Bootlegger’s Daughter (24 page)

“Oh dear!” sighed the preacher.

The patrol car was parked so that the pickup was completely blocked. A uniformed sheriff’s deputy leaned against the truck’s hood with a happy grin on his pudgy face and a meaty hand resting lightly on his holster. Deputy Jack Jamison.

“Major Bryant’s on his way over,” he drawled. “He said he’d ’preciate it if y’all’d wait on him.”

Okay, so it turned out not to be as bad as it could have been. The fact that I’d called Ambrose from Raleigh supported my claim that I really was escorting Denn to the sheriff’s office even though, strictly speaking, Possum Creek Players Theatre wasn’t on the route.

Dwight arrived a little after six and took me off to one of the side rooms to hear as much as I could tell without compromising Denn’s attorney-client privileges, even though I hadn’t formally said I’d represent him. We sat down at a table across from each other; and starting off, it was Mr. Deputy Sheriff and Ms. Lawyer as I described how I’d wound up meeting Denn at Pullen Park. No meaningful glances, no locked eyes this go-round, and soon he was back to treating me like the Knott boys’ kid sister.

“What’s your gut feeling on him, Deb’rah?”

“Did he kill Michael Vickery?” I asked. “No.”

“Well, who does he think?”

“I don’t believe he has a clue. But if your next question’s is he telling everything exactly like it happened, your guess is good as mine. I keep trying to pin him down about why he wanted me to meet him out here, and he keeps prevaricating. You going to charge him?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Why? Just because they fought? Lots of couples fight.”

“Oh, come on, Deb’rah. He took a gun out to the woods. He damn near killed Vickery right in front of your eyes last week. That’s no little domestic squabble.”

“He was trying to scare Gayle and me from involving Michael in Janie’s death again. He said Michael still had nightmares.”

“Yeah? Like a war vet’s post-traumatic stress syndrome?” Dwight looked skeptical.

“I don’t know. Denn keeps bringing up religion. Maybe Michael felt guilty because she lay over there so long and he didn’t know, didn’t help.”

He leaned back in his chair and propped one of his size elevens on the edge of the table as if he were back in my mother’s kitchen, arguing with my brothers around the dinner table. He’s big all over, Dwight is. Played basketball in high school and could have played at Carolina if he hadn’t joined the army. Dean Smith liked the way he could handle a ball enough to send a scout over to some of his games. Big hands, big feet, big shoulders.

And yeah, everything else in nice proportion, too.

The summer I was ten, to teach me patience and keep me out of trouble, my mother gave me a good little pair of binoculars and a bird book and told me to go find a sheltered place and just sit quietly without making sudden movements and I would see nature’s wonderful secrets. There was a thick stand of grapevines and honeysuckle that overlooked the creek bank where the boys used to swim and horse around buck naked after their farm chores were done. I always came back to the house with chigger bites and scratches, but Mother was right. To this day, there’s a whole bunch of men walking around Colleton County whose natural endowments are no secret to me.

Oblivious to my memories, Dwight was still laying out reasons to arrest Denn.

“-besides, you know as good as I do how many homicides come from domestic fights. If Denn was a woman whose husband’d been cheating on her, you know he’d be the prime suspect. How’s this any different?”

“For one thing, I talked to his friend in Raleigh who swears Denn didn’t leave his place till a quarter past nine. Say thirty-five minutes to get to the theater, you’re talking what? Nine-fifty, almost ten?”

Dwight doodled a clock face on the yellow legal pad in front of him. “It was nearly twenty-four hours before you found the body. The ME said everything was ‘consistent’ with nine P.M. being when he died, but fifty minutes more or less don’t make an alibi.”

He sat back, clicking and unclicking his ballpoint pen.

“Denn’s friend also helped him unload the truck,” I said, “and can swear categorically that there was no shotgun in it.”

Before Dwight could say the obvious, I beat him to it. “Yeah, yeah, I know. He could have stashed it anywhere between here and Raleigh.”

Dwight grinned. “Now you’re starting to sound sensible. One drawback though: nobody at the Pot Shot ever saw a shotgun out there. Just the rifle.”

He took his foot off the table and the chair came down with a bang. “I guess I’ll just get his statement first and see what happens. You going to sit in and advise him?”

“If I can’t get Ambrose to come over.”

“Is that a smart thing to do?”

