At the juncture of county road 33, I saw my turnoff. The Henry farm, from what I could see by the car's headlights, was neat as a pin. The small farmhouse had a welcome glow, and I found myself eager to step into the warmth the house promised.
My knock was answered by a woman who could have been fifty or seventy. "Can I help you?" she asked.
I identified myself, honestly this time, and explained that I was looking for information on the Garrett family. She didn't ask why I wanted the facts, and I didn't tell her.
"You'll need to talk to Amos," she said, pushing the screen door open for me to enter.
The house was warm and filled with the smell of good cooking.
"We're having some leftovers for supper," she said. "If you don't mind eating in the kitchen . . ."
I certainly didn't. I followed her and took the place she indicated as she filled a plate at the stove and put it down in front of me. Turkey, dressing, ham, sweet potatoes—all the traditional foods. But each just different enough from my own cooking to make them interesting.
An older man sat to my right, and he nodded and smiled but continued eating. It struck me that his priorities were right, and as soon as Mrs. Henry took a seat, we all gave the food our primary attention. We made small talk about the weather, the coming year, farming, and the price of cotton.
"Wonderful," I said when my plate was empty.
"She wants to know about the Garretts," Mrs. Henry said. "She's from Dahlia House. One of the Delaneys over at Zinnia."
"I knew your father," Henry said. I thought there was a hint of sadness in his eyes as he looked at me. "He was a good man. A fair man. He wasn't afraid of helping others."
"He was like that," I agreed.
"You got some problem with the Garretts?" He sipped at the cup of coffee his wife placed before him. She put another cup in front of me, along with cream and sugar and a large slab of pumpkin pie topped with real whipped cream. My favorite.
"No." I thought about my shoulder and realized it was a lie. "I just met Hamilton for the first time today. He's rather . . . forceful. I'm gathering information for someone else."
"Private investigator?" His brow furrowed.
I hadn't thought of calling myself that. I didn't have a license or anything else. But the term described the job Tinkie had hired me to do. "Yes," I said. "In a manner of speaking."
"The Garretts had plenty of heartbreak. Maybe it would be better if you let sleeping dogs lie."
There was an undertone in his voice that I couldn't decipher. "My client has a reason for wanting to know. She wants to protect her . . . interests. This is a personal matter."
He seemed to think about that. Mrs. Henry picked up her coffee. "I'm going to watch some television." She left the room.
Amos Henry was still staring directly at the wall when he began to talk. "After fifty years working for the Garretts, I was fired this morning. Thanksgiving Day," he said. He leaned back in his chair. "I cleaned out the fall garden Wednesday, and I was sitting on the porch early this morning. I'd just gone over to make sure I'd locked the toolshed good and tight. Young Hamilton pulled up. He left the car running and walked up on the porch. I thought for a minute that I was having a daydream, seeing him like that. He had grown into a man, but I recognized him. I stood up kind of slow, like I was in a daze, and then I smiled. I remember because that smile just kept stretching and stretching and it hurt my face, but I couldn't stop it because I was so glad to see him. It's hard to work at a place where nobody lives. It's hard to make the flowers grow when nobody sees them or takes pleasure in their beauty.
"I started toward him grinning like an old coonhound and sticking out my hand to shake his. I said, 'You're home. I can't believe you've finally come home.''
"And he said, not even looking at my hand, 'Yes, I'm home. Your services aren't required any longer.' And he reached into his coat and pulled out a piece of paper. He put it in my hand and turned around and went back to the car. He drove off."
Amos Henry reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out a piece of paper. He carefully unfolded it and handed it to me.
It was a check, and when I glanced at the figure, I took a deep breath. It was for twenty thousand dollars. The signature at the bottom was bold, a scrawl of black letters.
"Mr. Henry, had you been receiving a paycheck for your work at Knob Hill?"
"Every month I got my check, regular as could be."
"This is severance pay?" I handed the check back to him. Hamilton Garrett was forceful, ruthless, and generous.
