Death Over the Dam (A Hunter Jones Mystery Book 2) (13 page)

“No, I would not,” she said. “And I have to go.”

She hung up.

“That wasn’t the same woman who called me,” Skeet said. “So he had two girlfriends and a wife with seven pit bulls.”

Just before noon, Hunter got up from her computer smiling. Her search for butterfly decorations had been such a success that she had barely given Rhonda Ransom a thought. Everything was ordered to come by overnight shipping, and she could envision Sam’s back yard with giant silk butterflies handing from all the trees. She had even found paper plates and napkins with a butterfly theme.

What if Bethie wanted to invite her mother?

Hunter frowned. She couldn’t imagine how either she or Sam could tell Bethie no, and she was back to worrying about Rhonda, when the phone mercifully rang.

It was the Mayor of Cathay.

“Hi, Hunter. I’m sorry to bother you at home on the weekend, but Tyler Bankston said you wouldn’t mind. It’s just wonderful what’s happening here today. The Mennonite Disaster Service is here working on that little New Life CME church that was so badly flooded, and there must be 50 of them, men and women working with the people who go to the church, and it would be so nice if you could come and take some pictures.. You are just the best photographer.”

“I’ll be there in about half an hour,” Hunter said. “I hope the Mennonite workers don’t mind having their pictures taken.”

“No, they don’t at all,” Mayor Taylor said. “I already took some with my cell phone.”

It was, in fact, a great photo opportunity, even though the ground was still muddy. Men with beards wearing plain white shirts and pants with suspenders, hard at work with the men of the church, women just as hard at work. The pews and the pulpit had been pulled out of the red brick church, and into the sun. Rolls of ruined carpet were already in the back of a truck to be carried away. Women in modest pastel dresses and little organdy caps were working side by side with women in shorts and tee shirts, scrubbing the river mud off the stained glass windows.

Hunter tried to get names to go with the pictures, and when she approached one of the older Mennonite men, he said, “I’m Enoch Kauffman, but don’t put me in there. Some fellow already took my picture when I was here the other day.”

“Not for our paper,” Hunter said with a smile, and then she remembered her T.J. Jackson’s interest in the photographers who had been there on Monday.”

“Did you get his name?” she asked.

“No, but I can sure tell you what he looked like,” the man said. “He was wearing suspenders, for one thing.”

“A bald man?” Hunter asked, “Wearing a plaid shirt?”

“Yes, that’s him He took some pictures of us working on that chicken restaurant, and we wound up having a good long talk because he was thinking we had come all the way down here from Pennsylvania by horse and carriage, and I was explaining to him that we have trucks and all those things. He was the kind of man who listens so hard, it makes you want to talk to him.

“Sounds like Ned Thigpen,” Hunter said. “So you were here on Monday?”

She wondered whether to mention the murder or not, but Enoch Kauffman had more to say.

“Anyway, he finally let me get back to work, and then a while later he came back by and he stopped again and showed me this picture he had bought. He thought I was going to like it because it had something to do with the Bible. Even if I had forgotten him, I never would have forgotten that foolish picture.”

“He bought a picture?”

“He did. It was a strange one too. It was supposed to be Noah’s Ark and had this big rainbow over the ark, even though it was still floating in the water, and the ark was full of nothing but dogs and cats. He said he got it down at that gift shop down there on the other side of the street and it was just $20 and he said it like it was a bargain. Now I have to say I wouldn’t have paid a dime for it myself.”

“Mr. Kauffman,” she said. “That man was shot to death sometime later that day, and, I don’t know how what you just told me fits in, but I know that Sheriff Sam Bailey will want to hear what you just told me. Do you have a telephone where he could reach you?”

Enoch Kauffman looked shocked and then saddened

She told him the little she knew about the crime. He gave her a number, and with her mind only half on the job at hand, she finished taking pictures and getting the story of the restoring of New Life CME Church.

