16
Wednesday Morning
After I’d gotten back from Maggy’s, I worked late on my office, cleaning and putting books on the shelves. I placed the rich leather-bound children’s books in a place of honor near my desk, so I could see them and smile. At first, I’d displayed them on a shelf in the front room, but then thought about some kid with a snotty nose and no respect for my books getting hold of them.
I’d also moved the mortar and pestle to several spots before finding it a home atop the oak filing cabinet between the oversized windows in my office.
That was my problem—always trying to find a good spot when I should settle for good enough.
I’d ended up sleeping on the leather sofa in my office and helping myself to the shower in the extra bath upstairs. Fodder for another note, if the poison-pen writer spotted my car in the office lot overnight.
I hadn’t seen or heard Melvin all night, and he wasn’t around in the morning. Even though he came and went without reporting in with me, it was unusual for him to be gone overnight. Business trip, I assumed. Or maybe he’d found himself a girlfriend. Him and Donlee.
Buried behind a box and the contents I’d emptied on my desk, the phone rang.
“Miz Andrews? Carl Newland Knight here.”
“Mr. Knight. How are you?” The mental image of Lionel Shoal’s body gave me a 3-D version of the memories Carl Newland Knight had of his wife. I now felt an odd bond with him.
“Well as can be expected.” He paused. “I hate to bother you again, but—I was going through some stuff here at home. I found something. Somebody needs to see it. I didn’t know what to do with it.”
“What did you find?” I sympathized with him, but his stammering, quiet helplessness lit a flicker of caution in me. I didn’t want to be drawn in. I couldn’t hold his hand through his entire grief process, as he sorted through and dealt with each of his wife’s possessions.
“It’s . . . hard to describe. It’s a letter. . . and a newspaper article.”
Uh-oh. “In blue ink?”
The line stayed silent a moment too long. “How . . . did you know?”
“Could I see it?” Before my brain got too far head of reality, I should make sure it was the same kind of letter Cissie and I had gotten. And Maggy Avinger.
“Sure. I’ll bring it. . . to your office. I just didn’t know. . . what to make of it. I’m leaving now. Soon as I hang up.”
Before I could finish tidying a place for us to sit, the worn leather strap of horse-cart bells I had hung on the knob to announce visitors jangled loudly. Mr. Knight came in.
From his hesitant voice in our phone conversations, I’d expected a small, mousy man. The Carl Newland Knight who appeared in my front room had spent more than a little time lifting weights and probably had played high school football. Basketball, too, given his height. His head was shaved smooth and his thick neck sat on hulking shoulders.
“Miz Andrews?”
“Come in, come in. Have a seat. Mr. Knight, I want you to know how sorry I am about your wife.”
His eyes clouded over and, for a moment, I thought he would cry. His grief was palpable and hard to face.
Without a word, he handed me an envelope addressed to Mrs. Carl Knight and settled into the tufted wing chair, which was a snug fit for him.
The thick paper felt all too familiar, the short newspaper clipping precisely pasted in the lower right corner below the cobalt blue ink.
“Paternity Test Scam Saves Deadbeat Dad Dough.” The clipping looked to be from one of those grocery-checkout tabloids. The article profiled a man in New York who avoided paying child support for eleven children by supplying substitute blood for his paternity tests. Eleven children with nine different women. That was scary enough, without the letter on which the article was pasted.
The message in blue ink was chilling.
Dear Mrs. Knight,
Innocent children suffer while you help fornicators and adulterers escape their due. You have been warned and yet you persist. The time for warnings has passed. You will get your due.
I reread the message before looking at Carl Knight. “I’m not sure I understand.”
He sat stock-still, but began blinking furiously, whether from nervousness or to keep back tears, I couldn’t tell. He found the words only with great effort. “Suse is—was a nurse.”
I nodded.
“She—I hate to say this out loud to anybody. Swear to God you won’t tell.”
“Mr. Knight, you’re here to consult with me. Whatever you say is confidential.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose to keep the tears at bay. When he spoke, his voice was stronger.
“Suse did that. Helped men fake . . . their tests. She offered to help them. For money.”
“How’d she do that?”
“She . . . had her own business. Doing physicals for insurance companies or. . . some home health work. She went to people’s houses. Sometimes a lawyer would ask her to come draw blood. For a court case. She just got this idea. She wanted more money than her regular work could pay.”
Carl talked about wanting money as if that didn’t quite make sense to him. Or maybe it was her willingness to sell her soul that didn’t make sense.
“How do you know? About her activities.” I was starting to talk with maddening pauses myself.
With his head bowed, he studied the floor. I doubted he was counting the dust bunnies on the dark wood. “She . . . used my blood . . . sometimes.”
“How many men did she help out?”
“I don’t know. They paid in cash. And she spent it. Who knows how many.” He didn’t intend that as a question.
“Did anyone else know what she was doing? Besides her clients?”
He shook his head. “I only know for sure one case. The lady kept insisting. She made him get retested, with a witness at the blood draw. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. She . . . knew he was the father. Suse got a little worried about that one. I don’t know what the lady decided to do.”
“Where else would she have gotten blood, other than from you?”