“Somebody has to.”

“Yeah, but should it ought to be you?”

“Probably not,” I sighed. “Is that all?”

“I reckon. For now anyhow.”

On the way out of the room, I remembered something and shut the door before I even had it open good.

“What?” he asked.

He’s a lot taller than me, so I had to reach up to pull him down to my level. It wasn’t mouth-to-mouth resuscitation or anything like that, but it was still a damn good kiss.

“Hey, wait a minute,” he said and stepped back, breathing heavily.

I laughed and fluttered my eyelashes outrageously. He was just Dwight again, only more so. “Well, you wanted to know, didn’t you?”

He was still looking dazed.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I did.”

“Anything else?”

“Naah,” he grinned. “I think that’ll just about get it.”

Using the theater phone, I tried one last time to make Ambrose Daughtridge come over and sit in on the interrogation, but even after I told him that Dwight probably wouldn’t book Denn, he still declined.

“I am not now and never have been Mr. McCloy’s attorney,” he said. “I may’ve drawn up his will as a favor to Michael Vickery, but I do not consider him my client.”

Ambrose Daughtridge is silver haired and soft spoken and looks like he should be cataloguing rare books in a university library somewhere. Unlike a lot of us who are ham actors at heart, Ambrose avoids courtroom appearances when he can, prefers civil cases to criminal, and never defends anything more serious than a misdemeanor if he can help it, even though his courtroom skills are quite adequate.

“I hope you won’t take this wrong, Deborah,” said Ambrose, misinterpreting my silence. “It’s not that I’m prejudiced against homosexuals or anything. I always got along just fine with Michael.”

“Because he didn’t flaunt it and Denn’s more obvious?” I asked caustically.

“Because he was a gentleman,” came the soft reply. “Now I do appreciate your courtesy in calling me and your concern for the proprieties, so let me assure you, for the record, that there is nothing in my former dealings with Mr. McCloy that would preclude your representing him, if you and he so choose.”

What could I say except, “Thank you, Ambrose”?

Actually, as I walked back down the hall to tell Denn I’d look after his interests tonight if he still wanted me to, it occurred to me that I’d heard something else in that telephone conversation. Ambrose is always a perfect gentleman even when he’s casting aspersions on a witness’s testimony, but there’d been a conciliatory note in his voice. A definite attempt not to alienate me.

Well!

The first sign that maybe I didn’t need to start drafting a concession letter to Luther Parker quite yet.

The interrogation went smoothly and quickly. Dwight set his tape recorder on the table in the green room, Denn answered all his questions calmly without breaking down again, and I had to interrupt and object to the phrasing of a question only two or three times.

When Dwight got to the specifics of Friday night, Denn said, “You have to understand where I’m coming from, okay? Every time the Whitehead woman is mentioned, Michael freaks. So I know that if Deborah and Gayle Whitehead stir things up, Michael will start having nightmares again, right? So I think to myself that the best way to stop Deborah is to give her something else to worry about. If she’s busy shoring up her campaign, she doesn’t have time to bother Michael, okay? I couldn’t think of any other way to stop her, so I cranked out those letters.”

He rubbed the back of his thin neck and gave me a sheepish smile. “If I hadn’t left Michael, I had this letter from Jesse I was going to doctor up. But I’m so angry Friday night that I decided nightmares serve him right, and now I’m sorry for the hard time I’ve given you, okay? This is a good place to meet. I’ll confess. Do the sackcloth and ashes bit. Give you a pitcher- the prototype for a new line that I’ll never get to produce since I’m leaving, maybe even going back to New York for a while.”

The rest I’d already heard: how he got to the theater around ten, how he found Michael dead, how he panicked and fled. He added nothing new to the telling.

When he’d finished, Dwight clicked off the tape recorder and sat looking at Denn a long moment. It was like a big brown Saint Bernard looking at a high-strung miniature poodle. Luckily for Denn, Dwight was no homophobe.

“Okay,” he said at last, “I’m not arresting you tonight, but you don’t leave the county without checking with the sheriff’s department. I’ll have somebody transcribe this and maybe you’ll come in and sign it, say tomorrow afternoon?”

I started to shake my head silently, but before I could explain why, we heard a car horn. Deputy Jamison, who’d sat silently through the interrogation, went out to see who it was and returned a few moments later with one of the last people I expected to see that night. Dwight immediately stood up, and even though I’d heard Denn poke fun at Southern manners, he too was on his feet as Jack Jamison ushered in Michael Vickery’s sister Faith, the Hollywood something or other.

