Smoke and Mirrors

21

When Leigh Gardner walked into Brad Barnett’s office, the sheriff had just returned from making arrangements for a deputy to deliver the toothpick evidence to the ProCell facility in Nashville via a chartered twin-engine airplane.

“Okay,” she said. “What’s so all-fired important?”

“Sit down, Leigh,” Brad said.

She sat, arms crossed.

“We don’t think Sherry was the target,” he told her.

“Oh, really. So you believe it was a hunting accident now? I shouldn’t be surprised you’ve changed your mind already. Keeping your crime numbers stacked for a reelection bid?”

“No, it definitely wasn’t an accident. I’ll let Winter explain the thinking behind it.”

Leigh turned in her chair to face Winter. “Okay, Mr. Massey, if Sherry wasn’t the intended victim, who the hell was?” she asked.

“I think you were,” Winter told her.

“Why would anybody want to shoot at me?”

Winter began, “It makes less sense that anyone who could make that shot would target a babysitter out in the middle of nowhere.”

“So you’re not pursuing Alphonse Jefferson?”

“We’ve ruled him out,” Brad told her.

Leigh frowned at Brad. “How do you imagine anybody could confuse me-a forty-year-old blonde-with a nineteen-year-old black girl?”

Winter said, “I was looking at the crime-scene pictures and something hit me. At a thousand yards in that early light, a dark-skinned babysitter wearing a hooded car coat and gloves, moving from the house to the garage, would look like a white woman doing the same thing. You’re a farmer and I suspect you keep farming hours. If the shooter didn’t know you were out of town, and was there to kill you, he might easily assume a woman close to your build heading out to the garage at daybreak would be you.”

“Why me?”

“Financial gain, so whoever gains if you were killed is a suspect. Since your kids didn’t have it done, we can move to the next most-likely suspect.”

“Like who?” she asked. “Nobody would gain anything by my death,” Leigh said. Her eyes flickered with some inner thought, some recognition perhaps, but passed quickly. She shrugged. “No. Despite the size of my operation, I am not a wealthy woman. Maybe you should look at the agricultural conglomerates. They’re the only people who’d profit from my death, since my children would have to sell the place to pay the inheritance taxes.”

“What about Jacob?” Brad asked.

She laughed. “Please. If I died, he’d starve to death. He lives with his mother in a two-bedroom apartment in Memphis.”

“Brad has to take a serious look at your ex-husband,” Winter said.

Leigh stared at Winter for a few long seconds, her expression impossible to read. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she scoffed. “Alphonse Jefferson is your killer. If that’s all?”

“I don’t think-” Brad started.

“That’s the trouble, you don’t think. Anybody wants to shoot me, I’ll be the one working my ass off. Good-bye, boys. Six Oaks won’t run itself.”

Leigh strode out the door without looking back.

“If she was the target, she probably still is,” Winter said. “When the shooter finds out he missed her, he might try again. She needs protection.”

“Forget it,” Brad said. “She’s in denial and as stubborn as a mule. But I’ll put a car out at the place, double the patrols on the roads out that way.”

Winter said, “I think she already suspected Sherry wasn’t the target before she came in here. I think she isn’t completely certain that her ex isn’t responsible.”

Brad said, “I can tell you from long experience with Leigh that she isn’t going to do anything she doesn’t want to do.”

“How long ago was it that you two dated?” Winter asked.

Brad’s startled look confirmed what Winter had suspected since he first saw Brad and Leigh Gardner interact at Six Oaks.

Bettye stuck her head into the office. “Sheriff, just got a call. There’s been a homicide at the Gold Key.”