Storm Track

As she came back full circle, she saw the pity in his eyes and abruptly tried to cover herself with her arms and hands.

“Oh, God!” she moaned and dropped to her knees at the foot of their bed, clasped her hands and began to pray, wordlessly, silently, with tears streaming from her closed eyes.

Ralph opened their closet, took her white cotton robe from the door hook, and gently draped it around her shoulders. Without opening her eyes, she pulled the fabric across her naked breasts and continued to pray.

As Ralph stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind him, he saw that Stan’s door was slightly ajar and he pushed it open.

The boy looked at him. “Is something wrong, Dad?”

He had never lied to his children. “Yes, but it’s between your mother and me and we’ll work it out. Try not to let it trouble you any more than you can help, okay?”

Wanting to be convinced, his son nodded.

“Don’t stay up too late,” said Ralph.

“I won’t. ’Night, Dad.”

“’Night, Daddy,” echoed Lashanda’s little voice from next door.

His daughter was already in bed with the lights out, but enough spilled in from the hall when Ralph opened her door to see that she was still wide awake. He adjusted the fan in her window and asked if she was cool enough.

“Is Mama still mad?” the little girl whispered.

“She’ll be fine in the morning,” Ralph said, knowing that Clara would be in firm control of her emotions by breakfast time. Even if she were still angry with him, she would try not to let the children see it.

He kissed Lashanda goodnight and went down the hall to the living room. The telephone sat on the desk that had betrayed him and for a moment he was tempted to call.

But what he had to say to Cyl couldn’t be said on a telephone, he decided. He pulled his keys from his pocket and walked out into the night.

* * *

The Bullocks lived in a small rental house at the edge of Cotton Grove.

There was only a single streetlight at the far end of the quiet block, but a light was on by the front door, and as soon as Dwight pulled up to the curb in his Colleton County cruiser, he saw a man come to the front window and peer out at him.

The door was opened before Dwight could cross the yard.

“What’s happened?” he called from the porch. “Is it my wife? Is she all right?”

“Evening, Mr. Bullock,” Dwight said.

Even though both had played softball together the night before and eaten pizza at the same table afterwards, Dwight was now in full official mode and Jason Bullock stopped dead on the porch steps as he registered the deputy sheriff’s formality.

“Was she in a wreck? She always drives too fast. Oh Jesus, I’ll kill her if she’s gone and hurt herself!”

The contradiction of words would have been funny if Dwight didn’t know what was going on in the man’s head, that he was bracing himself to hear what a rumpled officer of the law had come to tell him at ten o’clock at night.

“I’m sorry,” Dwight said. “There’s no easy way to say this—”

“She’s dead?”

All the air seemed to go out of Jason Bullock and Dwight put out his hand to steady him.

“Oh, Jesus,” he moaned. “I told her and told her, but she wouldn’t slow down. I swore I was going to buy a clunker that wouldn’t go over forty miles an hour and she just laughed. Oh, Jesus. What happened?”

“Where was your wife this weekend, Mr. Bullock?”

“She drove up toward Virginia—there were some antique stores near Danville. Look, are you absolutely sure? I mean, her sister was with her. Maybe they made a mistake?”

Dwight shook his head. “No mistake.”

“She called me just before our game. She said she’d bought me a surprise. She said she loved—”

His face crumpled and he sank down on the wooden steps that led onto the porch.

Awkwardly, Dwight patted his shoulder.

“Sorry,” Bullock said. He fumbled at his pockets, stood up and went into the house.

Dwight followed through the open door and into the kitchen where Bullock pulled a handful of paper towels from the dispenser by the sink and blew his nose.

The kitchen table was set for two with a bowl of slightly wilted salad in the center. A couple of steaks had thawed on the drainboard and runnels of blood had dried on the white porcelain.

“What about Lurleen?” asked Bullock when he had his emotions in check. “Her sister. Is she okay?”

There was no way to mask the truth. Quietly but succinctly, Dwight explained that his wife had never left Colleton County. That she hadn’t died in a car crash, that she’d been murdered in the Orchid Motel out on the Dobbs bypass.

“What?” Bullock was looking like someone had sucker-punched him. “Why?”

As neutrally as possible, Dwight described how his wife had been found—the wine glasses, the black lingerie, her partial nudity, how the door showed no sign of being forced.

Bullock listened numbly, his jaws clenching tighter and tighter with each new humiliating detail, till faint patches of white appeared along his chinline.

“I’m sorry,” Dwight said again.

“Where is she?” he asked abruptly. “What do I need to do?”

“We sent her body to Chapel Hill for the autopsy,” said Dwight, “but they’re fast. If you have a funeral director call, they’ll probably be finished within twenty-four hours.”

He pulled a plastic bag from his pocket. Inside was a slim ballpoint pen. Sterling silver and expensive. Not an advertising gimme, although it looked elusively familiar to him for some reason. They had found it under Lynn Bullock’s body though he didn’t tell her husband this.

