Death's Half Acre (21 page)

From behind him, Deputy Richards said, “Then to make sure she was dead, he stood over her and fired again through the side of her head.”

Three days ago, she had been vibrant and sexy and looking forward to her inheritance, thought Dwight. A spoiled slacker, Stevie had called her. The daughter of a woman who didn’t know how to be a mother, according to Gracie Farmer. From his own observation, she had been a conflicted young woman who had not finished growing up.

Now she never would.

“Did she surprise an intruder or was the shooter someone she let in herself?” Dwight wondered aloud.

“I think she let him in.” Richards pointed to the dead girl’s bare feet. “Looks like she kicked off her shoes there by the couch. There’s her wineglass, the cork, and the opener. Her glass is still half full, but the bottle’s almost empty. She might have drunk it all herself, but someone else could have had a glass with her.”

“Make a note of it for the ME,” Dwight told Denning. “You check the kitchen, Richards?”

“Yessir, and there are dirty dishes and fast-food cartons but no used wineglass. Either he washed it clean and put it back on the shelf or else took it with him. Seems like everybody’s heard of DNA these days.”

Her rueful tone reminded him of something Bo Poole had said about one of the county’s high sheriffs. “I heard that a sheriff back in the nineteen-twenties tried to keep Linsey Thomas’s granddaddy from describing fingerprint technology in the
Ledger
. He thought it was telling the criminals how not to get caught.”

“Yeah,” said Denning as he bagged and tagged the slug. “Even if we had the time and equipment to process this house like one of those CSI shows on television, so many people have tromped through here the last few days, there’s no way you could separate out what’s relevant from what isn’t.”

From his aggrieved tone, Dwight knew he was still smarting over having to admit in court last week that no, he had not lifted fingerprints off the digital camera that a thief, the meth-addicted son of a local businessman, had walked out of the store with.

“He had it inside his jacket,” Denning would say to anyone who would listen. “Why the hell would we bother to match his fingerprints to it? He was holding the fricking thing when he was arrested!” Nevertheless, until someone with a little common sense finally spoke up, the jury had almost declared the shoplifter not guilty because of that lack.

“Anything else disturbed or different from when you were here last?” Dwight asked them as two more deputies returned from canvassing the neighbors, who, predictably, had seen nothing.

Richards shrugged. “Denning and I think that her room is messier than it was before. But then she moved back in on Saturday, so she had at least a day and a half to trash it some more. Drawers and cabinet doors are open all over the house, and there’re some cardboard boxes in her bedroom and in the kitchen, like she was starting to pack up whatever she planned to keep.”

“Can’t say for sure if she tossed the house or someone else did,” said Denning. “Looking at the kitchen, I’ve got her pegged as a natural slob. Most of the drawer knobs are too textured to show prints. I got a couple of smears off the smooth knobs in the kitchen, but that’s it.”

One of the EMS techs pointedly tapped his watch. “How ’bout it, Major Bryant? Can we transport her now?”

“Yeah, okay,” Dwight said, and watched as they zipped Dee Bradshaw’s small stiff body into a body bag, lifted her onto the gurney, and wheeled her through the doorway.

Outside, beyond the yellow tape that bounded the yard, a knot of uneasy neighbors had gathered to watch. More deputies were keeping them back, but he saw cell phones raised to record the scene. No doubt it would soon be on someone’s website. The local TV crew left when the door of the EMS truck swung shut.

The days were steadily getting longer. Four o’clock and the sun was only now starting to settle into the trees. A shaft of sunlight through the leaves caught Richards’s auburn hair and turned it bright as a new copper penny.

The EMS truck pulled away just as Terry Wilson’s car coasted to a stop on the circular drive.

“Sorry,” the SBI agent said as he opened the door and got out and slipped on his jacket to cover his shoulder holster. “Got held up on another case. What the hell’s going on here, Dwight? Why was she killed? You reckon she found that flash drive?”

“Who knows?” Dwight turned back to his deputy. “Where’s Bradshaw?”

“In the sunroom with his office manager,” Richards said. “McLamb’s babysitting them.”

“Show me,” he said.