"That's what some folks might call it." He dropped the check on the table. "I've never been fired from a job. I went there fifty years, working each day when nobody would have known whether I did or not. And I get fired, just like that." He shook his head.
"Did Hamilton ever marry?" I was thinking about Tinkie. This was a fact she'd want.
He shook his head. "As far as I know, neither of those children ever married. Or ever will, I dare say, after what all went on. Until today, I never talked to the boy after he left here. Ever since Mr. Guy and his wife died, I took my orders from Mr. Wade up at the real estate office."
"Guy?" I hadn't heard his nickname before.
"It was what we called him. Too many Hamiltons in that family. There was a time when Mr. Guy was alive, and his father and little Hamilton. You'd think with all that money they could have found a book with some baby names in it."
It was his first smile, and I responded in kind. I liked Amos Henry. He had a lot of dignity.
"Tell me about Mr. Guy and Mrs. Veronica," I said, forking another bite of pie. I was having an excellent time. Being a private investigator was great work. "Were they happy?"
Amos looked at the kitchen wall for a long while. I could tell he was replaying old memories, things he'd thought about before. "Being married is not always a cause for happiness," he said. "Sometimes money complicates things, whether you don't have enough or you have too much. Mrs. Veronica needed money. Mr. Guy had it. It was a situation where the power never changed hands. That can cause a lot of grief between two people."
It was his way of telling me there was trouble in the marriage. Guy lorded money over his wife, or else his wife was so greedy that she could never get enough.
"There was talk Mrs. Garrett might have had a boyfriend." There was no way to sugarcoat this. "Was it true?"
"She was a looker. And she liked for men to look. Any man. It caused more problems with the daughter, Miss Sylvia. Even when she was little, that girl would crawl up under my bushes. She could hold herself still for hours, just waiting, watching her mother. She was always watching. It made me uncomfortable, to be honest. She was a beautiful thing, but she never laughed or played. She just watched. Like she was an old, old woman trapped in that little girl, and she was watching for something she knew had to happen."
He paused for a moment as if he were deciding what else to tell. "Mrs. Garrett sent her away to school up in Tennessee when she was nine. I do believe that child scared her mother."
I filed the information about Sylvia away. She sounded like a strange duck, but my focus was Hamilton the Fifth. "Was there a particular man hanging around, someone who visited Mrs. Garrett a lot?"
"No one special that I saw. Of course, Mrs. Garrett wasn't a fool, either. There were lots of men, and she loved it. She lived for the attention. It wasn't taking anything away from Mr. Guy. She couldn't help it any more than he could help having all that money. Her looks were her power. She had a way about her, when she'd sit out in the sun and run that little butterfly comb through her hair. It was one of her favorite things, that comb. Some kind of special design. She told me once, but I forgot. She said it made her feel magical, and she would draw that comb through her hair and make a man want her in a way that made everything else just fly right out of his mind."
I swallowed, wondering if Amos Henry had felt the lasso of her attraction. Everything around me spoke of a man who took deliberate, practical act
ions in his life. But every man has a weakness, and for many it's a particular woman.
"So there was a conflict between the parents—his money and her looks."
Amos thought about this for a time before he answered. "There was arguments. I worked outside, tending the yard, but I heard them fighting. They were two folks so different. Mr. Guy was an inside kind of man. He had his work and his investments, and he wasn't the kind to play tennis or swim. Mrs. Veronica, now, she loved the sunshine." He smiled. "She'd lay out by the pool and just soak up the sun. She'd laugh whenever anyone tried to tell her that it would make her old and wrinkled. She just said she didn't intend to grow old. She said that women like her weren't created to last long, they were meant to burn hot and fast and go out with a bang."
Mrs. Garrett's big bang was a tree trunk. And she had lived to fulfill her own words. Suicide flashed in the back of my retinas in big red letters. It was another angle to check.
"Mr. Guy didn't enjoy the outdoors, but he was a bird hunter?" I probed.
Amos snorted. "Not hardly."
"He died when he was hunting. I read the story in the newspaper."
