"Sorry about that," he said in a tone that clearly said he wasn't. He bent for another log to split. "Seems to me if you're writing fiction you could just make the whole thing up. What do you care about the facts?"
I had thought of this. "I don't want to accidentally make it sound too much like what really happened and wind up getting sued. That woman who writes about Kay Scarpetta. She got sued by a family who said she put their tragedy in one of her novels." My smile was tight as I recalled Jitty's hell-raising about the issues of The National Enquirer I brought home from The Pig. Trash they might be, but they'd paid off. I had the low-down on every celebrity at my fingertips.
Delo brought the ax down on another stump and kindling flew. "It's been my experience with life that few mistakes are innocent."
Now that was a conversation stopper. I picked up the piece of kindling and chunked it onto the pile. Just to let him know I wasn't going to be run off easily, I took a seat on one of the bigger logs. "See, the way I've got it pictured in my head was Mr. Garrett the Fourth had on one of those camouflage vests with all the pockets loaded down with shells. It was a crisp evening, one of those sunsets too pretty to believe. Mr. Garrett was waiting for that last clutch of doves to fly up into that beautiful sky, but he was tired, so he kind of knelt down, and then, unexpectedly, he stood. The other hunters hadn't seen him because he was kneeling, and when he stood he caught the shot in his throat. Is that about right?"
Delo had stopped chopping wood. He was leaning on the ax handle looking at me, and his eyes didn't look weak any longer.
"What is it you really want?" he asked.
"The truth," I said slowly.
"How old are you, Sarah Booth?"
I didn't see where that was any of his concern, but I also didn't see where it would hurt to answer. "Thirty-three."
"Long past the prime age to get a man."
His words were unexpected. They were not wounding, but unsettling. But then I should have anticipated that if I pressed him on his turf, he'd take the fight to mine. Psychology 211.
I decided to up the ante. "If a man was what I wanted, I'd have one. I want something more." I gave the pause three beats. "I want fame, Mr. Wiley. Fame and enough money so that I'll never have to worry again."
Something sparked in his eyes, and I knew we'd finally found our common language.
"It could be dangerous to dig too deeply into the past," he said carefully. "And expensive."
This was a new snag. He was asking for money, but I didn't know how much to offer. Usually, folks around Zinnia were more than willing to talk about somebody else's business for the sheer pleasure of it. Naturally, he would have to be different. But how much to offer?
My first thought was one hundred, but I pulled two bills out of my pocket and folded them down the middle into a long trough. I tapped them against my knee. "How was Hamilton the Fourth shot?" I asked.
He took the money, tucking it into his shirt pocket. "Looked to me like he was sittin' on the ground. Lots of possibilities there. It's not a good idea to put inexperienced people out in a field with guns. Anyway, I heard the official sheriff's report ruled it an accident."
"Tell me about that day," I said, hoping his story would clue me in as to other questions to ask.
"It was Isaac Carter who set up the hunt. He called and wanted the Mule Bog field, which is down in the lower acreage and borders the river. It's the best hunting land because there's a lot of natural growth there, but the ground is boggy. It's hard walking."
"How many men?"
He thought a minute. "Maybe eight. It was Carter, Camden Wells, Lyle Bedford, Asa Grant, Myles Lee, Hamilton the Fourth, and a couple of men I didn't know. Investors from out of state, according to Carter."
Delo had just listed the top players for the Buddy Club. They were the movers and shakers of the Delta, the men who controlled the money and who had married the Daddy's Girls of my mother's generation. They were blooded, the inheritors of the earth and all of its bounty. Unlike Harold, who had acquired wealth by his wits and hard work, the Buddy Clubbers were born to it.
It made sense that they were all out together blasting the symbol of peace into tufts of feathers. They were powerful men, and they never tired of showing it by their possessions, their ability to ignore the rules, and their easy laughter.