He shrugged. “She was a nurse.”
I studied the note and the spidery writing.
“What have the police told you about your wife’s death?”
He began blinking furiously again.
“They’ve been very close-mouthed. One of the deputies finally told me. They think she was . . . poisoned.”
“Poisoned.” I said it softly. He seemed so fragile, despite his bulk, that I felt I needed to be gentle.
He nodded. “She’d eaten some candy. I don’t know . . . where she got it. But it was there.”
I forced myself to take a deep breath. “A box of candy? Chocolates?”
He blinked and nodded. “The sheriff thought I did it. But I haven’t bought any candy. Not this candy . . . from California or somewhere.”
They would check his credit cards and online purchases, which meant they hadn’t found any connection yet between him and the candy or he wouldn’t still be walking around free.
Chocolate wrappers and pieces of candy scattered on blue carpet. Poison. That suspicion had crept around the corners of my mind at Shoal’s house, but I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it to Rudy, or even to myself. Now I had no choice. I couldn’t quite believe Carl had anything to do with his wife’s death. After what I’d seen at the Shoals’ house, the candy was a good bet.
“Did your wife know Lionel Shoal, by any chance?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“He’s a real estate developer. New in town. Maybe she knew his wife, Valerie Shoal?” I tried to prod his memory.
More head shaking. Someone from the sheriff’s office would soon be back asking him the same questions. They would check other avenues, too, looking for connections.
I kept watching him. Was this all an act? Could he really be this shaken? Had he sent the letter—or letters—to deflect attention from himself? That se
emed far-fetched, though not without precedent. But how could he have known or cared about me or Cissie or Maggy Avinger?
I didn’t see a guy who looked like a walking ad for anabolic steroids sending poison pen letters written in dainty, spidery ink.
A chill thought struck me: Suse Knight’s poison pen letter had proven truly poisonous. Which cast the news clippings and the poison pen letters in a new light.
“Have you mentioned this letter to the sheriff?”
“Uh-uh. I just found it.”
“Does the sheriff know about your wife’s. . . extracurricular activities?”
He hesitated. “I. . . don’t know. The sheriff didn’t ask anything about it. Until I found this, I. . . didn’t think anything of it. I thought Suse. . . just got sick with a virus or something.”
“What did she do with the money she made?”
He shook his head, with a slight frown of disgust. “I accidentally saw the receipt. For her boob job. She didn’t ask me before she went and did that. And she gambled. Her and her friends, they go over to Cherokee. To the casino. Guess she thought she had to have more. To play with.”
“Mr. Knight,” I said slowly, still turning over all the permutations in my head. “Your wife isn’t the only one who got a letter like this. Other people have received them. I’d advise you to take this to the sheriff.” This was a murder investigation, not something he could pretend never happened.
He looked surprised. “About. . . my wife? Other people got letters about my wife?”
“No, no. I’m sorry. Not about your wife. About themselves. But this is more than a coincidence. Sheriff Peters needs to know about this, and about your wife’s . . . side business.”
I’d spent too much time around Carl Knight. I had to stop stuttering through my sentences.
“If you think so,” he said, obviously reluctant to invite Sheriff Peters’s attentions. I completely understood his reluctance.
“Mr. Knight, I’m not ordering you to go see the sheriff. I certainly won’t volunteer the information myself without your permission. I’m just advising you that it might help figure out what happened to your wife.”
L.J. needed to know about the letters. She had murders to solve. I expected she’d get a warrant to search the Knights’ financial records and personal papers, checking for motive. At least I assumed that was the way things would happen. What did I know?
He looked at the note I still held. “Can you take it to the sheriff? For me?”
My turn to pause. “Sure,” I said finally. “If you’d like me to.”
He nodded. “Sheriff Peters is—can be—hard to deal with.”
Tell me about it. At least she wouldn’t try to slam hulking Carl Newland Knight up against a brick wall.
“I’d be glad to,” I said. “Do you have your wife’s business papers, showing how she’d set up her practice? Her tax returns, things like that?” Carl might be more at risk from an irate, defrauded mother who’d been denied child support suing him than he was from L. J. I needed to know if Suse set herself up as a corporation or a limited liability company, how much malpractice insurance she carried, and whether the policy covered intentional acts, which I doubted. Her death might actually protect Carl’s assets, depending on how her business affairs were arranged.
“I also need to get you to sign a contract, showing that I represent you as your attorney and that you understand the fee structure.”
He nodded, looking uncomfortable. This was the part of solo practice I wasn’t handling well—the details. Specifically the money details, charging people for my time. It didn’t feel so intimate when someone unknown to me in a far distant part of my giant law firm sent out my bill for me. I just filled out a time sheet and went about my lawyering business. Asking people for money was hard.
I went into the next room and shuffled around in the jumbled desk drawers until I found the sample representation agreement I’d gotten from Carlton Barner.
Carl Newland Knight signed the agreement, happier once I’d explained I wouldn’t charge him for the initial consultation. Technically, this was his second initial consultation, the first being over the phone, but neither of us pointed that out.
