The Buzzard Table (16 page)

“You bought Deborah a diamond?”

“Well, naw, but I was thinking about it till I saw what Lee’s first year at State was costing me.”

After that Deborah treated Terry like yet another brother and the three of them stayed friends. Terry still came out to the farm to fish with Mr. Kezzie and Cal even called him Uncle Terry as if he were Rob or one of the Knott brothers.

“Hey there,” Terry said when he recognized Dwight’s voice. “Guess what? I just bought me a diamond ring.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, I know I said never again, but we’ve been living together almost as long as you and Deborah, so—”

“You and K.C.?”

“Well, who the hell else would it be?” he asked indignantly.

K.C. Massengill was a sexy little blonde, one of the SBI’s best narcotics agents until she was promoted to a division head and an office job around the same time that Terry came in off the streets. Dwight remembered Deborah’s glee when she told him that Terry had moved into K.C.’s house out at Lake Jordan and how K.C. had shrugged and said, “He’s probably only interested in my bass boat.”

“Y’all settin’ a date or is she just in it for the jewelry?”

“Right now, we’re looking at the last Saturday in June, after Lee’s graduation. You know what they say, Dwight—fourth time lucky. You and Deborah be sure and save the date.”

Dwight congratulated him, then asked if he’d heard about the death out at the Clarenden Motel.

He hadn’t, but after listening to as many of the details as Dwight could give him, Terry promised to see what he could learn. “It may be on into next week ’fore I can tell you anything.”

“That’s okay.”

“Pritchard’s a tightass, but why do you care if he takes over? Less work for you guys.”

“I just like to know what’s going on under my nose,” Dwight said.

And why, he wondered after hanging up, was it under his nose anyhow? Why Colleton County?

According to an in-depth story in the
New York Times
, a story that he’d heard confirmed in sub rosa conversations, the usual scenario for small jets had them flying from Gitmo to here for refueling, then from here to Bangor and back again. In Maine, it was said that prisoners were put on a larger plane and flown to Shannon, Ireland. From there, the destination would be to some hellhole that wasn’t hampered by human rights watchdogs.

Despite the
Times
story, most people around the county neither knew nor cared about those flights, so who in Cotton Grove would want the man dead? Maybe he and the ME were overthinking the whole thing. Maybe it really was an accident.

On the other hand, Bo was right. They did know people. And not just local SBI agents.

Dwight reached for the phone again. His Army Intelligence days were several years in his past, but he had kept in touch with a couple of former colleagues who could ask discreet questions through back channels. At least he might learn who this so-called Frank Alexander of McLean, Virginia, really was, see if he had any ties to the area, just in case it turned out to be a private killing and nothing to do with what he did for a living.

Maybe it was a jealous husband. Or a scorned mistress. Hell, it could even be somebody pissed off because he’d quit supplying them with Cuban cigars.

T
he weekend started off uneventfully. Dwight and Cal were home before me on Friday, and as soon as I opened the garage door to the kitchen and smelled sage and onions, I knew that Dwight had started roasting the two chickens I’d buttered and seasoned the night before. Roast chicken for supper tonight, hot chicken sandwiches tomorrow night, and if there were any scraps left over, chicken pot pies on Sunday, with lots of peas and carrots under the crust.

Dwight poured me a bourbon, heavy on the Pepsi, to go with his beer, and we took our time over the meal while discussing our plans for the weekend. They mostly consisted of no plans and our phones did not ring once. Cal talked us into a game of crazy eights after supper, then two chapters of
The Hobbit
before he started yawning and got ready for bed.

When I asked Dwight how his investigations were going, he told me about the maybe not so accidental death out at the Clarenden Motel and how the FBI had claimed jurisdiction because the victim was a pilot and, quote, “one of theirs,” meaning that he was possibly connected with those rendition flights.

I had heard about the attack on Jeremy Harper from Richard Williams.

“The doctors told Richard that he could be in a coma for two weeks until they get the swelling down,” I said as I finished loading the dishwasher. “Was he hurt because he tried to take pictures of those airplanes?”

“Too soon to know, shug. He was left near where we found Rebecca Jowett’s body, so yes, it could be related to her death. On the other hand, he did spend an hour out there with Anne Harald and Martin Crawford yesterday.”

I followed him over to the couch with my coffee. “Did you tell Crawford he’s been seen loitering around the airport?”

“Yep, and he claims it’s a total coincidence. He says he was only experimenting with those buzzards, seeing how far they would follow him.”

“You believe him?”

Again that noncommittal shrug as he reached for one of the seed catalogs that had begun to pile up on the coffee table. “What kind of corn you want this year? Silver Queen or Seneca Chief?”

“Seneca Chief,” I said promptly. “Yellow over white? No contest. But it’s too early to plant.”

“Yeah, but Seth’s putting together an order for family and I need to let him know what we want.”

I laughed. “
We?
”

We had agreed last year that he would keep our garden small, because I don’t like to spend my summer weekends freezing and canning vegetables. All the same I wound up with several quarts of tomato puree for spaghetti sauce and more than a few packages of corn and butter beans.

