“I’m sorry to be out of touch,” I said. “Some things have happened.”
“We’re not talking the Metcalfs, are we?”
“No.”
“Barry, who’s Skeeter Gibson?”
“The guy who got killed at the Walker County Courthouse last night.”
“Do you know why Sheriff Ewbanks thinks I know him?”
Her question caught me off guard. I didn’t know of a connection Skeeter Gibson had to Susan, and Claiborne had been the only one to mention her name when he saw her photograph with Calhoun.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Heading from the clinic to the hospital. I’ve got late rounds.”
“Okay if I meet you tonight?”
“Sounds like you’re bringing a story.”
“I’m afraid so. And I’m right in the middle of it.”
I hung up, amazed that my efforts to get Susan cleared were only making things worse. Maybe Ewbanks was just fishing for a connection between Skeeter and Susan. But he seemed like more of a hunter than a fisherman. Now I was his suspect as well. But someone didn’t just want me in jail; he wanted me dead.
With that pleasant thought, I reached for the second half of my sandwich and noticed the FedEx envelope at the edge of the desk. Might as well see what lowball figure Hoffman thought they could pay to snatch up a business owned by an Alzheimer’s victim and run by a reluctant undertaker. Maybe half a million.
A gold paperclip held several pages together. The cover letter was addressed to me and the opening paragraph gave the expected niceties of what a privilege it had been to meet me.
The second paragraph stopped me as cold as when I had seen Skeeter Gibson’s body in the courthouse. “Hoffman Enterprises is pleased to tender an offer for the purchase of Clayton and Clayton Funeral Directors in the aggregate amount of two million dollars.”
The ham sandwich tumbled to the floor.
Chapter 17
“Someone shot at you?”
I looked away. The intensity of Susan’s question forced me to acknowledge how the stakes of my amateur investigation had skyrocketed. “Yes,” I said, “and it couldn’t have been Skeeter.”
We sat beside each other on her sofa. The lights of the angel tree and glow from her fireplace belied the mood my story had created.
Susan trembled. “I nearly got you killed.”
“You weren’t responsible. I got into this mess all by myself. I have a knack.”
“Barry, we’re no longer talking about a murder seven years ago. Last night somebody put a gun to a man’s head and pulled the trigger.”
“I know. I’m going to take Tommy Lee’s advice and lie low for awhile.”
“But what if the killer comes after you?”
“That’s not going to happen. I got away and then said nothing that could incriminate anyone. The murderer must ask himself if Skeeter had told me something, why would I be holding it back? Killing me now would only raise more questions.”
The logic sounded good. I almost believed it myself.
Susan calmed down. “Then promise me you’ll stay out of it. Let Ewbanks run his tests and follow up.”
“I promise. One good thing should come out of this.”
“What’s that?”
“It should be clear somebody other than you killed Calhoun because you didn’t kill Skeeter. And you wouldn’t shoot at me. I’m your boyfriend.”
“That carries a lot of weight,” Susan said. “They think I’ve already killed one boyfriend.”
Fortunately a phone call saved me from further comment.
She took it in the kitchen. I heard her say “Hi, Cassie,” and then “Barry’s here” with an inflection that sounded like her aunt had asked for me. As I got up from the sofa, a knock came from the front door.
I opened it, and there on the opposite side of the threshold stood Sheriff Horace Ewbanks and his faithful companion Bridges.
“Clayton, I see you more often than my wife.”
I wanted to reply “And she should thank me,” but I restrained myself. Instead I asked, “Why do you want to see me now?”
“I don’t. We’re here to speak to Dr. Miller. May we come in?”
Stepping back, I said, “She’s on the phone. Have a seat.”
The two men settled in chairs, leaving the sofa for me. There was no small talk. Too late I realized I should have initiated some to keep them from overhearing Susan’s phone conversation.
“That’s ridiculous,” we heard her say. “Cliff Barringer is wrong.”
Ewbanks shot a glance at Bridges.
“If he says Barry’s a suspect, then your station’s going to look foolish.”
Ewbanks muttered under his breath and reflexively patted the cigarettes in his chest pocket. Bridges looked at me and scowled.
