Up Jumps the Devil

16

« ^ » That these accounts are genuine and true, we hope, will appear from the following general description of the province in question, in which all that is intended, is to lay before my countrymen things most essential for them to know…“Scotus Americanus,” 1773

All was quiet when I arrived at the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department in the basement of the courthouse. Indeed, the duty officer at the front desk was absorbed in a paperback romance and she barely acknowledged my wave as I passed. Saturday night, yes, but much too early for any bloody knife-fighters, spaced-out deadheads, wife beaters, drunk drivers or other violators and disturbers of the peace who would be showing up— stitched, sober and sorry—in my courtroom next week.

As I approached Dwight’s office, I heard the low rumble of male voices, then a raucous laugh that could belong to no one except Special Agent Terry Wilson, State Bureau of Investigation.

Dwight’s always been like another brother, but Terry and I came awfully close to making it legal once. Fortunately, we had the good sense to backoff, and then we had the even better sense to stay friends.

That didn’t stop him from giving me an exaggerated leer when I came in. “Damn, but that Kidd Chapin’s a cocky bastard.”

“Why, Mr. Wilson, whatever do you mean?” I asked in my best Scarlett O’Hara drawl.

“Letting a good-looking woman like you out alone on a Saturday night? If he’s not cocky, then he’s sure ’nuff crazy.”

We talked trash a few minutes longer, till I asked him about Stanton and he came crashing back to reality with a frustrated groan. Stanton’s his son by his first marriage, sixteen years old and climbing Fool’s Hill, to hear Terry tell it.

“He’s a mess! You know how I wasn’t going to let him have a car till he could pay for the upkeep and insurance?”

“Yeah, and even when you were laying down that law last year, I told you it wasn’t going to last much past the candles on his birthday cake.”

“I’d’ve stuck to it, hadn’t been for his mama. All those after-school activities? She didn’t like him hitching rides with any kid who’s got a driver’s license, so we bought him a good used car and he got a weekend job. Only now he needs to work more hours to pay for the upkeep so he’s cut out a lot of the after-school stuff. He’s even talking about not going out for baseball next spring.”

“I’ve heard my nieces and nephews sing the whole five stanzas,” I said. “They need a car to get work, but the main reason they have to work is to support the damn car. If they schedule their study halls for the end of the day, the schools will even give them early release so they can work longer hours to buy newer cars. Between school and work, they’re putting in ten- and twelve-hour days. When do they have time to study?”

“They don’t,” Terry said grimly. “Stanton’s grade average has dropped a whole letter. He keeps this up, he’ll be lucky to get into Wake Tech.”

“You sure you don’t want to hang around tonight, split a pizza with me and Deb’rah?” asked Dwight. “She’s buying.”

“Wish I could, but I’d better get on back to Raleigh. Unlike you two, I’ve got a real date tonight”

“Yeah? Anybody we know?”

He gave a sheepish grin. “Stanton’s algebra teacher. We’re chaperoning their Thanksgiving dance tonight.”

“Well, good luck to you,” said Dwight, “and we sure ’preciate your help on that drug evidence.”

“No problem. Just let me know how it turns out, okay?”

He gave me a hug and then he was gone and I turned to find Dwight giving me an odd look.

“What?” I asked.

“Allen Stancil. I ran a background check on him. Criminal and civil. Want to see what I came up with?”

“Not unless there’s a warrant out on him,” I said warily. “Is there?”

“Not at the moment. But if we don’t hear from him by tomorrow, I may put an apprehend on the network.”

He pushed a bunch of printout sheets across his desk anyhow and I leafed through them. Allen had certainly led a busy life, beginning all the way back to his teenage years when he was caught hauling a load of bootleg whiskey through Greensboro before he was old enough to get a valid driver’s license. I knew that Mr. Jap had recruited him and Dallas both to transport moonshine occasionally, but trust a fourteen-year-old to keep cool with all that power under the hood? Of course, Daddy had been head of a household before he was fourteen, so maybe it didn’t seem as outrageous back then as it does now. Allen’s age was all that saved him on that one.

Most of the recorded violations were minor and had been punished by fines and a scattering of light jail sentences that ranged from overnight to thirty days. No moral pillar of the community but no wife beater or serial killer either.

He did seem to get questioned an awful lot about stolen cars, though.

“Guy I talked to out in Charlotte says they just busted up a big chop shop operation—one of those places that steal cars to order and then chop them up for parts.”

I hate it when Dwight patronizes me. “They can dismantle a car in seven minutes flat, then sell the parts for more than the original car’s worth. I do know what a chop shop is, thank you very much.”

“Sorry. Anyhow, the guy says Stancil was one of the known associates and that probably the only reason he didn’t get hauled in, too, was because he’s been out of the area the last month when they were doing their heaviest surveillance. They don’t have any actual evidence against him.”

