Storm Track

* * *

The blue LCD numbers on her bedside clock marched inexorably toward eight o’clock. Lying there, watching the numbers reconfigure themselves to show every passing moment, Cyl DeGraffenried wondered dully who it was that first realized it would take only seven straight little segments of liquid crystal to display every digit.

She was supposed to be in court at nine, but she couldn’t seem to pull herself out of bed. All she wanted to do was lie here and watch those little segments light up or then go dark as the numbers changed.

As an assistant district attorney, she’d seen her share of people with clinical depression and she knew that staying in bed was a classic symptom of withdrawal, but knowing it and being able to resist were two entirely separate things.

Like falling in love with Ralph Freeman. She had known it was stupid and wrong, and she hadn’t been able to resist that either.

She considered herself religious, yet she’d never daydreamed of loving a preacher. And certainly not a married preacher.

Two months of unimagined happiness, followed by these last two nights of misery. Just thinking about Sunday night made her eyes fill up again with tears. Such delight when she’d opened her door to find him standing there.

Such grief when he told her why he’d come.

“You don’t love her,” she’d said and he didn’t deny it.

Instead he took her in his arms as if reaching out for salvation and held her against his heart. “If it were just you and me, I’d walk through the fiery furnace to stay here with you forever. I love you more than I ever dreamed I could love anyone. The smell of you, the softness—” His voice broke with sorrow. “She’s the mother of my children, Cyl, and she’s done nothing to be humbled like this.”

“But she doesn’t love you!”

“No,” he said bleakly, as his arms fell away from her. “No. But we both love God.”

Coming from anyone else, it would have sounded sanctimonious. To Cyl, it sounded hopeless.

“What kind of God would keep the two of you in a loveless marriage?” she had wept. “God is love.”

“If I left Clara, I’d be turning my back on His love,” he said dully. “Breaking all the vows I ever took. I’d be saying that all the things I’ve preached, all the things I’ve believed in my whole life, were hypocrisy. I can’t do that, Cyl. I can’t live without God in my life.”

“But God forgives the sinner,” Cyl argued, calling upon all the forensic skills that made her such a skilled prosecutor. “He’ll forgive us. If you believe in Him, you know that’s true.”

“Could we forgive ourselves? Could we build a life on the wreckage of Clara’s? Break my children’s trust?” He touched her cheek, wet his fingers in her tears and brought his finger to his lips, almost as if it were a communion cup.

“These are my tears which are shed for you,” she sobbed, seeing the sacrifice in his eyes. “Take. Drink.”

He had crushed her in his arms then with all the intensity of his bitter grief, then, very gently, he had kissed her forehead and walked away.

Leaving her to lie there alone in an empty bed, numbly watching the blue segments come together and fall apart, endlessly marking a time that no longer had meaning.

* * *

The partnership of Lee and Stephenson, Attorneys at Law, had begun in an 1867 white clapboard house half a block down from the courthouse back in the 1920s. More than seventy years later, they were still there. When Dwight Bryant stopped in a little after nine, however, he found that this generation’s Stephenson hadn’t yet arrived.

“Only thing I’m getting’s his voice mail,” Sherry Cobb apologized. “I’m sure he’ll be here directly. Let me fix you some coffee.”

Dwight accepted readily. Of all the law firms in town, Lee and Stephenson had the best coffee.

Hearing their voices, John Claude Lee came to the door of his office.

“Got a minute?” asked Dwight.

As soon as he explained what he wanted, John Claude brought out a folder from the file drawer in his desk. As precise and well-ordered as John Claude himself, it was labeled “Christmas Gifts, Office” and after a quick perusal, he was able to give Dwight the brand name and model number of the silver pens, as well as the name of the jewelry store at the Cary Towne Center Mall.

“I bought three,” said the white-haired attorney. “One for Reid, one for Deborah, who was still in partnership here that year, and the third for Sherry. Those were my personal gifts to my colleagues. As a gift from the firm the rest of the staff received silver pins shaped like snowflakes with their bonuses.”

