Devil Sent the Rain

by Lisa Turner

  “Why do you say ‘claimed’?”

  “After Finn disappeared I got suspicious and looked into Atwood’s background. He’d been expelled from Princeton and never attended Stanford. He had a minor possession charge in Florida and an arrest in Georgia for selling counterfeit DVDs out of his trunk. Got probation for that.

  “Our family has lived in a bubble of power and privilege for many years. It didn’t occur to us that someone with Atwood’s background could work his way inside.”

  “It happens. Con artists seek out smart, wealthy people like your family and worm their way in. They rely on your good manners.”

  “Finn trusted him. We’ve calculated that Atwood talked him out of at least thirty grand.”

  She studied the photo, the way Finn’s gaze cut possessively at Atwood. “The PI report indicated Finn and Atwood were lovers.”

  Judd’s eyes softened. “That explains a lot, doesn’t it?”

  “What makes you think Atwood had a role in the disappearance?”

  Judd’s gaze jumped around the room over the charts and stacks of files. “Atwood started dealing drugs. We believe he talked Finn into making a pickup. It got him killed.”

  “You’re certain he’s dead?”

  “Without a body …” He shrugged. “Walker’s investigators believe he’s gone. The day Finn disappeared the landlord overheard him yelling on the phone. Records show Atwood called Finn from Miami three times that day. Walker believes Atwood convinced Finn to drive to a place in Arkansas where meth labs had been operating. Meth cookers have shit for brains. You know what I’m talking about.”

  She nodded, not wanting to interrupt.

  “I’m sure Finn didn’t know what he was walking into. It would be like him to balk when he realized he’d been sent to mule meth. He’d be furious.”

  Frankie looked around the room, aware of the resources Judd had thrown at the case. She caught him rubbing his eyes. “Headache?”

  “No sleep. It’s under my skin. Finn and Caroline gone. You’re wondering why I think the cases are connected. Take another look at the photograph of the two of them standing with Atwood.”

  She leaned in. Atwood had pulled Caroline close, his hand around her waist, two fingers slipped deep into her waistband.

  “She had it bad for him,” he said. “She’d done a lot of drugs as a teenager, but it was behind her. Atwood found out. He roped her in with coke.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure,” he said.

  “She had to know Finn and Atwood were lovers.”

  “No one in the family knew Finn was gay. Maybe Zelda did, but she’d never bring it up. Finn wouldn’t want Caroline to know about him and Atwood, although she was so infatuated I don’t think it would have mattered. Atwood must have realized Finn’s money was limited and that Caroline’s folks were the ones with the deep pockets.”

  Frankie thought about that. “You believe Atwood wanted Finn out of the picture?”

  “Hard to say. Running drugs out of Arkansas was dangerous business. Walker believed the meth cooks killed Finn by accident or for the hell of it. Knowing they’d screwed up, they called Atwood. He was smart enough to make the murder look like an accident or suicide.

  “I ran into Atwood at a bar downtown after the case went cold. I hauled him out into an alley and knocked him around, gave him Walker’s theory about the meth labs and Finn’s murder. I accused him of being responsible. He took off running. I couldn’t catch him. He disappeared after that. Caroline found out what I’d done. That’s why she quit talking to me.”

  “I picked that up from the transcript,” she said.

  “Walker tracked him to a California prison where he served 120 days for a simple possession charge. He gated out. Walker lost him.” Judd fell silent. He ran his palm across his forehead, sweating. The rum and conversation had taken its toll.

  “On the phone you said you had information about Caroline,” she said.

  “Right. It’s in the kitchen if you’ll follow me.”

  He showed her to a kitchen with a beamed ceiling and brick fireplace. Sitting on a stack of old phone books at the end of the counter was a dusty answering machine.

  “I just found this message Caroline left on my landline. It’s time stamped Monday afternoon. I was concerned I might lose the recording if I unplugged the machine to bring it to your office.”

  “Good thinking,” she said. She took out her mobile and set it to record.

