“Tom, where this kid is concerned I’m going to need some wiggle room. I’m convinced he didn’t kill that poor woman, but I’m equally convinced that he knows who did. What can we offer him if he talks?”
“You really don’t think he did it?”
“No, I don’t,” I said.
“Why not?”
“My instincts. Remember that I started this job when you were about ten years old.”
“And you’ll never let me forget it, will you?” he said, shaking his head ruefully.
“Nope.”
He played around with his pen for a moment, then said, “I don’t think there’s any doubt that he helped transport the body.”
“Neither do I.”
“If he wasn’t involved in the planning or execution, I could go as low as ten years for accessory after the fact.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
* * *
I was on my way across the street to Walter Durbin’s office on the third floor of the old Sequoya National Bank Building when Carla called on my cell phone to tell me that Zorn’s story checked out. I went on upstairs and told Walter’s office manager, Nelda Parsons, that I needed to see him. Nelda was about forty and the same shade of café au lait as Toby, which was natural since she was his older sister by a few years. Their family went all the way back to slavery days in Caddo County, and their father pastored the largest black church in town. She was about five two and petite with short hair and velvet-like skin and liquid brown eyes a man could get lost in. Besides her physical attributes, which were considerable, she was brilliant and said to have a photographic memory. I was convinced that she and Walter had been lovers for several years, but he was divorced and she was a widow, so it was nobody’s business, mine included. “You can go on in,” she said. “I think he’s feeding the snake.”
It was common knowledge around town that Walter kept a six-foot python that belonged to his daughter in a big aquarium in his storage closet. “What’s he feeding it?” I asked.
“Things,” she said, staring me right in the eyes and not smiling. “There’s always something around this office that needs to disappear.”
“If you run short, let me know,” I said. “I’ve got a few ‘things’ I’d like to get rid of, myself.”
When I entered the inner sanctum, he was just closing the door to the storage closet. I didn’t ask him to reopen it. In his early fifties, he was big and broad-shouldered and bald with well-tanned skin and pale blue eyes. A former national guard colonel, he’d been in Desert Storm and won the Combat Infantry Badge and a Bronze Star. He’d also resigned his commission not long after that fracas ended. After we shook hands, I sat down and outlined my problem for him.
“Have you talked to Raynes?” I asked.
“This morning.”
“Walter, let me get right to the point. I don’t think the boy killed Amanda Twiller, but I’m just as sure that he knows who did.”
He leaned back in his big chair and put his booted feet up on his desk and gave me a sad smile. “I believe you’re right on both counts. The kid just doesn’t have it in him.”
“That’s exactly what my gut told me as soon as I got a good look at him yesterday.”
“So where do we go with it?” he asked. “Since we’re obviously talking off the record here.”
“I don’t really want to see him go down for murder one. But it is shaping up as a slam dunk.”
“It looks bad. I’ll admit that.”
“So tell me, is he clamming up because he’s scared or because he’s protecting somebody?”
He held up his hands in supplication. “I can’t get a fix on the kid, Bo. It’s like trying to push toothpaste back into the tube. He won’t look me in the eye, and he gives evasive answers to every question I ask him.”
“Will you let me question him? With you present, of course?”
“I’m willing, but he says he won’t talk to you, so…”
I laid out the deal the DA would go along with. “Put it on the table and see what he says,” I said. “Ten years is a hell of a lot better than life.”
I rose to leave and I was almost to the door when he said, “You know, Bo, if I had to guess, I’d say that poor boy is both scared and protecting somebody. He’s scared of going down for life, and he’s shielding somebody too. Or maybe we’re just imagining things.”
“I don’t think so, Walter. When you add it up, together we’ve got over five decades of experience dealing with these old criminals. That has to be worth something.”
“Maybe so, but it hasn’t made me rich. Has it made you rich, Bo?”
“In friends and experiences, sure. But I’ve always been thankful I haven’t had to depend on my salary to get by. In fact, my deputies need a raise right now.”
“County commissioners,” he said, disdain heavy in his voice. “They want to spend all the money out in their precincts fixing potholes and installing driveway culverts for their constituents.”
“Things are looking up on that front. Charlie Morton has come around to my point of view on just about everything.”
“Ha!” he said. “You must have caught him with some bimbo.”
“Now, you know I can’t talk out of class.”
“Right. The shame of it is that Charlie is the most intelligent and able fellow on the court.”
“That’s why he’ll make the most effective advocate now that he’s born again.”
He laughed. “I bet his conversion experience was something worth seeing.”
“It was spiritually moving, Walter. It truly was.”
* * *
I’d been back at the office for about an hour when Linda popped back in. “Did you find anything?” I asked.
“Yep,” she said. “The woman was a neat freak. There were about a hundred empty prescription bottles lined up in rows like little soldiers on the top shelf of her closet.”
“Anything else?”
