“No, definitely not as bad as that. So what you’re witnessing right now didn’t happen. Even if they beat you with telephone books to get you to confess, it did not happen.” Savannah quickly accessed the phone’s call log and said, “There are the three calls I made. Half a dozen calls in a row Sunday morning from Frank Riggs’s cell.”
“They were probably out here looking for it themselves,” Dirk said. “Good thing they didn’t find it.”
“Very good thing,” Savannah said. “We’ve got some extremely interesting text messages here, sent back and forth between Lisa and Frank right after she walked away from us and headed back here.”
“Let us see!” Dirk peered over her shoulder, trying to read the small print.
Gran added, “Yeah, we wanna read ’em, too!”
“Come on! We helped you find the phone!” Tammy complained.
“Okay, okay,” Savannah said. “But as soon as you read them, we have to call Tom and tell him we found something for him in the weeds. Whatever you do, don’t spill the beans that you know what’s on it.”
“Of course not!” Tammy said. “We’re highly trained agents who never, ever spill our secrets!”
“And ole Tom won’t finagle it out of us, either,” Waycross said proudly. “’Cause if all else fails, and he ties us to the rack, there’s always—”
In unison, they shouted, “Cyanide capsules!”
In the course of their careers, Savannah, Dirk, and the Moonlight Magnolia entourage had endured their share of Dumpster dives in the never-ending quest for evidence. They had sifted through garbage from private homes, grocery stores, restaurants, medical facilities, paint shops, and Savannah’s personal favorite—pet stores.
But they had never enjoyed a search as much as the one conducted late that afternoon, after Sheriff Stafford had studied their evidence at the parking lot, and once they had watched him and his deputies search for the offending hot pink, rhinestone-enhanced high heel—aka the murder weapon—in the Riggs’s residential garbage.
Having come up high and dry at the home, they, the sheriff, and his deputies had decided to search the waste bin behind Frank Riggs’s workplace, a butcher shop called Fancy Meating You.
As at the residential search, the gang didn’t need to lift a finger. In fact, they had been expressly forbidden to do so. While Tom, Jesse, and Martin crawled among discarded entrails, slabs of fat, bones, gristle, and other unidentifiable gore, Savannah and her friends sat on a nearby curb, watched, offered bits of unsolicited advice, and drank Dr Peppers.
“I hate seeing you boys slave away like that,” Savannah called over to Tom as he rose from the heap to catch a breath of slightly less foul air and then sank into the pit once again.
She had no doubt that he had begun the day as a handsome man. But he was now in desperate need of a shower and all new clothing.
Not just clean clothing, she told herself, sniffling a giggle, but an entire new uniform. She was pretty sure he was well greased in pork fat all the way to his underdrawers.
In years past, she had seen Tom in a far better mood, though not as good as the one Dirk was in at the moment.
“Don’t give up now, Sheriff Tom,” Dirk hollered. “You’ve almost reached the bottom. You know the rule. The evidence is always in the last place you look.”
Tom popped up and fixed him with a deadly glare over the top edge of the Dumpster. “We had better find a pink high heel in here with blood on it. Human blood and some brain tissue, too,” he said, tossing out something that looked like a massive congealed pork liver. “Or that wife of yours is gonna be in more trouble than she knows what to do with.”
“I offered to help you,” Savannah said most sympathetically. “We all offered to help, but no. You boys wanted to do it all by yourselves, so—”
“Shut up,” Tom snapped, bobbing down for more. “And, Jesse, if you toss one more handful of that crap over here on my boots, I swear I’ll draw my weapon, shoot ya dead, and tell God ya died.”
“Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir,” Jesse replied, wiping his forehead with his bloody hand.
Savannah had seen less gruesome faces in slice-and-dice horror movies. They looked like escapees from a zombie flick.
Another twenty minutes passed, and even Savannah was starting to worry a bit. What if she was wrong, after all? What if her instincts about Lisa’s reactions were off? What if there was an innocent explanation for everything they’d found at the parking lot, including the seemingly incriminating text messages on Lisa’s lost phone?