It made sense that he had bought the picture, she thought as she drove home. Maybe it was inside the store He still got a bargain but maybe it wasn’t flood damaged, or maybe Sharon Bennett had gotten the idea that she could sell them for a little more. So he must have talked to her about knowing Deirdre Donagan Bennett’s father. If he recognized her paintings at the paper in an instant, he surely would have recognized another.

Then it struck her that Taneesha was the one doing the investigation in Cathay, and she would probably want to know about this.

Back home, she called Taneesha and left a message.

It was an hour before Taneesha called back.

“Hey, are you working today?” Hunter asked.

“I was just supposed to be on call, but I’ve been sheriff for the day. Some investigative stuff I can’t talk about, but on top of that a log truck jackknifed out at Mimosa Corners and it has been one big traffic mess with that road blocked and everybody detouring.

Hunter was rapidly beginning to feel that her call wasn’t all that important, but she forged ahead.

“I covered a story over in Cathay a while ago and I heard something you probably already know, but I thought I ought to be sure.”

“What’s that?”

“Ned Thigpen bought a painting at Sharon Bennett’s store while he was in Cathay, and I’m pretty sure it was one by Deirdre Bennett.”

“He WHAT?”

Hunter relayed the whole story as carefully as she could.

“I can’t believe this,” Taneesha finally said in a tense voice. “Sharon Bennett was so busy having a fit about Skeet going out to her son’s house that she forgot to mention she sold the murder victim a painting by her daughter-in-law.. That must have been stolen from the car, too. I think I’d better get over to Cathay and talk to this Enoch Kauffman,” Taneesha said. “You want to ride with me and point him out? I’ll come pick you up.”

When they got there, Enoch Kauffman had gone home, and since his home was 40 miles away, they decided that picking up fried chicken dinners at Hunter’s apartment was a good next move. The owner of the flooded fried chicken place in Cathay had relocated quickly to serve the volunteers.

When they got back to the apartment, the first thing they saw was that Hunter’s cats had created a disaster. The vase of pink roses that Hunter had brought back home and placed on the dining room table was overturned, water was dripping on the carpet and rose petals were everywhere. Katie Calico and Mr. Marmalade were posing on the sofa among the pillows, looking innocent.

After taking in the scene for a moment, Hunter started cleaning up, and Taneesha said, “I’d be killing me some cats. Did Sam send you those?”

“Yes,” Hunter said. “And they were so beautiful!”

“Smart of him,” Taneesha said. “Are you okay with Princess Rhonda coming back to town?”

“No,” Hunter said, picking up the last of the roses. Most of them had lost their petals in the cat attack, but four still looked halfway presentable. She arranged them in the vase and they all tilted to one side.

Taneesha looked around and said, not for the first time, “I just love this place. You know I love Uncle James and Aunt Ramona, but if I could find a place I could afford, I’d love to be on my own like you are.”

“I like it, too,” Hunter said, and then she added, “But I hope I’m not always going to be single, and turning into a crazy cat lady, and I just hate this business of Rhonda coming back.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Taneesha asked. “I happen to know how much Sam doesn’t love Rhonda. I even know why Bethie never goes up there.”

Hunter was sorely tempted, but chose seeming unthreatened and not getting information behind Sam’s back.

“We’re OK,” she said.

As they dug into the fried chicken and cole slaw, they talked about Ned Thigpen’s art purchase.

“You know, I can’t think what difference it really makes,” Taneesha said, “It just bothers me that she didn’t tell me that. Of course, I didn’t ask her if he bought a painting, but she made it sound like all they discussed was the flood. I think maybe she was just being contrary and only answering exactly what I asked her because she can’t stand Sam.”

“You’re kidding,” Hunter said. “I thought every woman in Magnolia County loved Sam.”

“Not that woman,” Taneesha said. “I think they had some kind of run in once. Maybe it was about something Grady did.”

“Grady seems to be on friendly terms with Sam” Hunter said, remembering Grady’s telling Sam, “This is a nice girlfriend you’ve got.”

Taneesha said, “You’re sure that it was one of Grady’s wife’s paintings?”