She nodded and tossed a letter across the desk to me. “I don’t know what it means, but it was hidden way at the back of one of her dresser drawers.”
I opened the letter and quickly read the two pages of neat, almost prim handwriting it contained.
“Who is this Nobel Dennard character?” Linda asked. “Do you know him?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“That letter is a threat, isn’t it?”
“Legally, no. It is skirting a fine line, though. The man is a lawyer and he knows better than to make outright threats.”
I sighed and put the letter back in its envelope and reached for the phone. “Go get the Suburban,” I said. “Wait for me around at the courthouse front entrance.”
“Okay. Where are we going?”
“Over to Center. But first I’m going to call this gentleman and tell him he damn sure better be there when I get there.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Center is the county seat of Shelby County, which lies due southeast of Sequoya bordering Louisiana. On the way we passed through the small village of Timpson. Like dozens of other East Texas towns, it had once been a thriving cotton market, but it was now paused in a timeless autumnal moment over the precipice of its ultimate oblivion. Half the businesses in the old part of town were boarded up, and the rest were struggling. Empty windows stared like sightless eyes out onto the passing years. As we drove down a side street I pointed to the long-defunct Fox Theater. “I saw my first movie there,” I said.
“Really? How come?”
“This is where my mother was born and raised. One Saturday when we were visiting her sister Emma, she and Aunt Emma decided to take me and my cousin to see High Noon with Gary Cooper. I was about five at the time.”
“Good flick.”
“Turn left at the next street,” I said.
“That’s not the way to Center, Bo.”
“I know, but I want to see my aunt’s old place.”
It was a few blocks north of the main highway, down near the end of the street�
��a big, shady, sprawling white clapboard affair with deep verandas and a world of memories. I pointed it out to Linda.
“Nice,” she said. “I could hunker down in a house like that for the rest of my life. Is your aunt dead?”
“She and Uncle Homer were killed in a car wreck back in 1980.”
I directed her to take a left. After a couple of blocks we passed a huge white-columned house that looked like something out of Gone with the Wind.
“Wow, that place is beautiful,” she said. “I wonder what the story on it is.”
“Rat Turd Blair. That’s the story.”
“What?!”
“His name was R. T. Blair. The kids all called him Rat Turd. He was a prosperous merchant here many years ago. See that screened-in porch on the side? Mr. Blair dropped dead of a heart attack one cold day between his car and the steps. He’d been fishing, and the authorities took his coat off to examine the body. They hung it on that porch, but his wife could never bring herself to move it. It hung there until it rotted.”
“Bo, you know so many interesting stories.”
I laughed. “And I don’t even tell the good ones. I think there’s a prizewinning novel in every country graveyard in this state if you could just get at it.”
Back on the main road and a dozen miles farther on we came to Center. In the middle of the square loomed the massive Irish castle–style courthouse, the last one remaining in the country, now renovated as a community center and museum. Nobel Dennard kept his office on the second floor of a fine old building he owned on the south side of the square opposite the courthouse. I knew the man, but I didn’t know him well. Though his practice was mostly confined to civil matters, over the years he’d had a few minor criminal cases in Caddo County that had brought us in contact with each other, and for a while we’d both been delegates to the East Texas Council of Governments. He was tall and slim, with wavy, prematurely silver hair, a matinee idol’s face, and ruddy skin.
His office was suitably lawyerly with its eighteenth-century-style walnut paneling and English hunting prints and brass-studded wing chairs of burgundy-colored leather. I quickly introduced him to Linda, and he motioned for us to sit and then took his place behind about a half acre of mahogany desk that looked like it might have come from Versailles and gazed at me blandly. “What’s the problem, Bo? You sounded mad as hell on the phone.”
“I’ve got a dead body on my hands, Nobel.”
“Whose?”
“Amanda Twiller.”
“Gosh, I hate to hear that. What happened?”
I ignored his question. “So you admit knowing her?” I asked.
“Sure, but what—”
“Somebody shot her three times.”
He seemed authentically surprised. “You don’t meant it! But why?”
“I thought you might be able to help me out on that, Nobel.”
“Me? Why me?”
“You didn’t know she was dead? It’s been all over the news for two days.”
He shook his head. “I’ve been down at my deer lease trying to get things ready for November.”
“I suppose you can substantiate that?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. Two of my buddies were there with me the whole time. We share the lease.”
“Give me their names and phone numbers,” I said.
“Sure.” He quickly scribbled on a notepad, tore off the sheet, and handed it to me. “What I don’t understand is why you came to me.”
I tossed the letter across the desk.
He read it quickly and tossed it back. “So? I don’t even have to talk to you about this, you know.”
“That’s true,” I said amiably.
“So I don’t think I will.”
I gave him a cold smile. “Okay, in that case, I’ll just have to go back home and call a press conference and tell them the investigation is zeroing in on a prominent Shelby County attorney Mrs. Twiller had been romantically involved with. A lot of people might not be able to put it together. But I bet some would. Your wife, for example. Some of your more prosperous clients.”