I yelled, “Susan, you have company. Sheriff Ewbanks and Deputy Bridges.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper, and in less than a minute, she emerged from the kitchen, pale but valiantly trying to smile.
“Would you like something to drink?” she asked. “Coffee?”
“No, thanks,” said Ewbanks. “We just have a few questions and we’d like to speak to you alone.”
The condo wasn’t large enough for Bridges to escort me to another room like he had done at Walt Miller’s house. I was being told to leave.
“Barry’s my guest,” Susan said curtly. She came over and sat close beside me. “You can either talk to me in front of him, or make an appointment.”
“Suit yourself,” he replied. “We’re only protecting your privacy.”
“And you’ve done a hell of a job with that so far,” she snapped. “Now Cliff Barringer is going on the air reporting Barry Clayton, boyfriend of Dr. Susan Miller, the prime suspect in Samuel Calhoun’s murder, is your prime suspect for murdering Mosely Skeeter Gibson. Why don’t we all just ride over to the TV station and you can interrogate us on the news set.”
If Ewbanks was surprised by Susan’s outburst, he didn’t show it. The sheriff looked at me. “I can’t control what that asshole reports or where he gets his information.”
“You’re saying it’s true?” I asked. “You think I killed Gibson? What’s the evidence? What’s the motive?”
“You know I can’t go into the details of an investigation,” said Ewbanks.
“So, you’re just going to let us be crucified by Cliff Barringer? I thought we all wanted the truth here, or does it work differently in Walker County?”
“It works the same way it does here or on the police force in Charlotte,” he said. “You start telling me the truth, I tell you the truth.”
“I’ve told you the truth. I’m the guy who reported the shots. If I killed Skeeter, why wouldn’t I wipe the judge’s chambers clean and leave? No one saw me.”
“Someone did wipe the judge’s chambers.”
“What?”
“The gun had been cleaned except for a neat set of Gibson’s prints. Too neat. There should have been smudges all over it. And the inside and outside knobs of the hall door had no prints or smudges either. You can bet the cleaning crew didn’t single out that one door for their attention.”
“That’s the point,” I protested. “Whoever killed him came in and out of that door.”
“That would explain it,” agreed Ewbanks, “except you were once a cop and would know how to set the scene to look like someone had used the door.”
“That’s absurd. Why bother?”
“To substantiate your story.”
“It substantiates my story because my story is true.” His catch-twenty-two logic infuriated me.
“I can’t dismiss that possibility,” he argued. “You’re a smart guy, Clayton. We found traces of blood in one of the lavatory sinks. I suspect we’ll get a match to Skeeter. Whoever shot him cleaned up. I expect your AA test will come back negative and prove nothing one way or the other.”
“And why would I kill Skeeter Gibson, a man I didn’t know ti
ll Mike the bartender gave me his name?”
“That’s why I’m here to talk to Dr. Miller,” said Ewbanks. “I spoke to Mike this morning. He remembered Calhoun from the photo just like you said. He also remembered the woman with him.”
“Susan’s never been in that bar,” I said.
I looked to her for support. She stared at the floor.
“Susan,” I said. “Tell them.”
She turned to me and said through clenched teeth, “I’m sorry, Barry.”
Ewbanks and Bridges didn’t need a polygraph test to validate that I was astonished. “But you told me—” I let the words hang, unable to complete the sentence.
“I was embarrassed and scared,” she said. “I didn’t think anyone would remember one more woman yelling at a man in that bar.”
“You’re not their typical patron,” said Ewbanks. “At least not the type who threatens to kill someone.”
Suddenly, no one in the room could be trusted. Not Ewbanks, not Bridges, and not Susan. She had first lied to me about her relationship with Calhoun and now about a confrontation with him. There was no wiggle room for any misunderstanding. I had asked point-blank if she’d been in The Last Resort and she had said no.
The anger surged up and I lost it. “Great. Just great.” I got to my feet. “You want to talk to her alone,” I told Ewbanks. “Fine. Have at it. I’m out of here.”
I slammed her door so hard it sounded like a pistol shot. Halfway to the jeep, I realized I’d left my jacket and the cold, damp air of the coming storm bit to my skin. But there was no way I was going back in that condo. Ever.