“Is it hers?” Dwight asked.

Jason Bullock took the bag and looked closely at the sleek design. “If it is, I never saw it before.”

He looked at Dwight bleakly. “But I guess there’s a lot I didn’t see, huh?”

CHAPTER | 7

These storms, which are common to the southern and southeastern coasts of the United States, invariably originate in “the doldrums,” or that region in the ocean where calms abound.

Monday morning—Labor Day—and I was surfing channels, trying to find more details about Lynn Bullock’s death while waiting for the coffee to perk. All I was getting were the bare facts voiced over uninformative shots of the Orchid Motel draped in yellow police tape from yesterday afternoon, although a helicopter view from above showed me that the motel was closer to the ball field than I’d realized. All the time Jason was talking to his wife, thinking she was a hundred miles away, she was right there less than half a mile from us.

The TV reporters didn’t seem to know as much as Amy had. I felt sorry for Tom and Marie O’Day, who bought the motel six years ago and have worked hard to make it succeed. This wasn’t the kind of publicity they needed. Tom appeared on camera long enough to say they had nothing to say, and viewers got to see a draped gurney being wheeled from a ground-floor room at the back of the building.

The radio was even less informative.

What I really needed was a newspaper.

When I lived with Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash, the News and Observer was lying on the breakfast table every morning when I came down. The Dobbs Ledger, too, if it were Monday, Wednesday or Friday. (With all the new people and new businesses coming into the county, the Ledger has also grown. Back in June, Linsey Thomas started publishing it three times a week instead of twice.)

Now that I have my own house, I also have my own subscriptions and both papers are delivered right on schedule.

The difference is that Aunt Zell has merely to open her front door and pick up the papers from her welcome mat. My mail and paper boxes are just over half a mile away from my front door, down a long and winding driveway, and this presents me with something of a moral problem.

Only a total sloth would use a car for a one-mile round trip, but I’m a pitiful jogger and walking takes too long. So I half-walk, half-run and when I get back, all hot and sweaty, with Ledger newsprint smearing my hands because Linsey won’t change the presses over to smudgeless ink, I might as well jump in the pond and swim till I’m out of breath before I shower and shampoo my hair.

Keep in mind that I am not a morning person. Before eight o’clock, all I really want is a reviving cup of coffee and a quiet moment to read the paper. Being forced to work out first thing is not my idea of how to start the day, although I have to admit that the new regime’s done wonders for my muscle tone.

Some days, if I’m pressed for time, I do drive down, but I always feel so guilty that it takes the edge off the morning. You think it’s silly to equate walking with righteousness and driving with sin?

Me, too.

But my Southern Baptist upbringing is such that nine mornings out of ten will find me puffing down the long drive. Which is why I was standing in a clump of yellow coreopsis at the edge of the road reading about Lynn Bullock’s death when Dwight drove by around nine that morning and stopped to ask if I wanted a lift back to the house.

“Sure,” I said, opening the passenger door of his cruiser. (Riding in someone else’s car doesn’t seem to bother my conscience.)

I was wearing sneakers, a sports bra and denim shorts with no underpants because I planned to swim as soon as I got back and half the time I don’t bother with a suit.

“So who killed the Bullock woman?” I asked. By then I’d scanned both papers and seen little new since both went to press before the victim’s identity had been announced.

“Now you know I can’t talk to you about this.”

“Sure you can,” I wheedled. “I don’t gossip—”

He snorted at that.

“I’ve never repeated anything you ever asked me to keep to myself,” I said indignantly, “and you know it.”

“True.”

“And homicide cases are never heard in district court, so it’s not as if you’re tainting a trial judge.”

“Also true.” He gently braked and I felt the underside of the car scrape dirt as we eased over a patch where the tire ruts were deeper than the middle.

“Well, then?”

“You need to get Robert or Haywood to take a tractor blade to this drive again,” he said.

“Dwight!”

“Okay, okay. Not that there’s much to tell yet. Bullock gave me his sister-in-law’s number up in Roxboro, but she never answered her phone till this morning. Said she hadn’t talked to Mrs. Bullock since Tuesday night. Didn’t know anything about a trip to Danville this weekend. She herself spent the weekend with a sailor in Norfolk.”

Dwight pulled into my yard and cut the engine when I invited him in for coffee. I’d turned on the coffeemaker just as I left for the papers and it was fresh and hot. I poured us each a mugful, toasted a couple of English muffins, added figs from Daddy’s bush and the last of the blueberries from Minnie and Seth’s and then carried the full tray out to the porch table. Dwight had switched on the paddle fan overhead and it stirred the air enough to make the difference between pleasant and uncomfortable.

Hurricane Edouard was still dumping water on New England, but here in Colleton County the skies were bright blue with a few puffy clouds scattered overhead.

We buttered our muffins and topped each bite with the fresh fruits.

“Anybody see anything at the motel?”

