Midwest. “I hope you’ll excuse my tardiness. Traffic is like death and taxes these days—annoying but unavoidable. I trust you weren’t inconvenienced? Oh, yes, I beg your pardon. Your medical condition slipped my mind.”
“Who the hell are you?” McCarty stood up. “And what medical condition? Your client seems healthy enough to me and she hasn’t complained.”
“Phillip Cuffman Darcy, Ms. Cross’s attorney, I’d like some time with my client now, Mr. McCarty. My client who is under doctor’s orders not to speak aloud due to a prior injury.” Though cloaked in a friendly veneer, Darcy’s tone brooked no refusals.
Blowing out a breath and muttering, “Prior injury, my eye,” McCarty heaved himself out of the room, shutting the door behind him.
At once, Darcy crossed over to Mackenzie. “I know the story from Ms. Birdwell and your cousin, James Austin.” He opening his briefcase, pulling out a leather-bound notebook. He handed the book to her along with a ballpoint pen. “Thank God you can’t speak, otherwise I hear we might have had a mess on our hands.
”
Mackenzie glared. Did he think her as empty-headed as Debbie Lou Erskine, a woman so dumb she didn’t know sheep shit from cotton seed? She took the offered notebook and pen. Do they really believe I’m involved with Turnip? she wrote.
Darcy pulled the other orange plastic chair closer and sat so they were knee to knee. A slight scent of woody aftershave wafted from him, mingled with a stronger hint of Castile soap. “As I understand the case, you’ve been accused by two people who are themselves suspected in committing arson and insurance fraud.”
She studied him a moment. Despite gelling his white hair within an inch of its life into the backswept, smooth ’do most often sported by televangelists and Baptist preachers, Darcy seemed okay. He certainly acted like he knew his business. She nodded for him to continue.
“As I see it, the police have no evidence or they’d have arrested you. The district attorney won’t file charges on the lone testimony of a pair of felons, so—” Darcy paused and smiled. His teeth gleamed almost as white as his hair. “Our initial strategy is to offer McCarty an alibi he can’t break and prove your accusers are lying. Write down where you were and who you were with on the night in question.”
What’s the date? Mackenzie wrote, almost hating to spoil the page with her untidy scrawl. Receiving the information from Darcy, she cast her mind back, trying to remember what she’d been doing—a difficult exercise as most days were pretty much the same.
“I believe the Burton Lemoyne High School’s football team won a home game against the Trinity Tigers,” Darcy prompted.
Mackenzie grasped at a memory. Mama asked me to help her with the church’s pinochle night. She’d roped in Veronica, too. They had been tasked with coordinating a potluck supper with the members of All Saints, a chore not unlike herding cats. Particularly when a fistfight almost broke out among the ladies over whose secret recipe for Atlanta brisket was best, though the altercation wasn’t nearly as gnarly as the Great Pie Debate of ’99.
She scribbled the facts in the notepad.
Darcy took the notebook and read over her account. The corner of his mouth twitched. “Excellent,” he declared. “Ms. Cross, I doubt the district attorney would care to refute the testimonies of dozens of respectable church members and community leaders.” He rose with the notebook in hand. “Be patient, Ms. Cross. I’ll have you out of here very soon.”
Once Darcy exited the interview room, Mackenzie was left alone with nothing to do. She glowered at the two-way mirror, fancying McCarty might be lurking on the other side. Of course, attorneys and clients were guaranteed privacy, but who knew how far this man from Macon might go to prove his case?
She started when the door swung open and Turner Erskine stumbled inside, propelled by a push from McCarty. The arson inspector looked grim. The door slammed shut.
Mackenzie stood, anger curdling in her belly. Her hands balled into fists.
Turner jerked upright and gave her a sickly smile. “Uh, hi, Kenzie.” He scratched in his dirty blond mullet. “Long time, no see.”
She took a step forward to confront the rawboned, bow-legged, flannel-and-denim-clad man and gave him her most incendiary glare. If looks could kill, she reckoned he would’ve been deader than a week old fish stick.
“Whoa, wait!” He flung up his hands. “It’s not my fault, I swear! I swear on a stack of Bibles.” He closed one eye and squinted down at her.
Mackenzie had learned a tidbit of German years ago from a business contact in Munich: backpfeifengesicht, meaning “a face badly in need of a fist.” The word described Turner to a tee. She hauled back a hand, itching to smack him.
He ducked and muttered under his breath. “Look, you got to understand, it ain’t my fault. It’s her fault. That goddamned bitch done messed me up, Kenzie. I’m an innocent man!”
She bared her teeth at him, gratified when he flinched. In sixth grade, he’d knocked her down in the playground and shoved her face in the mud, but she’d managed to flip over and bite his hand to the bone. The bullying coward hadn’t come within ten feet of her since. She might be smaller, shorter and a lot skinnier, but she was a damned sight meaner.
He cast his gaze around the room, clearly hunting something, and ambled over to the corner to spit out a stream of tobacco juice, leaving brown stains on the wall and carpet. “That bitch Rosie Parker. She promised I wouldn’t get in trouble. Paid me a couple hundred bucks.”
