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

by Charlotte Moore

  “Oh, yes,” Miss Rose said as she put on the tea kettle. “I heard about that this morning at my book club. One version is that Rhonda Ransom has failed in Nashville and is trying to come home in style by having a benefit concert. I hope you aren’t worried about her.”

  “Of course, I’m worried about her,” Hunter said, “and what’s worse is that Sam knew about this yesterday and we were together last night and he didn’t even mention it, so I walk into the paper and Novena tells me.”

  Miss Rose measured tea into one of her prettiest rose-covered teapots and said, “Men do misunderstand how women feel about things, Hunter. Maybe he didn’t know it would be such a big thing to you.”

  “Well, I’m not taking his lunch to him,” Hunter said, hearing herself sound like a stubborn child.

  “I think that’s appropriate,” Miss Rose said mildly. “You certainly wouldn’t want to go into the courthouse carrying his dinner and crying. Now don’t worry. He’ll come around and apologize.”

  Hunter managed to smile. Miss Rose’s big Himalayan cat, Ozymandias, rubbed up against her leg, bit her sandal strap and purred. For a moment, the end of the world didn’t seem imminent.

  “They ate cookies and drank tea in silence, and then Hunter choked up again.

  “It just ruins everything!” she said through her sniffling. “I already ordered a cake for Bethie’s birthday party and now Rhonda is probably going to be there.”

  “But it’s not Sam’s fault,” Miss Rose said. “You know he didn’t ask her to come back. He can’t control where she lives. I think, my dear, that you are feeling much too threatened. You can have a separate party for Bethie if you want to.”

  “I am not feeling threatened,” Hunter said, knowing as she said it that it was a lie.

  “Rhonda is very striking, very pretty,” Miss Rose said, “but so are you and you are much brighter and, quite honestly, a better person than she is. And besides, you are interested in Sam’s work, which I doubt I’m sure she ever was, and you have a wonderful relationship with Bethie.”

  Hunter’s cell phone rang. She saw at a glance that it was Sam calling, but she didn’t answer. She wasn’t about to talk to him until she had calmed down. Miss Rose watched, understood and nodded in agreement.

  Then Miss Rose’s phone rang. It wasn’t a cell phone, but an old-fashioned wall phone, and it never told you who was calling. She got up slowly and went to answer it.

  “Hello,” she said. “Well, hello there Sam.”

  Hunter shook her head back and forth vehemently.

  “Yes, she’s here, but she doesn’t want to talk with you right now.”

  Hunter buried her face in her hands.

  Miss Rose listened intently and said, “Of course I will, Sam. Now you have a nice day.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said to tell you he loves you and he will get his own lunch and he will come over to talk to you as soon as he gets off work, so don’t move back to Atlanta.”

  Hunter smiled a little.

  “I thought it was sweet,” Miss Rose said. “But what was he talking about? Have you been thinking about moving back to Atlanta?”

  “No,” Hunter said, “but I guess I never have exactly told him I’m here to stay. He’s been after me about getting Tyler to give me a raise.”

  “Well, are you here to stay?” Miss Rose asked. “I’ve wondered about that, too.”

  “Well, I would be if Sam and I were, well. I mean, I don’t really know, but if he and I were to break up, I think I’d probably start thinking more about my career.

  “Have another cookie,” Miss Rose said. “You mean to tell me he hasn’t mentioned marriage?”

  Sam seldom asked for advice on his personal life, but when he did, his secretary was glad to give it.

  “What you need to do,” Shellie said, “is send her flowers. I’d say this is a dozen red roses situation, at the very least. You really messed up. Red roses from Sue Ellen’s, not from the grocery store. Delivered, so she has time to get in a sweeter mood before you see her.”

  Sam groaned. “And everybody in town will know about it by the time they get there,”

  “That,” his secretary said, “is a good thing. I mean, Sam, I can see why she got upset. Here your ex is coming back and making sure it’s the biggest news in town, and you didn’t even give her a heads up.”

  “I was thinking,” he said, “that if I told her she’d think I thought it was a bigger deal than it is. I am not married to Rhonda.”

