Dead Weight

Chapter Thirty-seven

I had little desire to make a bigger fool of myself than I assumed Sam Carter to be, so when I left Burger Heaven I dipped across the street to Grace Sisson’s. I left 310 idling in the driveway, and Grace had the front door open before I’d crossed the sidewalk.

“What did you find out?” she barked.

I wasn’t about to shout across the front yard. She might have been rude, contrary, and stubborn, but Grace Sisson was not stupid. Her puffy eyes narrowed as she watched me silently approaching, and she could see damn well that I had news…none of it good.

“We need to talk,” I said, and for once Grace didn’t argue. She turned on her heel and retreated into the house. I closed the door behind me, took off my hat, and wiped the sweat from my forehead with my shirtsleeve.

“Grace,” I said, “there are some things you need to explain to me.”

“What are you talking about? Where’s Jennifer?”

“I don’t know. But I’m pretty certain about who she’s with. And I think you are, too.”

She wasn’t ready yet. I saw the lines of her jaw harden, and her eyes grew resentful and wary. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, you do,” I said. “Tell me about Sam Carter.”

The house was absolutely silent for about the count of ten. The tinnitus in my ears was cranked up as loud as it would go, and I listened to that symphony while Grace made up her mind.

She surprised me. “What do you want to know?”

“Why would he pick up Jennifer across the street?”

If Grace had a ready answer, she wasn’t prepared to share it. She turned, arms crossed tightly across her chest, and walked slowly across the length of the living room. At the far wall, she leaned against the doorjamb, her back to me. Her shoulders jerked every so often, and then she tipped her head until it was leaning against the doorjamb, too, and I knew she was crying.

She wasn’t the sort who invited a warm arm around the shoulders, and I stood silently in the foyer, hat in hand, waiting.

“He and I have been seeing each other,” she said after a few minutes, voice husky.

“All right,” I said, trying to keep my tone neutral.

“No, it’s not all right,” Grace snapped, and she had the old nasty twang back. “It’s not anywhere near all right.”

“Did Jim know?”

She turned to face me, making no effort to wipe her face. “I don’t think so.” She shrugged. “But who knows, in a town this small? If he did, he never said anything.” She stepped across and wrenched a fistful of tissues out of the box on top of the television.

“And Jennifer?”

“Sam saw her all the time in the store. Sometimes we’d be in there together, Jennifer and me. Sam would flirt with her.” She turned away again. “I guess I thought it was cute. And then a time or two over here, just in the past few months. And then last week, he offered her a job at the store.” She hauled out more tissue, and her face was flushed red. “That slimy son of a bitch,” she muttered.

“You don’t think the baby is Kenny’s, then, do you?”

“The kids broke up in early June. Jennifer never mentioned Kenny after that. So no…I don’t think so.”

“Sam picked Jennifer up at the burger joint a few minutes ago,” I said. “Any idea where they’re headed?”

“Oh, God,” Grace said, and sagged onto the sofa. She dabbed at her face, but no amount of dabbing was going to do any good. “Jenny doesn’t want to carry the baby. That’s what we were arguing about. My folks and Jim-and he assumed that the baby was Kenny’s, of course-they all see it as some kind of goddamned deadly sin that she might try to get rid of it.” She heaved a deep sigh. “That’s what Jim told her at lunch on Tuesday, in between screaming matches. That it was just bad judgment that she got pregnant…that she wasn’t going to compound that with murder.” She shook her head. “She’s scared, Sheriff.”

“Was Sam Carter over here Tuesday night?”

Grace shook her head wearily. “I just don’t know. I don’t know why he would be. The last person he’d want to cross would be Jim. I think he was afraid of my husband. He always acted like it, so supercautious and all.”

I pictured the wiry, sun-browned Jim Sisson, arm muscles like steel cables, lifting the balding, potbellied Sam Carter off the ground by the scruff of the neck.

“Were you and Jim going to get a divorce?”

“We hadn’t discussed it.”

“Did you discussed it with Sam?”

“He told me that I should leave Jim. That he’d take better care of me.”

“Of course, he didn’t say anything about leaving his wife, did he,” I said, and Grace shot me a dark, venomous look. “Where would they go? Jennifer and Carter. Any ideas?”

Grace balled the tissue up into a tight little wad and chucked it into the wicker wastepaper basket by the end table. “Maybe he knows somebody,” she said. “A little money to the right doctor.” She shrugged. “Obviously, he wouldn’t want Jennifer to have the child any more than she does.”

“You’ll sign a complaint against him? Not that we’ll need it if we catch them together. But if you’ll sign a criminal complaint, and if you’ll testify, then that puts the ball in our court. That gives us all the leverage we need.”

She almost smiled. “With pleasure. I hope you find him before I do.”

“There’s no question that we’ll find him, Mrs. Sisson. It’s out of your hands now, though. You let us handle it.”

“He has my daughter, Sheriff. And while we’re standing here talking there’s nothing but harm that can come to her.”

“Stay by the phone,” I said. “I need to know that I can reach you at a moment’s notice. You’ll do that for me?”

She nodded and reached for more tissue. I left the house by the back door, ready to give the troops something more interesting to do than lifting faded prints off hot metal.