Death's Half Acre (11 page)

A sturdily built five-foot-ten redhead with freckled face and arms and a slight unease whenever surrounded by so much blatant femininity, Richards doubted that much real work was done here. Nevertheless, it was a place to start collecting names. When the SBI reinforcements arrived, they would take a stethoscope and tongue depressor to this room and to the computer, but it wouldn’t hurt for a CCSD deputy to check it out first.

She selected a likely candidate from the key ring found in Bradshaw’s purse, unlocked the cabinet on her first try, and opened the top drawer. This seemed to be general storage for her supplies: extra printer paper, ink cartridges, and other odds and ends.

The middle drawer held neatly labeled hanging files and was apparently devoted to Bradshaw’s work as a county commissioner. In addition to the minutes of the meetings and various reports, there seemed to be a file on each of her fellow commissioners, past and present. She picked one at random—Harvey Underwood. “VP at the bank. Approved B’s loan w/o proper collateral. [fd] Wife, Leila. Two daughters in Raleigh. G’children. Drives late-model Lincolns. Doesn’t drink or smoke. Sleeping with B, but I could prob. have him. Registered Repub, but can’t be trusted to vote the right way.”

There followed a list of issues that had come before the board and whether Underwood had voted with her or on the opposing side.

So she kept score
, thought Richards and a hasty flip through the other files confirmed it. There was a running tally on how each board member had voted since she became chair last year. The two Democrats on the board did not receive flattering comments. Jamie Jacobson seemed to be a particularly sharp burr under Bradshaw’s saddle and the dead woman had quoted some of the other woman’s comments with childish petulance, adding exclamation points and heavy underlining. The word
bitch
had been doodled in the margin.

She pulled a folder for Lee, Stephenson and Knott, the law firm where Major Bryant’s wife had practiced before she became a judge. It held a few newspaper clippings of a case John Claude Lee had won in a civil suit that involved a farmer’s defense of his land when the state tried to condemn it for an exit ramp to I-40. There was also a sheet of paper with Lee’s name and that of Greg Turner, an attorney from Makely. That sheet bore the same
[fd]
notation she had spotted in Underwood’s file.

[fd]
? File drawer?

Maybe she meant a computer file, Richards decided, and switched on the laptop. While she waited for it to load, she looked through the bottom drawer, which was labeled PERSONAL. Here were Bradshaw’s insurance policies, bank and medical records, tax returns, and a thick folder tabbed SEPARATION AGREEMENT.

Separation?

“I thought the Bradshaws were divorced,” she told Dalton when he came to report that he’d found nothing of apparent interest in the rest of the house.

Dwight and SBI Special Agent Terry Wilson arrived at Bradshaw Management shortly after lunch to find Cameron Bradshaw seated behind the desk in Candace Bradshaw’s office. He acknowledged them by holding up a finger to indicate that he would be with them in a minute.

According to the report, Candace had been forty-two and folks said her husband was nearly twenty-five years older. Dwight knew him by sight, although they had never interacted in the eight years he had been back in Colleton County. With that wrinkled face, white hair, and liver-splotched hands, Bradshaw did indeed look to be in his late sixties, but he seemed fit enough and his voice was vigorous as he said, “. . . taking it hard, but Dee’s stronger than she looks . . . Thanks, Tom. And you be sure to tell Mary how much we appreciated that chicken salad she brought over last night, you hear?”

No sooner had he hung up than the phone rang again. “Sorry,” he told them, then lifting his voice, called, “Gracie?”

The brightly dressed middle-aged office manager who had shown them in came to the door. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry, Gracie, but could you take all my calls? Tell people I appreciate their concern, but . . .”

“Sure thing, boss,” she said with a solicitous smile.

“Boss,” said Bradshaw. He pushed back from the desk and stood to shake their hands in old-fashioned courtesy. “I haven’t been called that in a while. Smartest thing Candace did was keep Gracie Farmer on as office manager after I retired.”

As the older man sat back down, Terry Wilson exchanged a quick glance with Dwight. A clerk at the courthouse had pulled the Bradshaw separation agreement and given them a quick overview. “Complete division of all the marital property and then at the last minute, they opted for a do-it-yourself separation instead of a divorce. Probably because of the business. It’s in his name alone, but she got to do the day-to-day running while he bowed out.”

