The Buzzard Table (19 page)

She pulled off another bit of the hard roll and it crumbled in her fingers. She didn’t seem to notice. “Maybe he went back the next day after we met with Martin? That close, wouldn’t he have driven down that other lane and checked it out?”

“Maybe,” Dwight said. He opened a second quart bottle of beer and topped off our glasses. “Tell me about his visit with Crawford.”

“There’s really not much to tell. Martin was wearing some clothes that those buzzards had vomited on when he was banding it. Talk about gross! Then he was deliberately boring because he really didn’t want to help with Jeremy. I told you. He just showed us picture after picture of vultures. Vultures flying, vultures feeding, vultures roosting in treetops.”

“How did Jeremy react?”

“Polite, but by about the sixtieth or seventieth picture, he had run out of things to ask about focus or lenses. Martin could have told so many interesting things—organizing tour groups, the contacts he needed to make, lining up hotels and mountain guides, but no, it was one damn bird after another. We were both ready to pack it in and I was so furious with Martin that we went out on the porch and I jumped all over him. That’s when he admitted he really didn’t want to help but he couldn’t refuse when he was using Mother’s hospitality to write his article.”

Her slender fingers absentmindedly shredded another corner of her roll.

“And nothing was said or happened that might link to Rebecca Jowett’s death or to the airfield?”

“No.” She frowned. “Oh, wait! You know when you’re clicking through photo files, how those little thumbnails of different files will run along the top of the screen?”

Dwight nodded encouragingly.

“One of them showed a small jet. Jeremy spotted it and asked about it, but when Martin tried to go back to it, he couldn’t find the file. Which seemed rather odd to me then. Makes perfect sense now. He told Jeremy it was one of those puddle jumpers that fly between small cities and immediately changed the subject. That’s when I made him go outside with me so I could find out what was going on.”

“How long were you out there?” Sigrid asked.

“I don’t know. Five minutes? Six?” She wrinkled her nose. “His clothes stank so badly, I wasn’t in any hurry to go back in and sit down next to him, I can tell you that.”

We smiled and Dwight said, “So y’all left Jeremy alone with Crawford’s computer?”

“Plenty of time for a tech-savvy kid to find that file,” I said. “If he had a jump drive—”

“Two or three of them,” Anne said. “He doesn’t have a laptop or an iPad, so he uses those memory sticks to move data from his PC at home to the school’s computer.”

We kicked it around some more, wondering what the picture of a plane might mean. Anne had seen it only for a moment or two before Martin made it disappear, but from her sketchy description of the number of windows, Dwight said, “Probably a six-passenger Learjet. The kind of plane our man with the broken neck flew.”

O
ur impromptu supper party broke up around 9:30 and Dwight was silent on the short drive home. I knew he had to be thinking of all that Anne and Sigrid had told him, and I thought I knew where he’d wind up with those thoughts. Sure enough, when we reached the house, he did not cut off the engine.

“I’ll be back in about an hour,” he said.

“I’m coming with you.”

“No you’re not.”

“Dammit, Dwight! If you think I’m going to let you go alone to meet with someone who can kill with his bare hands, you can think again. Just let me check on the kids, see if they can stay another hour, okay?”

I got out, leaving the truck door open. “And if you drive off without me, I’ll roust out Bo Poole and half your deputies, I mean it, Dwight.”

He wasn’t happy, but he did wait while I went inside. Cal was already asleep and the kids were watching a scary movie that wouldn’t end till eleven, so they were willing to stay. Especially when I mentioned that there was a half gallon of Rocky Road ice cream hidden in the freezer under packages of peas. I made a quick detour back through the garage to get my .38 out of the locked toolbox in the trunk of my car. Daddy had given it to me back when I was still in private practice and driving all over that part of the state alone at night. Dwight made me get a permit once he realized I wasn’t going to give it up, but I probably don’t get it out more than once a year.

I tucked it into the deep pocket of my coat, a three-quarter-length car coat of thick black wool. What Dwight didn’t know wouldn’t hurt either one of us.

He was still frowning when I got back in the truck, and immediately started laying down conditions.

“I won’t speak unless spoken to,” I promised. “But let’s keep some space between us, just in case.”

For some reason, this amused him. “I really don’t think he’s likely to rush us or try anything physical.”

He described how Crawford had been unable to hoist himself up onto a table a few days earlier. “He
says
he fell down some stairs last year and broke both arms.”

I heard the slight emphasis on
says
. “You don’t think so?”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure his arms were broken,” Dwight said grimly. “He certainly doesn’t seem to have a lot of strength in the left one. But I doubt if he got hurt falling down some stairs.”