“Guilt by association?” I said dryly.

Dwight had been leaning back in his swivel chair, one foot lazily propped on an open desk drawer. Now he came upright with both feet on the floor.

“Oh, come on, Deb’rah. You’re holding his rap sheets. You think he came over to Colleton County and got religion? He was just getting out of Dodge City before the bullets started flying. You can’t really believe the guy’s clean?”

I thought back to yesterday—was it really only yesterday and not weeks ago?—when Mr. Jap was bragging on Allen’s automotive skills and prowess: “He bought a old wrecker from some man out from Raleigh, he did, and in just two days, he got it fixed up good enough to sell, yes, he did.”

Now that I considered how fast he’d “fixed it up,” there was a better than fifty-fifty chance that Allen had probably bought a wreck and immediately transferred its vehicle ID number plate to a stolen car of the same make and model. He could then register the stolen car as rebuilt and sell it legitimately.

“No,” I said slowly, “he’s—” I broke off as the implication of something on Allen’s printout suddenly leaped out at me.

“What the hell is this?” I asked, pointing at the dateline on every sheet.

Last Monday’s date.

“You started checking up on him before Mr. Jap was killed. Why?”

The guilty look on his face was the mirror image of the look on Daddy’s face when he said Dwight wanted to see me.

Exasperation jetted through me. “I don’t believe this!”

“Now, Deb’rah—”

“Don’t go ‘Now Deb’ring’ me, you egg-sucking hound! Daddy told you about Allen and me, didn’t he? And the two of you thought you’d take care of him. Just run him on out of the county before he got dug in too deep at Mr. Jap’s.”

“It’s not my fault if Mr. Kezzie wants to protect you,” Dwight said stiffly.

“It’s your fault that you keep indulging him,” I snapped. “If you and the boys don’t quit sticking your noses in my affairs—”

“You’re going to get out your trusty butcher knife and chop ’em off?”

The trouble with trying to stay mad at Dwight is that he can usually make me laugh. And once my anger was diffused, I had to admit—to myself if not to Dwight—that getting Allen Stancil out of Colleton County had been high on my list of priorities, too.

“No warrants on him, hmm? I was hoping maybe he was behind in his child support payments or something.”

“Support payments? According to the records, he stayed in hot water over them, but that kid’s way past twenty-one now.”

“No, there’s a minor girl, too. Wendy Nicole.” I riffled through the civil judgments against Allen, but there was nothing about a Wendy Nicole Stancil or her mother Sally. “Probably sweet-talked her into keeping it out of Child Support Enforcement,” I muttered. “Probably told her that he’d pay her what he could when he could and ‘You can’t git blood outn a turnip, darlin’.’ ”

“I thought I read that the little girl’s name was Tiffany and that the paternity case against him was dismissed,” said Dwight.

“Tiffany came later. A lot later.” In amongst the sheaf of papers Dwight had managed to accumulate on Allen, I found a summation of the case and read, “ ‘Tiffany Jane Morgan, daughter of Katherine J. Morgan.’ She’ll be four years old in January. According to Allen, Tiffany’s mother didn’t know who the father was so she picked him as the nearest warm body. Wendy Nicole is his, though. By his second wife. She’s seventeen, which means he still has a year to pay on her.”

Dwight was more interested in Allen’s present than in his past.

“Everybody seems to know that Billy Wall was coming with all that money,” he mused. “Allen had to know, too.”

“You talked to Wall?”

Dwight nodded. “Said he came by around eleven-thirty. Jap was out in the garage alone. Said he paid him his share of the produce money in cash—forty-nine hundred in hundred-dollar bills—and Jap took his notes out of that old safe, put the money in, and spun the lock on it.”

“Was Allen there?”

“Billy said his truck was gone and he didn’t see him. He didn’t hang around, he said. Just counted out the money, talked a couple of minutes about Jap’s plans for the garage and then left.”

“So now you’re looking at a time of death between eleven-thirty and one-thirty. Did you talk to Cherry Lou?”

“Yeah, but she’s real hostile. Says good riddance to all Stancils and she saw nothing.”

“What about Dick Sutterly?”

“Pretty much the same thing. Says he came in through Gray Talbert’s lane and went out by Jap’s. But I may have to talk to him again because he was real curious about the time frame and who was where, you know? And he was driving around that whole section from Adam’s land to Gray Talbert’s nursery and on back out past Jap’s around one o’clock.”

He paused a second, then assumed an offhand air. “Says Adam and the dogs were on Talbert’s side of the creek when he came up on them around twelve-thirty.”

“Oh?”

“And somebody’s dogs were around the garage after the rain stopped.”

“Lot of dogs still run free,” I observed. “See any footprints?”

“Just yours going back. And the dogs, of course. And I had somebody walk that lane all the way to the creek.”

“It wasn’t Adam,” I said.