Amos gave me a look like he thought I should be blond. "Mr. Guy wasn't no hunter."
"Are you certain?"
"One summer a big fat moccasin slithered up by the pool. Mrs. Veronica was screaming and yelling, and Hamilton was just a little fella, he was standing big-eyed about a foot from the snake, frozen, like. That ole snake was coiled up, big around as my arm. I called Mr. Guy and he comes running out with a gun. He just hands it over to me and tells me to shoot the snake. His son there, and that snake ready to leap out and bite the boy, and Mr. Guy hands the gun to me. No man who can use a gun would do that."
Amos Henry had convinced me. So what was Guy Garrett doing in a dove field if he wasn't hunting? The possibilities were endless—and they all spelled murder.
9
I had to pass by Knob Hill on my way home. There was no evidence of the house, no lights, or at least none that could be seen from the road. The idea of Hamilton, alone and brooding in that big old house, was chilling. Not even my great-aunt Elizabeth, who wore her petticoat and nothing else to church, had been so far gone into madness that she chose to sit in the dark on a cold November night.
The case—and I had begun to think of it as "my case"—had taken on a different twist. Hamilton had not attended Sunflower County High. Unless he had gone to Memphis or one of the bigger Mississippi cities, he'd graduated from Dorsett Military Academy, the place where all Delta males of blue blood and bad disposition completed secondary education.
And Sylvia? Henry Amos had left me with a vivid image of a young girl, an obsessive child who spent her life in the shadows, watching. I gave a little shudder at the thought of a primary-school stalker. Sylvia had been sent to Tennessee, probably Bethany Academy.
So Veronica had had an open playing field during the day, when hubby was working and the staff could be deployed in other directions.
I had plenty of questions to ask Mr. Henry, but in the proper time. Good manners dictated that a visit should last no longer than two hours. I had stretched my stay, and my stomach, to the maximum.
Feeling satisfied with what I'd achieved, I cleared the Zinnia town limits and decided on the spur of the moment to stop at Millie's for a diet Dr Pepper. I was wired from the excitement of the day, and it also occurred to me that if Millie's was open, business would be slow. Other than Martha Sue Riley at the Glitz and Glamour, Millie was one of the best sources of gossip. She'd know plenty about the Garretts, and whether her gossip was true or not, it would lead me to new possibilities.
The cafe was open, and Millie was sitting at the counter reading a tabloid newspaper. I could see her in the window as I drove by, so I pulled into a parking space and hurried inside. The night was turning downright cold. By morning, there would be a blanket of frost on the ground.
"How's it shaking, Sarah Booth?" Millie asked as I walked in. Millie would never have spoken to any of the other Daddy's Girls in such an informal manner. But then the others ate at The Club, not at a diner. Even as a teenager I'd loved the thick white coffee cups and the egg-and-bacon sandwiches Millie made while holding conversations with three or four patrons at the counter.
"I'm full as a tick but thirsty." I gave my order as I took a seat beside her and read the headlines of her tabloid. Roseanne was pregnant by an alien. "I wasn't certain you'd be open."
"I cooked, I ate, I washed the dishes, and then I discovered I was bored. It's slow, but a few folks have come in." She lit a cigarette. "Most of them thirsty."
Millie is older than I am, a single mother whose children are grown, married, and producing offspring of their own. There are no womb disorders in the Roberts family. I could understand that opening the cafe was preferable to staying home alone.
She put the fizzing soda in front of me and reclaimed her seat. I saw that she was reading a story about a sighting of Princess Di at Graceland. The photo that accompanied the story showed a ghostly figure that resembled the late Princess of Wales—and about ten million other slender blond women—peering through the musical gates of Graceland.
"Do you think she's really dead?" Millie asked, pointing at Di.
I hadn't thought about it as up for debate. "I guess."
"Some folks think she and Dodi only wanted to live their lives in peace. They think she's living on an island off the coast of Greece."
It was one way of interpreting the facts. "Sounds like a nice ending to an unpleasant life," I said. I'd seen the handwriting on the wall in that marriage when Di had to do the virgin check and Charles didn't.