  He hit play.

  Chapter 25

  Caroline’s voice came over the speaker sounding elated. She spoke in a hurry.

  “Judd, it’s Sparrow. It’s been too long. That’s my fault. I’m leaving town for a couple of days. If you’re in Memphis when I come back, let’s get together. I’ll have some happy news. At least I’m happy about it. I’ve missed you, Cuz.”

  Judd hit the stop button.

  Caroline’s good news probably referred to the baby, but Judd wouldn’t know about that. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “Atwood’s back.”

  “Why jump to that conclusion?”

  “The excitement in her voice. If you’d seen how wrapped up she was in Atwood, you’d understand. Before Finn disappeared, she confided that Atwood had come to Vandy and proposed. She wanted to graduate from law school before they married, so they kept it secret. Then Finn disappeared and Atwood took off.”

  “There’s nothing in that message that points to Atwood.”

  “There is.” He played it again. “Only three people ever called her Sparrow—her dad, Finn, and Clive Atwood. She never used the name between us. I think she’d been talking to Atwood.”

  “That’s pretty thin.”

  He regarded her. “I’m at a dead end with Finn’s case. Atwood knows what happened to him. I think he came here to seduce Caroline and wound up killing her. If we find him, we may wrap up both cases.” He was more clear-eyed now. He held her gaze, didn’t flinch.

  What the hell, she thought. He could be right. “Tell me what you think happened.”

  “Atwood found out about her engagement to Dr. Sharma and got in touch. A call from him would have turned her world upside down.”

  “You think she would’ve gone back to Atwood that easily?”

  “In a heartbeat. Especially if he played on her sympathy and fed her a plausible story about where he’d been.”

  “You have evidence he’s been in Memphis?” she asked.

  “After I heard the message this morning, I hired an investigator to look for him.”

  Frankie considered a possible scenario. Atwood showed up with a good story and a supply of coke. That could explain the vial in her overnight bag. She partied with him a couple of times and decided to cancel the wedding with Sharma. When she found out she was pregnant, she chose to marry Atwood. On the way to Airlee, she changed her mind and rejected him. Would he kill her? Murder isn’t the typical profile for con artists.

  “Do you think he’d kill her?” she asked.

  “I have a report on Atwood written by a prison psychiatrist. Read it and you’ll understand.

  “What kicked off my investigation was a visit with Aunt Gracie Ella four years ago after she’d been released from the hospital. She was like a bonfire burned down to ashes. She was suffering. For both our sakes, I had to find out what happened to Finn. That hasn’t changed.”

  He cleared his throat. “Would you consider riding over to the scene with me tomorrow to take a look?”

  At the CJC Frankie stowed her satchel under her desk and went to check on Harrison’s progress with the marriage license application search. When she came back Billy was on the phone with his shoulders up around his ears. He hung up and began scribbling on a pad.

  “How’d it go with Zelda?” she asked.

  “Good. She explained the closet of suits with the tags on them. Sharma wanted his wife-to-be to dress more conservatively. That fell flat with Caroline. I think Zelda is going to try and ta
lk Rosalyn into giving her Caroline’s wardrobe. She’s an enterprising woman.”

  Frankie leaned her backside against the edge of her desk. Sheesh. Men could be so bloody stupid. “What else?”

  “The sapphire ring belonged to Zelda. She loaned it to Caroline for the wedding to Sharma. Caroline wouldn’t give it back. Zelda says that’s what the fight in the office was about.”

  “You believe her?”

  “About the ring? Yes. But there’s more to the fight than she’s telling. And she sure changed her story about being best buddies with Caroline. Caroline went to the top of the family firm. Zelda got stuck in the file room.”

  “I’ll bet she said the family spoiled Caroline and treated her like a dog.”

  A funny look crossed his face. “Yeah, sorta. She said Caroline picked up a coke habit at her private school. Bored little rich girls looking for trouble. The coke triggered manic episodes that never went away. And she had some legal problems.”

