She showered and put on comfortable clothes, which for her was a sweat suit. She looked at herself in the mirror and decided that she looked a little too casual. She slipped on a pair of jeans and a snug-fitting navy long-sleeved cotton T-shirt.
Pronouncing herself suitably dressed, she started a late dinner of roasted vegetables and spinach-stuffed salmon. It was ready when she heard Frank come in the door and empty his pockets into the small ceramic tray that held his keys, change, a watch—all the things he used only outside the house. The clink of metal on ceramic had come to be a comforting all’s-right-with-the-world sound to Diane. She smiled and decided she was glad she’d dressed in something a little sexier than fleece. She served up dinner in the dining room with candles.
“Is it my birthday?” asked Frank.
“After looking at some of the stuff I’ve looked at all day, I thought it would be nice to get away from it all,” she said.
“I’m good with that,” said Frank. “You look great.”
“Thanks.” She kissed him and went to get the wine.
After dinner they curled up on the couch with their glasses of wine. Curling up with Frank was getting to be Diane’s favorite pastime. She was just about to tell him that very thing when the phone rang. They both sighed. Frank got up to answer it.
Diane deduced that it was Frank’s partner, Ben Florian. Must be something important—he rarely called Frank at home. But it was hard to tell. It was a very one-sided conversation. Frank mostly listened, sitting on the arm of a chair.
“That was interesting,” said Frank when he sat down next to her again.
He gave Diane one of his eye-twinkling smiles, the kind that made his eyes sparkle and crinkle in the corners.
“Ben’s brain processes information in a kind of algorithmic loop. Data goes around and around until an answer occurs to him.” Frank took a sip of his wine. “Or, ‘He’s like a dog with a bone,’ is another metaphor I could use.”
“I take it he has an answer for something?” said Diane.
Frank nodded his head. “A pretty good answer. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. It seems so obvious.”
Diane straightened up and sat cross- legged with her back resting against the arm of the sofa, rolled her glass of wine in her hands, and watched Frank.
“Can you talk about it?” she asked.
“Actually, it’s about you,” he said.
Diane raised a brow. “Me? He’s got a circuit going through his head about me?”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” he said, grinning at her. “I told Ben about your adventure in the mountains, the tree, the skeleton, Slick and his girlfriend, her temper, her cousin with the walker, Slick following you to the museum to give back your stuff, the finger bones in the hood of your car—all of it. It’s all been making a circuit through his brain,” said Frank.
“And?” said Diane.
“And the answer Ben’s brain has come up with is that Slick and his girlfriend are involved with Social Security fraud,” he said.
Diane opened her mouth. “Okay, I’m listening.”
“You have a skeleton of an older person showing some disability that was walled up inside a tree. You have an elderly person with a disability staying with Slick and Tammy. Tammy, who doesn’t have a particularly generous nature, is being very solicitous to the so-called cousin staying with her. Put all these pieces together and one scenario that occurs to us fraud professionals is that they may be taking in vulnerable individuals and stealing their Social Security checks. It doesn’t have to be Social Security; could be any pension. But Ben thinks there may be some kind of fraud going on, and I agree.”
“But what about these people’s families? No one’s been reported missing,” said Diane.
“Do you know that for a fact?” said Frank.
“Well, I suppose not,” she said.
“They could be taking their victims from nursing homes,” he said. “Or just homeless people with a pension of some kind. Do you know how many homeless we have in Atlanta? They could choose the kind of person who has no one else in the world. All Tammy and Slick would have to do is change the address where the check is being sent. Or better yet, go down with the person to a bank and open up a joint account to have the checks direct-deposited. There are any number of ways they could play it.”
Frank shook his head. “They could just wait for the person to die. I don’t imagine Tammy and Slick are particularly good caregivers. Or they could murder their victims. Either way, they don’t report the death, and they continue to collect the check. It’s been done—mostly between relatives, but not always. It’s actually pretty safe for the criminal if it’s set up right. Tammy and Slick don’t have any neighbors. Nobody to watch them. It’s really a pretty good setup for that kind of thing.”