“We don’t have statements from all the help yet, but so far, nothing. That unit was the end one on the back side of the building and the trees and bushes back there are so thick that Sherman’s army could’ve camped for a week without anybody seeing ’em. The people in the nearby units checked out yesterday before the body was found and we’re trying to contact all of them. The O’Days run a clean business, but if someone wants to pay by cash, they don’t ask to see ID and that’s what happened with the guy in the next unit. Connecticut license plate. We’re just hoping he didn’t lie about his plate number.”

“How’s Jason really taking it?” I asked, popping a plump and juicy blueberry against the roof of my mouth.

“’Bout like you’d expect. Doesn’t know whether to be mad or sad. She was his wife, but she was screwing around on him.”

“Any chance he could’ve done it?”

We’re both cynical enough to put spouses at the top of any list of suspects.

Dwight shrugged. “Always a chance. He seemed pretty shook when I told him last night. He was at the ball field when you and I got there and his car was in front of us all the way back to Cotton Grove. Of course, he could have got home, found something that told him where she really was, and roared back to Dobbs by ten-thirty. We’ll have to wait for the ME’s report. One good thing though—they ought to be able to pinpoint the time of death pretty close.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. The motel’s shorthanded right now since school started, so Tom and Marie were both working the weekend. He had a bowl of peanuts on the registration counter and she ate a few when she checked in. Tom thinks that was around four-thirty, quarter to five.”

He didn’t have to draw me a picture. Depending on how far along digestion was, the ME should be able to bracket the time of death rather narrowly.

“Tom had never met her, didn’t know who she was and he didn’t think twice when she paid cash in advance and gave him a phony name. Benton.”

“Her maiden name,” I said.

“Now how you know that?”

“She was an LPN at the hospital. Amy and Will got here after you left yesterday.”

That was enough. He knows Amy, knows where she works, knows how she picks up information and stores it like a squirrel laying up pecans for winter.

“Amy says she played around.”

“Any names?”

“Not recent ones,” I hedged as I nibbled more blueberries.

“Her sister swears she’d hung up her spurs and was walking the straight and narrow these days,” said Dwight, “but you wouldn’t know it from the way that room looked.”

He took another swallow of coffee. “Anyhow, Tom O’Day says she knew exactly where she wanted to be. Asked for a ground-floor room in back, said she liked it quiet and didn’t want stairs. It was the last non-smoking room left on that side. According to the switchboard records, she made only one outgoing call on her room phone after she checked in. Around five.”

“To her husband. I was sitting in front of Jason when he talked to her.”

“And the switchboard says she received an incoming call about ten minutes after that, someone who asked if Lynn Benton had checked in yet.”

“Male?”

“The operator thinks so, but can’t swear to it. She also says somebody called around three o’clock asking the same thing and that it could’ve been the same person.”

“Impatient lover just waiting to find out what room she was in before rushing over?”

“Sounds like it, since he knew what name she was using.”

“Nobody saw her at the drink machine? Filling her ice bucket? Letting strange men into her room?”

“If they did, they’re not saying.”

“I guess you’re pretty sure it was a man?”

“Dressed like that? Or rather, undressed like that? And she was pretty well-built. Taller than you. Probably stronger, too. Nurses do a lot of lifting and pulling. It would’ve taken somebody just as strong.”

“He could’ve caught her off-guard,” I said, picturing the scene. “He could’ve been undressing her, took off one of her stockings. Maybe trailed it along her neck.”

My mind flinched from the rest of the scenario. Lynn Bullock had thought he was making love to her. Instead—

Across the table from me, Dwight pulled a fig apart to reveal the soft fleshy interior and I wondered what he was thinking as he ate it. Ever look closely at a fig? It’s male on the outside, explicitly female on the inside. Erotic as hell, but I doubt if Dwight notices.

“We bagged her hands,” he said, “but if the killer came up from behind with that stocking and threw her down face-first, she may not’ve had time to do more than claw at the thing that was choking her. If that’s the case, we’ll only find her own DNA under her nails.”

“Poor Jason Bullock.” I sighed and got up to fetch the coffeepot for refills.

When I came back from the kitchen, Dwight was holding a couple of plastic evidence bags in such a way that his big hands concealed the contents.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“These really do stay confidential,” he warned me. “Ever see this before?”

Inside the first plastic bag was the top part of a gold-toned tie tack. Less than half an inch wide, it was shaped like a tiny American flag.

“Ambrose Daughtridge wears tie tacks,” I said. “And so does Millard King, but I never paid much attention to them.”

“What about this, then? We found it under the victim’s body. For some reason, it makes me think of you. Why?”

It was a silver ballpoint pen.

“Because I had one just like it on my desk at the law firm,” I said promptly. “You must have seen it there. John Claude gave them as Christmas presents three or four years ago.”

Mine was in a pencil cup by the telephone in my bedroom and I brought it out to show Dwight. “I don’t carry it in my purse because I’m afraid I’ll put it down somewhere and walk off without it.”