  “Manic episodes,” Frankie said. “That explains her dependence on scripts. The coke screwed up her neurochemistry. Judd told me she’d been clean then started back with coke in college.”

  “You’ve talked to Judd Phillips?”

  “I did. But let’s stay with this.”

  He frowned, not used to her controlling the conversation.

  “Is Zelda on our suspects list?” she asked.

  “The fight over the ring still bothers me. I think she showed up at the house on Tuesday to push her way into the investigation.”

  “We’ll see how it rolls. Hold on. I have something else.” She went to her desk to pick up her mobile and two files.

  “Here’s Caroline’s phone log.” She gave him a marked up copy. “Caroline made five calls on Monday evening. Three we’ve confirmed—Blue Hopkins, Zelda Taylor, and Gracie Ella Adams. The fourth was Highsmith. We’ll assume she was on her way to marry Sharma and wanted to cancel the protective order.”

  She tapped her finger on the log. “And this one. She left a message on Judd Phillips’s landline. I went to his house to record it.”

  She played it on her mobile. Billy listened with his chin tucked and his brow furrowed. He asked to hear it again. He wanted to listen to the message, but she knew he also wanted to hear Caroline’s voice a second time, an observation she would keep to herself.

  “Her good news was about the pregnancy,” he said.

  “Judd doesn’t know about the baby. He has a different interpretation.”

  She summarized the connection between Finn, Atwood, and Caroline including the secret engagement. “Judd thinks Atwood came to Memphis to snake Caroline away from Sharma.”

  Billy picked up the baseball on his desk, tossed it in the air, and caught it. “You’ve confirmed Atwood is in town?”

  “Judd put an investigator on it this morning.”

  He tossed the ball up again. “Why would Atwood kill his potential meal ticket?”

  “Try this. She dumped Sharma and got back together with Atwood. She agreed to marry him then tried to back out at the last minute. He’s broke, he’s desperate. He snapped and killed her.”

  Billy leaned back, thumbing the ball. “You’re intrigued with this Phillips character.”

  She knew this would be coming. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Would you say he’s an alcoholic?”

  “He has a drinking problem.”

  “He’s a rum-dum. He’s steering you off course.”

  She held up her mobile. “We need to rule Atwood in or out. And your comment about my being intrigued with Phillips is out of line.”

  “Point taken.” He set the ball on its stand. “Now I have news. Rosalyn called the director this morning and told him my interview with her husband put him in the hospital. She called me opportunistic white trash. Said I want to see my name in the papers.”

  “Wow. And Davis repeated that crap to you? He should’ve thrown it back in her face.”

  “Here’s the thing. Our new director, Mr. Jefferson Davis, is as Old South as the Lees. His family ran out of money faster, so he had to get a working man’s job. He’s going to align with people like the Lees all day long.”

  “That’s unethical.”

  “You’re not from here, so I’ll explain how it works,” he said. “We have two types of born and raised Southerners—sons of planters who’ve owned delta soil for over a hundred years, and the sons of the poor whites who moved from the Kentucky and North Carolina hills. The poor whites bought acreage from struggling plantations. They started their farms but couldn’t compete with the big planters who still had cheap labor from sharecroppers. Most of the poor whites lost their farms. They had to go into government work or sell burial insurance to the blacks. They ended up living in tenant houses or trailers. That’s where the term ‘trailer trash’ comes from.

  “It doesn’t matter that the descendants of those families have gone to university and now own businesses and practice law, the Old South folks still resent the fact that their great grandfathers stole land from plantation owners.

  “The poor whites blamed the blacks for everything bad that had happened to them. It’s human nature to find someone to look down on. The more they burned crosses and lynched people, the more blacks caught the train north to Memphis and Chicago. Here’s the twist. The Old South folks depended on frightened and oppressed blacks to maintain their lifestyles. They resented the poor whites even more because they had scared off the cheap labor.”

  “Where does Rosalyn say you fit in?”