He returned the folder to its proper place and closed the drawer. “May I assume your interest in my choice of Christmas gifts somehow relates to the death of that unfortunate Bullock’s wife?”

“It might, but don’t let it get out, okay?”

“My lips are sealed,” said John Claude. “Sherry’s on the other hand—Would you like for me to ascertain if she still has hers?”

“That would be a big help,” Dwight admitted. In addition to having the best coffee, Lee and Stephenson also had the most gossipy office manager. While she was fairly reticent about the firm’s business affairs, everything else seemed to be fair game.

“And of course, you’ll want to see Reid’s.” The older man shook his head in weary resignation. His partner’s randy nature was a constant trial.

Through the window behind John Claude’s head, Dwight spotted Millard King heading down the sidewalk toward the law office next door.

“I’ll check back by in a few minutes,” he said and hurried out.

Talk about banker’s hours, thought Dwight as he cut across the grass on an intercept path. Attorneys don’t do too shabby either. Here it was almost nine-thirty, yet Reid wasn’t in and King was just arriving.

* * *

“Overslept,” said Millard King, although he looked alert enough to have been up for hours as Dwight followed him into the two-story white brick building that housed the firm of Daughtridge and Associates. “And I have a ten-fifteen appointment, so I can’t give you but just a minute.”

“Actually, it may take ten,” said Dwight, settling into the comfortable leather chair in front of Millard King’s shiny dark desk. “I understand that you were seeing Mrs. Bullock?”

King had worked hard to lose weight this last year, but he was still robustly built and inclined to perspire a little when nervous. He mopped his brow with a snowy white handkerchief, then took off his beautifully tailored gray jacket and hung it on the antique cherry coat-stand behind the door before taking a seat behind his executive-sized desk. His shirt was pale blue with white cuffs and collar, his dark blue tie was held in place, not by a tie tack, but by a narrow gold clip. Late twenties, he had the slightly beefy, very blond, all-American good looks of an ex–college halfback who wasn’t quite good enough for the pros. Rumors were that he was a fair-to-middling attorney with political ambitions beyond this junior partnership in Ambrose Daughtridge’s firm.

King leaned back in his leather armchair, elbows on the armrests, and tented his fingers in front of his chest. “Am I a suspect in her death, Bryant?”

“Should you be?” Dwight asked mildly.

“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t play games.” The judicious tones would have been more effective without that light sheen of perspiration on his forehead.

“This belong to you, by any chance?” Dwight asked, handing him the bagged flag-shaped tie tack they’d found near Lynn Bullock’s body. “I’m told you had one like it.”

“Sorry,” said King. “I don’t recognize it.”

“You’ve heard how she was found?” Dwight asked. “The way she was dressed?”

“And you think I was the one going to meet her that night? I was on the ball field,” he said indignantly. “You saw me. I hit a double off you, for God’s sake!”

“We don’t know yet when she was killed,” said Dwight. “No one saw her after five or spoke to her after five-ten. Our game didn’t start till well after six.”

“Well anyhow, I’m covered from around five till our game ended,” said King. “I try to run at least five miles a day and on Saturday, I used the school track to run laps from about five-fifteen till shortly before six when I joined the team.”

“There’s a footpath from the far end of the track, through the trees, out to the bypass. The Orchid Motel is exactly three-tenths of a mile from the track,” said Dwight. “We measured.”

“But I never left the track,” he said tightly. “Dozens of people would have seen me leave or come back. Ask Portland or Avery Brewer.”

“Were they out there running with you?”

“Of course not!” King snapped. “I was running alone. I mean, there were other people on the track, but not with me.”

“Can you give me their names?”

Millard King frowned in concentration, then shook his head. “I didn’t know any of them. One man looked a little familiar. He might be a doctor at the hospital, but I couldn’t swear to it. Wait a minute! One of the women. She had on red shorts and a white shirt and I think she works in the library. Peggy Somebody.”

“Peggy Lasater?”

“Yeah, that sounds right. She’ll tell you.”

Dwight wrote the name in the little ringbound notebook he carried in his jacket pocket. “What about after the game?”

