Slow Dollar (16 page)

By the time the DA and I’d disposed of sixty or seventy cases of DWI, speeding violations (
I know, I know!
), seat belt violations, improper equipment, etc., etc., I was back to normal.

I recessed for lunch early, snagged Portland, and hauled her over to an end booth at the Bright Leaf Restaurant before the rest of the regulars came straggling over. Normally when the courts are in session, a table near the back is reserved for judges, and the waitress tried to seat me there, but I made her give us the most private booth in the place. Even so, the four elderly ladies two empty tables away looked at us as Portland squealed in a perfect blend of surprise, horror, and amusement.

“You and
Dwight?
I don’t believe it.”

“Will you keep your voice down?” I snapped. “This is for your ears only.”

With black hair so curly she has to keep it short, Portland sometimes reminds me of a well-clipped poodle. Today, though, she was like a bright-eyed terrier on the scent of a weasel as she leaned forward conspiratorially. “So what’s he like in bed? Tell, tell!”

“It was fine,” I said.

“Only fine?” She gave me such a leer that I couldn’t restrain my own smile.

“Actually, it was better than fine,” I confessed. “He probably learned a lot while he was in the Army.”

“Well, that’s something anyhow. But marriage, Deborah? I mean, you know Avery and I are crazy about Dwight, but
marriage?
When you’re not in love with him?”

“Isn’t being in lust with him almost as good?” I asked lightly.

She wasn’t to be deterred. “It’ll be like one of those cut-and-dried arranged marriages.”

I shrugged. “From what I’ve heard, a lot of arranged marriages were very happy.”

Portland just sat there, shaking her head.

“Look,” I argued. “If an Avery had come along for me, I’d probably have three kids and be lending
you
maternity dresses right now. But one didn’t. You know my track record, Por. Allen. Lev. Terry. Kidd. Not to mention Randolph Englert and at least a half dozen more that nearlymade junior varsity. It’s time to quit kidding myself. I don’t
have
an Avery out there. He probably got run over by an eighteen-wheeler twenty years ago. Dwight’s here and now and he’s one of us. We have history together.”

“But without love?”

“But we do love each other,” I said, knowing I was using the same arguments to convince her that I was still using to convince myself. “We always have. So it’s not thrills and chills. Big deal. That just means it’s no spills, either. No letdown after the honeymoon’s over. We’re going into this with our eyes wide open and no illusions.”

Portland sighed. “Sugar, you’ve done some crazy things in your life, but arranging a sensible marriage probably wins the jackpot. When do you two plan on getting this business deal notarized?”

“If you’re not going to take it seriously,” I said stiffly, “we might as well go on back to the courthouse.”

“Oh, no, you don’t. You invited me to lunch.” She waved to the waitress. “Mary? We’re ready to order now.”

When Mary had taken our orders and gone away, Portland said, “You’re really going to do this?”

I nodded solemnly. “I’m really going to do it. We haven’t set an exact date yet, but probably over the Christmas holidays.”

Portland laughed and patted the little bulge beneath the jacket of her dark red suit. “My due date’s the twenty-eighth. I’ll come as the goddess of fertility.”

“You don’t get out of it that easily, girlfriend. You’re gonna be my matron of honor. If I could wear bright pink satin for you, you can wear red velvet trimmed in white fur for me.”

Her glee turned to horror. “I’m coming as
Santa Claus?
”

As Dwight Bryant headed his squad car toward the carnival grounds, he caught a glimpse of Deborah’s car in the parking lot across from the courthouse and in his rearview mirror, he saw her get out and lock the door. Any other day, he might have circled the courthouse and intercepted her with a teasing remark or the offer of a cup of coffee if she had time, but not today. Not after last night. He had loved her and wanted her for so damn long that the wanting had become a permanent ache in his heart, like a limp from a badly mended broken leg or a torn muscle that wouldn’t heal, something you learned to live with but that could still leave you gasping with pain at unexpected moments. And now that ache was finally, cautiously, lifting.

He still couldn’t believe that she’d actually said yes.

And hadn’t changed her mind even after he made love to her.

Twice.

So until they both got used to the idea, he told himself, better not risk messing it up or making a fool of himself in broad daylight. Stick to business.

Marriage to Jonna had taught him to compartmentalize his feelings, a useful trick these last few years as he watched Deborah with other men—the willpower it had taken to keep his mouth shut and his hands off when she confided in him while watching some old World War II Van Johnson movie, or that time she wept on his chest after Herman had been poisoned, or any other time when she would touch him with casual, sisterly affection. If she’d ever suspected the intensity of his feelings for her, he knew she’d shy away. Every instinct warned him to keep it light, act as if nothing had really changed between them, compartmentalize.

He was halfway across town before he realized that he was whistling. So much for compartmentalization.

“Boss is in a good mood today,” Raeford McLamb said to Jack Jamison as he pulled out of the Hardee’s drive-through and turned onto the highway for Raleigh.

“Was he? I didn’t notice,” said Jamison, yawning widely as he uncapped his coffee. It was scalding hot, but the caffeine was a welcome jolt to his tired nerves.

“Jack Junior still keeping you awake?” McLamb asked sympathetically.

“He’s seven weeks old,” Jamison moaned, turning a plaintive face to his fellow officer. “Shouldn’t he be sleeping through by now?”

As the voice of wisdom and experience, McLamb said, “Well, Rosy was, but it was almost three months before Jordo gave up that two A.M. feeding.”

“Three
months?
” Appalled, the tubby young detective recapped the coffee and stuck it in a cup holder clipped to the dashboard, then leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. “Wake me when we get to Shaw,” he said. “I need all the sleep I can get.”

Deputy Mayleen Richards glanced again at the clipboard on the dash to confirm the address. One of the self-storage facilities on her list was right there in Dobbs, but it wouldn’t open till ten, so she’d decided to start with the one farthest away on the edge of Fuquay-Varina over in Wake County. The way the numbers seemed to be running, Six Pines Self-Storage should be—ah, yes, there it was, a gray cinderblock office with long rows of units out back, each looking like a single-car garage with a pull-down door. A high chain-link fence surrounded them all.

She pulled into a parking slot, adjusted the tilt of her hat, and made sure the blouse of her uniform was properly tucked in as she got out of the car.

A tall, sturdily built young woman with cinnamon brown hair and freckles across her prominent nose, Mayleen Richards had tried sitting at a desk after finishing a two-year computer course out at Colleton Community College, but she was farm bred, used to hard physical work outdoors. Another two years of trying to fit her awkward square personality into a comfortable round hole was all she could take before she quit her job in the Research Triangle and asked Sheriff Bo Poole for a job. He knew her parents, knew her, and was always glad to have another officer in the department who wasn’t afraid of computers. He’d been disappointed that she preferred patrol duty over an indoor job, but agreed to let her pull a normal rotation. Lately, Major Bryant had been giving her more detective chores, and with the county growing in population, she was hoping to get switched over permanently.

As she entered the office building, a gray-haired woman smiled at her from behind the counter.

“Good morning, Officer. How can I help you?”

Richards introduced herself and explained that she was there in connection with a Brazos Hartley, who had bought the contents of a storage locker from Six Pines. “A couple of racks of negligees.”

“How do you spell that name?”

As Richards spelled it out, the clerk swiveled around and began tapping computer keys to bring up the record. “Oh, yes. The Lee Hamden account. Negligees? Is that all it was?”

“Nightgowns and robes. And rather expensive looking. Didn’t you know?”

“Honey, all I know’s what’s on this contract. They don’t have to get specific about what they’re storing, and we can’t go through their things.”

“Even when you’re auctioning it off?” asked Richards.

“Nope. Even the buyers don’t know what they’re getting till they’ve paid over their money. Talk about a pig in a poke. All they can do is look. They can shine a flashlight in, but they can’t touch anything and they can’t go inside till they’ve made the winning bid
and
paid for it. Is Ms. Hamden suing him? Her brother said she’d be furious, but you know, we did everything by the book—certified letter, advertisement in the paper, everything the law requires.”

“You remember Hartley, then?”

“Hartley? The man who bought the locker?” She shook her head. “Wouldn’t know him from Adam’s house cat if he walked in behind you,” she said cheerfully. “Doubt if I ever saw him. My boss is the one who helps with the auctions. I stay in here and do the paperwork. I meant the owner’s brother.
Him
I remember. He was here last week trying to pay his sister’s back rent and her stuff already auctioned off nine days before. He was awful upset for her, but what could I do? She only left us an accommodation box number at one of those mailing stores here in town. We ask folks to leave us the name or telephone number of a friend or relative, somebody we can get in touch with. The way people move around these days, though...”

She shrugged helplessly. “We wind up auctioning off three or four of our lockers every month.”

“Did he say why his sister didn’t respond to the certified letter?”

“She never got it. It went to the mail store and bounced back here when it couldn’t be delivered. He said she’s been called out of state to nurse her husband’s mother and didn’t realize she’d be gone so long. Soon as she remembered, she called him and told him to come over and pay me the back rent, late fees. I had the hardest time making him understand we really didn’t have her clothes. Clothes. That’s what he said it was. Didn’t say nothing about fancy nightgowns. Mostly, he said, she was worried about some pictures—maybe an album?—stored in her locker, too.”

“Oh?” Deputy Richards encouraged.

“I had to tell her brother that most people, when they buy one of these lockers? They just keep the stuff they think they can sell at flea markets and dump all the personal stuff.”