Dwight smiled as he compared the two. He knows my theory that there are probably only about fourteen ballpoint pens in Colleton County and everybody keeps picking them up at one business counter and putting them down at another counter somewhere down the road.

These pens were sterling silver—John Claude doesn’t give cheap presents—and were distinctively chased with tendrils of ivy that twined along the length of the barrel.

“Any fingerprints?”

“Just smudges. Who else got one besides you?”

“I’m not sure. You’ll have to ask John Claude.” I didn’t like where this was going. “Reid got one and Sherry Cobb.”

Sherry is the firm’s small, bossy office manager and Reid, of course, is the current generation’s Stephenson.

Lees and Stephensons have been law partners since John Claude’s father (a cousin from my Lee side) began the firm with Reid’s grandfather (my great-grandfather) back in the early twenties. Southerners sometimes exaggerate the ties of kinship, yet family loyalties do exist and most of us will always give a cousin the benefit of doubt, even a first cousin once removed, as Reid was. His sexual development may have stopped when he was in junior high, but that doesn’t make him a killer.

I didn’t care if Will and Amy had once seen them together, there was no way Reid could be involved in Lynn Bullock’s death, and I wasn’t going to offer him up as a candidate to Dwight.

“I think John Claude bought them at a jewelry store at Crabtree Valley,” I said. “Dozens of them are probably floating around the Triangle.”

“We’ll check,” Dwight said mildly. “Long as Reid has his, no problem, right?”

I keep forgetting how well he knows me.

CHAPTER | 8

Ordinarily, men and women have enough to do in attending to their own affairs, expecting others, of course, to do the same, and consequently they pay small attention to what is going on around them.

After Dwight left, I finished reading the paper. Polls showed Jesse Helms with his usual slim lead over Harvey Gantt in the senate race—what else was new?—and NASCAR champion Richard Petty was several points ahead of Elaine Marshall for Secretary of State, though that gap had closed a little since the last poll. Nothing to get our hopes up about though.

The Ledger’s front-page story carried a studio portrait of Lynn Bullock. Even in black and white, her makeup looked overdone and her long blonde hair was definitely overteased. More Hollywood than Colleton County.

(“Meow,” scolded my internal preacher.)

Sheriff Bo Poole reported that his department was following up several important leads and he appealed to the public to come forward if anyone had seen Mrs. Bullock or anything suspicious at the Orchid Motel between five p.m. and midnight on Saturday.

In true Ledger fashion, the story ended by listing Lynn Bullock’s survivors: her husband, Jason Bullock “of the home”; her sister, Lurleen Adams of Roxboro; her mother, Vara Fernandez of Fuquay-Varina; and her father, Cody Benton of Jacksonville, Florida.

I was mildly bemused to see Dr. Jeremy Potts pictured at the bottom of the same page, along with another white-jacketed doctor. They flanked a piece of diagnostic equipment that was evidently state-of-the-art. The story was about the machine, not the doctors, so I turned to the sports pages to check out the softball pictures.

Linsey’s new photographer might have been slow with names, but he was expert with the camera. White or black, all our faces were crisp and clear. I never push, but I do make sure I’m always on the front row. Every bit of public notice, no matter how tiny, has to help subliminally at the polling booth.

Putting the plates and mugs Dwight and I had used in the dishwasher, I wiped down the countertops, then swept the kitchen and porch floor clean of crumbs and sand from last night. It’ll be next spring before my centipede grass is thick enough to make a difference with tracked-in sand. In the meantime, no matter how many doormats I scatter around, I live with the sound of grit underfoot. It’s almost as bad as a beach house.

At Aunt Zell’s, I kept my two rooms picked up and I chipped in on her twice-a-month cleaning woman, but that was about the extent of my domestic labors. Now I’m doing it all myself and part of me is amused to watch the surfacing of a heretofore latent pleasure in housework, while the other part is horrified to see myself slipping into such a stereotypical gender role.

“Long as you don’t start crocheting potholders or make people take off their shoes before they come in,” soothes my mental pragmatist.

By noon I had changed the linens on my bed and had just thrown sheets and towels in the washer when my friend Dixie called from High Point. She said she’d get me a visitor’s badge if I wanted to come over at the end of next month’s wholesale furniture market to pick up a few floor samples at dirt-cheap prices.

“Should I keep my eye out for anything in particular?” she offered.

Standing in the middle of my house and looking around at all the bare spots that surrounded a handful of shabby family castoffs, I hardly knew where to start. “A couch?” I said. “And maybe a really great coffee table? That’s all I can afford right now.”

We talked about styles and colors and whether her love life was as stalled as mine seemed to be at the moment.

Yet, as if to give lie to all my grumbling, the phone rang the instant I hung up and it was Kidd, who did a lot of grumbling on his own about having to work time and a half to compensate for his wounded colleague when he’d rather be upstate with me.

“Tell me what you’re wearing,” he said.

“Right this minute?”