  “Well, you’re not married to Hunter either, so what does that have to do with anything? Unless I’ve missed something, you’re not engaged to her either. So what’s she supposed to tell Rhonda if she meets her—that you’re going steady?”

  “I’m waiting to find out if she really wants to stay here,” Sam said.

  “Well, maybe she’s waiting to find out if she’s got a reason to stay here,” Shellie said.

  “I think you’re right about the roses,” Sam said, changing the subject. “How about calling Sue Ellen and ordering them for me.”

  “No way,” Shellie said. “You need to call Sue-Ellen your very own self, so she can tell Hunter you did. I’ll get you the number.”

  An hour later, Sue Ellen Larson headed out the front door of Sue Ellen’s Flowers with a dozen long-stemmed pink roses. Normally when orders came in, she had her teenaged son make the deliveries, but this time she left him to watch the shop, because she wanted to make the delivery herself, and tell Hunter Jones how cute the sheriff was ordering them, and how he didn’t want a card attached, and said, “She’ll know they’re from me.”

  Not that she was a gossip, but Sue-Ellen couldn’t wait to tell one or two friends in strictest confidence that if Rhonda Ransom thought she was going to waltz back into Sam Bailey’s life, she had another think coming.

  As for the pink roses, she had told Sam she didn’t have enough red ones, which was a fib. She just thought that red roses were for Valentine’s Day and beauty pageants, and the long stemmed pink ones were much more romantic.

  “As soon as she opened the door, I could tell she had been crying,” Sue-Ellen told her two best friends later. “She was absolutely stunned when she saw the roses, and I just said, ‘Sam Bailey said you’d know these were from him,” and she started bawling , so naturally I went inside and put the roses on the table—it’s a really cute apartment—and then I gave her a hug and told her not to worry about a thing.”

  CHAPTER 14

  ON FRIDAY, HUNTER GOT TO WORK early and put the clear glass vase filled with long stemmed pink roses on her desk. Sam had suggested she do that and tell everybody who came in that they were from him, and just before she had left her apartment for work, she had decided to do just that.

  If her private life wasn’t going to be private, at least she was going to make sure that she wasn’t going to be the “poor thing” in the stories that went around.

  That settled, she was ready to focus her attention on work for the next issue of the paper—on another story about Ned Thigpen’s still-unsolved murder, and a wrap up of the report on the flood damage that Clarence Bartow and Sam had given to the County Commissioners, and the controversy about the casket in the courthouse basement.

  “What else?” she asked herself, trying to think ahead to the Tuesday deadline.

  Maybe an interview with Mayor Debbie Taylor about the damage to the city hall and whether it was time to start thinking about building a new city hall, she thought, scribbling down notes.

  Or maybe a background story on earlier floods? Somebody from the Historical Society was sure to help with that. Tyler might even want to write that one himself.

  And, of course, there was the story about hometown girl Rhonda Ransom giving a benefit concert for the flood victims. That one would be Novena’s to write. Hunter promised herself not to blink an eye if Tyler decided it should go on page one.

  Tyler arrived at exactly 8:30 and stopped at her desk to find out what s
he was working on. Hunter moved the roses to the other side of her desk so that he could take notes, too, and if he noticed them at all, he did a fine job of showing no curiosity.

  “I’ve got a good one from the P&Z work session last night,” Hunter told him. “They were all worked up about the casket being stored in the basement of the courthouse and they were saying it was against zoning regulations. They seemed to think the body was in it.”

  Tyler grinned, as she knew he would.

  “Good quotes?” he asked.

  She flipped through her notebook.

  “How about ‘This is not a mausoleum!’ and “It could be a health hazard.’? And then Commissioner Kelley told me ‘Don’t you put this in the paper.’”

  “I hope you laughed in his face.”

  “I smiled. Oh, and then Jaybird Hilliard was there doing his ex officio thing and got into a rant about how if anybody showed up to claim it they had to cover the expenses for hauling it away and how they needed to check with P&Z to make sure they could even rebury it legally without getting a plot at a cemetery.”