"I was surprised when Mr. Garrett showed up," Delo continued. Now that the money had loosened his tongue, I didn't have to prod at all. "He'd never hunted with them before. And he didn't look too happy that day." His jaw shifted to the right. "Here's a fact for you. His gun had been fired once. It was right beside him in the field."
"Was it the gun that killed him?"
"No one ever said for sure."
I turned back to the day of the hunt. "The men got there in the morning?"
"It was after lunch. I offered to set them up, but Carter said he knew the field. So they went off together and I stayed up here to tend to my business. I had several other groups in different fields." Before I could ask, he answered. "None close enough to see what happened. And let me say that no matter what Fel Harper or his official coroner's report tell you, Mr. Garrett had been dead awhile before I found him."
"Did anyone call a doctor?"
"What for? He was dead."
One good reason would be that in Mississippi, coroners are elected and can be as dumb as dirt. Fel Harper had never won any IQ contests. Trusting him on the time of death would be asinine, or possibly a deliberate attempt to hide the truth.
"So the other men came in . . ."
"It was getting dark, and I was about to get in the four-wheeler and go round them up when they came in the yard. None of them seemed to have noticed that Mr. Garrett wasn't with them. When I pointed out he was missing, they all shrugged and said they thought he'd come back a long time ago. So I got in the four-wheeler and went out to find him. I called for a while, and when he didn't answer, I began to think that something bad had happened. Sure enough, I was cutting around a stump that had a lot of scrub growth around it and there he was. He was lying on his side, sort of. It was a mess."
"What happened then?"
"I rode back to the house and told the others. Then I called the sheriff and the coroner."
"How did the men react?"
"Carter volunteered to go and tell Mr. Garrett's wife, and they decided that's what should be done. The rest just milled around until the sheriff came, and then they all went back out to the field in the hearse."
"Did you go?"
Delo's dark eyes narrowed. "I wasn't asked, and I didn't volunteer. It looked to me like a bad day's work had been done. The smartest thing for me was to feed my dogs, collect the money from the other hunters, and stay put at the house."
"You did tell the sheriff, though?"
"Pasco Walters didn't ask me a single question, and I didn't volunteer any information." He picked up his ax. "One thing a girl like you never had to learn was that you don't offer suggestions to your betters." His voice had grown angry. "Now move on. You've gotten everything you paid for."
"If you have any other thoughts on this, I'd like to hear them," I said, standing up.
"I'll give you some advice, Sarah Booth. You ask the wrong question of the right person, and you might find more trouble than you ever dreamed possible."
Fel Harper was a big man and a popular one. Along with pronouncing all the dead folks dead, he fried catfish and grilled steaks for various parties and functions. For as long as I could remember, a political rally wasn't much to speak of unless Fel had his portable cook station there and was serving up the grub. He was a gregarious man who seemed to defy his elected capacity as coroner. For all of his six-foot-five frame and three-hundred-plus weight, he moved quickly as he pulled out a chair for me in the small office at the stockyards, where he worked a day job.
"Sarah Booth Delaney," he said, putting big hands on my shoulders and holding me at arm's length while he took my measure. "I remember the day you and Roger C
rane snuck off from school and rode your bicycles to Leatherberry Creek. Whewee! Your folks were torn up. They thought you'd been kidnapped, or somethin' worse." He laughed loudly.
This wasn't a good memory for me. I had been twelve, and Roger Crane had been three years older. He'd persuaded me to skip school and go swimming with him. It was my first lesson in deception, his, mine, and ours.
I focused on Fel's face. Even though he had to be sixty, his cheeks were smooth as a baby's butt. There wasn't a wrinkle or a sign of beard stubble, and I wondered if somewhere he'd had chemotherapy, because his head was bald and shiny as Mr. Clean's.
"You need me to cook for some 'do' you're planning up at Dahlia House?" he asked as he pressed me down into a chair. "Miz Kincaid has me booked for her charity function. She's doin' up her house in hay bales and gingham to make it look like the country. That's the theme. Fried catfish is the menu, to highlight the fact that Mississippi is the number-one producer of catfish in the nation. You know Miz Kincaid always likes to point out the good things about our great state. She's a charmin' little thing, isn't she?"
