Authors: Lorena McCourtney
I was not, however, feeling too kindly toward this man who had apparently taken an adversarial stand against the generous Mr. Braxton, who’d offered assistance at Country Peace. In fact, I had to admit to a certain prejudice against lawyers in general ever since the pill-lid incident.
“Charley Mason pointed you out to me at church, but you disappeared before I had a chance to talk to you. I think you may be interested in information I’ve acquired about Country Peace.”
“Concerning Mr. Braxton?”
“Yes, basically.”
“Yes, I’m very interested.”
I thought he meant to tell me whatever he knew right then, but instead he said, “I was thinking we might have dinner together. Perhaps Friday evening at Victorio’s Seafood?”
Thea’s and my special place for birthday celebrations. I had to give the man credit for excellent taste, but I still wasn’t eager to share dinner with a lawyer. Then I had to chide myself for that discriminatory attitude. In spite of my sour experience with the lawyer handling the loose-pill-lid case, it was a lone experience, and there were no doubt any number of decent, honorable men in the profession. And Jordan Kaine apparently was a respected member of Tri-Corners Community Church.
“Yes, I think I can make Friday evening.”
He said he’d make reservations for 8:00 and pick me up about 7:45.
Magnolia and Geoff got home later that day, and she came over to tell me they’d made a rush trip down to Oklahoma and to let me in on her latest genealogical findings. She was wearing moccasins and feather earrings, which I uneasily suspected indicated something meaningful.
“What I found out—”
“From the guy who didn’t want to talk about family connections?”
She waved a dismissive hand. “Not him. I located this other fascinating woman. And you know what I found out from her?” Magnolia didn’t wait to find out if I wanted to hear. “There’s American Indian blood in our background, on our great-great-grandmother’s side!”
Magnolia’s theory of genealogy, I once decided, was that if one illustrious bloodline is good, ten are even better. And now she had this new one to add to her dazzling array of French, Hawaiian, and Russian royal ancestry. Magnolia looked no more American Indian than I looked Italian Mafia, but I didn’t dispute the claim. Who really knows what any of us is, anyway? “That’s great. Any particular tribe?”
“Cherokee!” she gushed. “Isn’t that marvelous? I’m thinking we’ll probably visit the reservation next summer. Maybe take in a powwow or something.”
“Where is it?”
“Oklahoma, I think. Oh, but what I really came over for is to tell you we’re having some RV friends in for stew and Indian fry bread Friday evening, and I want you to come. I also have some fantastic CDs of American Indian drumming.”
“I’d like to come, but I have an appointment.”
“On a Friday night?”
“It’s about Country Peace. A man from church has been looking into the problems there. We’re going to have dinner together so he can tell me what he’s found out.”
Magnolia pummeled me with her usual questions, and by the time I’d told her what I knew about Jordan Kaine, she’d jumped to her own conclusions.
“That isn’t an ‘appointment,’ Ivy, it’s a date.”
“No, it is not a date. I don’t even know that he’s unmarried.”
“Did he make this dinner ‘appointment’ with you for himself and a wife?”
“He didn’t say.” Although deep down, I knew. No wife was involved in the dinner, and neither was Jordan Kaine hiding one.
“This is a date,” Magnolia stated with assurance. “If he hadn’t wanted to see you personally, he’d have told you whatever he knows on the phone instead of asking you to dinner. He got this guy at church to point you out, he liked what he saw, and he’s using the Country Peace thing as an excuse to ask you out.”
I could think of arguments against that theory, but I didn’t have time to present them because the doorbell was ringing. “I’ve got to go. Someone’s at the door.”
“Wear something . . .” Magnolia paused, and I expected her to come up with something outrageous. My answer was ready.
No, Magnolia, I am not going to wear anything sexy, seductive, or scintillating.
As if I even owned anything in those categories.
But after a thoughtful pause, the word she chose gave me pause. “Wear something enchanting,” she said.
Detective Harmon strode in, mirror sunglasses and all. I showed him the letters and birthday card and told him that the Little Rock landlady had definitely identified the earlier photo as her tenant, Debbie Etheridge. “And, as you know, that other photo has already been positively identified as her brother, Ray Etheridge. Who was engaged to the real Kendra.” I had the uneasy feeling I sounded as if I were giving a summation of a TV soap opera.
