Death's Half Acre (17 page)

“Really?” It had been difficult to think of Candace killing herself, but somehow less surprising to hear that she’d been murdered. “Any details?”

“Not yet. I’ll IM Faye Myers. See if she knows anything.”

Faye Myers is a plump and gossipy dispatcher who’s married to an EMS tech. Between them they know most of what’s going on in the county before anyone else does. Bo Poole keeps threatening to fire her, but somehow he never has, probably because she seldom reveals anything sensitive to an investigation before it becomes common knowledge. It might also be that he regards her as a barometer of public opinion and likes the feedback she gives him. Grapevines do tend to run in both directions and there’s a reason Bo barely has to break a sweat out on the campaign trail every four years.

If Faye knew more than the bare facts though, she wasn’t responding to my clerk’s instant message, so I wandered around to Luther Parker’s office during the break. As soon as I walked in, he said, “I hear Candace Bradshaw didn’t kill herself. That true? What does Dwight say?”

“Sorry, friend. I buzzed his office but he’s not there and I don’t like to bother him on his cell phone during working hours.”

“Yeah?” He lifted an eyebrow and grinned. “Since when?”

Roger Longmire, our chief district court judge, stuck his head in. “Y’all hear that Candace was murdered?”

We batted it around for a few minutes, wondering if the motive was personal, a love affair gone wrong, something connected with her business or with her position as a county commissioner.

“I’m guessing it was something to do with kickbacks for approving some of those iffy housing developments,” Longmire said.

“I don’t know,” said Luther. “I heard she and Creedmore had a falling out over a clerk down in Ellis Glover’s office.”

Ellis Glover is our clerk of court and gives a lot of young women their first jobs. Like us, he has to run for office every four years, too, so he always seems to have an opening for the sister or daughter of constituents. Many important men—and yes, dammit, men still hold most of the power in our county—are grateful to him for looking after their female relatives. He makes sure that his “girls” are the first to hear of any opening in other county departments so that he can cycle them out and cycle in a new group to keep widening his circle of supporters. Democrats or Republicans, it doesn’t much matter to Ellis. He knows that men are daddies and brothers and uncles and grandfathers first, party members second.

I didn’t recognize the name of the young woman that Danny Creedmore was supposed to be lusting after, but it wasn’t important. Most courthouse affairs have a sell-by date from the get-go and they usually end with no hard feelings on either side.

“From all I’ve heard, it wouldn’t really matter if Danny and Candace weren’t lovers any longer. They were still in bed together, weren’t they?” I asked.

Convoluted but Luther and Roger knew what I meant.

“Yeah,” said Roger. “She was still saying ‘How high?’ when Danny said ‘Jump.’ Although I did hear that she wanted to be taken seriously if she filed for Woody’s seat. She really thought she could be a state senator.”

“Hey, if Dubya could be president,” said Luther.

We laughed and returned to our separate courtrooms.

Dwight is normally finished by four and I had no compunctions about calling his cell number then. Now that Cal is part of our lives, one of us has to pick him up every afternoon.

He answered on the first ring. “On my way. What about you?”

“I may be a little late,” I told him, virtuously refraining from asking about Candace. “I need to swing past Seth’s for a few minutes.”

That encounter with Daddy at lunchtime was still bothering me. When I got to Seth’s house, though, no one was home and I decided the hell with it. Go to the source. Ask Daddy flat out what was going on. Yes, he can be touchy as a hornet when questioned about his private business, but you don’t deserve any honey if you’re not willing to get stung. And don’t bother telling me that hornets don’t make honey. You know what I mean.

There was no sign of his truck at the homeplace, and Maidie was putting his supper in the oven so the pilot light would keep it warm.

“I never know when he’s gonna be home these days,” she said. “Walk on down to the house with me, honey, so I can start Cletus’s supper. And you’re welcome to eat with us.”

“Thanks, Maidie,” I said, “but Dwight and Cal are probably waiting for me.”

Maidie was my mother’s right arm after Aunt Essie married a policeman up in Philadelphia when I was a little girl. Cletus was working for Daddy back then, too, and it got to the point that they couldn’t keep him away from the kitchen. He was eight or nine years older than Maidie, yet way too shy to pop the question.