"Absolutely," I said.
"Now what's on your mind?"
"History," I answered sweetly.
"An antebellum theme!" he enthused. "I love those Old South parties. I make the best bourbon-soaked ham. Put out some home-baked biscuits and greens, and you got a party."
My stomach growled long and deep. "I'm not planning a party, but I'll keep your menu in mind." I took a breath. "I'm writing a book." This had become the most serviceable lie in the history of whoppers.
"You always were a little peculiar, Sarah Booth. I thought New York had cured you of such foolishness. Book writin' and actin' are career cousins. You know, folks around here thought you'd gone off to have a love child or been put in an institution. No one really believed you'd gone to be an actress. So what kind of book are you writing anyway?"
"A murder mystery," I said, leaning forward and making my eyes as big as possible. "It's about a man who gets murdered in a dove field by his wife's lover." His gaze shifted to the door. "Then just when it looks like the perfect crime has been committed, wham! the wife meets an untimely death—an accident. Something involving an automobile. What do you think?" In the silence that followed I heard a calf bawling.
"I'm not much of a mystery reader," Fel said finally. "Sounds more like something for a made-for-TV movie. Seems I saw something that went that way last year."
"As county coroner, you'd know about every death that occurred here, wouldn't you?" I pressed.
"I don't remember every case that comes along," he said. "Fact is, I try to forget as much as possible."
"You'd remember the Garrett deaths, wouldn't you?"
"Old man Garrett got shot in a dove field. I remember." Fel shifted in his seat.
The calf bawled again, this time with pain. One thing I wouldn't forget was the brutal nature of Fel's surroundings.
"Are you sure Hamilton Garrett the Fourth's death was an accident?"
He leaned back in his chair, ignoring the groaning of the springs. His small eyes assessed me.
"Mr. Garrett was sitting on the ground when he was shot," he said. "He was carrying a Remington pump and it had been fired once, the spent casing still in the chamber. The gun was on the ground beside him, pointing right at him. There were dog tracks all around. Isaac Carter was working a couple of retrievers, and I figured it was those dogs that had been there." He sat forward. "Mr. Garrett wasn't a huntin' man. Pasco Walters and I assessed the situation and figured that Mr. Garrett sat down and rested his gun on a stump. One of the dogs, all excited like dogs get, knocked it. When he reached for it, he wasn't careful. One little touch on the trigger . . . Now that's one way of lookin' at it. The best way."
Best for whom? "Another way would be that someone sneaked up on him, grabbed his gun, and shot him."
His eyes became hard and his mouth tightened. "You tell me which one of those seven men you want to accuse of murder. Especially when the widow is claiming accidental death. Keep in mind that no one wanted a ruling of suicide, which is more likely than murder."
Fel had a point. "What about Mrs. Garrett? Veronica was killed only a few months later."
Fel nodded and his eyes went to the doorway once again. "Car wreck. She was a beautiful woman before she went through the windshield. Awful accident."
"Another accident, right?"
Fel's eyebrows lifted. "That woman died from injuries she got in the wreck. She went through the windshield face-first. That was all I could say; all I ever said."
"Rumor has it that her brake lines were cut."
He gave me a black look. "I'm the coroner, not an auto mechanic." He was across the room fast, his finger pointing out the door and down the hall. "Get out of here. I can't be wastin' my time with foolishness like this."
I let him escort me to the door. "Where can I find Pasco Walters?"
He smiled. "Try Cedar Lawn Cemetery." He slammed the door in my face.
Damn! Cedar Lawn Cemetery. So Pasco Walters, former sheriff of Sunflower County, was dead. There were certainly a lot of dead folks involved in this case. It struck me that perhaps the sheriff was also the victim of foul play.
