Death's Half Acre

CHAPTER 16

. . . charged with exit

routes wrongturned.

—Paul’s Hill, by Shelby Stephenson

On Monday morning, we learned that Candace’s body had been released and that there had been a private cremation the afternoon before. Only Cameron Bradshaw, her daughter Dee, her office manager Gracie Farmer, and the minister of her church were present. There was mention of a future memorial service once her killer was found and locked away. In the meantime, it was said that Cameron wanted to buy space in a columbarium for the two of them, but that Dee thought she should be scattered over Colleton County from a helicopter. No one seemed to know exactly where her ashes were at the moment, only that Cameron had bought a very expensive and very tasteful urn for their eventual repose.

I was callous enough not to care about the whereabouts of her ashes so much as the whereabouts of her previous car.

“Sorry, hon,” Dwight said when we passed in the back halls sometime in mid-morning. He was upstairs to testify in a superior court trial; I was on a break while the attorney tried to bargain down the charges on his client with Julie Walsh, today’s prosecutor. “Bradshaw says he doesn’t remember a cousin and the daughter’s not answering her phone. Richards has gone to talk with the office manager, see if there are any personal records. And Terry’s got Sabrina Ginsburg looking on her computer for an address book.”

“What about Georgia’s DMV?” I asked.

“Down, tiger,” he said with a grin. “We’ll get there. It’ll just be easier all around if we have a name for them.”

I conscientiously put the matter on a back burner of my mind and concentrated on the cases before me. In addition to the usual roll call of simple assaults, property damages, and break-ins, we had Elton Lee back in court again.

Less than a year ago, Mr. Lee had stood in front of me and pled guilty to a Class H felony, obtaining property by false pretenses. I had given him a suspended eight-month prison sentence on the condition he pay restitution and remain on probation for three years. Yet here he was again on the same charges: two more real estate scams.

Somehow or other, the man manages to get access to empty houses. Either they are houses that have been on the market a while or else they are model homes in half-built, modestly priced developments. Preying on the hopes and dreams of his low-income victims, he poses as a sympathetic real estate agent, takes their five-or six-hundred-dollar down payments, and then quits taking their calls. When one of his victims recognized him at a local grocery store, he told her that there was something wrong with her credit and that he was still trying to get her loan approved. She was trusting enough to give him another three hundred dollars to help hurry things along.

After taking his guilty plea to these new charges and hearing a summary of the facts, I found him guilty again.

“Mr. Lee, what’s it going to take to make you stop doing this?” I asked him.

He gave me a sheepish shrug. He really does have a warm and charming smile and he’s articulate as well. I can readily understand how his victims could trust him, especially when they so want to believe that he’s helping them buy a home of their very own. This was a man who could sell snake oil to doctors.

“You realize this new offense means you have violated your probation and that some judges would send you to jail for eight months right this minute?”

“No, ma’am, Your Honor, I didn’t, but I surely hope you won’t have to do that,” he said earnestly.

Frankly, I did, too. If I gave him active time, his victims would get no restitution.

“I see that you paid restitution for your first conviction?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, that’s one thing in your favor.” I sat back in my chair and considered all the possibilities. At last I leaned forward and said, “Here’s what we’re going to do, Mr. Lee. I’m going to sentence you to another eight months, to run consecutively with the first eight, and contingent upon several conditions. That means when you’ve served the first, you get to serve the second if you break probation again. Do you understand, sir?”

“Yes, ma’am, I do.”

“This time, I’m ordering house arrest. You’ll wear an ankle monitor for the duration so that your probation officer can keep track of you and the only place you can go is to church and a legitimate job. And you will pay restitution to these new people even if you have to sell your own house. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re a bright man, Mr. Lee. There’s no reason why you couldn’t be a very successful salesman somewhere in the business world.”

“Even with this against me?” he asked.

“Even with this against you.”

“Ma’am, you reckon you could write me a letter of recommendation?”