“Right this minute.”

I slipped off my sneakers and curled up on the old overstuffed couch handed down from April’s aunt. “My purple knit bra and a pair of cutoffs.”

“That’s all?”

“Hey, I’m decent.”

“Not for long.”

I smiled. “Why not?”

“Because I’m sliding the straps down off your shoulders and over your arms.”

“You are?”

“I am.”

“And I’m letting you?”

“You have no choice,” he teased. “The straps are keeping your arms pinned to your side while I pull the bra down around your waist and kiss you all over.”

“Um-m-m,” I murmured, settling deeper into the cushions. “Feels wonderful.” It seemed so long since we’d touched that I closed my eyes and drifted as his voice added detail upon erotic detail.

“I’m not as helpless as you think, though,” I warned him softly. “You’ve pinned my arms, but my hands are free and I’m unbuttoning your shirt . . . running my hands across your chest.” My voice slowed and deepened. “I’m touching your nipples very lightly, barely brushing them with my fingertips.”

My own breasts began to tingle as he told me where his lips were and described what his hands were doing. I could almost feel the roughness of his stubbled cheek, his face pressed hotly against me.

“Now I’ve unbuttoned the top of your shorts,” he said huskily. “My fingers are on the zipper . . . Slowly, very slowly I—”

The screen door slammed and a male voice said, “Hey, Deb’rah? You home or not?”

I was so into the spell Kidd was weaving that for one confused moment, I felt as if I ought to clutch a cushion to my chest to hide my nakedness. Between telephone and washer, I hadn’t heard Reid Stephenson’s car drive up.

“Oops!” he said as he poked his head through the door and saw me. “Sorry. Didn’t realize you were on the phone. I’ll wait. Go ahead and finish.”

As if.

Mood shattered, I told Kidd I’d call him later.

“’Fraid I won’t be here,” he said with a long regretful sigh. “Roy and me, we’re patrolling the water tonight. Lot of drunk boat drivers’ll be out. But, Deb’rah?”

“Yes?”

“Remind me to punch your cousin in the nose the next time I come up, hear?”

* * *

“Hey, you didn’t have to get off the phone on my account,” said Reid.

“Yes, I did,” I said grumpily. “What’re you doing out this way anyhow?”

Dressed in dark red shirt, white sneakers, no socks, Reid just stood there happily jingling his keys in the pocket of his khaki shorts. Not only is he cute as a cocker spaniel puppy with his big hazel eyes and his curly brown hair, he has a puppy’s sunny good nature and isn’t easily insulted, which is probably why he’s so successful with women. Takes more than a whack with a newspaper to discourage him when there’s a tasty treat in sight.

“I brought you a housewarming present.”

He beckoned me out to the porch. There on the table was a long flat box wrapped in brown paper, tied with a gingham ribbon and topped with a spray of what looked like dried grasses.

“What’s that stuff?” I asked.

He grinned. “Hayseeds, of course.”

It’s been a running joke with some of my town friends that my move to the country was the first step toward turning into a country bumpkin, that I’d soon be coming to court with a stem of broomstraw dangling from the corner of my mouth.

Inside the box were two smaller packages. The first was a yellow-backed booklet covered with dense black typescript that advertised things like blackstrap molasses, copper arthritis bracelets and diuretics—an old-fashioned farmer’s almanac.

“You need to know what signs to plant your crops under,” Reid said.

I had to smile because Daddy and Maidie still consult this same almanac before they plant—a waxing moon for leafy vegetables, dark of the moon for roots, zodiac signs for everything else.

The other package contained a rather handsome walnut board, inset with three brassbound dials. The top one was a thermometer (86°), the middle was a barometer (29.6"), and the bottom recorded the humidity (58%)—actually a pleasant day for the first week in September.

“How about beside your bathroom door?” Reid suggested as I looked around for a place to hang it. “You can see what the weather’s like as soon as you get up every morning.”

As if I couldn’t just look out the window. But he was so pleased with himself and his gift that I held my tongue.

We carried it into my bedroom and he was right, as he usually is about spatial concepts. It was a perfect fit. One of the reasons Reid’s such a good trial lawyer is that he notices details. So far as I knew, he’d only been in this room once since I moved in, when he brought out a small bookcase from my old office a few weeks back, yet he remembered the narrow wall between my closet and bathroom doors.

“Get me a screwdriver and I’ll go ahead and put it up for you,” Reid said.

I fetched one from the garage and we hung it in less than five minutes.

“Dwight see you this morning?” I asked as we walked back through the kitchen and I transferred my wet laundry to the dryer.

“About that pen he found under Lynn Bullock?”

“He told you that?”

“Come on, Deborah. I’m an attorney, remember? I don’t answer any questions from a deputy sheriff without a good reason. Soon as you told him they were Christmas presents from John Claude, you knew he’d come asking to see mine.”

“And you showed it to him?” I asked casually.