"The way I've got it figured is that Charles and the queen went along with it because that way they'd get Diana out of their hair. I mean, she's dead; she can't keep upstaging Charles. And all she ever really wanted was to be loved. So she gets that and peace."
It was a pretty neat bundle, I had to admit. "I hope you're right."
"Me, too," she said, but her voice had lost its conviction. Millie enjoyed creating fantasies, but that didn't mean she was stupid enough to believe them.
"Speaking of tragic families, I saw lights on at Knob Hill tonight." In the commerce of gossip, you have to learn to trade. I'd just plopped the Hope diamond of red-hot news on the table. Millie's face lit up like she was standing at a Tiffany's counter.
"Lights? On Thanksgiving night?" Then the wheels turned. "What were you doing at Knob Hill?"
"Driving by," I said, waving a hand to dismiss my errand as insignificant. "That house has been closed for nearly twenty years, as best I can remember."
Millie nodded. "Hamilton the Fifth has been home a few times, or that's what I've been told. He hasn't put in an appearance in Zinnia." Her voice had taken on a careful edge.
I nodded and sipped my drink. The fizz was very comforting. Without a qualm, I stole a line from Cece. "His whole life has been like a Greek tragedy."
Millie shot me a strange look but picked up her cigarette. "Yeah, it would make a great miniseries on television. If anyone ever really got to the bottom of it."
Pay dirt. "You mean you don't think it happened like—"
"Guy Garrett wasn't a hunter. He couldn't hurt a fly." She got up and went behind the counter. She picked up a stack of menus and tapped them into a neat pile, laid them down, and began to wrap flatware in paper napkins. She kept her back to me.
I put a few things together fast—Millie's hungry look as I mentioned Knob Hill, her careful tone, and her use of Hamilton Garrett the Fourth's nickname.
"I was a kid when all of that happened." I kept it casual. "How awful for Hamilton the Fifth to lose his father and then his mother. I wonder if he liked Europe."
"He didn't have much of a choice." Millie put the flatware aside and turned to pick up her cigarette, which was mostly a big, long ash. She thumped it and put it out. "There wasn't anybody on the Garrett side of the family left to take him. And his mama's people wouldn't take him."
"Why not?"
She stared at me as if she could discern the true reason for my curiosity. "Tragedy has a way of marking a person," she said slowly. "Folks don't want it in their homes. There was enough money for Hamilton to go somewhere far away, to finish growing up in a place where he wasn't viewed as a victim or a murderer. He made the smart choice."
"Murderer? I don't remember anything about that."
I saw the truth strike Millie. "You had other things on your mind then, Sarah Booth. I don't suppose you would remember anybody else's troubles." Her voice had softened. "Anyway, it was never an official murder. No charges were filed, but they spread the gossip. That's how things are done in Zinnia. Nothing official, just trial by innuendo. Drove his poor sister into an asylum. That little girl never had a chance with a mother like that, always more interested in her looks and her collectibles than anything else." She gave a sharp little snort of disgust. "If anyone deserved to die, it was Veronica Garrett. And if anyone wanted her dead, it was me." She lit another cigarette and as the flame met the tip, she stared directly into my eyes with a look that actually chilled me. "Veronica murdered Guy as sure as I'm standing here. She deserved exactly what she got. I just wish I believed she got it."
Apparently Millie had a theme going with women who'd cheated death. First Di and now Veronica. But the anger in her eyes made me sit up straight on the bar stool. After two decades, she still hated Veronica Garrett with a dangerous passion. "Did Hamilton have something to do with his mother's wreck?"
Millie swallowed, her mouth moving funny as she worked to reign in her emotions. "Hamilton was a child."
That wasn't an answer. "Is it possible Hamilton thought his mother . . . that he might have taken revenge on Veronica? There's still a lot of talk that he cut the brake line on her car."
She swallowed again. "Sarah Booth, I'm not feeling well. I know you'll understand if I close up and go on home."
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