Death Over the Dam (A Hunter Jones Mystery Book 2) (7 page)

“I went over this morning and took Dee Dee Bennett a casserole from the freezer,” Arnette said, “and you won’t believe what she asked me.”

“Yes I will,” said Pastor Jimmy, who tended to be literal. “Of course I’ll believe you.”

“She asked me what heaven looked like,” Arnette said.

“And what did you tell her?” her husband asked.

“Well I tried to remember everything I could from the Bible. I told her it would have streets paved with gold and there would angels singing to God, and that there would be a crystal lake and all kinds of precious jewels and light everywhere..”

“Why do you suppose she wanted to know that?” Pastor Jimmy asked.

“It turned out she wanted to do a painting of it,” Arnette said. “She said she wanted to do a painting with this world down below and Heaven on top of the clouds, and she wasn’t sure she could get all of that many things in. I told her I thought that would be real sweet however she did it, and not to worry too much about getting it exactly right, because if her heart was in the right place, Jesus would guide her hand.”

Pastor Jimmy considered this carefully and said, “I’d like to see that painting. Maybe we could buy it for the children’s Sunday school room.

“Or maybe I could talk her into painting a mural on the wall in there,” Arnette said. “She needs to get out more.”

CHAPTER 9

T
UESDAY WAS A SCORCHER, BUT IT
was good day for business in Merchantsville, as volunteers poured in to help with the disaster in Cathay, and half of them headed back across the river over the re-opened bridge to buy building supplies, pick up sunscreen and eat lunch.

Hunter walked around R&J’s at lunchtime, stopping to talk to any dirty stranger she saw, to find out where they were from and why they had come. Many were young retirees, some from church groups, some who were volunteer rescue workers in their own counties, and some who had gotten their carpentry skills from Habitat for Humanity projects.

Time was getting to be a big issue for her. She needed to get her writing finished and to help with the layout. Neither she nor Tyler wanted anything but the Pages 1 and 2 left to do on Wednesday morning, because, flood notwithstanding, both the Merchantsville City Council and the Magnolia County Board of Education would be meeting that evening and those stories would have to be written.

Tyler, as always, would cover the City Council meeting. Hunter would have the Board of Education meeting, and with the start of school just two weeks off, it would be a busy one.

The front page was already going to be packed with flood stories, including a short one about the coffin.”

“My bet is that nobody’s going to claim those bones,” Tyler said.

“I think Taneesha’s checking on missing person reports going way back,” Hunter said.. “They’re keeping the remains at the crime lab in Macon but they didn’t have room for the casket, and they sent it back. It’s down in the courthouse basement.

That’s creepy,” Novena said, glancing out the window toward the courthouse.

Grady Bennett was home most of the day. Arnette Rayburn had come by in the morning and taken Dee Dee to Bible study, and she had invited Grady to church on Sunday as she always did.. Arnette was nice, Grady thought, and he was glad for Dee Dee to be out with other people, with Arnette looking after her, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to start going to that church on Sundays. If you went a few times, they’d be after you to join, and Mama had said, “Those people are nothing but Holy Rollers.”

Grady was not sure what was wrong with Holy Rollers if they were as nice as Arnette and Pastor Jimmy.

Mama went to Cathay First Baptist, but she did not push Grady and Dee Dee to go where she went.

She did not think Dee Dee had the right clothes, and she had gone to the Macon Mall once to shop, and brought Deirdre three shopping bags full of new clothes.

Dee Dee had smiled and thanked her, but she never wore any of the clothes, and Mama had noticed that and gotten her feelings hurt. She had said she had tried her best and would not keep trying.

Dee Dee just said she wanted Meredith to help her pick out clothes, that Meredith had a store and knew what she liked. But Grady didn’t know who Meredith was and Dee Dee couldn’t remember the name of the store or where it was.