“Not yet. It’s back at the office. He’s going to come by tomorrow when I’m there. But I got to tell you, it pisses the hell out of me that he won’t take my word for it. Has anybody ever seen me raise a hand to a woman? Ask Dotty. Bad as we used to fight, the only thing I ever slammed was the door.”

“But you did have an affair with Lynn Bullock,” I said.

He shook his head. “Nope. We went out twice last winter, I slept with her once and that was it.”

Genuinely curious, I asked, “What’s your definition of an affair?”

“More than a quickie and two suppers, that’s for sure,” he said virtuously. “Not to speak ill of the dead, but she turned out not to be my type.”

“Oh?” I hadn’t realized there were such creatures.

“Lynn Bullock was a sexy woman and she really liked to—” He hesitated. John Claude’s lectured him so many times about using the F-word in front of women that it’s starting to sink in. “—to do it. The thing is, she was just a little too trashy for me.”

He spoke with such a straight face that I couldn’t control my laughter.

“After Mabel, the motorcycle mama?” I hooted. “Or little Cass with the big—”

“You don’t have to call the roll,” Reid said, offended. “Look, you know Dolly Parton’s famous remark?”

“‘It takes a lot of money to look this trashy’?”

“Right. But Dolly goes for that look deliberately. It’s her stage persona. Earthy. Playful. Lynn Bullock wore the same big hair, flashy clothes, and gaudy costume jewelry, only she was dead serious. She thought it made her look upper-class—I swear to God, she must’ve spent her formative years studying Dynasty as if it were a documentary on tasteful dressing.”

“I never knew you were such a snob,” I said.

“I’m not! Lynn was though. The first and only time I f—I mean, laid her, she spent the rest of the evening classifying half the people in Dobbs—this person was, quote, ‘society.’ That one was ‘low-class.’ I thought at first she was being funny but, no, ma’am! She was dead serious and she had the pecking order in this county down pat. I told her that if she wanted to see a real pecking order, she ought to come with me to the Rittner-Kazlov Foundation reception at the North Raleigh Hilton and watch artists and musicians put each other in their places. Mother wanted me to go represent her and I’d had just enough bourbon to think it might be amusing to watch Lynn watch them.”

(Between them, Brix Jr. and Jane Ashley Stephenson have sat on half the non-profit boards in the Triangle.)

“I’m guessing all the women showed up in earnest black gowns and ceramic necklaces?”

“I believe there were two maroon velvets and an authentic batik with strings of cowrie shells.”

“And Lynn Bullock wore—?”

“A bright green satin cocktail suit with the skirt up to here, hair out to there, gold shoes, gold purse, chunky gold earrings and gold glitter in her hair. She said she hoped the glitter wasn’t too much, but after all it was Christmas.”

“Oh, Lord.” I’ve always disapproved of extramarital sex, but I could almost find it in my heart to feel sorry for someone that tone-deaf about clothes. “How on earth did she get out of the house dressed like that without her husband noticing?”

“He was in Charlotte that weekend.”

“So how did the artsy crowd react?”

“’Bout like you’d expect. Polite for the most part, but there was a lot of eye-rolling and the older women became very, very kind to me, almost motherly. They did everything except cut up my carrot sticks for me.”

“Poor you.”

“The worst was running into Amy and Will as we were leaving. Amy took one look at Lynn and then sort of glazed over. But what really iced the cake was the way Lynn thought those women were jealous of her style. She didn’t have a clue.” Reid shook his head.

“The weird thing was that even though she was out with me, cheating on him, she kept talking about how great it was going to be when her husband joined Portland and Avery’s firm—how much money Jason was going to make and how they were looking forward to the day when they could afford to sponsor civic events because money’s the way you get your nose under society’s tent.”

“She got that right, didn’t she?” I said cynically.

More than forty years ago, my daddy’s own acquisition of respectability was based on the illegal production and distribution of moonshine. Mother’s people were higher up the social scale and after they fell in love and married, she made him quit bootlegging. Without that early seed money though—the whiskey money that bought good bottom land, decent equipment, and a fair amount of respect—he probably would have stayed too dirt poor to court her in the first place.

“Who would kill her, Reid?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Usually you’d say the husband, but Bullock was on the ball field, right? Millard King, too.”

“She slept with Millard King? When?”

He shrugged. “Before me, after me, during me—I don’t keep tabs. I just remember hearing their names linked.” He paused a moment. “Come to think of it though, not recently. I heard he’s hoping to marry the daughter of one of our Justices.”

He shook his head again. “I really don’t know who was sleeping with her. Not me, though.”

“Any problem walking away?” I asked, trying to get a feel for the murdered woman.

“Not for me,” he said, with that male arrogance that always annoys the hell out of me. Then he gave a sheepish grin. “Cost me a bundle to get the smell of dog dirt out of my car, though. She dumped a whole pile of it all over the front seat.”

CHAPTER | 9

Dejection and despondency succeeded fright.