“So he couldn’t have been the one who broke that pilot’s neck?”

“Ordinarily, I’d say no, but we don’t know how badly he wanted the man dead. Assuming he did.”

“But he’s a spy?”

“He could be. Or an ex-spy.”

“Shouldn’t you tell the FBI?”

By the dashboard lights, I saw Dwight’s wry smile. “After they’ve made it very clear that they don’t want my help? If they haven’t tumbled to his interest in the airport, why should I tell them?”

“You’d let someone get away with murder before you’d swallow your pride?”

“It’s not always black and white, shug.”

I thought about that and what it could mean as we turned at the NutriGood intersection. The lights from a gas station at the edge of the highway beamed a dozen bright lights in every direction, polluting the darkness and washing out the stars. Why our county commissioners can’t make developers reduce the wattage on their lights and aim them downward is something I’ll never understand. They just look at me blankly when I corner one of them and ask.

When we reached the dirt-and-gravel road that led to the old Ferrabee place, I said, “You’ve never talked to me about when you were in Army Intelligence.”

“Sure I have.”

“You’ve talked about Germany, but not what you actually did there.”

He didn’t answer.

“Or why you got out.”

“Jonna hated the Army. She hated it as an enlisted man’s wife and she kept on hating it even after I was commissioned and started getting promoted.”

“So you got out because of her?”

He shrugged. “She thought it would save our marriage.”

“You’re evading the question,” I said quietly.

He didn’t answer until we reached the end of the road, where he stopped the truck, cut the headlights, and half turned to me in his seat. “Let’s just say that I got to a level where I didn’t like what I was seeing and I didn’t want to do the things I was going to be asked to do.”

“But you’ve stayed in touch with some of the people who stayed in.”

“Yes.”

“And they’ve told you something about the dead man. More than what you’ve told Anne and Sigrid.”

“Yes.”

“Things you’re not going to tell me?”

“Let it go, honey.”

There’s a time to push and there’s a time to back off.

“Okay,” I said.

He put the truck in gear, flicked on the lights, and we drove down to the old farmhouse. Crawford’s truck was parked out front, but there was no sign of light through the windows. Dwight pulled up only inches away from the porch and tapped the horn two or three times, then opened the door so that anyone inside the house could see by the interior cab light who we were.

A few minutes later, the door opened and Martin Crawford stepped out onto the porch. He was fully dressed in his heavy black jacket with his hat pulled low on his forehead as he peered out at us warily. “Bryant?”

“Sorry if we woke you, Crawford,” he said, one foot on the ground, the other on the edge of the floorboard, “but I need to talk to you, ask you a few questions.”

“They can’t wait till morning?”

The moon was about halfway to full, and when Dwight doused the lights, the stars overhead blazed out of the velvety sky. To the west, beyond the trees, we could see a faint glow of the lights from that service station, but the rest of the sky was pricked with twinkling points. Despite the moon, it was such a clear, high-pressure evening that I could even see the Milky Way swirling through the winter constellations. A cold wind blew up from the creek, though, and I hunched deeper into my wool coat as the cab’s heat was sucked away.

Crawford closed the door behind him and eased himself down to sit on the edge of the porch only a couple of feet away from Dwight.

“We had supper with your cousins tonight.”

In the moonlight, Martin Crawford’s face was a pale square beneath the brim of his black fedora. He didn’t speak.

“Anne’s remembered where she saw you before,” Dwight told him.

Silence.

“Somalia,” Dwight said.

Crawford took a deep breath and let it out so heavily I heard it from where I sat motionless.

“I was never in Somalia,” he said at last.

“She says you were. Almost twenty years ago. Mogadishu. A UN peacekeeping mission.”

“Really? We went out to dinner together? Had drinks?”

“You can play all the games you want, Crawford, but Anne knows what she saw.”

“You’re right. Forgive me. Stupid of me not to have shaved before meeting her again, but it was twenty years ago. She only saw my face briefly and not in full light.”

“I imagine every detail of that night is seared in her memory,” Dwight said mildly.

He didn’t answer. Cold was seeping into my bones and I drew my scarf up higher around my face. Crawford stood up as if to go back inside.

“It was kind of you to drive out and tell me this, Bryant, but I’m afraid your wife is getting chilled and I’m rather tired, so if you’ll excuse me…”

“A man was killed in a motel near here,” Dwight said. “He was a pilot.”

Crawford stopped with his hand on the doorknob.

“His neck was broken. Just the way you broke the neck of Anne’s guard.”

“Are you here to arrest me?”

“Should I be?”

He turned back to Dwight. “Now who’s playing games?”

“Not me. The FBI’s claimed jurisdiction.”

In the near darkness, I saw Crawford nod as if in professional sympathy. “Turf wars? They’re the same the whole bloody world over, aren’t they? So why are you here instead of them if it’s an FBI case?”

“It’s the boy. Jeremy Harper. He saw one of your photo files with an airplane on it. Anne thinks he may have copied it off your computer while you two were outside. It may have been what almost got him killed the same night someone killed that pilot. I was hoping you’d let me take a look. Help me figure out what it was.”

“Unless you have a search warrant, absolutely not,” Crawford said.

“Actually, I’m not real sure I need a search warrant,” Dwight drawled. “Our Constitution protects its citizens from unreasonable searches, but you’re not a citizen, are you?” He looked over his shoulder at me. “The feds might could come bustin’ in, but how you reckon you’d rule on that, Deb’rah?”

“Having never considered how our Bill of Rights might apply to a foreign national, I’d probably buck it up to a superior court judge,” I said.

Both men laughed. I wasn’t sure what was happening here, but I sensed an easing of tension between the two of them.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” Dwight said, drawing his leg back in the truck.

“I’ll count on it,” Crawford said. “Good night, Bryant. Judge.”

We were almost home before I finished working it out.

“You warned him!” I said. “You as good as told him that the FBI might be around to question him and impound his computer. Why?”

“He saved Anne’s life when he didn’t have to,” Dwight said quietly. “Probably at a serious personal risk. That has to count for something, don’t you think?”

The best thing about Dwight’s truck is the bench seat. So much more friendly than bucket seats. He reached over and drew me close to him. I leaned my head on his shoulder with my hand on his thigh and said, “I guess so.”

Dwight chuckled and gave me a quick kiss on the forehead. “Now aren’t you glad you didn’t need to shoot him?”

W
e got home to find an extra vehicle parked near the back porch, a white utility truck with the new company logo on the door. When Annie Sue got her electrician’s license last year, Herman had wanted their new logo to read “Knott and Daughter” as a slam at Reese, who’s never been motivated enough to take the exam to get his own electrician’s license even though he’s six years older. Annie Sue was not willing to embarrass her brother like that. Instead they had settled on a simple “Knott Family Electricians” underlined by lightning bolts tied together in loose knots.

In the living room, Lee, Jess, and Ruth were mesmerized by the TV, where that horror movie was building to a climax, but Emma had fallen asleep on the rug.

They waved and said hey as Dwight went on back to our bedroom.

“Where’s Annie Sue?” I asked.

Before they could pull their eyes away to answer, Dwight reappeared. “There’s a pretty young woman sitting on our bathroom floor,” he said and headed down the hall to the guest facilities.

He was right. Although Annie Sue may not be the prettiest of my nieces—Haywood and Isabel’s Jane Ann is generally considered the beauty of the family—none of the kids got hit with the ugly stick, and Annie Sue has been known to start a few male motors racing. Her hair, light brown or dark blonde depending on the season, was in a ponytail that she had pulled through the back of her billed hat that still had Herman’s old logo stitched across the front.

She sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by bits and pieces of a small motor. A piece of cardboard was taped over the hole in the wall above the tub where the exhaust fan had been when we left the house.

“Oh, hey, Aunt Deborah,” she chirped. “I told Uncle Dwight I could take this somewhere else, but he said for me to go ahead and finish here.”

“No problem,” I said. “But you didn’t have to do this tonight.”

“Granddaddy wanted me to reset his motion lights on the barn so Maidie could get home before they clicked off, and as long as I was out this way, I thought I’d take a look at your fan. I’m afraid it’s shot, though.” She began to gather up the pieces and put them in a plastic bag. “It shouldn’t have quit working this quickly, so I’ll bring you out a new one tomorrow and make the supplier pay for it.”

I spotted her needle-nose pliers and brought her my bracelet and the new charm Dwight had given me.

She found an empty link and carefully attached the little engraved head. “It’s so cool that you’re going to adopt Cal. I wish I’d gotten here before he went to bed. I told him I’d bring him some red flex next time I was out so he could make some wristbands.”

She handed me back the bracelet and cut her eyes at me in sudden mischief. “Reese asked me to take a look at that pig sign y’all put in the barn. Pretty cool, but it’s gonna take some time to get it working.”

“Get what working?” Dwight asked, sticking his head around the door.