Exasperated because he could never find Cletus when he was needed, Daddy stormed into the kitchen one day and said, “Now look here, Maidie. This man’s acting like a moonstruck calf and it’s got to quit.”

That’s when Mother and Maidie started laughing.

Daddy was too wound up to stop and Cletus had turned ashen beneath his brown color. Daddy gave him a sour look and said, “I don’t know why on earth you’d want to marry him, but if you do, for God’s sake and mine, tell him so I can get some work out of him. All right?”

Still laughing, Maidie said, “All right.”

“Huh?” Daddy and Cletus were both dumbfounded.

“She said yes,” Mother told them. “Now will you two please get out of my kitchen? We’ve got a wedding to plan.”

The little clapboard house that Maidie and Cletus have shared for thirty-odd years is just past the barn and down the lane from the main house. The garden that he and Daddy had planted was growing vigorously. Peas and potatoes were blooming and the first planting of sweet corn was almost knee-high. No stakes yet for the tomatoes because they were still too short, but the cabbage plants had begun to head up and butter beans had their first true leaves.

“I hear Dwight’s planted y’all a garden, too,” Maidie said.

“Oh yes. I’ve told him that I don’t can and I don’t freeze, but that hasn’t stopped him.”

Maidie laughed. “And how’s that Rhonda working out?”

“You were right,” I admitted ruefully, having resisted hiring someone to help me with the housework for as long as I could. “I don’t know how I ever got along without her.”

“I know exactly how you were getting along,” she said tartly. “I saw the dust and dirt in that house.”

“Dirt?” I protested. “It wasn’t dirty. Not really.”

“Them windows? Those baseboards? Them dust bunnies under the beds? I was pure ashamed of you, Deborah.”

Which was why she had bestirred herself to find someone to clean for me when it became clear that Dwight and Cal and I weren’t keeping to her standards. She no longer has a pool of nieces and cousins to draw from. The Research Triangle and state government departments have siphoned them off. But through her own grapevine, she found an energetic young white woman willing to work mornings so she could be home with her children in the afternoons, and Rhonda Banks comes once a week now. She dusts, mops, scrubs, changes the beds, and does the laundry. I pay her more than twice the minimum wage and she’s worth every penny.

But it was soon apparent that Rhonda wasn’t what Maidie wanted to talk to me about. Cletus wasn’t back yet either and we went out to the kitchen, a kitchen warm and cheerful with red-checked curtains, tablecloth, and dish towels. I picked up her big black cat and stroked it under its chin while she sautéed three thick pork chops in her iron skillet.

“Is everything okay with Daddy?” I asked, plunging into it.

“Well, now, that’s what I wanted to ask you,” she said, a worried look on her warm brown face. “You know well as me, Mr. Kezzie ain’t never been religious.”

I nodded, wondering where this was going.

“I’ve prayed on it, your mama used to pray on it, and I think Miss Zell still does, but I figure the Lord knows he’s a good man deep down even if he might not’ve always been right with the law.”

That was putting it mildly.

“But?” I asked.

“But right lately he’s been asking me a lot about what it means to be saved. And what somebody needs to do to get right with the Lord. Now I know he’s getting old and starting to slow down a bit, but getting right with the Lord’s never been something he cared one lick about, now is it?”

I had to admit she was right about that. I don’t have a clue about Daddy’s religious beliefs, but I do know he never goes to church except for weddings and funerals. He adored Mother, but I’ve never heard him speak of being reunited with her in heaven and, if asked, would have to say that he probably doesn’t believe in a heaven.

Or hell.

“You don’t reckon he’s sick, do you?”

“Does he act sick?”

“Well . . . no, not really. And he still eats good.”

I waited while she seemed to concentrate on cooking. The chops had nicely browned in the hot grease, so she put them in a bowl, poured off most of the grease, and began to brown some diced onions and a little flour with the pan scrapings.

Even though I had skipped lunch, I didn’t think I was hungry, but those sizzling onions gave off an aroma that made my mouth water. I tried to ignore the rumble in my stomach.

“He’s just not hisself these days,” Maidie said, cocking her head at me. She’s only fifteen years older, but her hair had passed the tipping point and was now more gray than black. (Of course, mine may be gray, too. Only my hairdresser knows for sure.)