“Pretty sure, because it just sounded like the kind of thing she would paint, like Outsider Art. Then there’s the fact that Mr. Kauffman thought it was a really bad painting and Ned thought he had gotten a great bargain. That’s the way it is with that kind of art. People either love it or hate it. Novena couldn’t stand the paintings I bought, and Tyler liked them.”

She went and got her own two paintings from the bedroom and held them up. Taneesha nearly choked on her iced tea.

Hunter laughed.

“You paid money for those?” Taneesha asked.

“See what I mean?” Hunter said, laughing. “And I love them. Anyway, see, she’s got cats in this one and a dog in this one, and Mr. Kauffman said that the one he saw had Noah’s ark filled with…”

“Cats and dogs,” Taneesha finished. “I guess I should have paid more attention in my art appreciation class because I do NOT get this outsider art thing.”

They concentrated on the chicken for a moment, and then Hunter lost her resolve.

“OK,” she said, “I really do want to know how much Sam doesn’t love Rhonda.”

“Fine,” Taneesha said. “I figured you’d break down. Now here’s the truth, and I’m doing my boss a favor by telling you this, but you’d better not tell him I did.”

Hunter nodded.

“ In the first place,” Taneesha said. “All of us at work know that Sam was a lot easier to get along with and just happier after Princess Rhonda decided to leave. He was never going to leave Magnolia County, and she knew it, and she wasn’t ever going to be some big superstar and he knew that, but wouldn’t say it to her, and she wouldn’t believe it anyway. She’s real pretty and she can sing, but that’s her and a couple of thousand others.”

“This needs ice cream,” Hunter said, getting up.

Taneesha continued as Hunter dished the ice cream out. It was Rocky Road.

“So one day he called us all together and he said, “There’s going to be a lot of talk, so y’all need to know that Rhonda has moved to Nashville. We’re getting a divorce, and Bethie is staying with me. .“

“Just like that?” Hunter asked.

“Yep, like he was reading a memo,” Taneesha said, “but it helped, to tell you the truth, because if anybody said anything to any of us, we just nodded and said we knew. And that was that. You know, once the whole truth gets out, nobody talks about it anymore. It’s the guessing that keeps the gossip going..”

“Anyway, his whole attitude seemed to improve after she was gone, but then once it got out that they were divorced, he had the problem of women inviting him to dinner, and men trying to fix him up with their sisters, and you know…”

“So what about Bethie?” Hunter asked.

“Well, in the first place, Rhonda got talked ugly about a lot about leaving her child, but Sam never said a bad word about her and cut a few people short when they did talk about her in front of him, because he said, ‘That’s my child’s mother.’”

“He’s a good father,” Hunter said.

“One of the best,” Taneesha agreed. “Now has Sam ever told you about the one time Bethie visited Rhonda in Nashville?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. What happened was that Bethie was supposed to be up there for a week, and her grandmother drove her up there and visited over the weekend and then came home because she was still working, and Rhonda was going to bring Bethie home the next weekend.

“So Sam got a call from Bethie. This is when she was maybe 6 going on 7, and it was 2 in the morning, and Bethie was crying and saying she woke up and her mother wasn’t there.”

Hunter felt a chill all over.

“So Sam kept her on the cell phone and got his landline phone too and told me to call the Nashville Police Department and he gave me the address, and I called and they sent a police officer over—a woman—to stay with Bethie until Rhonda came home with this guy. So she walks in and finds a police officer sitting in her kitchen having cookies and milk with her daughter, and she did at least tell the guy he’d have to leave, according to the police report there.

“Meantime, Sam had asked me to go with him to Nashville, and we took turns and drove straight up there, and half the time he was on the phone because Bethie was so wired up and couldn’t go to sleep, and he was telling her stories and singing songs to her. And then he’d drive and I’d talk to her. When we got there, we never even saw Rhonda, because she was asleep in her bed with the door shut, and Bethie was having breakfast with the police officer, who wouldn’t even leave her with her own mother. Sam just went in and got Bethie’s things and left a note for Rhonda and took Bethie home. He didn’t even wake Rhonda up and tell her off.”