September 3—Edouard—no longer anything but an extratropical storm at 6 a.m.—just south of Nova Scotia—winds only 55 kts. Large swells, minor beach erosion, some coastal flooding from NC–Maine. Some damage to small boats at Martha’s Vineyard & Nantucket. At least one drowning.

—Fran 24.4°N by 70.1°W—still a Category 1 hurr. & getting stronger. Will prob. be upgraded to Category 2 by tonight.

—Gustave’s collapsed.

—Hortense

“Stan? Mama says come to breakfast now or we’re gonna be late for school.”

Reluctantly, the boy turned off the radio, shelved the notebook and followed his sister down the hall to the kitchen. Yesterday’s breakfast had been so strained that he’d volunteered to help Dad cut the grass around the church tent without being asked, just to get away from the house. Not that Dad hadn’t been quiet and withdrawn himself. But his silences were always more comfortable than Mama’s.

To Stan’s relief, his mother seemed to be in her normal school morning mode. Wearing a pink-and-green-checked cotton dress, she gave him a good-morning smile as she sliced bananas and peaches over their bowls of cold cereal. His father asked the blessing, then she poured Lashanda’s milk and handed the carton on for him to pour his own. Her voice sounded just like always as she passed out lunch money, looked critically at his shirt to see if it was a clean one, and reminded Lashanda that she had piano today, “so don’t forget to take your music. I don’t want to have to come rushing over to the school this morning, you hear?”

“Yes, Mama.” The little girl smiled, too young to worry whether everything really was back to normal. As long as no visible storm clouds hovered over their heads, the semblance was sufficient and she chattered so freely that even Stan felt the tension level go down.

Ralph Freeman finished eating first and went to brush his teeth. When he came back to the kitchen with his backpack hanging from one shoulder, he said, “I have to leave now, Clara, if I want to get to Dobbs on time. You sure you don’t want me to drop the children off on my way?”

“You go on ahead,” she said, from the kitchen sink. “Rosa gets off at seven and she’ll be here in plenty of time. You’ll probably pass her on the way.”

That’s when Stan realized that his mother’s car wasn’t in the drive. Miss Rosa must’ve worked the night shift again. As his father bent to kiss them goodbye, he also realized that Mama still had her back to them. Spoons and dishes rattled against each other beneath the running water and she acted too busy to turn around and lift her face for his usual kiss on her cheek. Dad must not have noticed either, because he didn’t hesitate, just went on out to the van and drove off.

* * *

Rosa Edwards gave a mighty yawn as she drove through morning traffic. Not that she was all that sleepy, merely ready for her own bed after two nights away from it. Sunday night was payback for when Kaneesha covered for her a couple of weeks back, and last night was her own regular night. For people on the housekeeping staff, night duty at the Orchid Motel was mostly a matter of just being there in case a bed suddenly needed changing or fresh towels were required in the middle of the night. Otherwise, there were a couple of lounge chairs in a little room off the main desk where you could put your feet up and doze after you’d tended to all your chores.

The O’Days were good bosses. For white people. They paid better than minimum wage and were real easy to get along with. Of course now, they had their own ideas about how to run a motel and it might not be the way Motel 6 or the Marriott did things, but long as you did your job and did it right, you didn’t have to act extra busy when they were around. And they were fair about dividing up the night work. You didn’t get hired unless you were willing to take your turn. But you could trade off if you needed to, long as you knew it was your responsibility to see that your hours were covered. That was the one thing they were bad about: show up late or don’t show up at all without being covered and, child, the doo-doo don’t get no deeper. They didn’t want to hear about flat tires, dead batteries or how the babysitter bailed at the last minute. You got one second chance and that was it.

Long line of women be happy to have your job ’stead of picking up sweet potatoes, she told herself. Mexicans, Asians, A-rabs, you name it these days.

Must’ve been like the United Nations when the police tried to talk to Numi and Tina, who worked the noon to eight shift Saturday and Sunday. Here it was Tuesday morning and that was still all anybody could talk about—that naked body, the black stockings, the fancy wine, the man who’d called twice to see if she was there yet. Not that they were saying much more than that, ’cause nobody’d really noticed the murdered woman when she checked in except for Mr. O’Day.

Sister Clara’s car radio was always tuned to a gospel station and Rosa sang along with one of their favorite hymns, but her mind wasn’t with the words.

Even though she was on duty Sunday night when yellow tape was being strung all over that end of the place and police cars and ambulances were coming and going, nobody’d interviewed her ’cause they must’ve been told that she got off work at four on Saturday, before the murdered woman arrived.

None of the others seemed to remember that she came back around five-thirty after doing her weekly shopping because she’d gone and left her Bible in her locker. She hadn’t thought anything about it herself till she got there Sunday night and they told her what’d happened in Room 130.

That’s when she remembered driving around the back corner of the Orchid Motel in Sister Clara’s quiet little car and there was this white man coming out of that very same room. He closed the door and hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the knob and soon as he saw her, he turned away quick-like.