Unbidden, Hamilton the Fifth's handsome face came back to me and I felt as if Mr. Jack Frost himself had whispered icy kisses along my spine. Was he capable of murder? Of murdering his own mother? It was something I had to find out, and I realized that it wasn't only for Tinkie's money.
11
The Sunflower County Courthouse is centered on a square of land bordered by chestnut trees. A statue of Johnny Reb guards the front entrance, and there is a memorial plaque to the men of our country who died in the War Between the States. I have never passed the statue of the bedraggled and poorly clothed soldier without thinking long and hard about the psychology of war. I always end up angry. My personal theory is that women would refuse to participate in such foolishness. Certainly the Daddy's Girls, who would find the hardships and lack of adequate hygiene enough to put an end to the fighting after the first three hours. It's not that Daddy's Girls don't want their way on global issues, it's just that they prefer less messy tactics.
Inside the courthouse, the smell of old dust is pervasive and comforting. As a child, I came here with my father to attend to tax business or courtroom work. I hid in the nooks and crannies of the old building, spying and eavesdropping on anyone who passed. During some of the more interesting cases, I would sit in the judge's chamber with the door cracked and listen to the trial, judging my father's mood by the power with which his gavel cracked down. Daddy never denied me the freedom to listen to the criminal trials, though Mama did her best to discourage it. She felt exposure to the baser human acts would warp me. Perhaps she was right.
Walking into the rotunda, I realized that I took the operation of the county for granted. I'd never thought to consider where a death certificate might be filed, or where the coroner's reports would be. So I headed down to the sheriff's office, where Coleman Peters currently held office.
Coleman was two years older than me, a boy whose father sharecropped on the Bellcase plantation. I remembered him as a linebacker on the Sunflower High football team, a big boy who did his duty without flinching.
"Why, Sarah Booth Delaney," Coleman said, rising to his feet from behind a desk. "What in the world could we possibly do to help you?"
It is true that up until recent years, people of a certain social status took care of their problems without interference from the law. Cops were hired for the middle class. The highest and lowest rungs of society were basically left to their own devices.
"Coleman Peters," I said, surprising myself at the pleasure I felt in seeing an old friend. "Imagine you as the chief law enforcement officer in this county. I remember when you used to kick butt on the gridiron."
"I'm still kicking butt," he said, grinning wider. "You're not being stalked or anything, are you?"
I considered fabricating a
tale to meet his expectations, but then I realized that Harold might get caught in the snare. That would not be a good thing. "I'm writing a book," I answered, watching the interest fade from his eyes. "I need to see some of the old county records."
"What kind of book?"
"Fiction. A murder mystery." I could see that Coleman didn't differentiate between fact and fiction. If it was written down, it was liable to be dangerous. "I'm interested in 1979."
"If it's a murder, the best records may be down in the circuit clerk's. That's where the trial notes are."
Score one for Coleman. "Wouldn't the notes from a crime scene be here?" There had never been a trial in this case, but I didn't want to get into that technicality.
"In the back. Things are kind of a mess, but you're welcome to look." He twisted his gun belt. "Me and Carlene are getting a divorce."
"I'm sorry to hear that," I said, surprised at the revelation. It would normally take a dental instrument to extract a detail like this from a man like him. I remembered Carlene as one of the bouncy little cheerleaders. She had a big mouth, a big butt, and big bosoms. She was chronically "cute."
"Is it true you never married?" he asked.
This was not good. This was definitely not good. Coleman was getting personal. "Marriage just isn't the road for me."
"You like men, don'tcha?"
I closed my eyes. "About half the time." Before he could sort through it, I hurried into the back. Things were a mess, but I found the jail docket and other records in chronological order, and I started plundering.
Pasco Walters's initial report was neither hard to find nor very informative. The facts, as recorded, matched what Fel and Delo had told me. Tucked in the file was Fel Harper's report, which pronounced the time of death to be 5:10 P.M. on the evening of October twenty-third. I noted that Fel had listed the time of death as the time the body had been found. According to Delo, Guy Garrett had been stiff by then.
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