Honestly Dearest, You're Dead

Thirty-three

“Your dental records confirmed it: Our burned body is your Officer Severs,” Dillard said to the speakerphone on his desk. He spoke conversationally, with no hint of accusation in his voice.

“No doubt?” Patterson asked.

“The Woodton postmaster also verified it was Severs who was trying to get at Carolina Dare’s mail. Of course, our friend Elstrom here, identified Severs as well.”

“I appreciate your getting on it so quickly.” Patterson’s voice came through the phone flat, as if he were grateful that he had the Mississippi River to hide behind.

“Did you suspect right away, Patterson?” I said.

“I was troubled when we found the body in the police car. Severs was a careful man. But no, I didn’t begin to suspect anything until you brought me those letters. They linked Severs to the robbery, gave him reason to fake his own death and disappear, to hunt down the money.”

“How do we find out if it was one of the Kovacs brothers burned in that police car?” I asked the phone.

Dillard cut in before Patterson could fumble up an excuse. “It was that badly burned?” Cop to cop, Dillard was tossing Patterson a lifeline, an out for why the Cedar Ridge medical examiner blew the identification.

“Crispy critter,” Patterson said.

“You won’t exhume for identification?” I asked.

“Not possible, Mr. Elstrom,” Patterson said. “Severs’s closest kin, a cousin, authorized his cremation.”

“So we will never know who was burned in that police car,” I said to Dillard and the phone.

“Until we find the surviving brother,” Dillard said.

“Lieutenant, did you recover any bullets from Severs’s body?” Patterson asked.

“None yet, but we’re still sifting dirt. The coroner thinks they came from a twenty-two.”

“Not a thirty-eight?”

“Could be. With our coroner, often it’s guesswork,” Dillard said.

“There’s going to be all kinds of hell to pay for this one,” Patterson said. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Wait,” I said, but Patterson clicked off.

Dillard replaced the handset on the phone. “How about some blueberry tea?” he asked.

I stared at him. “I can’t stand the smell of it, can’t stand the thought of it, can’t understand why the hell anyone would drink it.”

“It helps you think.”

He swiveled around and filled his own cup, and another that had daisies on it, from the teapot behind him. Immediately, the stink of blueberries in the room intensified tenfold. He smiled as he reached across the desk to set down the daisy cup in front of me. “I always keep it warm.”

“You hope that the tea will keep everybody here too stupored to rush out and catch criminals?”

The smile stayed on his face. “Nobody can stand the tea except me. But there’s no doubting: It helps you think.” He raised his cup and made a show of enjoying the aroma. “Take a taste, and tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Take a taste, and tell me about the tea and where this case is.”

The tea tasted like a funeral home smelled.

“It tastes like a funeral home smells,” I said.

“All right, then just tell me about the case.”

“The Kovacs brothers were the guys who entered the bank. Severs was either in on it from the beginning, or he found out that the Kovacs brothers were involved afterward, during the investigation. Either way, Severs was a partner, and the one who held the money. No one would think to suspect him.”

Dillard nodded approvingly, as though it were the one sip of tea I’d taken that was firing my brain accurately.

“Then everybody sat back, to let the case cool,” he said.

“Except Severs’s stepdaughter discovered the money, sent it to Honestly Dearest. That got young Lucia killed.”

“By Severs?”

“Him, or one of the Kovacs brothers,” I said. “Lucia was a threat to them all.”

“But now someone else knew: your girlfriend.”

I looked at the teapot, let it go by.

Dillard set down his cup. “She got the money, Elstrom. She was involved.”

When I still didn’t respond, he went on. “Severs killed a Kovacs brother, faking his own death, and took off to find her.”

“As the surviving Kovacs brother took off to find Severs,” I said.

“But only Severs found his way to Rambling.” He leaned back in his chair, as affable as a cracker rocking on a country store porch.

I knew where he was going. “No,” I said anyway. “The Kovacs brother also found his way here. He’s the only one left. He killed Severs.”

“Maris Mays,” he said, “your girlfriend.”

“She’d left Rambling by the time he got here.”

“Likely enough,” he agreed. “Who’s that leave, Elstrom?”

“I told you. The surviving Kovacs brother.”

“I had a couple of men show Patterson’s pictures around. Lots of people remember Severs, but nobody at a store, at a gas station, recollects seeing one of the Kovacs brothers.”

He turned around then and busied himself with pouring more tea.

I waited him out.

He swiveled back and for a minute made a savoring face as he sipped his tea. “So who’s left, Elstrom?”

I shook my head.

“Maris Mays had been running from cops her whole adult life,” he went on. “Suddenly, a ton of money gets dropped in her lap, only now she’s being hunted for that as well. By another cop, of all people. Now, I’m not saying she wasn’t justified in wanting him dead. Hell, he’d killed his wife and his stepdaughter, then tracked your Maris down to Florida, and up here to Rambling. No doubt, he would kill her for that money.”

“You think she faked her own disappearance, dribbled a little blood around the cottage, hid out for a few weeks, then came back to kill Severs? Have more tea, Dillard, or give it up altogether.”

He smiled. “No, that’s not what I think.”

“A Kovacs brother killed Severs,” I said.

“That’s not what I think, either.” His eyes were steady. “Your Maris had the money; she could run. But she’d always be looking over her shoulder for Severs. So she turned to the one person she could trust. You.”

“You’re wrong,” I said, but the way my voice quivered, it sounded like a lie.

“Have her come in and the two of you can explain.”

“I don’t know where she is.”

“You didn’t help her before, either.”

“Before?”

“That August, when you were kids. You didn’t help her by keeping quiet about her secret. You could have spared her a life of running, given her a chance to rebuild her life, by tipping the police in Rivertown.”

“Tipping them to what?”

“To what made her kill her father.”

“No motive-”

“Yeah, and no murder weapon, either. I’ve been hearing you, Elstrom. You’re not helping her now, like you didn’t help her then.”

“I’m free to go?”

“For now. I’ll drive you back to your motel.”

We stood up, but Dillard’s door opened before I could reach for the knob. A young sheriff’s deputy, not much older than I was when I knew Maris, stuck his head in.

“We’ve been digging up the dirt floor in the garage like you wanted, looking for bullets,” the young cop said to Dillard.

Dillard had come up to stand next to me. “Yes?”

“They found another body.”