He inspected the birthday card first, without taking off the sunglasses. “This doesn’t tell much,” he said.
True. “But more information may be on the computer in Debbie’s apartment in Little Rock. If you could locate this Aunt Chris, she could surely identify the body.”
He didn’t respond to that, although he did deign to take the sunglasses off to read the letters. Which he sped through as if he’d stopped in on his way to an emergency call to chase down a bank robber. When he snapped the rubber band around the letters again, I thought he was going to dismiss their importance and hand them back, but he didn’t go quite that far. “We’re quite close to tying this murder into a drug case, but I’ll take these along. They might prove useful.”
Right. And I might locate something enchanting in my closet.
“Couldn’t you get a search warrant for the office at Thrif-Tee Wrecking, and especially for the wall safe Ray mentioned? And the computer system at Bottom-Buck Barney’s also? Something illegal must have been going on at both places. Something that probably resulted in Ray’s death, and then in Debbie’s also.”
I thought I knew now what Kendra/Debbie had meant when she said she was almost through here. She had the goods on both the illegal activities and her brother’s killer and was about to go to the authorities.
Detective Harmon looked at me with an air that said I was wearing on his patience.
“Mrs. Malone,” he said with strained politeness, “I appreciate your interest and . . . uh . . . theories, but there’s no mention of Thrif-Tee Wrecking or Bottom-Buck Barney’s anywhere in this material, and we can’t get a search warrant based on hasty assumptions. We have to have more to go on than this.” He shook the bundle of letters lightly, and I suspected he’d like to shake me as well. Meddlesome little old lady. He wanted his drug deal to work out, wanted to prove he was right.
Detective Harmon left, backing his car out of my driveway with a bit more speed than I thought was called for.
Tiffany phoned later in the afternoon. She’d called Benny at Thrif-Tee with a pretense of checking the name scribbled on an old invoice. Benny had told her a guy named Danny used to work there, but he’d quit last fall and moved away. To Alaska, Benny thought. Or maybe it was Argentina.
Probably not much chance, then, of running Danny down to ask what he knew about activities at Thrif-Tee. Definitely no chance of my doing it, anyway. I hadn’t enough information about Danny’s leaving to know if it was before or after Ray’s death, but I wondered: Had the death scared him, and he’d decided to get out before a fatal “accident” happened to him too?
“What about the company owner’s identity?”
“I approached it with Jessica. I told her I thought it would be nice if we had his name and birth date so we could give him a birthday present from the office.”
“And?”
“She looked . . . startled, I guess you might say. She said she didn’t think that would be appropriate, then she rushed into Mr. Retzloff’s office and shut the door.” Tiffany hesitated. “I’m not sure why, but it makes me kind of uneasy.”
Me too, and I made a quick resolution. No more dragging Tiffany into any of this. I also wasn’t feeling good about the fact that my questions were encouraging her to use fabrications to get answers.
* * *
Jordan Kaine arrived promptly at 7:45 on Friday evening. I watched him come up the sidewalk from the driveway. Medium height, a little on the stout side, but his walk was light and brisk. Hair gray, but more iron than possum. His suit was a conservative gray, his tie conservative maroon with narrow diagonal stripes of silver. He rang the bell, and I opened the door.
He smiled. “I have the advantage. I know you’re Ivy Malone, but you don’t know me. Jordan Kaine.”
I could easily see him disarming a witness with that affable manner. I felt a bit disarmed myself. If Jordan Kaine were giving out approval ratings, I could see a nice gold star for me as he discreetly looked me over.
Was this not strictly an appointment to discuss church business? Was it, at least on some level, a date?
My life a manless moonscape for years. And now two of them?
I quickly discarded the idea of myself as some late-blooming femme fatale. In spite of Magnolia’s claim of Mac MacPherson’s interest in me, he’d spun out of my life almost as fast as Detective Harmon spinning out of my driveway. And Jordan Kaine just wanted to talk about overturned tombstones.
“I’ll get my purse,” I said.
