I ran my finger over the details in the picture. Next to Wilkes stood two deputies who must have been only in their twenties. I’d had an artist age them, and one I had already spotted around town. Dean Sowers, a haunted-looking man in his late fifties, spent most of his time in a patrol car, late at night, his shadowed gaze moving from one empty store to another. It was a killer shift, playing security guard for a town with a crime rate almost in the negative numbers.
Dean was number three on my interview list, right behind Roscoe and Doris.
My fingernail scraped relentlessly at a dry patch on the side of my foot, showering the bed sheet with minuscule bits of skin. My anxiety showing. I needed to get to work. I’d inherited Daddy’s sense of patience—Mother had always said it was nonexistent—and the waiting wore on my nerves. Yet whenever I got the urge to dive into the investigation, confronting witnesses and opening old wounds, I reminded myself that his exuberant impatience had gotten Daddy killed.
Not exactly what I wanted to achieve this time around.
You’re afraid.
I leaned back against the pillows, stretching my legs out and putting that dry spot out of reach of my twitchy fingers. The word echoed a bit in my head. Afraid.
Well, yes and no. I definitely didn’t want to wind up with a belt around my neck. But I’d spent more than a decade as a cop and a year as a private investigator, and the prospect of a new investigation usually put a tingle on my skin, not a clammy sweat. I knew how to protect myself.
I turned the picture over. Underneath was a pencil drawing my mother had done of my father, in one of her “find myself with art” phases. It was a loving rendering of Daddy as a bad boy, wearing leather and straddling a Harley. Copied from a photo taken during his early law school days, it showed a trim, wiry man with a daring glint in his eyes. He was smiling, hands on hips, thick ebony hair down around his shoulders, tossed by a wayward breeze. This was the man that my mother talked about for the rest of her life. The wild boy she’d fallen for, not the driven lawyer who’d so frequently abandoned his wife and daughter for the one cold case that consumed him—and eventually took his life.
I slid my fingers under the remaining documents in the file, pulling out the one that had started it all, had given my father his ambition, his zealous drive.
Another crime scene photo. Daisy Doe to the citizens of Pineville. Esther Spire to me and the son who’d loved her enough to die for her.
Same field. Same cause of death. Clippings from the Alabama papers at the time had compared her death to the Black Dahlia case in LA. The young beauty dumped. The mysterious young boy she’d left behind. In my files, the clippings gave way to page after page of my father’s memories, scribbles he’d started as a teen, trying to hold on to the last bits of memories he had of his mother. They continued into his twenties, stopping abruptly about the time he’d entered law school. What emerged was a portrait of a temperamental, loving woman who’d doted on her only child but who had loved to grab handfuls of adventure. She collected unusual friends, soldiers, artists, musicians. She’d survived World War II in France, where she’d been part of the Resistance. A Jew who’d survived the Nazis only to die in a cornfield in Alabama.
To my mother and me—the two people who’d loved them the most—Esther Spire and her son had been cut from the same romanticized cloth. As a cop, I knew all too well that the truth had a dark side.
My eyes watered. Maybe that was it. I knew that solving the murders would turn everything I knew about them upside down. Right now, they were tragic, golden people. But in murder, there was no gold, and tragedy could take a twisted path.
Maybe what I was afraid of was losing them all over again.
I stood up, wiped my eyes, and walked to the window. I inhaled, letting the air out slowly, as my eyes scanned the street below. I could stop now, before the investigation really began. File everything away. Go back to Nashville, to my life, to all I’d left behind to pursue this case. These cases. Forget about my father’s murder. Forget Esther Spire.
Esther. Hebrew for star. My father had passed her name and looks to me, along with that apparently irresistible drive of our family to wind up in this tiny Southern town. Unlike them, however, I had no intention of dying here.
But Roscoe had returned home. Now was the moment to decide. Go, or dive into the deep end.
