Hush My Mouth (26 page)

“Was he the only one on your radar?”

“Naw. When she’d visited Tank in Dacus, she’d met another guy. We heard there were some sparks, but he had an alibi, too.”

“Lots of alibis wandering around,” Rudy said.

“Yeah. I had trouble believing it myself. How often you got even one suspect with a really good alibi? The kicker was, this other guy had not one but two alibis. A friend swore he’d been with him at Myrtle Beach that weekend, staying in another friend’s beach house. Down visiting the clubs, photographing girls at some bikini festival. The photos were real enough.” He smiled at a pleasant memory.

“Later, we got wind that he’d been in Atlanta shacked up with some woman who was inconveniently married to somebody else. Never could shake loose a name for this mystery woman, and the witness, after we questioned her again, couldn’t be sure it was that weekend. We felt okay about the Myrtle Beach story, though. Just enough detail but not too much. Nothing else in his past that was suspicious. In the end, we had a guy with two alibis—never had that before—and no leverage to either crack or settle on one or the other.”

I didn’t say,
So you got stuck on one guy and didn’t look anywhere else?
“Anybody else on your list?”

“She’d hitchhiked to Dacus from Atlanta. That opened up possibilities all along I-85, from Alabama to Richmond. Again, nothing we could prove.”

“She hitchhiked?”

He raised his eyebrows, maybe thinking I was shocked that a woman would do that.

“An odd coincidence. Her niece, the new victim, gave a ride to a guy,” I said. “From Atlanta to Dacus.”

He huffed, his brows together now. “Not a big fan of coincidences myself.” He shot a glance at Rudy, who sat with his arms folded on the table.

“How did Wenda die?” I asked.

“Strangled, probably until she was unconscious. Didn’t do the trick because then her throat was slit.” He pointed to the dark
line circling her throat. “She was killed somewhere else, cleaned up, and dumped here. Staged here would be more accurate.”

“Anything—else happen?”

“You mean was she raped?” He barked the word.

A woman at a two-person table sitting just over the pretend porch railing from us snuck a glance in Vince’s direction.

“She wasn’t. She had no money in her purse, but she had a gas card. It was still there. Nothing else missing, that we could tell, unless she’d muled some drugs in for her boyfriend. Which, knowing him, was a possibility.”

“Wenda’s boyfriend was a drug dealer?”

“That wasn’t what he told the IRS, but we had plenty of evidence that’s what was going on with his friends up at the Pasture. Still was when I retired, for all I know.”

“The Pasture?” I asked. I felt Rudy come to attention beside me.

“That’s how her boyfriend Tank met Lenn Edmonds. He’d recently bought the Pasture. Lenn still have it?” he asked Rudy.

“On paper and in fact. Never made a bust there that involved him, though we’re called there fairly regular. Rumors about bootleg whiskey, but the feds’ve never made a case.”

He snorted. “Like they ever could.”

He took a cornbread muffin from the basket. “Much as I might have wanted to pin it on Tank or even on Edmonds, her hitchhiking seemed the likeliest place she met her killer. Never safe, especially for a woman.”

“Lenn Edmonds was the other suspect?”

“Yeah. The guy with two alibis. You know, I always liked Edmonds. Damn good football player, even if he didn’t have sense enough to go to Clemson. He just has a way of surrounding himself with shady dealings. Part of owning a nightclub, I guess. That Ash Carter still riding around on Lenn’s coattails?”

“Yep,” Rudy said.

“Not much changes, does it?”

Lenn Edmonds. No wonder he’d stared at Neanna’s picture. She did look familiar, exactly like somebody he’d once known. Exactly like someone he’d been suspected of killing.

“You ever get any leads on who gave Wenda Sims a ride from Atlanta?” Rudy asked.

“Naw. Not enough manpower to troll all the I-85 truck stops.”

“Unlikely that a serial killer has been plying I-85 all these years waiting for her niece to appear,” I said.

Vince fixed me with his pale eyes, but I didn’t blink or apologize for my sarcasm. Wenda’s killer had been going on about his life for too many years.