We small-talked on the drive to Victorio’s. I learned he’d lived and practiced law here for over thirty years. His wife had passed away five years ago, and he had two daughters and four grandchildren. I cautiously supplied corresponding information about myself. By the time we were seated at Victorio’s, Country Peace had not yet surfaced in the conversation.
I looked around the candlelit room with pristine white tablecloths and gliding waiters and thought about the times Thea and I had come here. Although Jordan Kaine seemed passably okay, I had to admit I’d have happily traded this “date” for one more birthday celebration with Thea.
He asked if I’d like a glass of wine, and I declined. He ordered halibut, and I chose the shrimp scampi. While we waited for our dinners, he got down to business.
“I’ve been checking into Drake Braxton’s interest in Country Peace.”
“I understand you’ve had some courtroom dealings with him in the past.” I kept my tone neutral, but I couldn’t help adding, “His offer to provide the land and move the graves to safer ground certainly seems admirable.”
“Perhaps. Did you ever notice a tombstone at Country Peace for an Emma Littleton?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“It’s rose granite, with an oversized chicken on top.”
Oh yes, the chicken. Who could miss that chicken? I’d been so astounded by it that I’d never noticed the name. “Yes, I’ve seen that one.”
“Emma was the young daughter of a couple named Earlene and Dolph Littleton. She had a pet rooster she was very fond of, and the parents apparently wanted to memorialize that relationship when she died. They also didn’t want her buried in some far-off cemetery—or perhaps they encountered some resistance to the chicken—so they arranged for the opening of Country Peace on a portion of their own land. Their home was back in the hills behind what is now the cemetery.”
“I remember seeing an old shack or something way back there. It looked as if the road goes through the cemetery to get there.”
“Right. When Earlene was alive, I think it was a reasonably decent place, but Dolph apparently turned eccentric after she died. Chickens became his main companions, and he let the house deteriorate. He died last year, leaving everything to the only relative who, as his probated will pointed out, ever came to visit him. A grand-niece named Alana Littleton.”
I didn’t see what all this had to do with Mr. Braxton, but I assumed Jordan was headed somewhere with it and didn’t comment.
“Alana married years ago. She was probably married even when old Dolph made out his will. But the different name didn’t change her inheritance of the property, of course, when Dolph died.”
“And her name now is . . . ?”
“Alana Braxton.”
“Braxton!”
“As a builder and land developer, Drake Braxton undoubtedly realized the development possibilities of his wife’s inheritance. Someone I’d guess was a representative of Braxton’s, although he didn’t identify himself as such, approached the county about subdividing the property into two- to five-acre estates, and you perhaps know the kind of money those bring these days. But there was one huge obstacle. The only access to the property is that twelve-foot-wide road easement through the cemetery that Dolph retained to get to his house. A twelve-foot easement does not enable Drake and Alana to divide and develop the property behind the cemetery. A big subdivision requires a road wide enough to meet county standards, on land that can then be given over to the county.”
I knew nothing about such regulations, but Jordan obviously did.
“But crafty old Dolph put in a special provision when he provided the land for Country Peace. It says that if, at any time, the land is no longer used as a cemetery, ownership reverts to him or whoever owns the main property at the time.”
I felt a dawning dismay. “Which means that if the cemetery no longer existed, Drake Braxton’s wife would get that land back. And they could then develop both it and the valuable property behind it.”
“Exactly.”
Where he was going with this finally hit home. It came out of me in a big gasp. “Are you suggesting Mr. Braxton himself may have had something to do with the vandalism at the cemetery?”
“It strikes me as a distinct possibility. There are big bucks involved here. And big bucks drive Drake Braxton’s life. Ethics are so far down on the list it would take a submarine to find them.”
Our dinners arrived, and I stared at my shrimp swimming in butter sauce. Was what Jordan Kaine was suggesting possible? I didn’t want to believe it. I’d been so impressed with what sounded like genuine concern and generosity on Mr. Braxton’s part. Then I remembered something. I dug in my purse, thankful that I seldom cleaned it out. I found what I was looking for.
“Something that I haven’t told many people is that I happened to be at the cemetery on one of the nights it was vandalized.”
Jordan looked at me in astonishment. “You
happened
to be—”