The east-facing sunroom was at the back of the house and looked out onto a grassy berm that was topped with a thick mixture of evergreens—cedars, hollies, camellia bushes, and boxwood—that disguised the highway beyond and effectively screened the house from both passing motorists and nearby neighbors. The far wall consisted of wide arched windows with French doors that opened onto a flagstone terrace, where a set of white wrought-iron patio furniture waited invitingly.

The room was furnished in the colors that Candace Bradshaw apparently favored: white carpets, rose-patterned fabrics on the chairs and couches, deep rose accent cushions, and crisp white shades on the table lamps. A wet bar had been discreetly hidden in a cherry armoire, but the doors were folded back at the moment and a bottle of bourbon sat on the counter.

Deputy Raeford McLamb stood up when they entered the room, and Mrs. Farmer gave them a sad smile, but Cameron Bradshaw remained huddled at one end of a couch and seemed oblivious of their presence. He cradled a highball glass in his hands and looked closer to eighty than sixty.

If ever a man had a right to look shattered, though, it was this man, thought Dwight. First the wife that he had continued to love, and now his only child. And he had been the one to find her.

“We were supposed to have lunch together,” he told them in disjointed sentence fragments, as if it was an effort to think in logical sequence. “We were going to go over Candace’s will again—she left the house to Dee. Talk about selling it, decide what to do with the furniture. She wanted to get your brother-in-law to come over and give us an appraisal. He was nice to her, giving her a job like that. She liked him. But she was going to go back to school. Make up the work she missed. Get her life on track. But she didn’t meet us and she didn’t answer her phone, so Gracie and I came over. Her car was here, and—and—”

“You have a key?” Richards asked gently.

He nodded. “I opened the front door and called and there she was. On the floor. Soon as I saw her, I knew it was no use. Blood all over Candace’s white carpet. So much blood for such a little thing. My beautiful little girl. All that blood.”

He lifted the glass to his lips with both hands and drank deeply. It was clear that this was not his first nor even third drink.

Tears puddled in Mrs. Farmer’s eyes as she watched, but she didn’t try to stop him.

“Who would do this, Bryant?” Bradshaw asked in a voice that was rough with grief. “What did Dee ever do to make a monster shoot her down in her own house? She was just a girl still.”

“When did you last see her?” Dwight asked.

“Yesterday. After the service for Candace. Gracie made us come home with her for supper so that we wouldn’t have to go to a restaurant. Not that any of us were very hungry, but Dee left before dark. She wanted to get started packing up her clothes and the things she wanted to keep.”

“Did you talk to her later that evening?”

“I didn’t, but Gracie—?”

Gracie Farmer nodded. “We talked a couple of times on the phone. I asked her to look for an umbrella of mine that Candace had borrowed last week. It cost more than I usually pay, but it has parrots and tropical flowers, so . . . Silly to even think of such a thing when Candace . . .” Her voice trailed off and they could see her try to recover control.

Unlike the cacophony of clashing colors they had seen her in before, today’s outfit was almost somber: dark red linen slacks and white silk shirt, a zip-up white cotton sweater randomly striped in thick and thin red lines. Black patent shoes with low Cuban heels, a black leather purse. Her short fingernails were painted the exact same shade as her lipstick and slacks.

“You said you talked a couple of times?”

Mrs. Farmer nodded. “Around six, I think. She called me about the dollhouse. Wanted to know if she could store it in my attic till she had a place for it. I told her of course she could.”

Bradshaw turned to her in wonderment. “She was going to keep it?”

“That surprises you, sir?” asked Mayleen Richards.

“She always made fun of Candace for playing with it and buying new furniture and things for it. She didn’t care much for dolls even when she was a little girl, but Candace? Candace never had the toys and pretty things that Dee had, and the dollhouse was important to her in ways I’ll probably never understand without talking to a psychiatrist. Wish fulfillment? Restructuring her childhood? Candace seldom talked about her family and home life to me. I think it embarrassed her. But I gather it was most”—he hesitated, searching for the discreet term—“chaotic and thoroughly unpleasant and—”

He lapsed into silence.