On the opposite side of the street, a delivery truck rumbled away from the curb, like a curtain opening on a brightly lit stage. In front of the hardware store behind the truck, Roscoe Carver sat in an unpainted rocker staring up at my window.
CHAPTER FIVE
Birmingham, Alabama, 1954
THE YOUNG BOY’S face peered up at Roscoe from the newspaper. The sharp cheekbones, broad face, and dark eyes echoed those of Daisy Doe. Mother. Son. The boy’s black hair had been parted on the left and mired down with some type of hair goo, but a number of curls had escaped the plastering, drooping over his forehead and ears like sun-darkened vines.
Roscoe picked up the paper, folding it in his lap. Heavily creased by previous readers, it had been left behind on the bench by a man who’d hopped the last bus of the afternoon. Roscoe peered one more time at the store across the street, where his mother and her sister shopped for their husbands’ birthdays. His aunt, a flamboyant preacher’s wife, had more money to spend today than his father would make on the farm all year, and she was all too eager to share with her sister. They’d already been in there almost two hours.
He sighed and gazed back at the paper, running one finger over the headline: “Do You Know This Boy?” Underneath, a paragraph described how he’d been found at a motel near Pineville, apparently the son of a woman who’d been murdered there. He didn’t speak, had no identification, and gave no signs he could even read. They had put him in an orphanage in Birmingham and called him Bobby Doe. The cops would like to find his father, to question him about the boy and his mother. So far, no luck.
“Too bad, kid. Guess they don’t know it wasn’t your daddy what killed her,” Roscoe murmured.
Roscoe wanted to remember the beauty with the daisy in her hair. There were other memories, however, he’d give his eyeteeth to forget.
Across the street, his mother emerged, calling to him. “Guess I’m stuck with them all,” he said, tearing the picture of Bobby Doe out of the paper and stuffing it in his pocket.
CHAPTER SIX
Pineville, Alabama, Present Day
THE TWO DAYS between Thursday breakfast with Roscoe and Saturday dinner with Mike passed with little more than my own continued obsession with the files under my table. Neither of the men put in an appearance at the drugstore on Friday morning, and I drove into Gadsden that afternoon to do some light shopping and make copies of a few things in the files. Be careful still rang loud and strong in my head, so I made a small, selective list of items to show Mike. I copied them in case he wanted to take them with him after hearing exactly why I had moved to Pineville.
My gut told me that he wouldn’t be pleased with the news. Fine-tuned by the streets of Nashville, that instinct had proved more reliable than my head knowledge at times, and I wanted to be as prepared as possible for his reaction. What I didn’t want was for him to think that any flirting I aimed in his direction had been solely because he was the police chief and a source for my investigation.
Or was it?
That was when I found myself in an artsy boutique, staring at a rack of designer jeans, wondering how my rear would look in them and if the stenciling on the thighs was too young for me.
OK, so maybe my thoughts about the black-haired Pennsylvania boy hadn’t been entirely confined to business. He made me laugh. Not many people had been able to do that lately, and I was always a sucker for any man who could make me laugh. Then there was those eyes, that uncanny blue in an otherwise dark palette. That his intense focus could be unnerving annoyed me. I needed to be stronger than that.
I passed on the jeans. While Star the PI could afford them and wan
ted a pair so much that her mouth watered, they cost more than Star the counter waitress made in a week. A good fit and fancy stitching across my backside just weren’t worth the risk of someone noticing that I was spending far more than I made. I already knew the gossip line had focused on Mike and me. More attention wasn’t what I wanted at the moment. I left the boutique and headed for Walmart, where I picked up a couple of cute T-shirts and a serviceable pair of khakis—cheap, cool, and perfect for the day job.
Back in Pineville, I slipped into a tank top, shorts, and my favorite cross-trainers. Time for a good run. When I’d first started working behind the counter, I’d stopped running. Figured I got enough exercise toting breakfasts around the room. My energy level dropped, however, so I started up again, usually after a nap in the heat of the afternoon. This turned out to be a wise move on my part. If I waited late enough, the folks who lived near the square had arrived home. Some puttered about in the yard, watering flowers and plucking weeds. Others just lounged, stretching their legs on an expansive front porch. The more they saw me trotting around the neighborhood, the more they waved or stopped me to chat.