Thinking about the way Dee Dee liked to dress reminded Grady of the lady from the newspaper, the one who was the sheriff’s girlfriend, who had bought the paintings. She was from Atlanta and she wore funny clothes, too… He thought she might know the name of the store.

He didn’t want his Mama to get mixed up in it, so he called one of his friends on his cell phone and asked him if he knew the number for the newspaper. Skeet found the number for him. He wrote it down, and thought about what to say.

At 4 p.m., Novena turned to Hunter and said, “This man on the phone wants to talk to the lady with curly hair who is the sheriff’s girlfriend. I think that means you.”

As soon as he said who he was, Hunter said, “I am so glad you called. I was trying to find out how to reach you.”

They both talked at the same time for a minute, and then things were said in order.

Grady stammered out that there had been a store in Atlanta where his wife used to buy her clothes and she couldn’t remember the name of it, just that a lady named Meredith who worked in the store helped her pick things out, and did Hunter know what store that was and where it was?”

Hunter said if he could wait until after the paper was out, she would try to find the store for him.

“She likes long skirts and faded things,” he said, “It’s kind of hard to explain, but, well, sort of like what you had on the other day. Not like ladies from around here wear..”

Hunter said she would try to find the place or another good place just as soon as she got through with the newspaper work. Then she told him he was going to be on the front page, and asked him about repairing the paintings.

He was thrilled about the front page picture, and knew just what to do about the paintings. He said, repeating three times that he stretched all Dee Dee’s canvases, that if he had known they had flood water on them, he would have taken them home and fixed them before his Mama sold them to anybody.

When they hung up, they were both smiling, and Hunter had directions to the Bennett house, where she would take the paintings a week later. He offered to come and pick them up, but she insisted that she’d really like to meet the artist. She didn’t mention an interview. That could wait until she had made friends with Dee Dee or Deirdre, who must be a real scatterbrain if she couldn’t remember the name of her favorite shop.

She knew Novena was dying of curiosity, but she decided Deirdre Dee Dee Donagan Bennett didn’t need her fashion issues discussed all over Merchantsville. She allowed herself a big Cheshire Cat smile, and then got back to work.

She filed another story with photos and cutlines, and checked her list. She thought she could see the light at the end of the tunnel, but that would turn out to be wrong.

At 5 p.m., just as he was ready to leave for the day, Sheriff Sam Bailey got a call from Bubba Shipley, who had found a car on the road to his hangar.

“There’s a dead man in it,” Bubba said. “Real dead.”

CHAPTER 10

T
HE DIRT ROAD WAS POORLY MAINTAINED
and barely wide enough for two cars. It had a few scattered pine trees on either side.

“I hardly ever come out this end of the road” Bubba was saying, “but I wanted to check the road after all that rain, and I came up on this. I’ve seen some bad stuff, Sam, but it still made me sick.”

“You ever saw the car before?” Sam asked.

“No,” Bubba said. “Never laid eyes on it.”

The Georgia car tag, from Cobb County, had already turned out to be listed under one Camilla Hopkins, who didn’t have a listed telephone number… Sam was reluctant to call and leave a message. It might well be the man’s wife, and she didn’t need to hear about this over the phone. He could arrange for somebody up there to go to her address.

“Looks like he rolled down the window and the shooter got him right in the face at close range,” Bubba said. “Poor man. Can I get out of here, Sam? I’ve told you everything I know. I just hope y’all can get this car towed out of here tonight.”

“We’re going to do that,” Sam said. “We’ll get a statement from you later.”

After Bubba had gone, Sam and his two deputies put up crime tape. A few cars had already slowed down along the highway to try to see what was going on.

“Looks like the shooter came in this side of the car after he shot him,” Bub Williston said. “Pushed him forward to get his wallet. See how the pocket is turned inside out.

“Cold blooded SOB,” Skeet Borders added.

“And probably took anything else in sight,” Sam said. “Hard to see somebody killing a stranger on the off chance that he had some real money in his wallet.”