“Has he been to a doctor?”

“No.”

“Well, if he’s eating good and staying active, what’s got you worried, Maidie?”

She shook her head and didn’t answer. I watched as she poured water in the pan and a cloud of steam boiled up. After stirring until the water and the flour and onions had turned to a smooth gravy, she put the pork chops back in the pan, covered them with a lid and turned the flame to low.

Her face was troubled as she sat down at the table across from me and the cat slid off my lap in one graceful, fluid motion to go sit in hers.

“I don’t want you laughing at me,” she said at last, smoothing an almost nonexistent wrinkle from the red-and-white cloth on the table between us.

I was indignant. “When did I ever laugh at you?”

“Just don’t you be starting now.” She stroked the cat, who began to purr so loudly I could hear him clearly from my side of the table. “All his talk about getting right with the Lord? I’ve seen it before, Deborah. Sometimes old people seem to know when it’s their time. They can be up and doing one day and then tell you they’ll be gone by that time next week. It’s like they feel His hand on their shoulder saying ‘Come on along now, child. Time to go home,’ and they just lean back in their rocking chair or lay down on their bed and they’re gone. Gone home to Jesus.”

Her words chilled me on two levels. One, because she was right. At least twice I’ve seen elderly relatives who had never talked of death suddenly say quite matter-of-factly that their time was up. They said it without drama. No sadness, no anger. They spoke of their imminent death as casually as if they were discussing the weather. Except that in a day or two, they died.

(Of course, I’ve also heard even older relatives claim they were ready to go and then linger on for another five or six years in increasing impatience. As if they’d missed a celestial bus and had to wait till the next one swung past them again.)

But Maidie’s forebodings touched an even deeper, more primal level that my brothers and I won’t even discuss. We know Daddy’s getting old and he’s not as strong as he used to be. But his spine is still straight as a flagpole and his mind is as sharp as it ever was, so we tell ourselves that he’s going to live forever.

Intellectually, we know it isn’t so.

Emotionally?

Once when I was little, I woke up crying in the night because I had suddenly realized that everyone dies—my cats, my chicken, my brothers, my parents—everyone, and it was breaking my heart to think I might be left alone. He had picked me up and carried me out to the porch swing. As I sat on his lap with my head against his chest and we gently swung back and forth in the moonlight, he had solemnly promised me that he would not die till I was an old, old woman.

I remind myself that he’s never yet broken a promise to me.

And thirty-nine isn’t old, old.

“Maidie, are you sure he was asking questions about religion for himself and not so’s he could pass it on to someone else?”

“Now why would he do that? He wants to know about God, all he’s got to do is talk to Herman’s wife. Nadine’s his own daughter-in-law. She’d tell him all about it.”

“Yeah, and then she’d try to haul him off to her church, wouldn’t she?”

Nadine’s one of those straitlaced born-again Blalocks from Black Creek and she’s always trying to get us to go visit her home church. Their preacher’s a male chauvinist whose bark is worse than his bite. I once sat through a sermon that was basically a reminder that a woman’s place is in the home, yet immediately afterward he told me quite sincerely how proud they all were that I was now a judge.

I grinned at Maidie. “Daddy probably feels it’s safe to ask you. He knows you won’t try to get him to Mt. Olive.”

Like it or not, our churches are the last bastion of self-segregation. No white would ever be turned away from a black church; no white church would ever bar its doors to blacks. We’re tolerant as hell and on Sunday morning, we smile when the nursery class sings

Red and yellow, black and white,

They are precious in His sight.

Jesus loves the little children of the world.

All the same, our churches still split along racial lines for the most part.

“Daddy may want to get right with the Lord, Maidie, but he also might be up to something. You say you never know when he’s going to be home these days. What’s he doing?”

“Oh, honey. You asking me where he rambles? That’s like asking me where this cat goes when I put him out for the night.”

“Then tell me this. Did Mother ever have any fancy jewelry?”

“Why sure she did. You remember that pretty ring Mr. Kezzie give her for their anniversary and them sapphire earrings? Didn’t he give them earrings to you? I know he gave the ring to Will when he married Amy. And—”