After he’d gone, I slipped the letter and envelope he’d brought into a larger manila envelope. A DNA match from the envelope flap was the kind of miracle that only happens on television and the letter had been handled by at least two people, but just in case a crime lab could use some magic methods. I wanted to minimize the damage.
I pulled my own letter out of the side table drawer where I’d stuck it and put it in its own protective envelope. I needed to see if Cissie Prentice still had her letter. The more the cops had to work with, the better.
Poisoned. The reality was much scarier than Curtis what’s-his-name’s grammar school tales of meningitis run amok.
Had Lionel Shoal, by a frightening coincidence, received his own annotated news clipping? I wasn’t about to call Valerie Shoal to find out. L. J. Peters could do her own addition: one plus one plus one.
17
Wednesday Morning
Icouldn’t get Cissie on the phone, so I stuck Carl’s letter in my desk drawer. To get my mind on something other than spidery blue handwriting, I walked down the street to buy the latest edition of the Clarion so I could study the real estate ads.
Maybe it was the crick in my neck from sleeping on the office sofa or the oppressive junkiness of my office, but I had an overpowering urge to try another nest on for size. The cabin, as much as I loved it, was proving a bit remote and primitive to live in full-time.
The first thing to catch my eye wasn’t an ad for the ideal fixer-upper but Noah Lakefield’s front-page article on Dacus’s murder spree.
Seeing it all itemized in black and white, in neat, narrow columns, Dacus’s crime wave inspired awe.
Three Suspicious Deaths Stun Camden County
Officers in the Camden County Sheriff’s Department have been challenged as never before by three mysterious deaths within a week.
Sheriff L. J. Peters acknowledged that the deaths of Len Ruffin, Suse Knight, and Lionel Shoal are all under investigation and all currently classified as suspicious in nature.
On Sunday, Len Ruffin’s body was found in an abandoned mine shaft during a “plant rescue” operation at the new Golden Cove luxury home development above Lark’s Rest Campground. The body was discovered by a group of volunteers working to save endangered native plants threatened by the construction.
The day after the discovery of Ruffin’s body, the Golden Cove office and a model home valued at $800,000 were damaged in two simultaneous explosions. The explosions are under investigation by federal Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) agents.
Late Sunday evening, the body of Susan “Suse” Knight was discovered by her husband at their home. The circumstances of the death made it unclear whether she died of natural causes or foul play. Her remains were transported to the state forensic pathologist’s office in Newberry for further study. A Sheriff’s Department source says the death is being treated as suspicious.
On Tuesday, the body of Lionel Shoal was discovered at the Shoals’ lakeside home by his wife, Valerie Shoal, and local attorney Avery Andrews. The victim owned Shoal Properties, the company developing Golden Cove. Shoal’s death is also being treated as suspicious, and investigators are awaiting the medical examiner’s report.
One focus of the investigation, according to sources, is the development of the luxury mountain resort Golden Cove. The discovery of Len Ruffin’s body at the Golden Cove site and the subsequent death of the site developer, Lionel Shoal, have investigators looking for possible connections.
“It is much too early in the investigation,” said Sheriff Peters, “to be jumping to conclusions. True, there are some coincidences here. But that may be all we have—coincidences.”
While the Sheriff’s Department continues its investigation, three families plan funerals and wait for answers.
&
nbsp; Very dramatic ending, Noah. I’d have to personally thank him for giving me billing in the article. I was surprised Mom or Aunt Letha hadn’t already called me.
A second front-page article also carried Noah’s byline: “Pet Pig Continues to Elude Sheriff.”
Noah had better be careful with so many of his headline-grabbing stories poking fun at the sheriff. In part because her mom named her Lucinda Jane and in part because she took after her daddy and her shoe size reached thirteen double-wide at a young age, L.J. doesn’t have much of a sense of humor. Noah didn’t want her grabbing a handful of his curly hair during a traffic stop gone bad—and he sure couldn’t do much as a reporter in Dacus if his “sources in the sheriff’s office” suddenly dried up.
Despite more sightings than Elvis, the runaway pig continues to elude one of the biggest man—um, pig hunts in Dacus history.
“I haven’t seen anything like this since 1963, when Elbert Stump and his brother took off running with a Chevy full of ‘shine and a whole county full of deputies in a heat after him,” said Pudd Pardee, head of the county’s Rescue Squad. “I was a kid then, but it was big news.”
Life on the run hasn’t been all bad for the pig many are calling Bambi, after the former Playboy bunny who went on the lam following her murder conviction.
“She looks well fed,” said Mabel First, whose winter vegetable garden was raided by Bambi. “And she sure can run. I had no idea a potbellied pig could move that fast. She’s about the same size as a couple of those deputies, but she sure leaves them in the dust.”
“Bambi” is a hundred-plus-pound Vietnamese potbelly pig, a breed often adopted as pets. “Sadly, though, many people are not responsible pet owners,” said Amy Cole, Camden County Pet Protection president. “We’re afraid someone couldn’t care for this pig after it reached maturity and set it out. Too often owners don’t do their homework. They think their cute little piglet will always stay small and cuddly. Their pet pig isn’t so cute when it outweighs the other members of the family.”
Night temperatures will dip below freezing this weekend, giving searchers a sense of urgency.
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