  “Quotes from the sheriff?”

  “He said if they’ll find a place for him to put it, he’ll move it, but the folks in Macon didn’t have room for it. They just kept the remains.”

  “Sounds like top of the front page,” Tyler said, “I was hoping we’d have something good to follow up the way we sold out last week.”

  Hunter wondered if it might be a good time to talk to him about a raise, but their discussion was over the moment Novena came in and saw the roses.

  “Oh, how beyoootiful!” she crowed. “I bet I can guess who sent you those.”

  She collapsed into her chair and gave what appeared to be a genuine sigh of relief.

  Then she jumped back up and came over to hug Hunter, who returned the hug and couldn’t help smiling back.

  “Ohhh, they smell so good,” Novena said.

  Tyler gave them both a look of total disdain and said, “Let’s have our staff meeting at 10 a.m. You ladies take time to smell the roses.”

  They both made faces at him as he turned and rolled his wheelchair toward his office.

  “I’m so glad everything’s good between you two,” Novena said earnestly. “I worried all night about it after you left here looking so upset. I shouldn’t have even told you..”

  “It’s all fine,” Hunter said, “And you didn’t do a thing wrong. I’m sorry you were worried about it.”

  Skeet Borders and Bub Williston were making their way down a rough dirt road to Pine Haven, which appeared to be a trailer court with bigger lots than most.

  “Long as I’ve lived in Magnolia County, I never knew this place was here,” Skeet said as Bub maneuvered around potholes.

  “We get calls from out here now and then,” Bub said. “Domestics. Sometimes noise complaints. Now where do you want to start?’

  “How about with that woman over there,” Skeet said, pointing to a woman hanging out clothes on a line.

  “Sure, I remember J.T.,” the woman told them. “Everbody knew J.T. Nice friendly man. Worked over at the kaolin plant.”

  “That’s what we’re looking into,” Skeet said. “We got some information that about five or six years ago, people heard gun shots from his house, and nobody’s seen him since.”

  “I don’t think I want to get mixed up in any talk about gunshots,” the woman said. “I can just say I haven’t laid eyes on him for about five years.”

  “Which trailer did he live in?” Bub asked.

  “It’s way down at the end of the road,” she said, “You can’t miss it if you just keep drivin’, ‘cause those dogs are gonna start up soon as they see your car, and don’t be tellin’ that woman I said anything about any of it.”

  “Are the dogs fenced in?” Bub asked.

  “Oh, yeah, you’d think it was Fort Knox down there, and I’ll give you some advice as long as you don’t never say you heard it from me.”

  Bub and Skeet both nodded.

  “That woman is stone crazy an’ she’s got two crazy sons and them dogs of hers are crazy too.”

  When Hunter met Sam for lunch, he had T.J. Jackson with him, and they had gotten the back corner table. T.J. was a detective with the District Attorney’s office, and Hunter held a special place in his heart. He was divorced when they first met, and had asked her out to dinner.

  It was their only date though, because after an evening of hearing all about his lost love, she had persuaded him to put his best effort into courting his ex-wife and winning her back.

  Their date had made Sam jealous, which T.J., now happily remarried, mentioned any chance he got.

  This morning, however, he was all business, and wanted to know everything Hunter knew or had dug up about Ned Thigpen, and if she had any ideas about other photographers who might have been around on Tuesday.

  “I saw that insurance list his wife sent, and I’m thinking he had some great gear,” T.J. said after waving toward Annelle for more coffee. “and another photographer might have wanted it.”

  “Enough to kill him for it?” Hunter asked. “I can’t see that.”

  “People have killed for less,” Sam commented. “Taneesha’s in Cathay looking into it now.”

  “Well OK, let’s say another photographer wanted to steal his cameras and was willing to shoot him,” Hunter said. “How would he get him way out on that dirt road?”

  “How did anybody get him out there?” T.J. said. “I’m just talking about motive. There wasn’t any reason to kill him except to rob him, not as far as I can see. He didn’t know anybody around here except you. “

  “He barely knew me,” Hunter said, “and he knew this artist who lives here, and knew her father.”