By the time I pulled into the cabin’s driveway, my thoughts had focused on one course of action, and I had two million reasons for taking it.
Susan was on my answering machine. I stopped the tape as soon as I heard her voice. I locked up the cabin and nestled into bed under a heavy down comforter, licking my wounds. Pellets of ice began blowing against the window with the rhythm of a snare drum, a steady roll portending dramatic events unknown but unavoidable.
From the depths of sleep, I heard the phone ringing on the night stand. I grabbed the silhouette of the receiver etched by the glow of the clock radio. Five minutes after two.
“Hello,” I mumbled, hoping for a wrong number.
“Barry, it’s Tommy Lee. There’s been a death.”
I shouted the first name that came to mind. “Susan? Something’s happened to Susan?” I was wide awake and panicking. Had my temper tantrum pushed her over the edge?
“No. Nothing like that. Do you know a Gentle Deal?”
“Gentle Deal?” The words meant nothing.
“She’s in her early twenties. Looks like a drug overdose. But underneath her phone is this morning’s newspaper article about Skeeter Gibson, and someone’s written Sammy Calhoun in the margin. I thought you’d be interested.”
Gen-tle…Gen-tle…The wiper blades beat the rhythm of the two syllables as they cleared the sleet from my windshield. I had never heard the word as a proper name before. Tommy Lee had said very little other than in addition to Sammy Calhoun’s name, a phone number had been jotted down. It belonged to Reverend Lester Pace.
I insisted on going to the scene and Tommy Lee didn’t discourage me. In fact, he wanted me up there as soon as possible. He gave directions to a gravel lane off Red Fox Road which was less than three miles from my cabin. He offered to send Deputy Hutchins to lead me from that point. As I turned off the blacktop, Hutchins activated the flasher bar atop his patrol car, and I followed the strobing blue beacon into the mountain cove.
The storm wasn’t so severe that I couldn’t make out my surroundings. After a quarter mile, we pulled into a small clearing on the left side of the road. A stone chimney rose as a solitary sentinel guarding the approach and marking the spot where a cabin once stood. Behind it, a single house trailer perched on a cinder block foundation. All its lights blazed, spilling out a yellow glow through thin sheer curtains and illuminating four other vehicles parked in an erratic semicircle around the center door.
One was an ambulance with two Emergency Medical Technicians sitting in it, drinking coffee from a thermos. Evidently, there was no need for their skills, and the EMTs waited patiently to carry their lifeless cargo to the morgue. Tommy Lee’s patrol car was beside the ambulance. It was flanked by a mid-Eighties Camaro with a splotched paint job and a PIZZA HUT delivery logo mounted on the roof. Closest to the door was a Ford 150 pickup truck with the mandatory gun rack in the cab’s rear window.
Reece Hutchins and I parked our cars in the crowded yard and trudged through the layer of coarse sleet granules now coating the ground. I was surprised to hear the sheriff’s engine idling, and I looked back through his windshield to see the dark shape of someone in the backseat.
“Don’t know what he thinks you’ll find,” muttered Hutchins as I walked by him.
Tommy Lee opened the metal door of the trailer and pointed to a white plastic garbage sack he had flattened on the threshold. “Step on this,” he ordered. “Then put these over your shoes.” He held out a pair of small bags with drawstrings like those worn by an operating room team. “I don’t want to contaminate the scene. The crime lab and coroner are en route.”
The narrow confines of the door allowed only one of us to prep at a time. Hutchins waited outside while I donned the shoe coverings. While tying the string around my ankle, I managed a quick glance at the interior of the trailer. The kitchen and living room were separated by a counter which came two-thirds across the width. The low ceiling and tight quarters had the feel of a boat except this one wasn’t shipshape. Plates and glasses were wedged in the small sink; a pot and pan were on the stovetop; clothes and magazines lay scattered around the floor and on sparse furnishings. I took all this in with a sweeping glance that ended on a girl slumped in a beanbag chair.
“Oh, God,” I mumbled. My fingers froze, suddenly incapable of tying a simple knot.
“Come on, Barry,” urged Tommy Lee. “The ice is blowing in.”