Gracie Farmer patted his arm consolingly and said, “When she came to me for a job, she was sixteen and pretty much on her own. She had left home and moved in with her grandmother, who died two or three years later. But Cam’s right. Dee did make fun of the dollhouse. But when she called to ask if I’d keep it for her, she was crying and blaming herself for not understanding Candace better.”

“And that was the last time you spoke to her?”

“No, she called back around eight and said she’d found the umbrella. She was going to give it to me today when—” Her voice broke and she reached for her handbag and some tissues to wipe away the tears that were freely coursing down her cheeks.

“The night she was born, I was there. Remember, Cam?”

He nodded without looking up from the empty glass in his hands.

“Little blond ringlets all over her tiny little head.”

Dwight stood up and said, “Mrs. Farmer, may we speak with you privately somewhere?”

She nodded, wiped her eyes, and suggested they go into the dining room next door.

As she stood, Bradshaw handed her his glass and nodded toward the bar. “Don’t fuss, Gracie. Please?”

Without comment, she poured him another stiff one, then led Dwight, Richards, and the SBI agent through the double doors into a formal dining room. The long polished table had seating for twelve. The centerpiece was an arrangement of silk roses and baby’s breath so realistic that Richards had to touch one to convince herself that they were not real. At least five dollars a stem, she thought, and not from any local discount house.

“This is an awfully big house for one person,” Terry Wilson said as they sat down at the table.

Gracie Farmer looked around the room, almost as if seeing it for the first time. “Candace thought she might start entertaining if she ran for the state senate. This would have been a great place for a dinner party, the way the double doors open into the sunroom.”

“How did she pay for it?” Dwight asked bluntly.

“Pay for it?” The older woman’s voice faltered for a moment. “She owned half of Bradshaw Management, Major, and she had just sold her old house. She could afford it.”

“Afford to pay cash?”

She looked at them in bewilderment. “Is that what she did? I assumed she took out a mortgage. I mean, this is one of the smaller houses in this development, but I’m sure it must have cost her close to half a million by the time she added on the extras and the landscaping. She wasn’t taking that much money out of the business and the old house was in such bad shape that—are you
sure
she paid cash?”

“That’s what they told us at the bank.”

“Dee thought she was skimming from the business,” Richards told her.

“Never!” Mrs. Farmer said indignantly.

But then a shadow crossed her face and Dwight glanced at Wilson, wondering if his old friend was thinking the same thing he was—that here was a woman who should never play poker for money. She sat silently for a moment, pleating the fabric of her red slacks as she thought about what they had said.

“Okay, look. I told y’all that she sometimes probably took money for some of the favors she did a few developers and real estate people? She really did care more about power and having people think she was very important than about money, but I guess she probably liked the money, too. If she was skimming though, Roger Flackman had to know about it.”

“Mr. Bradshaw’s auditor?” Wilson asked.

The office manager nodded. “I hate speaking ill of the dead, but it’s not as if Candace was really married. And you know how beautiful she was. Looked more like thirty than forty. I don’t know if he would have cooked the books for her, but she could be very persuasive when she was trying to sell something.”

“And sometimes she paid with sex?”

Gracie Farmer had quit meeting his eyes. “You’ll have to ask Flackman about that. I truly don’t know.”

“Tell us about her cousin down in Georgia,” Dwight said.

“Cousin? Oh, yes, the one with the peaches. Someone from your office called me about that this morning, asking about her car. All I know is that he showed up at the office last spring and said his name was Manny and that Candace had called him, asked him to bring some peaches up for the office staff. There were like five bushels. Even the cleaning crews got a few. Candace said his truck broke down and she was going to lend him her car to get back.”

“Lend it to him?”

“But then she decided to just give it to him because the peach orchard wasn’t doing so good and she felt sorry for him. I told you she liked doing people favors.”

“And that’s all you know?”

“He was scamming her with that hard-luck story about the orchard,” the woman said, as if remembering an old grievance. “He didn’t own any orchard. Those peaches came from north Florida, not north Georgia. When I went out to the truck to take a look at them, one of the baskets had a label. I said something about was that the name of his orchard and he immediately shifted it around. I’d already seen the Florida address though. By the time those baskets came inside, every label had been torn off. And something else. That wasn’t his truck either. It was one of those rent-a-wrecks.”