“Your birthday present,” I said quickly.

He gave me a suspicious look. “My birthday’s not till May.”

“All the more reason for me to get started on it right away,” I said, and gave Annie Sue a wink. “I’m not sure I have enough wool and you know how slow I knit.”

My niece giggled and scooped up a couple of screws that had fallen to the floor when she stood to go. “I can get you a good deal on some dog hair and LEDs if you go that route.”

Dwight shook his head at our teasing. “Y’all’re not going to get me to bite.”

From the living room came sounds of the kids getting ready to leave. Lee pulled his sleepy sister to her feet and Dwight slipped her a twenty that she tried to refuse. “We should be paying you for the pizzas,” she said with a yawn, but he just closed her hand around the bill.

There were hugs all around, a chorus of engines in the yard, then Dwight and I were left in the sudden quiet of the house.

And whaddya know? It was still Valentine’s Day.

(Ping!)

Annie Sue arrived the next morning after Dwight and Cal had left for work and school. She popped the new exhaust fan into the old cutout and had it running in less than fifteen minutes. I didn’t have to be in court till 9:30, so I poured us another cup of coffee and was soon listening to why she had broken up with her latest boyfriend.

“I got tired of his dad’s sniping. He thinks it’s unfeminine for a woman to work a blue-collar trade. He just couldn’t deal with the fact that I have my own truck and that I’m out physically pulling wire through basements and attics. He thinks Andy would be happier with a more girly girl, as he puts it. And better educated. Like a teacher or a computer programmer. Never mind that I’m already making almost twice as much as most beginning teachers.”

I was appalled on her behalf. “He told you this himself?”

“No, but he told Andy.”

“And Andy agreed?”

“Well, you saw where I was on Valentine’s Day. Did you get stuff like this when you first became a judge? All that crap about ‘what’s a pretty little thing like you doing a man’s job?’”

“Not really. Most of the barriers in my profession had been broken by the time I got to law school. Your granddaddy was the biggest roadblock. He didn’t think my delicate ears could stand hearing all the ugly things people say and do to each other.”

She laughed, knowing how he still didn’t like anyone to use language around the women in his family. As if we hadn’t heard it all by the time we were ten.

“And we really have come a long way,” I told her. “I saw a woman working one of those monster bulldozers the other day. Power to the sisterhood!”

“One thing about my job. I don’t have to worry about it going offshore. People are always going to need electricians and plumbers and carpenters. All the same, I’ll be glad when people can take it for granted that we’re as competent in the trades as any man.”

I patted her hand. “All they have to do is look at Reese, honey.”

My first case of the day could have been a textbook for Annie Sue’s complaints. Ronnie Currin, 41, was charged with four counts of assault against his former boss and her other three employees, the “assault” being the adulteration of a food substance with intent to do bodily harm.

When the charges against him were read, I said, “How do you plead, Mr. Currin?”

“Not guilty,” he answered firmly.

For twelve years, Mr. Currin had evidently been a satisfied employee at Braswell Hardware and Seed Store here in Dobbs. Then Leland Braswell died and his wife Linda took over. Mrs. Braswell had worked side by side with her husband and knew as much about seeds and hardware as he did, but when she decided to freshen up the store’s faded appearance, expand the gardening section, and discontinue what she considered was an inferior line of hand tools, Mr. Currin took exception. He grumbled about the extra workload that the plants and hanging baskets caused, and what did a woman know about running a hardware store anyhow?

When Mrs. Braswell made it clear that he could be replaced and the other three employees told him to suck it up, he stopped joining them in the break room for coffee and doughnuts.

“He said coffee had started giving him heartburn, so he switched to ginger ale,” one of them testified.

Soon afterwards, the employees began to notice that the coffee tasted odd.

They changed brands.

The off-flavor continued.

Mrs. Braswell brought in a new coffeemaker. It worked fine for a few days and then the unpleasant taste began again.

Eventually, someone noticed a yellowish liquid around the top of the pot immediately after Mr. Currin had been in the break room alone. Mrs. Braswell had it tested.

Urine.

At that point, the ADA Julie Walsh looked around the courtroom and said, “Any real big coffee drinkers here today?”

When I raised my hand, along with four-fifths of the audience, Mr. Currin abruptly decided to plead guilty and throw himself on the mercy of the court.

I have to admit I wasn’t feeling all that merciful. I sentenced him to five years’ supervised probation and required him to get a mental health exam, pay a $2,000 fine, and reimburse Mrs. Braswell for two coffeemakers.