He fumbled with his tightly rolled napkin. As if he read my mind, he said, “I hated to leave with that case file open. Can’t say I was sorry when her grandmother stopped calling me ever’ whip-stitch to see what was happening.”

The waitress appeared with a wagon-wheel-sized tray full of plates and slid them in front of us. Vince paused but didn’t step away from his memories.

“Too many of the cases we handled were obvious, almost like the victims couldn’t have stopped themselves if they’d tried, like they went looking for it. With her, even though she’d made some bad choices, she didn’t seem like one who deserved it. I remember reading about an English case once, a body found in a steamer trunk. Commenting on it, somebody said, ‘You’ll never find a good girl in a trunk.’ In my experience, that’s true. With her grandmother watching over her, seems she would’ve stayed out of an early coffin.”

I cut my first steaming piece of steak. My mouth watering, I paused to ask, “Why did Gran quit calling?”

He shrugged, putting his knife to his own cream-gravy-covered golden-crusted steak. “I don’t know. She just all of a sudden quit. A little after the first anniversary. I remember because that struck me as sad, as if the warranty had run out or something. I told myself I’d call her, keep in touch. A’course I didn’t.”

He waved his fork at Rudy. “You know how that is.”

His voice was somber. I knew I was glimpsing the soft underbelly he used gruffness to hide. I wondered if Rudy had ever seen it before, the vulnerability, the sadness. I knew he felt it himself. Did Rudy work as hard to hide it around his colleagues, or had he just not been at it as long?

The three of us chewed and thought our own thoughts.

“How is Miz Sims, her grandmother?” Vince asked.

“Gran—died.” I shied away from saying
she passed away
, figuring he’d read euphemism as weakness.

“Mm. Sorry to hear that.” He kept his gaze on his food. “How’d you come by that picture?”

I glanced at Rudy, not sure what he’d already told Vince, or what he was comfortable telling. Rudy didn’t look in my direction or step into the conversation, so I blundered on.

“You know about Miz Sims’s granddaughter, Neanna Lyles? She had it.”

“And she’s dead. Rudy mentioned it when he called. Hell of a note, itn’t it?”

“Neanna’s friend—actually, they’ve been raised more like sisters—came to my office when Neanna first went missing. Neanna’s body had already been discovered, but they hadn’t officially identified her yet or located the next of kin.”

I paused, but Rudy forked in some drippy collards and seemed content to continue his observer’s role.

“The officer at the scene initially figured it as a suicide. Rudy
took me to the impound lot to see the car, so I could give a full report to the sister, Fran. We discovered the photo stuck in the car’s headliner. They’d found her luggage ransacked, and a scrapbook Gran—Miz Sims—had kept was missing.”

“A scrapbook?” His weathered fisherman’s face wrinkled in a frown.

“Gran kept a scrapbook about the investigation into Wenda’s death. She kept all the news articles about the case. She’d had that photo stuck in the front.”

I’d slipped it back into the envelope and had moved it aside when the food arrived. We didn’t have to see it to remember all too well what it showed.

Vince snorted. “Grandmothers clip stories about their grands accomplishments, but that’s sure not what any grandmother has in mind for making her babies newsworthy, is it? I can see wanting to know what was going on, but why the hell she keep a creepy thing like that?”

I didn’t point out that he’d kept the file on the case, his own version of a memory book. “I think she’d always wanted to pretend the family was normal. After what happened, this was the most normal thing she could do. Maybe she wanted to write the story, so to speak. Make sure it was told, that her baby wasn’t forgotten.” Maybe save her somehow, pull her back from the edge.

His snort was milder than I’d expected. “Wish to hell we could’ve written an ending for her.”

We ate in silence for a while, then Vince asked Rudy what some of his old buddies were up to and what the latest uproars and scandals were, both in the sheriff’s department and around Camden County. I half listened, watching their easy camaraderie, trying to fathom the dynamic between old hand and the once-Young Turk. I detected grudging respect on both sides—and some
envy. Envy that one was free from the pressure and envy that the other was still in the thick of it.