“Haywood and Robert are coming over tomorrow morning to disk in the garden and run a few rows for garden peas. Time we got them in the ground. February’s half gone.”

“We do not need a
few
rows,” I said. “One row will be plenty.”

“Not if you give away as many as you did last year.” He grinned, knowing full well that my generosity was so I wouldn’t have to shell and freeze them.

On the other hand, our kitchen gardens tend to be communal. My sisters-in-law will come pick whatever we don’t want, just as we’ll raid their late tomatoes and okra if we forget to keep ours watered through the heat of summer.

We were up fairly early the next morning, but my brother Haywood arrived on one of the big farm tractors even earlier. While Cal rode his bike down to the road to fetch the newspaper, Dwight started a pot of coffee and I made sausage patties to go with waffles. Isabel has asked us all not to feed him, but Haywood always assumes we’ve fixed enough for him, and as soon as he got a whiff of that sausage, heavily seasoned with sage, he climbed down off the tractor, washed up at the kitchen sink, and sat right down at the table in happy anticipation.

I doubled the waffle batter and added extra patties to my black iron skillet.

“Bel only set out cereal and fruit this morning,” Haywood said, beaming when the waffles began coming off the iron. He slathered on the butter and added a pool of maple syrup. “A man cain’t go all morning on just cereal and fruit.”

Cal finished his waffle in record time and went outside to clamber up on Haywood’s tractor. While we ate, Mayleen Richards called. She had spoken to Jeremy Harper’s doctor minutes before.

“No change in his condition,” Dwight told me when he’d hung up, “but it looks as if whoever did it caught him off guard. The doctor says he was probably hit twice, just like Rebecca Jowett. No defense marks on his hands or arms. He told her that if the second blow had landed on the same spot, he’d be dead now. All the same, it’s still too soon to know how much permanent damage there’ll be. The good sign is that neither his hands or feet are drawn up like they’d be if he was paralyzed.”

I topped off his coffee and he cut into a second waffle as Haywood was finishing off his third.

Minutes later, another deputy called to report that Jeremy Harper’s blue Toyota had been found in the NutriGood parking lot only a few miles away.

I half expected Dwight to go running over, but he told the officer to question all the clerks there once the stores opened and to keep him informed. When he saw my look of surprise, he grinned and said, “Well, you’re always telling me I have good people and that I need to trust ’em to run with the ball.”

“And besides,” said Haywood, “you got them peas to plant.”

Three more cups of coffee later (and another round of waffles for Haywood), our brother Robert pulled up on a smaller tractor rigged with plows to run rows.

“You was supposed to be done disking by now,” he scolded Haywood, “but here you set, feeding your face. Bel’s right. You’re just digging your grave with your teeth.”

Since Robert’s not exactly a beanpole either, Haywood didn’t pay him any mind. He climbed back up on the John Deere and headed out to the garden site. I handed Robert up a mug of coffee with a spoonful of the honey he likes and he told me that his wife Doris planned to take their grandson to see
The Lion King
that afternoon. “She says she’ll take Cal and Mary Pat and little Jake, too, if y’all pay for their tickets and popcorn.”

“What do you think?” I asked Cal when we were in the car to pick up the other two for the day to give Kate a break.

He gave me a big thumbs-up. Despite computer games and DVDs, all three children are entranced by the big screen.

Or maybe it’s the popcorn.

We got back to the house in time to wave goodbye to Robert, who had finished running precise, ruler-straight rows where Haywood had disked. I love the smell of new-turned dirt, and soon I had a hoe in my hands, too. Dwight and I each took a row and sent the children ahead of us to drop two peas into the furrows at a time, three or four inches apart, then he and I used our hoes to cover them and firm the soil.

Despite the cool air, it felt good to be out working in the sunshine. Dwight pruned dead branches from the azaleas and other flowering shrubs, and the children and I piled them for a bonfire. Then the kids washed up and finished working on their valentines for Monday while I made lunch.

Doris picked up Cal and his cousins in time for the two o’clock matinee. After a morning out in the fresh air, Dwight turned on a ball game and stretched out on the couch. I sat down in a nearby lounge chair with a basket of clean laundry and we watched Carolina run up and down the court while I folded T-shirts and underwear.

I meant to rest my eyes for only a minute, but I must have drifted off, because it was halftime before I opened them again, and Dwight was sound asleep. I quietly put away the folded clothes and went out to the kitchen to make a salad to go with the hot chicken sandwiches I planned for supper.

He woke up when the kids came back and sat up yawning. “Want me to run them over to Kate’s?”

“No, I’ll do it. You watch the rest of the game.”

Instead of heading toward the garage with us, Cal sat down on the couch beside Dwight and I realized that he and Mary Pat must have butted heads over something, because they didn’t bother to tell each other goodbye.

Mary Pat claimed the front seat as her right now that she was almost ten, while Jake buckled himself onto the booster seat that the state requires and that he’d have to keep using for another couple of years, to his chagrin.

