Death Over the Dam (A Hunter Jones Mystery Book 2)

by Charlotte Moore

  Still, this was too big a job to toss together in a hurry. This would be an issue that would prove one more time that when there was a big story in Magnolia County, the Messenger would be the paper that had the most coverage and the best coverage.

  It would be the one they submitted for journalism awards, and the one Hunter would tuck into her own portfolio, if she went job hunting.

  She didn’t want to leave Merchantsville or Sam Bailey, but she knew if things changed between them and she wanted to leave, she’d need to have good work to show to other editors and even some prizes if possible. Everybody in the business had warned her that it was next to impossible to get a job at a big daily paper if you were coming from a small town weekly, unless you had great work to show.

  She started with the story requiring the least creativity—the one on the governor’s promises of state and federal help.

  “Hunter Jones. I can’t believe it.”

  The voice was only dimly familiar, and it took her a moment to remember the name of the chubby balding man standing at her desk, loaded down with cameras. He was somebody she had met a few times when she worked in Atlanta, and she remembered him mostly because of his suspenders and plaid shirt. Who else in the world still wore suspenders?

  “Ned Thigpen, what are you doing here?”

  “Looking for a story, “he said. “I’m doing features for Red Clay Roads now, and I heard there was a flood down here, so I thought I’d pull the oldest trick in the book and stop by the weekly paper. What on God’s green earth is a city girl like you doing here? Talk about the end of nowhere. It took me less time to get from Marietta down to Macon than it did to find this place once I got off I-75. I never saw so many pine trees and farm fields and detour signs.

  She started to answer his question and say that she had come here to get away from the big city rush and write a novel, but it had been six months since she had even looked at the novel, so she skipped that part. Besides, she didn’t really have time for a long chat, and she knew he didn’t really care. His friendly banter was preliminary to his asking for her help.

  “Well, how about helping an old guy out?” he said, proving her right.

  He shifted his camera bag off one shoulder and put it down, taking a seat without being offered one, and opening his laptop..

  He gave her a look of anticipation.

  “The place you’ll get the best pictures is over in Cathay,” she said. “That’s where the flood did the most damage and there are lots of people volunteering over there.”

  “Anybody in particular I should talk to over there?

  “Anybody wearing gloves and working in the dirty water,” she said.

  “Got some names?”

  .“There’s a webpage for Cathay if you want some basic statistics,” she said. “The mayor’s name is Debbie Taylor. It’s a very small town. You won’t have any trouble finding people to interview.”

  Ned had stopped listening and was staring past her.

  “My God,” he said. “Those are Deirdre Donagan’s paintings, aren’t they?”

  “Is that her name? Deirdre?” Hunter asked. “I was told Dee Dee. She’s a pretty girl, long dark hair. Dresses like an artist.”

  “That’s her. Probably folks down here can’t pronounce Deirdre. Where’d you get these?”

  “You know her?” Hunter countered.

  “Well, not all that well, though I’d know her work anywhere. I did a story about her and her dad four or five years ago up at Cloudland Canyon. He’s a really good nature photographer, and she was doing these wild paintings. She just kept painting and he did all the talking as I remember. Where’d you buy these?”

  “Would you believe I bought them in Cathay yesterday at a flood sale? She’s married to a guy who lives down here.”

  “Do you know how I can reach her?” he asked.” I’ve lost track of her dad and I’d sure like to ask her how to catch up with him. He has some old cameras you wouldn’t believe, and he wanted to sell this old Hasselblad…”

  “No. I really don’t. I’m sorry,” Hunter said.

  She considered telling him where to find Sharon Bennett, and reconsidered. Sharon might be more cooperative with a man, but that was just the point. Ned might be willing to ask other writers for information, but he’d be naturally cagey about his own plans, and if anybody was going to do the first story about Deirdre Dee Dee Donagan Bennett moving to the boondocks, it was going to be Hunter Jones, not Ned Thigpen.

  She did tell him how to get to Cathay, though, and she began to wonder as she wound up drawing a map, explaining and re-explaining, how the man had even found his way to Merchantsville.

  “You ought to get a GPS,” she said.

  “People keep telling me that,” he said, “but I’m just not into all this technology stuff. I’m still using film in my camera, too. Probably the last one left in Georgia besides Mike Donagan. He’s still using film, or he was last I talked to him. Said he wouldn’t ever change, and he’s into all the other computer stuff big time. He just likes doing his own developing.”

  Hunter finally got him out the door, and then he popped back in again

  “How’s that restaurant on the other side of the courthouse?” he said, “I’m going to need some supper. I’ll treat if you want to join me.”

  “It’s good,” Hunter said, “and thank you, but I’ve got a meeting.”

  Ned Thigpen waved goodbye.

  “Who was that?” Tyler said, coming out of his office.

  “You ever heard of Ned Thigpen?”

  “Oh, yeah. Freelancer, lots of folksy stuff with pretty good pictures.”

  “That’s the one,” Hunter said, “He’s way out of his territory. I did tell him how to get to Cathay, but I don’t know if he’s even going to find the bridge.”

  She was about to tell Tyler that Ned Thigpen had known about the artist who did her new paintings, but Novena came through the door triumphant over her ad sales and when the celebrating was over, everybody settled back down to work.

  Meanwhile on the other side of the flooded river, in the office of The Good Shepherd Church, Arnette Rayburn was having a comfortable talk with her husband, Pastor Jimmy Rayburn, going over plans for the week, talking about the flock, members and non-members, they considered their responsibility.

  “I went over this morning and took Dee Dee Bennett a casserole from the freezer,” Arnette said, “and you won’t believe what she asked me.”

  “Yes I will,” said Pastor Jimmy, who tended to be literal. “Of course I’ll believe you.”

  “She asked me what heaven looked like,” Arnette said.

  “And what did you tell her?” her husband asked.

  “Well I tried to remember everything I could from the Bible. I told her it would have streets paved with gold and there would angels singing to God, and that there would be a crystal lake and all kinds of precious jewels and light everywhere..”

  “Why do you suppose she wanted to know that?” Pastor Jimmy asked.

  “It turned out she wanted to do a painting of it,” Arnette said. “She said she wanted to do a painting with this world down below and Heaven on top of the clouds, and she wasn’t sure she could get all of that many things in. I told her I thought that would be real sweet however she did it, and not to worry too much about getting it exactly right, because if her heart was in the right place, Jesus would guide her hand.”

  Pastor Jimmy considered this carefully and said, “I’d like to see that painting. Maybe we could buy it for the children’s Sunday school room.

  “Or maybe I could talk her into painting a mural on the wall in there,” Arnette said. “She needs to get out more.”

  CHAPTER 9

  TUESDAY WAS A SCORCHER, BUT IT was good day for business in Merchantsville, as volunteers poured in to help with the disaster in Cathay, and half of them headed back across the river over the re-opened bridge to buy building supplies, pick up sunscreen and eat lunch.

  Hunter walked arou
nd R&J’s at lunchtime, stopping to talk to any dirty stranger she saw, to find out where they were from and why they had come. Many were young retirees, some from church groups, some who were volunteer rescue workers in their own counties, and some who had gotten their carpentry skills from Habitat for Humanity projects.

  Time was getting to be a big issue for her. She needed to get her writing finished and to help with the layout. Neither she nor Tyler wanted anything but the Pages 1 and 2 left to do on Wednesday morning, because, flood notwithstanding, both the Merchantsville City Council and the Magnolia County Board of Education would be meeting that evening and those stories would have to be written.

  Tyler, as always, would cover the City Council meeting. Hunter would have the Board of Education meeting, and with the start of school just two weeks off, it would be a busy one.

  The front page was already going to be packed with flood stories, including a short one about the coffin.”

  “My bet is that nobody’s going to claim those bones,” Tyler said.

  “I think Taneesha’s checking on missing person reports going way back,” Hunter said.. “They’re keeping the remains at the crime lab in Macon but they didn’t have room for the casket, and they sent it back. It’s down in the courthouse basement.

  That’s creepy,” Novena said, glancing out the window toward the courthouse.

  Grady Bennett was home most of the day. Arnette Rayburn had come by in the morning and taken Dee Dee to Bible study, and she had invited Grady to church on Sunday as she always did.. Arnette was nice, Grady thought, and he was glad for Dee Dee to be out with other people, with Arnette looking after her, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to start going to that church on Sundays. If you went a few times, they’d be after you to join, and Mama had said, “Those people are nothing but Holy Rollers.”

  Grady was not sure what was wrong with Holy Rollers if they were as nice as Arnette and Pastor Jimmy.

  Mama went to Cathay First Baptist, but she did not push Grady and Dee Dee to go where she went.

  She did not think Dee Dee had the right clothes, and she had gone to the Macon Mall once to shop, and brought Deirdre three shopping bags full of new clothes.

  Dee Dee had smiled and thanked her, but she never wore any of the clothes, and Mama had noticed that and gotten her feelings hurt. She had said she had tried her best and would not keep trying.

  Dee Dee just said she wanted Meredith to help her pick out clothes, that Meredith had a store and knew what she liked. But Grady didn’t know who Meredith was and Dee Dee couldn’t remember the name of the store or where it was.

  Thinking about the way Dee Dee liked to dress reminded Grady of the lady from the newspaper, the one who was the sheriff’s girlfriend, who had bought the paintings. She was from Atlanta and she wore funny clothes, too… He thought she might know the name of the store.

  He didn’t want his Mama to get mixed up in it, so he called one of his friends on his cell phone and asked him if he knew the number for the newspaper. Skeet found the number for him. He wrote it down, and thought about what to say.

  At 4 p.m., Novena turned to Hunter and said, “This man on the phone wants to talk to the lady with curly hair who is the sheriff’s girlfriend. I think that means you.”

  As soon as he said who he was, Hunter said, “I am so glad you called. I was trying to find out how to reach you.”

  They both talked at the same time for a minute, and then things were said in order.

  Grady stammered out that there had been a store in Atlanta where his wife used to buy her clothes and she couldn’t remember the name of it, just that a lady named Meredith who worked in the store helped her pick things out, and did Hunter know what store that was and where it was?”

  Hunter said if he could wait until after the paper was out, she would try to find the store for him.

  “She likes long skirts and faded things,” he said, “It’s kind of hard to explain, but, well, sort of like what you had on the other day. Not like ladies from around here wear..”

  Hunter said she would try to find the place or another good place just as soon as she got through with the newspaper work. Then she told him he was going to be on the front page, and asked him about repairing the paintings.

  He was thrilled about the front page picture, and knew just what to do about the paintings. He said, repeating three times that he stretched all Dee Dee’s canvases, that if he had known they had flood water on them, he would have taken them home and fixed them before his Mama sold them to anybody.

  When they hung up, they were both smiling, and Hunter had directions to the Bennett house, where she would take the paintings a week later. He offered to come and pick them up, but she insisted that she’d really like to meet the artist. She didn’t mention an interview. That could wait until she had made friends with Dee Dee or Deirdre, who must be a real scatterbrain if she couldn’t remember the name of her favorite shop.

  She knew Novena was dying of curiosity, but she decided Deirdre Dee Dee Donagan Bennett didn’t need her fashion issues discussed all over Merchantsville. She allowed herself a big Cheshire Cat smile, and then got back to work.

  She filed another story with photos and cutlines, and checked her list. She thought she could see the light at the end of the tunnel, but that would turn out to be wrong.

  At 5 p.m., just as he was ready to leave for the day, Sheriff Sam Bailey got a call from Bubba Shipley, who had found a car on the road to his hangar.

  “There’s a dead man in it,” Bubba said. “Real dead.”

  CHAPTER 10

  THE DIRT ROAD WAS POORLY MAINTAINED and barely wide enough for two cars. It had a few scattered pine trees on either side.

  “I hardly ever come out this end of the road” Bubba was saying, “but I wanted to check the road after all that rain, and I came up on this. I’ve seen some bad stuff, Sam, but it still made me sick.”

  “You ever saw the car before?” Sam asked.

  “No,” Bubba said. “Never laid eyes on it.”

  The Georgia car tag, from Cobb County, had already turned out to be listed under one Camilla Hopkins, who didn’t have a listed telephone number… Sam was reluctant to call and leave a message. It might well be the man’s wife, and she didn’t need to hear about this over the phone. He could arrange for somebody up there to go to her address.

  “Looks like he rolled down the window and the shooter got him right in the face at close range,” Bubba said. “Poor man. Can I get out of here, Sam? I’ve told you everything I know. I just hope y’all can get this car towed out of here tonight.”

  “We’re going to do that,” Sam said. “We’ll get a statement from you later.”

  After Bubba had gone, Sam and his two deputies put up crime tape. A few cars had already slowed down along the highway to try to see what was going on.

  “Looks like the shooter came in this side of the car after he shot him,” Bub Williston said. “Pushed him forward to get his wallet. See how the pocket is turned inside out.

  “Cold blooded SOB,” Skeet Borders added.

  “And probably took anything else in sight,” Sam said. “Hard to see somebody killing a stranger on the off chance that he had some real money in his wallet.”

  The car was buzzing with flies and both of them were willing to leave the search of the car to the crime scene tech team.

  “Could have been somebody the victim knew,” Skeet Borders said cautiously. He was the new kid on the block and he hadn’t been at a murder scene before, but he liked applying common sense. “Who’s going to stop and roll down a window to a stranger on a road like this?”

  Sam wondered the same thing, but he knew that plenty of people asked strangers for directions.

  “Could have been a drug deal,” Bub said.

  Hunter, who had heard the sirens start up in town and turned on the newspaper’s police scanner, pulled up, got out of her car and stood outside the crime tape. The light was still good, and took four or five pictures v
ery rapidly, concentrating on the officers, not the car.

  She knew Sam wouldn’t tell her anything yet, but as Tyler always said, “You can get the facts later. You can’t get the pictures later.”

  She studied the beat-up old red car and the Cobb County tag and got a chill. How could somebody from the Atlanta area wind up on some crazy dirt road out this far from town? She knew that this must be the other end of the semi-circular road that led to Bubba Shipley’s hangar, what Shipley jokingly called “Bubba’s By-Pass.”

  Then “Cobb County” and “Marietta” clicked together in her mind.

  “Sam!” she called out, “Do you know who it is?”

  Sam looked around, shaking his head negatively, though it wasn’t clear whether he meant, “No, I don’t know who it is?” or “Don’t ask me any questions right now.”

  “Is it a bald guy wearing suspenders?” Hunter called out.

  Sam looked surprised, and walked over.

  “Yes,” he said tersely. “Do you know him?”

  “It could be a freelance writer named Ned Thigpen . He came by the paper yesterday. I’m pretty sure he lives in Marietta. The car ought to be full of cameras. He had a laptop computer, too. Is he dead?”

  “Spell the name for me,” Sam said, and Hunter did.

  “There’s not a thing in the car as far as we can see,” Sam said “It looks like the car never was turned off and the battery finally quit. We’re waiting for the crime scene techs to get here.”

  Hunter steadied herself.

  “I can identify him if you need for me to.”

  “No you can’t,” Sam said. “You don’t need to see this. Do you know if this Thigpen guy is married? The tags listed under a woman’s name in Atlanta. It’s a Camilla Hopkins.”

  “I don’t know anything about his family,” Hunter said.

  “Tell me about what he said yesterday,” Sam said.