“Just their bad luck their tree fell on me,” said Diane. “Where do you think they pick up the people? Off the street? How would they know if they get a monthly check?”
“Probably not off the street. Probably Atlanta or nearby. Someplace where there’re lots of vulnerable people, like at a free clinic, a nursing home, places that provide services for people on pensions. We need to find out what Tammy did before she shacked up with Slick.”
“We?” said Diane.
“Yeah. I hate fraud. Have I ever told you that?” said Frank. “Besides, if we’re right, there’s a woman in danger. Do you think your new friend Travis might know anything about Tammy?”
“I don’t know. But I need to alert him about the woman living with them.” Diane grabbed the phone and called information to get Travis’ home number. It rang about fifteen times before he picked up.
“Travis,” he answered.
Diane explained their concerns. “I was wondering if you could check on the woman we saw there,” she said.
“Sure. I’ll be damned. That kind of makes sense, don’t it? That ol’ Slick’s slicker than I thought. I can go over there right now. I’ll let you know,” he said.
“Does your cell phone have a camera?” asked Diane. “I was wondering if you could get a picture of Tammy, and perhaps her guest.”
“You mean kind of spy-like?” he said.
“Yes,” said Diane.
“I can give it a try,” he said.
When Diane hung up, she turned to Frank.
“My lipstick,” she said.
“What?”
“I was going to throw it away, but it’s still in that sack of things Slick returned. There’s no way Tammy didn’t use it. I’ll bet it has her prints on it. I’ll lift them and see if we can get a match.”
“If we can get a picture of Tammy, Ben and I can run it by some of the clinics and nursing homes in the Atlanta area to see if anyone recognizes her,” said Frank.
Diane was surprised at how relieved she felt to have an explanation of Slick Massey’s and Tammy Taylor’s behavior. Ben’s analysis might be wrong, but it didn’t feel wrong. That was why they returned Diane’s things. Slick didn’t want her digging any deeper into their business. Diane felt energized. She was about to pour them another glass of wine when the phone rang again.
“Too soon to be Travis,” said Diane. She looked at the caller ID but didn’t recognize the number. She answered.
“Hello, is this Diane Fallon?” said a breathy female voice.
“Who is calling?” said Diane.
“This is Christine McEarnest. Roy and Ozella Barre are my parents. I was wondering if me and my brothers could come talk to you?”
Chapter 23
Christine McEarnest wore clothes well. She was slim, with a well-balanced body. She was wearing a shirtdress of chocolate brown polished silk, a wide dark belt, dark hose, and brown platform sandals. Her ensemble looked new. The men with her were less dressy. Her husband, Brian, wore Dockers with a khaki shirt. Her brother, Spence Barre, had on jeans and a denim shirt over a white tee. All three sat on the couch in Diane’s meeting room at the museum, looking solemn. Christine had red-rimmed eyes. Spence kept looking at his watch. Diane sat opposite them in one of the stuffed chairs. They had declined the drinks she offered them. Christine twisted an embroidered cotton handkerchief in her hand.
“I don’t know why Roy Jr.’s late. It isn’t like him,” she said.
This got a derisive grunt from her husband. Christine gave him a sharp look.
“Roy Jr. knows how important this is,” she said. “It was his idea.”
Christine had introduced all of them by explaining what they each did for a living—obviously an important thing to her, a sign that they had left the mountain hollow and made something of themselves. Christine managed a dress shop in Reston, Virginia. Her husband, Brian, worked for the U.S. Geological Survey as a computer technician. Her brother Spence was a medical technician in Knoxville, Tennessee, and her brother Roy Jr. owned an art gallery in Helen, Georgia. They had all done well and Christine wanted Diane to know it, to know that they and, more important, their parents mattered.
She hadn’t needed to convince Diane and certainly didn’t need to justify their existence to her. The truth that people mattered was written in Diane’s DNA.
“We need to get started,” said Brian McEarnest, glancing at his own watch. “We can’t waste Dr. Fallon’s time like this. Roy Jr. will be here when he gets here.”
“I know,” said Christine. “I was just hoping he would be here. I thought he would get here before us. Helen isn’t that far away.”