His face held a sour frown. “I’ve always heard you were mean as hell, Bo.”
“Nah, just playful and fun-loving. Now what’s it going to be? The easy way or the hard way?”
“What do you want to know?”
“For starters, you admit that the two of you had an affair?”
He laughed an insincere little laugh and gave a futile shrug. “Sure. What’s the point in lying when you could dig into the area’s motel registers and whatnot and prove it?”
“How did you meet her?”
“I was a delegate from my church to a regional ecumenical convention in Houston. She and her husband were there.”
“You seduced a woman you met at a religious conference?” Linda asked, a hint of disgust in her voice.
“I suppose that must seem a little ironic to you,” he said. “But I promise you that other people have done it long before me.”
“Let’s have the whole story, Nobel,” I said.
“It’s not much of a story. We met, she gave signals that she might be available, and I responded. The first time we got together in Nacogdoches when her husband was in Dallas. There were a lot of other times too. Here and there. You know how it goes.”
“No, actually I don’t,” I said. “How long did it last?”
“About three months.”
“What ended it?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
He squirmed around a little in his chair. “I hate to talk about a dead woman, Bo. I know that at heart she was a good person. We had a lot of fun together.”
“That letter indicates otherwise, Mr. Dennard,” Linda said.
“I felt like I had to be a little blunt with her. I regretted having to do it.”
“Why did you end it?” I asked again.
“I became aware that she was misusing prescription drugs, and I could see a disaster looming in her near future. I didn’t want to be part of it.”
“I’ve always heard that painkillers reduce people’s sex drive,” Linda said.
“They seemed to have the opposite effect on Amanda,” Dennard said.
I tapped the letter with my fingertip. “Exactly what did you mean when you said she stood to suffer more than you did if the affair was revealed?”
“I was referring to something she and I had talked about earlier. I was pointing out that if she exposed our romance, which she was threatening to do, a lawyer like me with a financially dependent spouse was in a better position to weather such a storm than a minister’s wife. That’s all. I had no intention of doing anything to harm her.”
“So you claim,” I said.
He shrugged. “If you know the two men on that piece of paper, then you know that neither of them are the sort who would lie in a situation like this. Just check them out.”
“I know Johnny Higgins, and what you say about him is true. But that doesn’t clear you completely. This has all the earmarks of a murder for hire.”
“Really?” he asked. “But who do you think would…” He broke off and gave me a twisted smile. “A former lover might have, right?”
“On the money, Nobel,” I said.
“If it comes down to it, I’ll give you access to my finances. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really need to see an important client in about five minutes.”
We rose to leave and he stuck out his hand. After a moment’s hesitation I took it.
“I’m sorry about blowing up and threatening not to cooperate,” he said. “Alpha male syndrome. But you probably know a little about that.”
“No,” I said with a firm shake of my head. “I’m an omega male myself.”
“Huh?”
“Last letter in the Greek alphabet. You alphas start things and I finish ’em.”
* * *
We were a mile or so out of town when Linda finally asked, “So what do you think?”
“About what I
expected.”
“He did offer us access to his finances, Bo.”
I gave her a dismissive snort. “Anybody as smart as Nobel has a cash stash somewhere.”
“Do you think he did it?”
“My gut tells me no.”
She grinned. “Does it tell you anything else?”
“Yeah. It says we need to stop and get a cup of coffee and a piece of coconut cream pie at that café in Timpson. My treat.”
“I’m trying to take off a few pounds.”
“Then you can sit and suffer in silence while I indulge.”
“Is the pie really good there?”
I turned and looked at her with mock amazement. “Have you ever heard of bad coconut cream pie?”
“Point taken, as you always say.”
“Then get a move on. All this talk has got me hungry.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
I went home early that afternoon and had a quick drink, then dozed off on the sofa in the den. I awoke with a start when the phone rang right beside my ear. It was Toby. I looked at my watch and discovered that it was a little past six-thirty. “Why in thunder are you still at work?” I asked him. “You should have gone off shift this afternoon.”
“Billy Don and Otis called me, and now I’m calling you.”
“It’s that bad, huh?” I asked.
“Maybe it’s that good. You need to come on down and see for yourself.”
* * *
Ten minutes later I entered the basement hallway to hear yelling coming out of my office. “I want a lawyer! You people deaf? I want my phone call and a lawyer!”
I stepped through my doorway and saw Toby perched on the corner of my desk with Otis and Billy Don leaning against the opposite wall. In the place of honor in front of the desk sprawled a slim young black man who couldn’t have been more than thirty. He had a shaved head, a gold earring, and enough gold chains around his neck to have ransomed a fair–looking princess back in the olden days. The rest of him was loosely encased in slick black and purple nylon gangsta crap that I found deeply annoying.
“What have we got here?” I asked, as I came around my desk and took my chair.
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