As the meal wound to an end, Rudy got down to business, making sure he had names and spellings for Wenda’s boyfriend and the alibi witnesses. Vince gave him all he had to offer.

“Call if you think of anything,” Rudy said, clasping Vince Ingum’s hand in a warm, bear-paw handshake as we stood on the corner underneath the restaurant’s man-in-a-bathtub landmark sign.

“Will do, buddy. Good to see you. Keep me posted.” He paused and fixed Rudy with his pale-eyed gaze. “Write her an ending, will you?”

Saturday Afternoon And Evening

The trip home was quick. Rudy groused that tonight was his night to take patrol, so he wanted to catch a nap before he went on.

“I thought you were chief deputy. Aren’t you supposed to be the big-picture guy? Don’t you have minions?”

He made a rude noise. “A department our size, we’re all minions. Besides, it was kind of my idea that everybody rotate through patrol. Nobody wants a boss who’s forgotten what it’s like on the road.”

I didn’t ask if Sheriff L. J. Peters was part of the egalitarian patrol-duty roster.

“Not a complete waste,” I said. “It gives you something to complain about.”

“It’s good to remember how bad it is,” he said with a snort.

We made it back home by late afternoon, with time to spare. I’d been toying with the idea of taking Emma up to the state park with me, maybe stroll around the lake and go to the Saturday night square dance. Too easy to get lost in the daily details and let time for those kinds of things just slip away.

Melvin strolled into my office as I finished making arrangements with my sister Lydia about picking up Emma, what she should wear, and whether I was planning to feed her.

“Square dance, huh? They still have those?”

“Yep.” Any excitement from new arrivals over at the jail holding cell wouldn’t happen until later that evening, after Rudy and the other minions started clearing from the bars those who believed every weekend was a holiday worth getting plastered to celebrate.

Melvin was obviously in a summer celebration mood of his own but with no plans and nowhere to go.

“You want to come?” I asked. “Just me and Emma. We’d love for you to join us.”

I held open the French door to my office, hoping to lead him out so I could lock the doors and get upstairs to change into shorts and a T-shirt. I was certain the state’s parks and recreation budget hadn’t sprung for air-conditioning the huge barn since the last time I’d been there.

“I don’t want to cut in—”

“We’re leaving in twenty minutes. You’d better get ready.” I waved him into the hallway and cut off his protests.

The phone in my office rang. I hesitated, not wanting to answer it but wondering if it might be Lydia or Emma calling. I shooed Melvin in the direction of the stairs and turned back to Shamanique’s desk.

“Hey. Found Wenda’s old boyfriend, Tank Smith,” Rudy said without preamble.

“Already?”

“Easy to find them when they’re dead.”

“Wow. Really?”

Rudy must have felt the same disappointment that swept over me. Otherwise he wouldn’t have felt the need to call.

“Stiffed a guy in a drug deal ten years ago in Atlanta. Got a knife through at least one vital artery for his trouble.”

“Nice. I’d really liked the possibility presented by a bad-boy boyfriend.”

“Might still be a possibility. It’ll just be harder to unravel without him around to answer questions. And not as satisfying in the end.”

Rudy believes in justice—swift and meaningful justice.

“We’ll just get busy on his alibi witnesses. Maybe, now that he’s gone, somebody’ll be willing to tell the truth.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be napping?”

“Who says I’m not?” He clicked off.

Thanks to Rudy’s call and my indecision about wearing shorts when I saw my deathly pale legs in the mirror, I was the one who ended up making us late picking up Emma. By the time I jerked on khaki slacks and rushed downstairs, Melvin was waiting, jingling his car keys.

Melvin refuses to ride with me, which was just as well since my Mustang’s backseat was like riding in a hole for seven-year-old Emma, who wasn’t tall enough to see out.

Not that she minded riding in the Mustang any more than I had at her age, but Melvin’s Jeep wagon was more comfortable, even if I thought he drove like a sissy.