“Never said it was. I’m just thinking that somebody was mighty lucky with that many people all around the place that morning—Adam, Mr. Kezzie, Cherry Lou, Dick Sutterly.”

“For what it’s worth, G. Hooks Talbert and a couple of his friends were out there, too. Hunting.” I gave him an edited version of that meeting. “They could’ve seen someone.”

Dwight smiled, knowing that Knotts and Talberts are polar opposites. “You’d love it if G. Hooks was involved, wouldn’t you?”

“Wouldn’t break my heart”

“Whoever did it probably didn’t go there planning to,” Dwight said thoughtfully. “Say somebody dropped in on Jap and maybe he bragged about how much money his corn brought. The killer might’ve just acted on the spur of the moment.”

“Carpe diem,” I said. It was the motto on a coffee mug Dwight had given me when I first filed for judge.

“Exactly,” he said. “Seize the damn day. Smash an old man over the head and burn open his safe and take his money. So what do you think, Deb’rah? Was it Allen?”

“If it was, it’s the second dumbest thing he ever did in his life. Mr. Jap planned to spend all that money on him, Cherry Lou Stancil was going to sign her half of the farm back over on Monday, and what I bet John Claude didn’t tell you was that he was also supposed to sign a will on Monday.”

“Huh?”

When I told him the terms, Dwight frowned. “If he dies before the will’s signed, Allen gets it all?”

“If Cherry Lou’s convicted.”

He waved aside the possibility that she might not be. “So with a will, Allen gets half; without one, he scoops the lot. How much you reckon we’re talking about?”

I shrugged. “Ninety acres of land with good frontage, say five thousand an acre and that’s on the low side. Say another fifty thousand for the house, garage and equipment—that’s half a million right there. Then all those old classic cars sitting around under the sheds and shelters? Everybody says they’re worth thousands in mint condition, but I couldn’t begin to say what they’re worth as is.”

Evidently Dwight hadn’t done the math in a while either. “Raw Colleton County farmland’s going for five thou an acre?” he shook his head in amazement. “I don’t think Mom and Dad paid more than three hundred when they bought their place.”

“Welcome to the twenty-first century,” I said.

By the time we left to pick up our pizzas, Dwight and I had sketched out a rough list of possible killers.

He wanted to put Allen at the head, I opted for Cherry Lou’s two kids.

“After all, they connived at Dallas’s death. Who’s to say they really understand inheritance laws? Or maybe they do, but think Avery Brewer’s going to get their mother off.”

“After they’ve cut a deal with the DA to testify against her?”

“They haven’t testified yet,” I said. “Put ’em down.”

With an exaggerated sigh, he wrote down Ashley Wentworth and Bradley Fletcher. “But if they go on the list, so does Merrilee Grimes.”

“Waste of time,” I told him. “She gains only if the will’s signed.”

“But she gains if he dies before Cherry Lou gives the farm back because she’s no kin to Jap.”

“Merrilee wasn’t one real drop of kin to him before.” I was getting a little tired of explaining how the laws of inheritance work. “All you people keep thinking it goes back to Dallas and starts again with Dallas’s heirs. It doesn’t. We’re still looking at Mr. Jap’s heirs—Allen or Allen’s children.”

“Yeah?” There was a mulish look of disbelief on Dwight’s big homely face.

“I’m a judge,” I told him. “I know the law.”

“Then maybe I ought to list Allen’s children, too.”

“Makes as much sense as having Merrilee there.”

“And to be strictly fair, I’ve got to list Adam.” Before I could protest again, he said, “Good as Adam’s doing in California, I grant you he’s the most unlikely one of the bunch, but he was out there alone during the relevant time.”

No way could Adam kill somebody, I thought, but that still didn’t mean I was going to tell Dwight about my brother’s current financial problems.

“Who else could we make a motive for?” Dwight mused.

I hesitated. Daddy had asked Adam and me not to mention Mr. Jap’s plans to sell, and even though he seemed to think it was okay to confide my secrets to Dwight, I couldn’t bring myself to go against him completely.

“Well, Dick Sutterly’s been trying to get Adam or Mr. Jap to sell. Maybe he thought he’d have better luck picking up the Stancil farm from Mr. Jap’s heirs than from Mr. Jap?”

Dwight looked dubious, but he added Sutterly’s name to the list all the same. At the very bottom, he wrote down Billy Wall’s name. “He says Jap Stancil was alive when he left, but unless someone else saw Stancil alive later, I’ll have to keep him in mind.”

There didn’t seem to be anyone else with an immediate motive. He stuck the list in the case jacket and stood up to go with a mischievous look on his face. “So if killing Mr. Jap would be the second dumbest thing Allen Stancil ever did, what was the first dumbest?”

For once, I did not rise to Dwight’s bait.

Daddy always says a catfish would never get caught if it’d just learn to keep its mouth shut.