  “We checked that out,” Sam said to T.J. “He didn’t know the father all that well, because the man’s been dead for three or four years and he didn’t know it.”

  Hunter told T.J. about Ned Thigpen’s recognizing Deirdre Donagan’s work and expressing an interest in Deirdre’s father’s cameras.”

  “See what I mean,” T.J. said. “It’s going to turn out to be a photographer.”

  “Most of the photographers I’ve known wouldn’t hurt a flea,” Hunter said. “They’re not nearly as mean as reporters.”

  Sam laughed.

  “It wasn’t just one camera,” T.J. said. “He had four with him, and a tripod and all kinds of lenses. Now I don’t see some thug deciding he could make a bunch of money at a pawnshop. I’m saying it could be somebody with a real passion for cameras.”

  “I guess it would have to be somebody crazy,” Hunter said, getting out her notebook, “And it would have had to be somebody who still uses film, or they’re going to be really disappointed. Now, I have a job to do too. Is there anything you two can tell me about the investigation?”

  “Just that it’s ongoing,” Sam said, “and we have cooperation from the District Attorney’s office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. If you can run that photo of him again, please do, and ask people to call my office if they talked to him or saw him, and put the details about the car in again too, in case anybody saw him heading out that way. Maybe it could be on the front page this time.”

  “Not my call,” Hunter said, “Tyler decides that kind of thing. You could call him about it. What about the gun? Do you have any idea what kind of gun it was?”

  “All I’m going to say is it was a handgun,” Sam said.

  “I’ve got it. Somebody’s following him,” T.J. suddenly announced , “and he turns on that road and the other car turns too, so he stops to see what they want, and this other guy walks up like he’s going to ask for instructions, and Thigpen rolls down the window and gets shot. Then the killer takes the cameras and takes off.”

  “I thought the killer took his laptop and his wallet and cellphone, too,” Hunter said.

  “Well, sure, just so it wouldn’t make the camera motive so obvious, and then the killer is from out of town, so he heads straig
ht for the interstate.”

  “And we never catch him,” Sam said, scowling.

  “OR,” Hunter said, a little amused at T.J.’s persistence about his theory, “Or Ned Thigpen took a photo of something the killer didn’t want seen by others, and the killer followed him and killed him to get the cameras and get rid of a photo of something incriminating. I think fear of exposure would be a stronger motive than just coveting somebody’s cameras.”

  “I wouldn’t rule that out,” Sam said. “Could be there was somebody around Cathay who had good reason not to want to be photographed.”

  “Well, it’s all speculation until we get more information,” T.J. said, and Hunter changed the subject.

  “Have you decided what to do about the casket?” she asked Sam.

  “I’m thinking of just putting it back in the creek somewhere near the county line,” Sam said with a grin.” “I was just telling T.J. about catching hell about putting it in the courthouse basement.”

  “I can see their point,” T.J. said. “It looks like something from an old Lon Chaney movie, like the lid’s going to start creaking open.”

  Hunter laughed and told T.J. that Sam had had about as much as he could take with the casket.

  “How old do you think it is?” T.J. asked, trying to get serious.

  Sam finished his iced tea.

  “Well it’s been underground long enough for the deceased to be unidentifiable. From what we can find out, but that could mean anything from a year to ten years, since there was no embalming and the casket wasn’t exactly water tight when it was built. Anyway, I think we may have a lead on that. Could have been a domestic turned into homicide, which is off the record. Bub and Skeet are checking that out.

  “So we may have a story for the paper?” Hunter asked.

  “Maybe,” Sam said. “Let’s hope.”

  In the meantime, Taneesha was having lunch at Porky’s, with the Mayor of Cathay. Debbie Taylor had been a stay-at-home mom and then part-time librarian before running for mayor when nobody else would. She had now been, as she put it herself, “stuck with the job” for 12 years, and she needed to be helping her daughter get ready to leave for college. She was nearly in tears.