He adjusted the wad of snuff in his lower lip and told her the sorry tale of how Ma Parker’s Pot O’ Soup factory had been in serious trouble. Rosalyn Parker had decided to use the company’s resources, including the retirement fund, as her private bank account. The recent threat of an IRS audit made her scramble to cover her tracks.
“Rosie was that nervous, you couldn’t have pounded a wet watermelon seed in her ass with a sledgehammer,” Turner confided.
Fortunately, already scheduled renovation work in the financial department meant the physical records were moved to her warehouse for temporary storage. The fire Rosie arranged with Turner destroyed the paper trail and she’d hired a hacker to wipe the company’s computer records. But Turner decided he hadn’t been paid enough for the job.
“Figured you’d have insurance or something like that, paying me wouldn’t be no big deal, and ol’ Purvis told me he could make you cough up the money for that old desk right smart.” Turner rolled his eyes to Heaven. “Jesus. What a cluster fuck. Sorry, Kenzie. I didn’t mean you no harm, honey. Anyhow, it was Purvis and Debbie Lou’s idea to sue you to begin with. Not me.” He dropped the bombshell with casual nonchalance, clambered to his feet, and visited the corner to spit.
Debbie Lou! Mackenzie’s throat tightened on a scream of purest fury.
The door opened and a red-faced McCarty came inside the interview room. “Ms. Cross, you’re free to go,” he growled.
Her head held high, her simmering rage held in check by the thinnest thread, Mackenzie marched outside, her thoughts shaded as red as blood.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Look at it this way, Mac,” Veronica said several days later while poking bobby pins into the smooth knot of brunette hair at the nape of her neck. “Debbie Lou Erskine and Alexander Purvis will probably be charged as accomplices. You were inconvenienced, sure, but you’re walking around a free woman while they’re in custody.”
“I’ll kill that cow anyhow!” Mackenzie grated. She was glad the doctor had given her a cautious thumbs-up regarding her voice. Had she been forced to stay silent without venting her feelings much longer, her head might’ve exploded. She jostled for position at the bathroom sink, picked up her toothbrush and met Veronica’s steady green gaze in the mirror.
Veronica clucked her tongue disapprovingly. “I told you, don’t make threats in front of a law enforcement officer.” She tweaked the collar of her button-down uniform shirt, a tan a shade lighter than her baby poop brown polyester trousers.
Mackenzie hated the unflattering sheriff’s department uniform that muffled Veronica’s curves and washed out the woman’s milk-and-roses complexion. However, she wanted no repetition of the time she’d made her opinion clear only for Veronica to bring up pots and kettles when it came to fashion sense, and the lack thereof. “Eat out tonight?”
“Swine Dining?” Veronica asked, naming the barbeque restaurant where they’d had a disaster of a first date, a night filled with crossed signals, wrong assumptions and misinterpretations that Mackenzie still recalled with a cringe.
“Sounds good to me.” Mackenzie squirted a blob of toothpaste on her toothbrush. “I’m going to the Buddhist temple today.”
Veronica paused in the act of flicking a bit of lint off her shirt pocket. “You’ll love it, Mac. It’s so peaceful. I’m sorry we never made it there together. Just be careful, okay?”
Mackenzie stopped brushing her teeth and glared at Veronica, attempting to convey the silent message: What the hell could happen to me in a temple full of monks?
“Osame will attack Rena
issance Two eventually,” Veronica went on, seemingly oblivious to both glare and unspoken message. “We need to know what we can do to stop her or at least mitigate the damage and save lives.”
After spitting a mouthful of peppermint-flavored foam into the sink and rinsing with water, Mackenzie replied, “Putting Osame down for good gets my vote.”
“Absolutely. Have a great day, stay safe, and if you need me, call. I’ll see you tonight.” Veronica bent, kissed Mackenzie and left the bathroom.
A few minutes later, Mackenzie heard the apartment door open and close.
Dealing with Annabel Coffin’s ghost had been much easier, she thought while standing in front of her closet trying to decide what to wear. She’d only had to solve a fifty-year-old murder mystery with Annabel’s semi-cooperation. But Osame seemed…she groped for the right word. Random. Yes, that was it. Osame didn’t seem to have a focus for her anger. Like a child pitching a conniption fit, Osame thoughtlessly lashed out at anyone and everyone without purpose other than destruction.
She shook off her thoughts, donned jeans and a loose-fitting T-shirt, and grabbed her car keys.
Halfway down the flight of cement steps in the closed-off, claustrophobic space between two buildings, she stopped, sensing she’d forgotten something. The sensation nagged at her until she heaved an annoyed sigh, marched back up to the apartment and stood in the living room ticking off items on a mental list. Iron off? Stove off? Clean underwear on?
A stray thought nibbled the edges of her consciousness. The sort-of bookmark she’d been given by Abbot Imamura. She retrieved the damned thing from the bedroom and set off again. This time, she was free to enjoy the scents of yeast, cinnamon and sugar from the bakery next door, if not the furnace-like heat radiating from the brick walls.
Once she banged through the green painted metal door to the sidewalk outside, she glanced at the horizon where Sweetwater Hill rose silhouetted against an unclouded, pale blue sky. The day promised to be hotter than yesterday. Already, little heat squiggles distorted the air above the concrete and asphalt. Even in the shade of the young hickory trees lining the sidewalk, the air felt listless and sodden with heat.