“Straight home,” King said virtuously.

“Which brings me back to my first question. Were you seeing her?”

It was clearly not a question King wanted to answer, but he leaned forward with the earnest air of a man about to put his cards face up on the table.

“Look,” he said. “I’m twenty-eight, single, and if a woman comes on to me, looking for a roll in the hay with no commitments, why not?”

“And that’s what happened with Lynn Bullock?”

King hesitated. “Is this off the record?”

“I’m not looking to jam you up,” said Dwight. “If it’s not relevant to our investigation, it stays in the department.”

“Okay then. Because, see, I’m about to ask someone to marry me. Someone whose father’s in the public eye and who wouldn’t take kindly to having his daughter’s name linked with a murder investigation. I’ve been absolutely faithful to her since we first started getting serious this past June and I intend to be faithful from here on out if we marry. I’m not going to have some little passing affair jump up and bite me in the ass ten or fifteen years down the road, if you get my drift.”

Dwight nodded, suppressing a grin. Say what you will about Clinton, he thought to himself, but for young men with their eyes on future elective office, he sure had provided a real good object lesson for keeping their peckers in their pants.

“It was at the Bar Association dinner back in April. She was there with Jason in this tight red dress.” He shook his head reflectively. “If it’d been New York—hell, if it’d even been Raleigh! But this was Dobbs and you should’ve seen all those other women looking at her sideways and reining their husbands in. Well, I didn’t have any wife and neither did one or two others. You talked to Reid Stephenson yet? Or Brandon Frazier?”

“Frazier’s a new one on me,” said Dwight, noting down the name. “Didn’t her husband mind?”

Millard King shrugged. “Some men like it when their wives make other men hot. Sorta like ‘Yeah, you’d like to get in her panties, but I’m the one she goes home with.’ Jason doesn’t miss a trick in the courtroom but he didn’t have a clue about his wife. Lynn and I got it on a couple of times, but right around then’s when I got serious about the gal I’m hoping to marry and decided I didn’t need that complication.”

Something in his virtuous tone made Dwight ask, “Your idea or Mrs. Bullock’s?”

“I guess you could call it a mutual decision,” King admitted.

“In other words, she wanted to break it off more than you did.”

“I told you—”

“So if she called you and invited you to join her at the Orchid Motel, you wouldn’t have gone?”

“Absolutely not,” Millard King said firmly.

* * *

At Memorial Hospital in Dobbs, Amy Knott stuck her head in the staff lounge and flourished a manila envelope. “I just wanted to tell everybody that we’re collecting to make a donation to pre-op in Lynn Bullock’s name.”

“I’m sure going to miss her there,” said one of the women doctors, handing Amy a ten-dollar bill. “She always went the extra mile. When’s the funeral?”

“She’s being cremated.” Amy held the envelope open as other doctors dug in their pockets. “I understand there’ll be a memorial service next month.”

The door opened and a white-jacketed doctor came in. He had poured himself a cup of coffee before the unnatural silence finally registered. Spotting Amy’s envelope, he said, “Taking up a collection?”

“For Lynn Bullock’s memorial,” Amy said with a rueful smile. “I don’t guess you want to contribute.”

“On the contrary.” Dr. Jeremy Potts set his coffee down, opened his wallet, and made an elaborate show of pulling out a twenty-dollar bill. “I can’t think of anything that would give me more pleasure.”

* * *

Back at Lee and Stephenson, Dwight was amused to see that Sherry Cobb was using her silver ballpoint pen as she and one of the clerks proofed a long legal document. John Claude smiled benignly from his doorway.

“Reid’s in his office,” he said, pointing down the wide hallway to what used to be the dining room when this was a private house.

The door was ajar and Dwight rapped on it, then pushed it all the way open. Reid was on the phone and he motioned the big deputy sheriff to come on in as he pushed back his chair so he could open the long center desk drawer. He held the phone in one hand while he rummaged with the other.

“Okay then, Mrs. Cunningham. I’ll draft that new codicil and . . . ma’am? . . . No, no, that’s quite all right. It’ll be ready for your signature tomorrow at ten.”