You want to get to know a small town? Walk the streets.
Settled in the latter part of the nineteenth century, the heart of Pineville still looked and felt like a postcard of a Southern community from that time. The drugstore sat on the southeast corner of a pristine square featuring a stark-white Georgian-style courthouse. With twin two-hundred-year-old oaks and a manicured lawn, the courthouse was more park than cityscape. An ornate wrought iron gazebo stood to one side of the courthouse, nestled up against a cluster of stone soldiers. A much-debated statue of a confederate soldier was the oldest, and the town council had finally solved the debate by commissioning statues representing infantry soldiers from every conflict since the Revolutionary War. It had taken most of the city’s budget for two years and left folks angry about potholes, darkened street lights, a lack of Christmas decorations, and wild dogs. Of course, now there was a petition, currently tabled, to add a statue of a female soldier, while another had raised the issue of the confederate soldier yet again.
I wouldn’t be a small-town politician if you paid me. Brings out the worst in people, I swear it does, being in the public eye.
As I moved from a brisk walk into a slow jog, one of Pineville’s most visible politicos, Ellis Patton, waved at me. He stood next to the driver’s door of his ancient pickup, keys in hand. On the passenger side waited Dandridge Patton, his grandson and heir apparent. As usual, rumors swirled around the local politicos, as in any small town. One of them had the thirty-something Dandridge being groomed for political office, starting with his grandfather’s job.
I love small-town rumors. My research had revealed a lot about the town, but Miss Doris and her girls had been busy filling in the blank spaces with some of the juiciest tidbits.
And everyone in town knew that Dandridge might be waiting a long time to take over for his grandfather. Ellis was nowhere near ready for retirement. He stood tall and ramrod straight despite being seventy-plus, had been mayor for the past twelve years. He lived in an elegant Victorian just off the square, a huge home he’d inherited from his daddy, just as he had most of his income and his political position. Despite being able to pay for his children’s and grandchildren’s Ivy League educations in cash—a fact one of the local bank tellers still whispered about on occasion—he drove a red ramshackle 1976 Ford pickup with a white topper and a couple of bullet holes. “Huntin’ accidents,” he’d joke, although his political rivals whispered, “Jealous husbands” behind their hands. Ellis usually wore khakis or jeans and white oxford-cloth shirts to the office. No tie, naturally.
They were his trademark common-folks signatures. Hokey, and the citizens of Pineville knew it was a facade, even as they reelected him three times, with a fourth term likely. No term limits in Pineville. But at least, Miss Doris once confided, he’d never been convicted of a felony. Yet.
Gotta love Southern politics—almost as much as small-town rumors.
Dandridge’s—Dan’s—father, Thomas, had joined the military after college and had died somewhere overseas, although no one was real sure of the circumstances. That was when Dan came under his grandfather’s tutelage, although the local scuttlebutt was that the apple didn’t just fall far from the tree but had dropped at least one county over. No one thought Dan was up to the task, at least not yet. Another reason Ellis had most likely refused to retire.
I waved back and shifted my route closer to the pickup. “Hey, Mr. Mayor! Dandridge!”
Dan threw up a hand in a friendly wave, but Ellis paused, grinning. “Hey, Miss Star. You sure do pretty-up things here on the square.”
I pranced in place, ignoring his glance below my neckline. “Everything still running safe and sound here in Pineville?”
He nodded once, a gesture of fatherly reassurance. “Always. No place safer.”
“One reason I’m here.”
“You ready to sell that Carryall yet? I’ll give you a good price.”
I grinned. He asked me the same thing almost every time I saw him. He’d coveted my 1966 GMC Carryall since the day I drove into town. “Now, you know Belle’s not for sale. She’s been in the family a long time. Would you trade your truck for her?”