I couldn’t help returning his smile. “You apply for a job and I’ll consider it,” I told him.

What the hell? He’d be a natural for a boss willing to keep him on a short leash.

Dwight and I met for lunch at the Bright Leaf Restaurant and he reported that Dee was still not answering her phone, but that a likely Georgia name had been found among Candace’s records: Manfred “Manny” Wells of Peach Blossom Mobile Estates in a suburb of Augusta, Georgia. Just over the South Carolina border off I-95.

“Wells was Candace’s maiden name,” Dwight told me.

I was ready to send the cavalry down I-95 to circle Manny’s double-wide until he gave up the car, but I reined in my impatience and reminded myself that I had leaped to groundless conclusions before. It could still be a total coincidence that Candace, in an act of unprecedented generosity, had given away a practically new Toyota at around the same time that Linsey Thomas was killed by one.

“Thanks for not telling me it’s none of my business,” I said as the waitress departed after bringing me a small spinach salad and Dwight a grilled chicken sandwich.

“So long as you remember it really isn’t,” he warned me. “What did Portland say when you told her?”

“I didn’t.”

“No?”

“No.”

Dwight knows that Portland Brewer used to be the first person I hashed out all my concerns and speculations with. She’s Uncle Ash’s niece and we bonded as children over a mutual hatred of an angelic little prisspot who used to tell on us and get us into trouble. She will always be my best friend, someone with whom I can bitch and moan about life’s big and little irritations. We’ve been too close for too long for that to change in a major way. Her marriage to Avery didn’t change things and neither has mine to Dwight. Shortly before we married, I had admitted that yes, Portland knew he was good in bed. “Just as I know that Avery is. But if he’s ever had performance anxieties, Por never mentioned it. That would be off-limits. Same for anything to do with your job, okay?”

For some reason, though, he finds it hard to believe that we really don’t tell each other every single thing.

We were sitting adjacent to each other at the table and I put my hand on his knee under the table. “Performance anxieties?”

“Okay, okay.” He covered my hand with his. “I get it.”

I smiled and took another bite of my salad. The spinach leaves were young and tender and so flavorful that they could have come out of Cletus and Daddy’s garden. The croutons had a homemade herb-and-onion flavor and offered a crunchy contrast to the greens and sliced hard-boiled eggs. “Have the Ginsburgs come up with anything solid against Danny Creedmore?”

Dwight swallowed a bite of chicken and shook his head. “If Candace kept any records, she’s covered her tracks well. There’s nothing incriminating on her hard drive and they still can’t find the flash drive she’s supposed to have used. By the way, they told Terry to tell you thanks for Linsey Thomas’s files. They seem to think they’re going to find pure gold there.”

As we ate, several people had stopped by the table to speak to us—attorneys, various county department heads, and Jamie Jacobson, who leaned in close to murmur, “You were asking if Danny Creedmore had a connection to Sassy Solutions? I mentioned it to my husband and he told me that Sassy is owned by Danny’s brother-in-law. We definitely need to talk tomorrow.”

“What was that about?” Dwight asked as she moved toward the door.

“She and a Raleigh advertising agency were asked to submit proposals for the ads for Grayson Village last year. The other company got the job.”

“So?”

“So one of Linsey’s diagrams linked that agency to Grayson Village through Danny and Candace. You might want to point that out to the Ginsburgs.”

He made a note of it and signaled our waitress that he was ready to pay. As we walked back to the courthouse, he offered to pick up a pizza for our supper. “I suppose you’ll want a side of those disgusting anchovies?”

“Yes, but I always keep a jar on hand, so don’t bother getting more.” One quick kiss in the momentarily deserted atrium, then we parted at the stairs, I to the courtroom upstairs, he to his office down below.

“I’ll try not to be late,” I promised.

In the end though, it was Dwight who was late. Cal and I had to settle for scrambled eggs instead of pizza.

The reason Dee Bradshaw wasn’t answering her phone today was because someone had shot her the night before.

Once in the back, once in the head.