The car was buzzing with flies and both of them were willing to leave the search of the car to the crime scene tech team.

“Could have been somebody the victim knew,” Skeet Borders said cautiously. He was the new kid on the block and he hadn’t been at a murder scene before, but he liked applying common sense. “Who’s going to stop and roll down a window to a stranger on a road like this?”

Sam wondered the same thing, but he knew that plenty of people asked strangers for directions.

“Could have been a drug deal,” Bub said.

Hunter, who had heard the sirens start up in town and turned on the newspaper’s police scanner, pulled up, got out of her car and stood outside the crime tape. The light was still good, and took four or five pictures very rapidly, concentrating on the officers, not the car.

She knew Sam wouldn’t tell her anything yet, but as Tyler always said, “You can get the facts later. You can’t get the pictures later.”

She studied the beat-up old red car and the Cobb County tag and got a chill. How could somebody from the Atlanta area wind up on some crazy dirt road out this far from town? She knew that this must be the other end of the semi-circular road that led to Bubba Shipley’s hangar, what Shipley jokingly called “Bubba’s By-Pass.”

Then “Cobb County” and “Marietta” clicked together in her mind.

“Sam!” she called out, “Do you know who it is?”

Sam looked around, shaking his head negatively, though it wasn’t clear whether he meant, “No, I don’t know who it is?” or “Don’t ask me any questions right now.”

“Is it a bald guy wearing suspenders?” Hunter called out.

Sam looked surprised, and walked over.

“Yes,” he said tersely. “Do you know him?”

“It could be a freelance writer named Ned Thigpen . He came by the paper yesterday. I’m pretty sure he lives in Marietta. The car ought to be full of cameras. He had a laptop computer, too. Is he dead?”

“Spell the name for me,” Sam said, and Hunter did.

“There’s not a thing in the car as far as we can see,” Sam said “It looks like the car never was turned off and the battery finally quit. We’re waiting for the crime scene techs to get here.”

Hunter steadied herself.

“I can identify him if you need for me to.”

“No you can’t,” Sam said. “You don’t need to see this. Do you know if this Thigpen guy is married? The tags listed under a woman’s name in Atlanta. It’s a Camilla Hopkins.”

“I don’t know anything about his family,” Hunter said.

“Tell me about what he said yesterday,” Sam said.

Hunter gave as careful a report as she could including the fact that he had recognized the paintings by Dee Dee Bennett as being by one Deirdre Donagan, and knew both Dee Dee and her father from an interview he had done with them. He wanted to know how to reach them, but Hunter hadn’t known where they lived.”

“I think he was more interested in locating the father than in Dee Dee,” she said. “Apparently he’s a photographer too. They both had an interest in old cameras and he mentioned one he wanted to buy.”

“Where was he going when he left?” Sam asked.

“I had made him a map to get him to Cathay,” she said. “He came back in and asked me if R&J’s was a good place to eat supper. I think maybe he planned to stay overnight. Anyway, one thing I can tell you is that the man needed a GPS. He had a hard time understanding directions. He told me he had gotten lost just getting to Merchantsville from I-75.”

“Well, he was for sure lost if he was heading to Cathay and wound up out here,” Sam said, shaking his head and frowning. “He’s probably been out here since yesterday.”

Then his eyes were looking beyond her shoulder.

Another car had pulled into the road where a mailbox stood.. Sam stepped over the crime tape and waved to the driver to stop.

A woman in her 70s rolled down the window on the driver’s side. She was frowning. Sam spoke with her for a minute or two and she drove down a hill and away from him, toward a small neat house half-hidden by a giant magnolia tree. Sam came back looking worried. and went into a huddle with Bub and Skeet.

Hunter left for the Board of Education meeting, thinking as she drove how much she was going to deserve a raise after the paper came out. What reporter ever did coverage of a flood, unidentified bones in an old coffin, and a murder and robbery in the same issue?