He chuckled. “Nope. You got me there.”
“I heard it was your daddy’s truck.”
“True dat. Well, you know what they say. You’ll never get what you don’t ask for.”
“True that. Have a good evening, Your Honor.”
“You too, Miss Star.” They slammed their doors, and Ellis backed out of the spot, careful to check for me in his rearview.
I’d think it was to avoid hitting me if they hadn’t paused just a little too long, patriarch and grandson watching as I jogged out of the square.
I picked up speed and turned off the square down Maple Street, where the maples that gave the street its name were so old they formed a thick canopy arch overhead. One of the three streets recently designated as “Historic Pineville,” Maple ran due north for eight blocks before dead-ending at the city park. The eight houses closest to the square were neat, efficient Federal boxes sitting so near the sidewalk that the front “lawns” were mere strips of wild ginger and silver-gray pussy toes. The back yards, however, were acre-sized refuges, complete with restored outbuildings that had once been slave quarters, kitchens, and smoke-houses. Now they were guest cottages, garages, and pool houses.
Farther out, the homes of Maple spread apart, with the houses in the center of the property and surrounded by boxwoods and thick clusters of loblolly pines and ancient oaks. Federals gave way to Georgians, Victorians, Greek Revivals, and Tidewaters, with the sole exception being an elaborate Italianate mansion four blocks from the square. This one, safely lodged on the historic register, featured an ostentatious cupola and a band-sized gazebo, which occasionally did, in fact, hold a forties swing band, hosted by the owners, George and Doris Rankin. When not a location for rollicking music, the polished red cedar deck of the gazebo supported a tasteful selection of wicker and rattan furniture and an old-fashioned double glider.
Miss Doris waved at me from the glider and motioned at me with a tea glass glistening with moisture. I slowed to a walk and took my time crossing the lawn to the gazebo. As I did, Miss Doris plucked a glass from a selection of crystal on a table near the glider and filled it with tea from a matching pitcher. Four or five glasses stood waiting, one already used. The entire town knew that Miss Doris held court in her glider every afternoon—at least while she was in town. Sugar cookies on Revere silver and dark sweet tea flavored with mint in Waterford glasses waited for any guest who happened to drop by. I once asked her why she used such priceless items in the front yard. She’d looked at me over the top of her reading glasses and announced that she was old and it made her happy. Good enough.
She brushed off the opposite side of her glider. “Sit, girl. Cool off.” She handed me the glass, w
hich I took as I sank down on the thick cushion. She didn’t offer the cookies—I had turned them down enough she knew I wouldn’t accept. Holding tight to the glider, she swung into the other side and pushed off gently.
We slid back and forth in the calm evening air, the slick motion of the glider creating enough breeze to dry the little bits of sweat I’d worked up on the short jog.
“You’d think you get enough exercise at the drugstore.” Her voice had the soft curves of a prim, Southern charm school.
“Jogging helps me keep my energy up so I don’t give out in the mornings.”
She nodded. “I understand. George and I still have more energy when we dance than when we don’t.” She grinned. “And at our age, that makes a difference.”
I considered Miss Doris a marvel of nature. At eighty-four, she was still trim and fit, with firm arms and legs, a sweet shock of red hair, and an infectious grin. While most of her peers walked slow and moaned more about their ailments than their next trip, Miss Doris moved about her garden as if on a mission. She let the ballroom dancing take credit for her good health, along with “a few good genes.” Her husband, George, was seven years younger and still moved with the grace of a ballet company’s prima danseur. His dimming eyes had stopped him from driving but not from leading his lady around the dance floor.
Part of me wanted to be Miss Doris when I grew up. The other part knew I had all the grace of a deer on ice.
“Are you and Mr. George heading out again?”
She let out a long breath. “No, I don’t think we’ll be doing a lot of dancing this year.”
“How come?”
She leaned back in the glider, and it eased to a halt. “Carly.”
“What about her? Is something wrong?”
Burying Daisy Doe Page 3