  “I’m poor white on my father’s side and Old South on my mother’s. Her family never forgave her for marrying beneath herself.”

  Frankie hardly knew how to respond. This was his heritage he was talking about. She could see the discussion was upsetting him. Even if Billy wasn’t insulted, she was.

  “I don’t care if Director Davis believes he’s the president of the Confederate States, he’s supposed to be in the trenches with us,” she said.

  “He’ll be there with us until someone like Rosalyn yanks his chain.”

  He picked up the Commercial Appeal and turned it so she could read the headline:

  Local Attorney Murdered in Bison Field

  “Tomorrow the story will be Middlebrook’s plea to the public for information. Every kook in the city will call the tip line. We’ll have officers chasing bullshit leads instead of digging up real witnesses.” He creased the paper and dropped it in the trash. “A waste of time.”

  She knew that sullen look. “The chief didn’t consult you on this.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “It’s precisely the point. You’re angry because Middlebrook and Davis are going around you.”

  “Which is the reason I don’t want you to be sidetracked by your gambling buddy. You and I have to solve this case and get out from under it.”

  “Damn it, Billy, don’t put this off on me.”

  Detective Kloss walked by, grinning. “You guys fight like a married couple.”

  “Hey, that hurts,” Frankie called after him.

  Billy started slamming desk drawers. “Where are we on the marriage license application?”

  “The entire staff at one of the clerk’s offices got food poisoning from bad potato salad served at a birthday party. They’ve been closed for three days. The Benton County’s office had pipes break in the ceiling. Everything’s soaked. But Harrison is staying with it.”

  Billy took a fresh memo book from a drawer and flung it onto the desk. “Any surveillance shots of the Camaro from Monday night?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Those frigging guys aren’t doing their job.”

  “I’ll be sure to pass that along.” She handed him pages from a file. “Here’s the latest on Highsmith.”

  “We can’t find him either?”

  She took a breath, held her tongue. She’d been in his place—angry, frustrated. “His grandfather is some kind of kingmaker in Illinois politics. Highsmith
was the golden boy of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office until his departure last May.”

  Billy flipped through the pages and stopped at the Toys for Tots photo. “He looks like a bore.”

  “Read the next article. The courtroom fight may have been the reason he moved to Memphis. Looks like the fix was in. I’m still digging. I’ll send along anything of interest.”

  Chapter 26

  On the murder squad, you go flat out until there’s nothing left to do, or there’s nothing left of you.

  There were no more field reports to read or calls to make, plus Billy’s head felt like a boiled cabbage. A New York strip was waiting in the fridge, but he was too hungry to fire up the grill, so he called the Flying Fish for an order of crawfish chowder, blackened catfish fillets, and a large order of fried jalapeño chips.

  When he got to the restaurant, the kitchen was running behind. He took a corner table and put a call into the one friend he’d made the year he attended Ole Miss School of Law. Carson Bicks had wanted to get the hell out of Mississippi, so he’d joined a Chicago firm as a criminal defense attorney. Billy hadn’t seen his buddy since they’d run into each other three Christmases ago at the Hollywood Cafe near Tunica, but he knew Carson wouldn’t mind a voicemail requesting confidential information. He wanted to find out if ASA Highsmith had a reputation in Chicago’s legal community as a fixer.

  State’s Attorneys can make things happen, more so than most officials. Sometimes they get overzealous with a prosecution. Occasionally, it goes the other way. When a solid case is kicked out of court for no obvious reason, everyone in law enforcement smells rotten fish.

  He picked up his order of chowder and took Riverside Drive home, easing down the steep pitch of the cobblestone landing to his home at the edge of the slack water. He’d left the porch light burning. As he walked up the ramp, he could hear the radio he’d left on to keep the cat company. When he opened the door, Leo jumped down from the sofa and trotted over, making guttural sounds in his throat.

  “I’m going to teach you how to use the can opener,” he said as the cat led him to the food bowl. He opened a can of white fish in sauce. Leo glanced up and licked his chops.