She was the middle of the three Vickery children and had the same good looks. Like her mother her back was straight and her voice was cool as she addressed us after introductions had been made.

“I’ve come on behalf of my mother. Mr. Daughtridge told her you were here, Major Bryant. Is Mr. McCloy under arrest?”

“No, ma’am.”

She turned to Denn, who stood there small and gaunt in the unforgiving overhead light.

“Mother wanted you to know that Michael’s wake is tonight. At Aldcroft’s. The visitation hours are from seven till nine if you wish to come?”

Denn nodded, for once inarticulate.

If there were rules of etiquette to cover a situation like this, I’d never read them; but trust Evelyn Dancy Vickery to do the correct thing. I could admire that and yet at the same time it seemed so unfair that Denn, who had loved Michael and had shared Michael’s life, now had to wait on the sidelines until he was invited to participate in the rituals of Michael’s death.

“The funeral will be tomorrow afternoon. At Sweetwater,” Faith Vickery concluded. “Mother hopes you will sit with the family at tomorrow’s services?”

Denn had been frozen into immobility, but as Michael’s sister finished speaking, he went to her, took her hand and lifted it to his lips. A theatrical gesture, yet this time it seemed totally appropriate.

Faith squeezed his hand and for just an instant, her eyes seemed to tear. “I am sorry,” she said quietly and then turned and left.

Denn McCloy had played the aging punk for so long that it really surprised me when he emerged from his bedroom. He couldn’t do anything about the buzz cut on such short notice, but otherwise he might have been one of the middle-aged VPs over at First Federal: neat gray suit, white shirt, conservative tie, the works. He picked up on my surprise and shrugged. “Church and Christmas dinner with his parents. Michael was pretty conventional about some things.”

I had come back to the barn with Denn because he wanted to go to the funeral home, but he didn’t want to walk in alone. Even though it was stretching the attorney-client relationship, the whole situation was so bizarrely awkward that I couldn’t help sympathizing. Dwight just shook his head when he heard me agree to go, but what else could I do?

There was a powder room at the top of the stairs. “Make yourself at home,” Denn had said, so while he changed clothes in his bedroom, I’d taken a quick tour around the converted loft and decided to freshen my makeup in the master bathroom- Michael’s evidently-where the light was better. Despite the long day, my slacks and silk cardigan still looked fresh. A skirt would have been more appropriate, but at least I wasn’t wearing jeans.

Lily followed me in, flopped down on a towel that had been thrown on the floor, laid her muzzle on the cool tiles, and let out such a long sigh that I knelt and talked baby talk to her a minute. You always wonder how much they sense.

This was the first time I’d been upstairs at the Pot Shot, and I admit I was impressed with the quiet good taste and tidiness that permeated the whole apartment, especially Michael Vickery’s bedroom, which was on the opposite side of the loft from Denn’s quarters. In spite of the luxurious sand-colored carpet, the heavy handwoven beige coverlet on the king-sized bed, the expensive chests of blond oak, there was an austere feel to the room.

“Almost like a monk’s cloistered cell,” said the preacher approvingly.

“Yeah, if the monk had a Dancy trust fund,” jeered the pragmatist. “You don’t find these fabrics or those custom-built chests in a thrift shop. And look at those wall hangings. Like medieval tapestries!”

“Exactly. I knew Michael was religious, but not that he was so devout.”

“May I point out that you don’t have to be devout to hang works of art on your wall?”

“But look how they’re arranged-almost like an altar in a Gothic chapel. And I don’t care what you think, that’s certainly a cross.”

Pragmatist and preacher dissolved into pure curiosity as I righted the heavy ceramic cross that had fallen over on the chest top and looked closer at the wall hangings. There were two, approximately two feet wide by three and a half feet long; and each hung from its own heavy oak dowel that rested on inconspicuous oak pegs. Not strictly medieval now that I took another look. More a Pre-Raphaelite flavor to the figures woven into the scenes. The one on the left was a familiar-looking Madonna with long flowing brown hair, her luminous brown eyes fixed on the curly-haired infant in her lap. On the right was the woman taken in adultery, with the Christ figure pointing to a white stone in the foreground.