If Tom wallowed in gore for an hour in the hot summer sun, only to come up empty-handed, there would be hell to pay.
She wasn’t sure what price hell was going for these days, but she was pretty sure she couldn’t afford it.
To her dismay, Tom crawled out of the Dumpster and wiped his hands on his ruined khaki slacks. “There’s nothing in there, gal,” he said. “I’m starting to think you and your buddies here have enjoyed watchin’ us look for that nothin’ way too much.”
Savannah switched into defense mode. “Now, don’t go gettin’ all huffy with me, Thomas Stafford. When you saw that stuff on the pavement and read those texts, you were just as excited as we were.”
“Yeah, but what am I supposed to do with any of it if I don’t have a murder weapon that can be traced back to her? Nothin’. That’s what it’s worth. Not a piddlin’—”
“Sheriff!” Jesse yelled. “Lookie! Lookie what I found!”
The deputy held the hot pink, rhinestone-studded pump aloft with all the gruesome aplomb of Attila the Hun lifting the head of a decapitated foe.
The Moonlight Magnolia crew sprang to their feet and danced a jig, and no one more energetically than Granny.
Savannah walked over to the bin to look at the shoe. She had no doubt whatsoever that it was the one worn by Lisa Riggs the night of the reunion.
“We’ve got to send that off to a lab right away and get it tested,” she said. “As soon as the results are back . . .”
“That might be how y’all do it in California,” Tom said. “But we got our own way of handlin’ things around here.” He turned to Martin and Jesse. “I’m fixin’ to go home and grab a shower. You two fetch the Riggses and drag their asses to the station.”
Jesse and Martin looked down at their own soiled uniforms.
“But . . . but... ,” Martin said.
“I mean now! Make tracks!”
“Yes, sir!” Martin jerked to attention.
Jesse gave a curt nod. “Right away, Sheriff,”
As the three policemen headed for their respective vehicles, Tom carrying the high heel in a brown paper evidence bag, Dirk turned to the Magnolians. “I hope you’re all taking notes, because in the future, that’s how I expect you all to address me.”
A moment later, he was sprayed with spit from his five comrades, their tongues fully extended in noisy, enthusiastic raspberries.
“All right! All right! It was just a thought.”
Chapter 29
Before Lisa and Frank Riggs were brought into the sheriff’s station, the Moonlight Magnolia team was sent home. Except for Savannah and Dirk. And they were allowed to observe the interrogation only after they swore an oath to, in Tom’s words, “not even so much as twitch, let alone utter a word, upon pain of death.”
“I think he meant it, too,” Savannah whispered to Dirk from their seats right beside the air conditioner and well apart from the desk and the chairs set directly in front of it, where the suspects would be seated.
“I figure he did mean it,” Dirk replied as they watched Tom take his seat behind his desk. “I remember most clearly the moment he lost his sense of humor. It was when he slipped on that liver and went down, headfirst, in the muck.”
Tom shot them a look and cleared his throat.
They both shut up instantly. They didn’t want to miss a moment of the upcoming proceedings.
Savannah only hoped that Tommy was half as good at “sweating” s
uspects as Dirk was. Without laying a hand on them, Dirk could have perps begging to be moved from the interrogation room to a jail cell in twenty-eight minutes.
She glanced up at the clock on the wall and made a mental note of the time to see who between the two would hold the record when all was said and done.
Tom ran his fingers through his hair, which was still wet from his shower, and told Martin, who was loitering near the bottom of the stairs, “Okay, haul ’em down here.”
A couple of minutes later, a miserable-looking Lisa and her equally dismal husband were brought down the stairs, Jesse leading them and Martin close behind.
The deputies herded them toward the chairs in front of the desk and directed them to sit down.
Savannah barely recognized Frank Riggs. The last time she’d seen him, he was a robust high school football player brimming with health. But now he looked pale, gaunt, and exhausted. He moved like he was made of brittle glass and could shatter into slivers at any moment.
Then Savannah reminded herself that the act of murder often destroyed the person who did the killing almost as effectively as it did their victim. Guilt and fear of that magnitude were heavy burdens for any human spirit to bear.