Quickly, I looped the strings of the shoe bags around my ankles and tucked them in my socks. I stepped closer to the corpse, my eyes drawn to the bloodless cheeks and bluish lips. She looked young and innocent, a little girl’s face on a woman’s body. Her head lay back against the white vinyl cover of the amorphous chair, and her long, sandy-brown hair flowed across her shoulder and down her bare left arm. The long sleeve of the loose-fitting flannel shirt was rolled up above her elbow, and a black rubber tourniquet dangled at the edge of the fabric, pinched in place by the weight of her arm. A plastic syringe had rolled against her left thigh as if it had been dropped. Her right hand was in her lap, palm down on the fly of her jeans, the sweep hand of her oversized wristwatch ticking off meaningless seconds.
A footlocker served as a makeshift coffee table. Its brass-plated clasps and lock created the only facade of style in the room’s simple décor. A candle had been stuck to the locker’s black, scuffed surface by its own wax drippings. Beside it was a smoke-smudged spoon, a half-empty folder of matches from Pizza Hut, and a small clear plastic bag with a white residue inside. I guessed I was looking at an addict’s works, the paraphernalia for cooking and shooting the poison. Heroin, most likely. Poor Gentle had mainlined herself out of existence.
“Who found her?” I asked.
“The kid out in my patrol car. A Wade Ryan. He and Gentle worked the late shift at the Pizza Hut in Gainesboro. She was a waitress and he did deliveries. I think he’s a wanna-be boyfriend. He’s only eighteen, a high school senior who works after school. He was worried when Gentle didn’t show up for work or answer the phone. He got the manager to give him her home address and he dropped by when he got off. He peered in the window and saw the body. Shook him up pretty bad. I don’t consider him a suspect.”
“Suspect?” I asked. “So, this isn’t an overdose?”
“Oh, it’s an overdose all right. I just don’t believe she took the injection willingly.”
�
�Did she write Calhoun’s name?”
Tommy Lee handed me the news item on Gibson torn from the Vista. I saw “Sammy Calhoun” written above the headline and a seven-digit phone number I recognized as Pace’s.
“You call him?” I asked.
“No. Figure it can wait till morning. Handwriting matches other notes she’s got posted on the refrigerator. She had to know something. No link between Calhoun and Gibson has been made public.”
“This was under the phone?”
“It makes sense. That’s where she’d keep it to call Pace. I found an Ingles receipt in her trash for a newspaper and some groceries. Time is stamped at two-ten this afternoon. She probably called Pace when she got home.”
“I doubt if she reached him,” I said. “He was with the Metcalfs all day.”
“I’ll know tomorrow,” said Tommy Lee.
“Wouldn’t be the first time an addict calls a preacher.”
“But it’s her first time for shooting up. There’re no other needle marks on her arm. Also, the trailer is too neat for a druggie.”
“Too neat?” I looked at the mess around me.
“Yes. Someone tried to create the impression that Gentle was a stoned slob, but I’ve noticed very little dust in this place.” He bent down and sniffed the small, marred table which held the phone. “Lemon Pledge. The bedroom has bureau drawers left out and the closet in disarray, but that could be because someone was searching for something. We also found a sandwich bag of grass in the bedroom, but no ashtrays, no roach clips, and no rolling papers. I asked Ryan, the delivery boy, if she ever tried to sell or buy drugs. He said she didn’t even drink. And then there’s the guitar in the bedroom.”
“Guitar?”
“Yeah, the advantage of my son playing in a bluegrass band. I ran my hand across the strings to hear if something was stashed inside the soundboard. The strings are tuned backwards.”
I looked at the tourniquet on the girl’s left arm and understood.
“She’s left handed.”
“Yeah. Calluses are on her right-hand fingers from fretting the strings, and her writing has a backwards slant.” He took a deep breath and shook his head. “Even if this is a first-time fix, odds are she would have used her left arm to inject her right. This girl was set up, Barry. Set up by someone who thought her death would be dismissed as the unfortunate end of just another junkie. Write her off as trailer trash.” Tommy Lee was so angry his jaw trembled. “But the son of a bitch who killed this girl made the mistake of doing it in my county. Sheriff Horace Ewbanks just got himself an unwanted partner.”
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