He hung up and continued his search. “That old lady changes her will every time the moon changes. Ah, here it is. Voila!”

The morning was so overcast that Reid had his lights turned on and the silver pen gleamed in the lamplight as he fished it out from the back of the drawer and handed it over to Dwight.

Same make, same twining ivy leaves engraved along the length of the barrel.

Reid watched him compare the two pens. “Would you really have thought I killed her if I couldn’t put my hands on it?”

Dwight shrugged. “Let’s just say it moves you down the list a couple of notches.”

“Come on, Dwight. I’m a lover, not a killer. You know that. I’ve told you—I saw her twice and that was one time too many.”

Dwight just nodded and took out his little notebook. “Now as I recall, you got out of somebody’s bed and over to the ball field around six. But you left as soon as the game was over. Where’d you go after that?”

“I came back here, showered and changed, then drove over to Raleigh. You remember Wilma Cater?”

“Jack Cater’s sister?”

“We went to see that new Tom Hanks movie, then stopped by the City Market for a couple of drinks.”

“Who’s she married to?” Dwight asked sardonically.

Reid laughed. “Don’t let it get around, but I do go out with unmarried women every once in a while.”

* * *

At noon, Deputy Mayleen Richards appeared in Dwight’s doorway with some papers in hand. “I called the jewelry store and spoke to the manager. The current manager.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, sir.” A tall and solidly built ex-farmgirl, Richards had only recently been pulled off patrol duty. Dwight had decided that her diffidence with him and Sheriff Bo Poole was because she was still ultraconscious of protocol. “There’s been a complete change of personnel from when Mr. Lee bought those pens four years ago.”

“But?”

“But they do keep pretty good records.”

Dwight waved her over to the chair in front of his desk. “So what do these pretty good records show?”

Richards sat down stiffly. “Well, for one thing, the store makes a point of offering exclusive merchandise. They won’t carry items you can find at every mall in North Carolina. The pens were made in England and distributed only through an importer in New Jersey. So I went ahead and called them and they confirmed it. The store in Cary Towne Mall was the only outlet between New York and Atlanta that carried the line. There’s one in Boston, another in New Orleans.” She looked down at her notes. “The rest are Chicago, Scottsdale, Vail, Seattle and L.A. for a total of six hundred pens—a hundred and fifty of them were this design.”

“Good work,” Dwight said approvingly. “So who owns ours?”

“The jewelry store’s old invoices show that they stocked twenty silver pens from that company in four different designs. Five were the ‘Windsor Ivy.’ They have no documentation as to who bought three of the pens—those have to be Mr. Lee’s three—but they do know that two pens were sold at employee discount to the then-manager, who now works in their flagship store in New Orleans.”

“Did you call him?” asked Dwight.

“Her,” said Richards, allowing herself the smallest of smiles for the first time. “She’s not there today, so I left a message that I’d call tomorrow.”

“Excellent,” said Dwight. “Keep me informed.”

“Yes, sir.” She handed him some papers. “These are Jamison’s interviews with the rest of the motel staff. Nothing useful. And the ME faxed over his preliminary report.”

Dwight skimmed through the technical terms that basically said yes, Lynn Bullock had indeed died of strangulation. And based on testimony that she had been seen eating peanuts at approximately 4:45 p.m., it was safe to say that death occurred between the hours of 4:45 and 7:45 p.m.

* * *

“Cremated?” gasped Vara Seymour Benton Travers Fernandez. “We ain’t never had nobody cremated in our whole family. My daughter ought to’ve been buried proper and decent, in her body, not burnt to ashes.”

Jason Bullock looked at his mother-in-law and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Vara, but it’s what Lynn wanted. We discussed it when I drew up our wills and that’s what we both decided to do.”

“She never!” Vara said stubbornly. “She ever tell you that, Lurleen?”

“Wills?” said Lynn’s half-sister. “She always said she was going to will me her pink ice necklace and earring set. Did she?”