Once they were seated, Tom gave them both long evaluating looks. Then, with his poker face securely in place, he said, “Did y’all know that the left brake light on your pickup’s out?”
Lisa and Frank looked at each other, astonished. Expressions of enormous relief flooded their faces.
“That’s why you had brought us in, Sheriff?” Frank asked. “A busted brake light?”
“That’s one of the reasons. I have others,” Tom said with a grim smile. He turned to Lisa as she sat stiffly on the chair across from him. “I’m not sure if my deputies read you two your rights yet or not, so here they are. Listen up.”
Tom carefully recited the Miranda warning and informed them they were under arrest for the murder of Jeanette Barnsworth. Then he asked Lisa if, knowing her rights, she was willing to talk to him.
“No!” she stated most emphatically, with an angry look in Savannah’s direction. “You’ve already got one person under arrest for killing Jeanette. I can’t imagine why you’d bring me and my husband in, too. And that’s all I’ve got to say to you. I want an attorney.”
In a voice as cool as the air-conditioning, which was about to blow Savannah and Dirk into the next county, Tom said, “No problem. Jesse, please take Mrs. Riggs back upstairs and return her to her cell.”
Tom glanced over at Savannah, and she could swear she saw a bit of mischief in his eye. “On second thought,” he said, “put her in the cell directly across from Yukon Bill. It’s been recently fumigated.”
As Jesse led Lisa back upstairs, Savannah whispered a silent prayer that Yukon would take a strong liking to Lisa. Lust at first sight and all that.
It was hardly a Granny-approved prayer, but the woman had been willing to let her take a murder rap for her, so Savannah wasn’t exactly overwrought with guilt.
Once Lisa was taken from the room, Tom took a long, hard look at his second prisoner. “How about you, Frank?” he asked gently. “Are you willin’ to talk to me?”
Frank nodded.
“I’m sorry. I need a spoken reply,” Tom told him.
“Yes. I’ll talk.” With his head bent as he stared down at his hands, which were folded in his lap, and his shoulders stooped, Frank Riggs looked like a man who was utterly defeated, scarcely able to bear the crushing weight of his own soul.
“Good,” Tom said. “You’ll feel a lot better if you do. I assure you.”
Tom reached into a drawer and pulled out a miniature tape recorder. After setting it on the desk between them, he switched it on. The sheriff identified himself and Frank Riggs for the tape and stated the time and place. Then, before he could even begin to question Frank, the suspect started to talk.
“I just want you to know, Sheriff—I want everybody to know—that this was one hundred percent my fault, not my wife’s. I take full responsibility for it.”
Savannah reached over and slid her hand into Dirk’s. He gave it a squeeze.
Nothing beat a confession in court. Absolutely nothing. And there it was.
“That’s mighty honorable of you, Frank,” Tom said. “Why do you figure it was all your fault? Did you kill Jeanette Barnsworth?”
“No. Not directly. She died, accidental like, by my wife’s hand. But I caused that to happen. And what happened afterward, that was also me. All me.”
Tom leaned forward in his chair and propped his elbows on his desk. “Just start from the beginning, Frank. We need to hear it all.”
Frank shivered, as though he had just stepped, naked, into a snowstorm. Then he began, “I’d have to say it started when Miss Jeanette bought those ribs from me last Fourth of July. I talked to her a long time about how to cook them up nice and tender, and by the time we was done talkin’, we were friends.”
“Good friends?” Tom asked.
“Not yet. We got to be real good friends on Labor Day weekend. Lisa went to see her folks in Mississippi, and Jeanette dropped by my house that night to make sure I wasn’t too lonely.”
“Were you? Lonely, that is?”
Frank gave a shy, awkward smile. “Not after she got there.”
“And what happened then?”
“We got together off and on. After a time or two, I started feeling guilty about it, and I told her I’d rather not do it no more. But she was a bossy gal. Hard to turn down.”
“Yes, she certainly was the determined sort. Did your wife find out about it?”