So yeah, Dwight thought, Bradshaw might have wanted to retire at age what? Fifty-seven? Sixty? But today, he certainly looked like a farm boy who was happy to be back on the tractor again.

“I believe you read the letter your wife left?” Dwight asked when the formalities were out of the way.

Cameron Bradshaw sighed and nodded. “I saw it, but I was in such a state of shock. When her cleaning woman called me . . . I went right over—that horrible bag over her head. I tore it open, but it was too late, of course, and I guess I did read the letter while I was waiting for the rescue squad to come, but I was looking for a real reason for her to do this and—”

“Malfeasance as a county commissioner?” said Terry. “Kickbacks from special interests? Those didn’t seem like sufficient reasons?”

“To you maybe.” The older man seemed to brush them away like so many pesky gnats. “But for Candace to kill herself over that?” He shook his head. “I’d have thought it would take something more personal. Like cancer. Or maybe problems with someone she was seeing. You know. As for those other things, well—”

He broke off helplessly. “She wouldn’t have come to me with personal problems, of course, and she didn’t have any professional ones.”

Dwight frowned. “Even though she says in her letter—”

“That’s what I don’t understand,” he interrupted, leaning forward to make his point. “If she was in professional trouble, she would have asked for my help. She always came to me when she was in over her head with county business or our company here. Position papers she didn’t quite understand. Reports and technical papers. That sort of thing. Statistics and projections were always hard for her. And nonlinear concepts. I was the only one she trusted to explain them.”

“You told her how to vote on the issues?”

“Good heavens, no!” He drew himself up as if Dwight had suggested that he cheated at cards. “That’s not what she wanted. She needed to grasp the main points so that she could discuss them without sounding dumb. And she wasn’t dumb, although people like Jamie Jacobson thought she was ignorant because their literary allusions went right over her head. She only had a GED and she wasn’t much of a reader, but common sense? About practical concrete issues? She was sharp as anybody. It was the esoteric and theoretical that she had trouble grasping. She was always giving me hypothetical scenarios. If A had this or did that, how would it impact on B or C? That sort of thing.”

“And you explained it all to her?” Terry Wilson said doubtfully.

“When I was much younger, I wanted to be a teacher, Agent Wilson, but I needed to make money, to salvage what was left of the family fortune. I think I would have been a good teacher.” His voice was wistful. “I wish she had told me what the real problems were. I could have helped her.”

Dwight felt sorry for the man’s grief. “You still loved her?”

Bradshaw gave a sad, hands-up gesture of resignation. “I never stopped. Oh, it was stupid of me to think she could be happy making love to someone so much older, but once we were living apart, we could be friends again and I liked knowing that she relied on me and on my discretion—”

“Your wife didn’t name names in her letter, just general accusations. Do you know who she meant?”

“I’m sorry. I really don’t remember any of the details. Do you have it with you?”

When Dwight shook his head, Bradshaw said, “Could I get a copy?”

“We’d rather not right now, sir. We’re trying to keep her allegations confidential until we have a chance to investigate.”

“Of course, of course. I understand. When will you—” He paused to find the right words. “When may we make arrangements for her funeral?”

“It shouldn’t be too long,” said Dwight. “I hope we can count on your cooperation and the cooperation of her staff here?”

As Bradshaw hesitated, Terry Wilson pulled out a court order he’d obtained to search the offices of Bradshaw Management for anything related to Candace Bradshaw’s position as chair of the Colleton County board of commissioners.

Before her husband could put his glasses back on to read it, the office manager tapped at the door and opened it without waiting.

“Sorry, Mr. Bradshaw,” she said formally, “but some people are here.”

“They’re with me,” said Wilson of the two women behind her, special agents who specialized in documentary evidence.

Dwight grinned, recognizing the Ginsburg twins, which was how Tina Ginsburg and Sabrina Ginsburg were known around the Bureau. They were no relation but had somehow wound up in the same division. Mid-thirties, one was an attractive blonde with an easy laugh; the other an intense brunette. Both had stiletto-sharp minds and the hunting instinct of foxhounds for sniffing out white-collar wrongdoings.

“They have a warrant, Gracie,” said Bradshaw. “I’ll clear out of here for a couple of hours and you show these gentlemen where Candace kept her commissioner’s files.”

“You don’t think you should stay?” A tall woman with a long plain face and a heavy jaw, the office manager was probably in her late fifties. Her clothes were a rainbow of primary colors: a bright blue jersey topped by a canary-yellow knitted vest that was edged in red wool and embellished on the back with multicolored 3-D yarn figures in a village market scene that suggested Central America. She did not seem happy with the situation. “All our confidential company records are here, too.”

Bradshaw gave the newcomers a gentle smile. “They are officers of the court,” he said trustingly. “I’m sure they won’t take anything they shouldn’t.”

Gracie Farmer’s raised eyebrow said, “Oh, yeah?” but she didn’t argue with him.

“We’ll give you a receipt for everything we do take,” Wilson assured her.

Grudgingly, the woman moved to the computer and typed in the password that gave access to everything on the hard drive.

One of the agents sat down and began scanning the file names. “Which are the files connected to her work as a commissioner?”

“It’s the one labeled CCBC.”

When the agent clicked on it, all she found was a list of names and contact numbers for the current board and a calendar marked with meeting dates. “This is all there is?” she asked.

Gracie Farmer shrugged. “I think she kept all the other files on her home computer. She really only used this one for Bradshaw Management.”

“What about hard files or CDs?”

“You’re welcome to look, but I’m telling you—she kept the two totally separate.”

While the two techie agents began to plunder both the electronic and the paper files, Dwight and Terry asked the office manager if there was someplace they could talk to her in private.

She led them to her own office, a space filled with ethnic crafts in bright colors. A small wooden oxcart painted with parrots and tropical flowers sat next to her computer and held the usual desk tools and pens. Several red-green-and-blue wooden parrots shared a perch suspended from the ceiling in a corner over pots of tropical plants in such lavish bloom that they had to be artificial even though they looked real. The walls were lined with photographs and posters of Costa Rica. It was like stepping into a tropical travel agency.

“Wow!” said Terry. “You must really love it there. Do you get down often?”

“As often as I can,” she said. “In fact, I’m hoping to retire there.”

She gestured them to chairs and immediately got down to business. “Is it true then?”

“Is what true?” Dwight countered.

“I heard Candace left a letter saying she stole from the county and took kickbacks from people the board did business with.”

“Does that fit with what you know of her?” Dwight asked.

Her plain face looked troubled and her eyes dropped before their gaze.

Trying a different tack, Terry said, “I guess you’ve known her a long time?”

Mrs. Farmer nodded and they noticed that her earrings were tiny enameled parrots that swayed when her head moved. “I was the one that first hired her to clean some rental property when the tenants moved out. In fact, I was the one encouraged her to get her GED out at the community college. She was a hard worker and didn’t mind getting her hands dirty.”

As if hearing how that sounded in this context, she shook her head. “Candace was ambitious. She wanted to be somebody. You know where she came from, right?”

“Tell us,” said Dwight.

So Gracie Farmer told them of little Candy Wells’s rocky childhood, her move to Dobbs, her struggle for a better life for herself. “I grew up dirt poor, too. My parents were sharecroppers, but they loved me and made sure I stayed in school. Candace had no one except an old sick grandmother and look how well she’s done. Running Bradshaw Management, chair of the board of commissioners. I can’t understand how she’d throw it all away for . . .”

She paused and looked at them. “If she did it, it wasn’t for money.”

“No?” asked Dwight.

“It would have been for power. Candace liked doing favors and having people beholden to her. She wouldn’t have cared for the money. It was knowing that important people came to her for favors. It would be hard for her to say no if someone like that asked her to do something that wasn’t strictly legal and didn’t really do anybody any harm. If money was involved, I’m sure she would’ve thought of it as a sort of thank-you, not a bribe or anything.”

Terry looked at Dwight with a wry shake of his head. “Kickbacks. When you care enough to send the very best.”