The older woman was skinny as a tobacco stick inside a pair of tight black slacks and a sleeveless top patterned in tiger stripes. Her orangy-blonde hair had been colored and bleached so many times it had thinned until you could see the scalp between the hair follicles. “You mean they’s not going to be a church service or nothing?”

“We don’t—Lynn didn’t—neither of us belong to a church, Vara. It was something we meant to do, but . . .”

Jason Bullock’s voice trailed away in regret. A church would have given structure to this hopeless morass he seemed to be floundering through. There would have been churchwomen bringing food and offering comfort, a minister who could have guided him into a traditional ceremony. Instead, he was suddenly thrust into unfamiliar territory and Lynn’s only two relatives (if you didn’t count her father and a bunch of half-siblings in Florida, and Lynn certainly never had) weren’t making it any easier.

He hadn’t been able to reach either of them by phone till early Monday morning. Lurleen immediately drove down from Roxboro, swinging through Fuquay to pick up Vara and bring her over. Now they were back again this afternoon and while there was grief in their eyes, there was also greed in Lurleen’s.

He himself was so numb and conflicted at this point that he thought, Well, why not? What else was he going to do with Lynn’s things?

“You and Vara can take what you want,” he told Lurleen, “but first you’ve got to tell me. Who was Lynn sleeping with?”

“Just you, honey,” she answered guilelessly.

“Ah, cut the crap, Lurleen,” he said, suddenly angry. “You know where she died. And how.”

She gave a petulant shrug. “She didn’t tell me and that’s the gawdawful truth. We used to be like this.” She held up two crossed fingers. “But ever since y’all got so high and mighty with your fancy jobs and fancy money, she didn’t tell me shit. And every time I asked, she’d just smile and say nobody, so she could’ve been blowing the governor, for all I know.”

Tears and mascara cut dusky tracks through Vara’s makeup. “Poor little Lynnie. She wanted to be somebody and now she’s just ashes. And I didn’t even get a chance to kiss her goodbye.”

* * *

At the stoplight in Mount Olive, as a patrol car pulled even with him in the next lane over, Norwood Love kept his face expressionless, but his eyes went nervously to the pickup’s rearview mirror. Everything back there was still secure. There was no way that trooper could see what was beneath the blue plastic tarp covering the truck bed. Besides, even if he could see them, there was no law against hauling a load of empty fifty-gallon plastic pickle barrels. For all anybody could say, he was maybe planning to store hog feed in ’em. Or turn ’em on their sides and use ’em for dog kennels. Till they were full of fermenting mash, couldn’t nobody prove different.

The light changed to green and the young man pointed his truck back toward Colleton County.

* * *

Reid Stephenson’s first court appearance of the day was scheduled for two o’clock. As he left the office, he tucked the silver pen securely in the inner breast pocket of his jacket and wondered if Deborah by any chance left her doors unlocked out there on the farm.

Otherwise, he was going to have to figure out another excuse to drop by and get her pen back on her bedside table before she missed it.

CHAPTER | 10

The air is calm and sultry until a gentle breeze springs from the southeast. This breeze becomes a wind, a gale, and, finally, a tempest.

Despite the long Labor Day weekend in which to get it out of their systems, courthouse regulars were still titillating each other with gossip of Lynn Bullock’s death on Tuesday. Who was she having an affair with? Reid? Brandon Frazier? Millard King? Or was it someone yet unnamed? The more malicious tongues favored Millard King, simply because he’d become more priggish now that he was romancing the very proper Justice’s debutante daughter. Malice is always entertained when prigs try to squeeze their clay feet into glass slippers.

There were those who thought it was tacky of Lynn Bullock to sleep with so many of her husband’s peer group. “Why didn’t she keep it at the hospital?” they asked. “All those beds going to waste. Why didn’t she crawl into one with a doctor?”

“How you know she didn’t?” came the cynical reply. “And come to think of it, wouldn’t a doctor know exactly how much pressure it takes to strangle somebody?”

I’d never met the dead woman and I’d had very little to do with her husband so I shouldn’t have been drawn into the discussions, yet, given Reid’s peripheral involvement, I couldn’t help being interested.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t hearing much new.