“Not for the longest. Jeanette threatened to tell her a time or two, if I didn’t wanna, you know, with her. And I couldn’t have that happen, so I did what she wanted. Whenever she wanted it. And she had a big appetite, that gal.”
“Did anyone else know?”
“A couple of folks had suspicions. Word got around, like it does in a small town. But Lisa said she didn’t believe it. She didn’t know for sure until the night of the reunion. I guess during the party she overhead some people talking about it. And she got to thinkin’ maybe it was true. Then she said in front of Jeanette that her and me had romantic plans for after the party. I felt guilty for not taking her to the reunion, but I had to work late getting some ribs on to smoke.”
He paused a moment to catch a breath, then continued. “Anyway, Jeanette was mad that I was doing something nice for Lisa. And she’d had a big fight with her boyfriend, so she wanted me to lie to Lisa and tell her I had to go back to work again.”
“That’s a lot of overtime for a butcher shop,” Tom observed.
“Yeah. Lisa mentioned that in a text she wrote me when I told her our ‘date’ was off.”
“I know.”
“You read our texts?” Savannah watched Frank turn, unbelievably, whiter still.
“Yes, sir. We found your wife’s phone by the parking lot and read ’em all. There’s some incriminating stuff there.”
“I know. We tried to find the phone Sunday morning, but we couldn’t.”
“How did it happen, Frank? The actual killing, that is.”
“Lisa, she’d just had enough. There in the parking lot, she outright asked Jeanette if she was steppin’ out with her husband. Jeanette laughed at her, and the two of them got in a scuffle. Lisa told me that Jeanette pushed her down on the ground and then kicked her. So Lisa pulled her down with her. And the two of them had a free-for-all.”
Savannah leaned over and whispered to Dirk, “That’s one I would have paid big bucks to see.”
Frank crossed his arms over his chest. “Lisa said Jeanette was getting the best of her, and she was scared. So she grabbed the first thing she could get her hands on to defend herself and swung it at Jeanette’s head. Turns out it was Lisa’s own high heel, which came off her foot when she fell. She said she hit Jeanette with it—one good lick—and the gal just laid right down and died.”
Tommy sighed and sat
back in his chair. “But she didn’t die, Frank. Not then.”
Frank started to cry, his shoulders heaving with his sobs. “I know that now. Mr. Jameson says she drowned. But I swear to you on my momma’s grave and the Holy Bible itself, we both thought that gal was dead when we put her in the car and pushed it off that cliff. She never moved a muscle or said a word. We weren’t trying to kill her. We just wanted to make it look like she had a car wreck. That was my idea. All my idea. Lisa sent me that text saying to get over to the school right away. I did, and she was all tore up over what happened. She wanted to call you, but I was afraid you wouldn’t believe her. So I told her how we’d handle it.”
“I wish you’d let her call me, Frank. As it is, I gotta arrest you both.”
“I know. But I swear, I did the dirty stuff myself. I drove her car up to Lookout Point, with Lisa following along behind in ours. I put Jeanette in the car. I rolled it off the cliff. All my wife did was defend herself with her shoe. You can’t blame a woman for that, Sheriff.”
Tom sighed and looked over at Savannah. They exchanged a moment of sadness, both feeling for the man who sat, broken, before them. His life ruined by a set of terrible decisions, all made at a time of high stress.
Savannah looked up at the clock.
Sixteen minutes from the start of the interview to the end of the confession.
Tom had broken Dirk’s record. But then she reminded herself, records were made to be broken. And she would still choose Dirk over Tom all day long and twice on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Frank had covered his face with his hands and was continuing to cry. “The worst thing is, I started it all by going for that silly piece of purple fluff, Jeanette. I’ve never been especially good lookin’. I’ve never had two nickels to rub together. Other than Lisa, no woman had ever given me a second look. Then that Jeanette starts wagglin’ it under my nose, telling me how cute I am and how much I turn her on.”
“I understand,” Tom said, with another quick glance at Savannah. “You’re not the first man that traded the heart of a good woman for a cheap piece o’ tail. You’re not the only guy to do something stupid that he regretted for the rest of his life.”
Killer Reunion Page 25