“Jesus, lift me up and lead me on,” she sang along with the radio. “Till I reach your heavenly throne.”

If any policeman had’ve asked her Sunday night, she might’ve told about that man right then and there, but all the guests down at that side of the motel, them that didn’t just up and check out, had to be moved over to the front side and Mrs. O’Day had kept her hopping till after the police left.

And if anybody’d been with her in the bathroom at two o’clock this morning when she was sitting on the stool reading the Ledger, she might’ve bust out with it then, but they weren’t and she didn’t. By the time she returned to the lounge, she’d had second and third thoughts about what this secret knowledge could do for her.

“For my sins you did atone,” sang the choir.

Yesterday’s Ledger lay on the car seat beside her, neatly folded so that the man’s picture was staring right back at her.

Probably had plenty of money. White men like him usually did. And here she was, needing a new car real bad, what with winter coming on. That old rustbucket of hers stayed in the shop more than it stayed on the road. Wouldn’t have to be a fancy car, just something nice and dependable like Sister Clara’s.

Sister Clara was always warning her to stay out of white people’s business.

Easy enough for her to say, thought Rosa, and her a preacher’s wife with a husband to give her everything—nice house, nice car, nice clothes she don’t have to go out and work among white folks for. Still, it won’t none of her business to bear witness against that man. “Thou shalt not suffer a whore to live.” Isn’t that what the Bible said? Not up to her to avenge the killing of a white harlot.

Anyhow, she didn’t have to decide right now, she told herself. Like Mary, she was going to sit back and ponder all these things in her heart.

“Jesus, lift me up and lead me on.”

* * *

He couldn’t believe his luck. Ever since it happened, he’d checked his rearview mirror for every white Civic that he met, noted every white Civic parked on the streets—who knew Honda had such a big slice of the car market? And didn’t they make Civics in any damn color except white?

Then suddenly, there it was!

He was waiting at a stop sign when the car sailed by, the gold cross affixed to the license plate, the Jesus bumper stickers with their blood red letters on a white background. The one on the left read, “Jesus loves YOU!” The one on the right, “Jesus died for your sins.”

Without thinking twice, he immediately switched his blinker from a left-turn arrow to a right-turn. As soon as the westbound lane cleared, he pulled out and headed after the white Civic, his heart pounding. He didn’t have a plan. All he’d hoped—a blind illogical hope, he’d begun to think—was that he could somehow find her before she heard about Lynn’s death, connected it with him, and went to the sheriff.

Finding her was first. He hadn’t really thought about what he’d do after that.

She drove as if she were late, weaving in and out of morning traffic. Fortunately, the heaviest traffic was leaving Cotton Grove, not entering it, and he was able to close the gap between them. Nevertheless, she was four cars ahead of him and he almost lost sight of her when she suddenly whipped into the central turn lane and zipped across in front of an oncoming car with only inches to spare.

He was forced to wait for six cars before he could follow and by then, the white Civic was nowhere to be seen.

Damn, damn, damn!

To be this close and then lose her.

He kept to the posted thirty-five miles per hour even though every instinct told him to go even slower so he could look carefully. Unfortunately, this was a residential street in a black neighborhood with black kids collecting on the corner to wait for their school buses. He couldn’t afford to drive too slowly or they’d notice him.

Notice and remember.

He told himself that Cotton Grove was a little town and this black neighborhood was proportionately small, too. How long could it take to quarter the whole area?

As it turned out, he didn’t have to. Two blocks down, he spotted the white Civic parked in the driveway of a neat brick house. He carefully noted the house number as he drove by but didn’t have time to make out the name on the mailbox, too.

At the next comer, he made a left, then three right turns to bring him back down this street. As he passed the house a second time, he saw two women and two children getting into the car and he immediately pulled in ahead of a green van parked at the curb. He waited there with the motor running till the Civic backed out of the drive. Only the little girl’s head turned in his direction when they passed him, and even she didn’t seem to notice as he trailed them through town.

First stop was the middle school where she let off the boy, then the elementary school for the little girl. Finally, she stopped in front of a small house at the end of a shabby, unpaved, semi-rural street and the second woman got out. He was too intent on the driver to pay much attention to her passengers. A quick stop at a convenience store, then she drove straight back to the first house.

He was right behind her all the way, and by the time she got out of the car and went into the house with her purchases, he’d begun to formulate his next move. She had to know about the murder by now, yet he hadn’t been arrested. Either she hadn’t looked at him closely enough to give the police a good description or she hadn’t connected him with the murder room. But how could that be unless she was dumber than dirt? She’d driven around the corner of the motel just as he pulled the door closed behind him. He’d certainly registered a black female face and the car’s religious symbols as she passed within fifteen feet. It seemed impossible that she wouldn’t recognize him the minute she saw him face-to-face again.

He slowed down enough to read the name on the mailbox.

Freeman.

It was a sign.

Take care of that woman and he’d stay a free man.