“You know Roy Jr.,” said Spence. “He gets all absorbed in a painting and time just stands still for him. He’s unaware that it’s ticking by for the rest of us.”
Christine and Spence looked like their mother—brown-blond hair, blue eyes, chubby cheeks. The last time Diane saw Ozella Barre alive, she was standing on her steps waving good-bye as Diane drove off. She was smiling; she looked cheerful. Diane imagined that under normal conditions, her children had their mother’s and father’s cheerful dispositions. Now they both sat looking like the world was ending.
“We don’t mean to waste your time,” Christine said to Diane. “We would like you to look into our parents’ deaths. Roy Jr. told us you are the one who discovered them.”
“He was a little unclear about why you were there,” said Spence. “Wasn’t it real early in the morning or something?”
Diane could imagine that it would be unclear. She doubted if the authorities in Rendell County had given them the whole story.
“Let me start by telling you about that evening,” said Diane. She hoped the events of the previous evening would give them the context they lacked about how Diane entered their parents’ home in the dead of night after they were in bed. She gave them a clear, brief description, from the time she first arrived at the Barre home to pick up the artifacts, to the time she was at their house again, and found them dead.
The three of them sat openmouthed—much like everyone else had when they heard the story. Brian was the first to speak when she finished.
“Slick Massey? Wasn’t that the guy in high school you used to tell me about?” he asked Christine.
“That’s him. He was always a strange no-account, but this is weird even for him,” she said. “Who was the skeleton?”
“I don’t know,” said Diane. “We know she was an older woman with some disabilities, but we don’t have enough information at this time to make an identification.”
“What is the sheriff doing about it? Nothing, I’ll bet,” said Spence.
“Massey and his girlfriend got rid of the bones. The expert the sheriff consulted . . .”
“Don’t tell me,” said Christine. “They’re saying the bones belonged to some animal.”
“They are saying the bones are too old to deal with,” said Diane. “Do you know a Dr. Linden?”
“Oh, yes,” said Christine. “He was our doctor for years. He’s a sweetie. You’re not saying he’s the expert? He was in practice when we were little. I thought he’d retired.”
“The sheriff called him in to consult about the bones and to do the autopsies. . . .”
“Autopsies?” said Spence, leaning forward. “He was our family doctor, a GP, for chrissake. No wonder Roy Jr. was concerned.”
“As I understand it, he had experience in the army,” said Diane.
Spence issued a derisive hiss. “When? World War One?” he said. “Why is Leland Conrad getting him to do the autopsies and not a real medical examiner? Are they in short supply in Georgia all of a sudden?”
“No, no shortage,” said Diane. “I recommended an excellent medical examiner. But it seems there are very few people Sheriff Conrad trusts.”
“Those people . . .” said Christine. She wrung her handkerchief some more. “That’s why we’re here.” She spread out her skirt with her hands. “The folks of Rendell County are good people,” she began the way people did when they were about to tell you just the opposite. “It’s just those Golgotha Baptists. As kids we called them Gothic Baptists. They were that strange—not like the rest of us Baptists at all. I don’t know why they even called themselves Baptists; they were so different from the other churches. Certainly nothing like First Baptist. We don’t mean to trash their church. There’s some good people there, but . . .”
“It’s Leland Conrad and the rest of the deacons who got themselves elected to public office,” said Spence. “If they had been content to practice their religion by themselves, instead of trying . . .” He threw up his hands, stood up, and walked over to Diane’s refrigerator. “I’ll take that drink, if you don’t mind. Anyone else?” They shook their heads. He opened the door and helped himself to a Coke.
“Look,” said Brian. “We’re just beating about the bush. What we came here for was to ask you to investigate Mr. and Mrs. Barre’s murders. The sheriff just isn’t up to it. You know, with all the forensic shows on TV, everybody in the country knows how to work a crime scene—everybody except the sheriff, apparently. His ‘ignorant and proud of it’ attitude is fine in his personal life, but it has no place in criminal justice. Me and my wife, and Spence here, and their brother, Roy Jr., are very worried that the killer won’t be caught. And now we hear there’s been another murder just like my in-laws’. Can you help us?”