“You and Cal have a fight?” I asked when we were under way.

She shrugged and didn’t respond, but Jake said, “She called Cal a scairdy cat.”

“Shut up, Jake,” she said tightly.

“Scared of what?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she muttered.

“He’s too scared to—”

Before Jake could tell, she rounded on him. “I mean it, Jake.
Shut up!
”

“I don’t think your mom would appreciate that kind of talk,” I told her.

We rode in silence till we reached the end of our drive and were out on the hardtop, then she looked at me and said, “How come you won’t adopt Cal?”

I was so startled by her question that I almost ran off the road.

“What?”

“He thought you’d adopt him when Mom and Dad adopted Jake and me, but you didn’t and now he’s too scared to ask you why. Don’t you love him?”

“Well, of course I do.”

“Then how come?”

“I didn’t know he wanted me to,” I managed to say. “Are you sure he does?”

She gave a firm nod and I heard murmured agreement from Jake.

“And he wants to call you Mom, not Deborah. Like Jake and me call Aunt Kate and Uncle Rob Mom and Dad now.”

“Do they know about this?” I asked.

She shook her small head. “Cal made us promise not to tell them, but he never said I couldn’t tell you.”

Even though I was shaken to the core, I was still amused by the way she could split hairs like a budding lawyer.

“I hope you’ll both keep that promise a little longer,” I said.

That evening, after Dwight had tucked Cal in for the night, I went down to his room alone and sat on the edge of his bed. I hadn’t felt this nervous and unsure of myself since the night Dwight proposed.

Enough light spilled in from the hall for me to see Cal’s puzzled expression as he looked up from his pillow. Bandit lifted his furry head from the other side of the bed, then settled back beside Cal with a doggy snuffle.

Fingers crossed that I could come up with the right words, I smoothed his hair and said, “Mary Pat told me why she called you a scairdy cat.”

He seemed to freeze, then pulled the covers up to his chin with his fists clutched in the quilt. “She’s a big blabbermouth,” he blurted angrily.

“But is she right, honey? Do you want me to adopt you?”

He pulled the covers even tighter and gave a shrug so like one of Dwight’s that I wanted to hug him then and there. “I don’t care,” he muttered.

I put my hand on one of his clenched fists. “Adoption’s a serious thing, Cal. I love you and I’d really like to be your legal mother, not just your stepmother, but you have to want it, too.”

He didn’t say anything, just looked at me wide-eyed.

I made myself smile. “Of course, there are drawbacks. You won’t be able to say you don’t have to mind me because I’m not your mother.”

That almost got an answering smile from him as we both remembered that incident from last summer, and I felt a slight easing of tension in his fist.

“And you don’t have to stop loving your first mother either. Look at how many new people you’ve learned to love this year—Granddaddy, all your new uncles and aunts and cousins. That doesn’t make you love Dad or Grandma less, does it?”

He shook his head solemnly.

“So you think about it,” I said, “and if this is something you really want, we can talk to Dad about it in the morning, okay?”

Silence.

“Okay,” he whispered at last.

Breakfast was awkward the next morning even though Dwight was clueless and I tried to act normally. Cal talked to Bandit and avoided my eyes. Finally, I went into the bedroom, did my hair, and got dressed.

When I came back out, Dwight frowned. “I thought we were skipping church today.”

“You and Cal are, but I haven’t seen Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash in over a week, so I thought I’d go to church with them this morning.”

Relieved, he settled back with the Sunday papers while I put on my coat and found my car keys, then paused as I opened the door to the garage. “Besides,” I said, “Cal has something he wants to talk to you about.”

Cal gave me a stricken look, but before either of them could speak, I was out of there.

With my phone switched off.

When Mother died, I quit talking to Daddy and all my brothers except Seth, dropped out of college, and ran off the rails for a while. Too much tequila let me almost kill the car jockey I briefly married, and I headed for New York. When I finally came home, it was to Aunt Zell’s house in Dobbs, not the farm. They had turned part of their second floor into a self-contained apartment for Uncle Ash’s mother and it had sat vacant since her death. Aunt Zell had never given up on me, and because Uncle Ash was still out on the road as a buyer for one of the large tobacco companies, they both assured me I would be the one doing them a favor if I moved in and kept Aunt Zell company.

Aunt Zell is like Mother with the edges smoothed off—a “good woman” as opposed to a “good ol’ gal”—and she seemed happy to see me when I pulled into their drive just as she and Uncle Ash were setting out for church.

She could always read me like a book, but her only comment as she tucked her arm in mine was, “Your menfolk aren’t with you?”

The minister’s text for the sermon was Psalm 118:24: “This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”

I took that as a good sign. All the same, a whole flock of swallowtails were doing barrel rolls through my chest when I drove down the long winding lane to our house. As soon as I neared the closed doors of the garage, though, I started laughing. In leftover red paint, a crudely lettered banner stretched across the whole width: