I raised my eyebrows, even if Isaac couldn’t see. “Where did it turn around?”
“Backed—pretty crookedly, too. Disturbed the bushes and grass on both sides of the road for nearly a hundred feet to the nearest turnaround, then made a mess of turning. See?” He shone the light behind us, but I couldn’t see a thing. Meteorologists may be astrologers in my book, but forensics teams are downright magicians.
“The way he was lying,” Ike continued, “it looks like he was coming toward the car when he got hit. He sure wasn’t trying to get away.”
“How many sets of footprints were there?” I peered at the ground, but couldn’t make out a blamed thing in that light.
“We didn’t find any except his. Looks like whoever hit him never left the car.”
“How cold-blooded.” I shivered.
As Isaac dropped his beam back to the ground, I saw a second set of tire treads on the verge up near the body. “Whose are those?” I pointed.
Ike grunted. “Chief Muggins was the first here, and he got too close before he saw Mr. MacDonald. He blurred some of the car tracks and most of the footprints, but fortunately there are still enough to pretty much see what happened.”
“So what did happen?”
“Darned if we know. Looks like Mr. MacDonald drove somebody here, stood in front of the car, and said, ‘Here I am, run over me.’ Or else somebody had a gun, forced him out of the car, and told him to walk in front of it. He could have turned back toward them, pleading for his life, and they ran him down instead of shooting him.”
All of those pictures made my stomach cramp. But I shook my head. “I can’t imagine Skye getting into a car with somebody who was a threat to him. And if he did, I can’t see him driving his own car this far down a deserted road and meekly getting out so they could kill him.” I’d had a dreadful idea. “There’s no way he could have done it himself, is there? Rigged the car or something?”
“He’d have to be some rigger to fix a car so it would drive itself over to the church.”
“Maybe somebody found the car here, running, and took it back.”
“Without calling for help?”
“Maybe they were scared—a poacher or somebody who had no business being here.”
“What poacher would risk being caught driving MacDonald’s car? Everybody knows it.”
I scuffed my shoes on wet grass, trying to get rid of some of the mud and adjust to what he was saying. “You all are calling it murder?”
“About have to, don’t we?”
“But you have no idea who could have done it?”
Isaac hesitated so long, I knew he had some internal struggle going on. “Chief Muggins is set on Skell,” he admitted at last. “We have several witnesses, including me, who say Skell was pretty upset with his daddy for selling Maynard that car. I ticketed him for speeding last night. He told me all about the car, and said he was so mad at Maynard, he hadn’t noticed how fast he was going.”
“What time was that?”
“Around ten. Not far from here, either. And he was shaking pretty bad. As you might imagine, the chief isn’t too pleased with me for letting him drive away with just a ticket.”
“How were you to know at the time it could be important? Besides, can you come up with one reason why Skell would kill his daddy? Surely you don’t think he’d run him down over the sale of a car?”
“I don’t,” Ike agreed, “but Chief Muggins is working on it.”
“That skunk,” I muttered to myself. “You won’t let him get away with it, will you?”
He sighed. “I’m doing what I can, Judge, but you know how things stand. Once he’s made up his mind about something, it takes an act of God to change it.”
I turned back to my car. “Then it looks like God, you, and me had better get to work.”
The courthouse clock chimed eleven as I drove past. I tensed up, waiting for the cheerful carillon, but all I heard was silence. Somebody had had the good sense to turn it off at night.
I stumped into the house and propped both hands on my hips as I stood in the den doorway. “You didn’t have to call Isaac.”
“So you went on over there.” Joe Riddley nodded in satisfaction without even looking up from the television. “Figured you would. You want to go on up to bed, or you want to stay down here and catch the weather?”
I figured I might as well stay up to watch Marilee take a guess.
“She looks a little peaky.” Joe Riddley leaned forward to get a better view. He was right. Her red dress and bright lipstick made a valiant attempt to hide it, but Marilee’s curls had less bounce, her eyes less sparkle, her nose a suspicious pinkness.
Joe Riddley stumped up to bed, complaining, “She didn’t even tell us good night.”
“Come here, you old bear,” I told him. “I’ll do better than that.”
12
Sunday after dinner, little Tad took us to the garage to admire the ferret. Cindy had created a ferret Hilton by filling a large dog cage with boxes to climb on and hide under, bowls for food and water, and a soft blanket to lie on.
After that, Cindy suggested that Jessica show me her room. “The decorator just finished. It’s a teenager’s room now,” she added proudly.
I managed to resist pointing out that the child was scarcely eleven, but when I got there, it took every ounce of willpower I possessed not to exclaim, “Who spilled the Pepto Bismol?”
In addition to new furniture, Jessica had soft pink carpet, pink striped wallpaper, and a comforter and pillow shams that looked like a heap of roses on the bed. A battered brown leather pencil holder beside the computer on her desk looked like a crumb of rye bread on a wedding cake. “Do you like pink?” I asked Jessica, not yet able to meet her eye.
She shrugged. “It’s all right.” The child’s mother had dressed her in pastels and ruffles all her life, but her square chin and a certain firmness around her eyes made me wonder whether she liked them or merely endured them.
“What happened to your dollhouse and your other stuff?” Joe Riddley and I had built that dollhouse for her fourth Christmas, and added to it each year. We’d envisioned it getting handed down to Jessica’s own children.
She tiptoed to her walk-in closet and opened the door like she was giving me a peek at a forbidden magazine. The dollhouse, her favorite dolls, and all her stuffed animals were arranged along the baseboard in a small world of their own. I suspected Jessica would enjoy playing in there with the door closed, anyway. She was a very private little girl.
Next she hurried across the room and laid one hand proudly on her desk. “Don’t you love this? Mother wanted a vanity to go with the chest, but Daddy said I could have the desk instead. It’s got three drawers for all my stuff. And I have my own phone.” It was, of course, an extension of the main line. Not even Walker and Cindy were silly enough to give a child her own phone line, particularly in Hopemore. It was also pink, but I was impressed that Jessica had arranged the room to put the phone on her desk instead of beside her bed. It’s exactly what I would have done at her age, if I’d had a phone.
I went over closer to admire it. “It’s a lovely desk. I like your pencil holder, too.”
“Thanks.” Her mouth curved up in happiness. “It was Daddy’s. He gave it to me.” She adjusted it a fraction of an inch. “You can sit down, if you want,” she added casually. She sat on the desk chair and twined one thin leg around its dainty curved one. Of course I sat. I couldn’t remember sitting down for a solo chat with this granddaughter since she was seven. But just as I settled into the pink-and-white checked armchair near the window, the telephone rang.
She reached over and picked it up with such a professional air, I suspected she’d been practicing. However, she didn’t speak, just listened. Walker and Cindy had better be careful what they said on the phone from now on. I couldn’t see her face, but Jessica’s back stiffened and she listened intently; then she thrust the receiver toward me like it had grown hot. “You take it.”
At first I couldn’t understand who it was. The words were fast and garbled, hysterical, even. “Slow down,” Walker said from downstairs. “I can’t understand you.”
“They’ve arrested ’em.” Clarinda’s voice was an octave higher than usual. “We gotta do somethin’. Maynard and Selena are both in jail down in Orlando.”
“How do you know?” I blurted without bothering to announce I was on the line.
“I’m down at your house bringing back the tablecloths and dishes I borried for Friday night’s party, and I answered the phone. Maynard only got one call, and you weren’t here.”
How was I to know I should hurry home from church so friends could call to tell me they’d been put in jail?
“Tell Mama what you just told me.” Walker didn’t even complain that I’d butted in.
“Police came to their hotel room this morning around eight, poundin’ on the door. They weren’t even up yet—it was their wedding night, remember? Said they’d gotten a tip about drugs being smuggled, and they’d found ’em up under the fenders of their car.”
I untangled pronouns as she went. “Drugs?” I more breathed than said the word. In my five months as a magistrate I’d had to learn to spell the names of drugs I never knew or wanted to know existed. What used to be a trickle was now spreading up from Florida faster than Noah’s flood. However—
“Maynard doesn’t use drugs,” I snapped, then added, “I don’t think.” Who knew for sure, in these strange days? I had gone cold all over.
“ ’Co’rse he doesn’t. How can you even think such a thing? And Selena a nurse. Somebody planted ’em. I wouldn’t have said they had an enemy in the world, but you never can tell where the forces of darkness will strike next. What we gonna do?” Like a diver on a board, her voice rose on the last word, then plunged.
“Do they have a lawyer?” Walker asked.
“Not yet. I told you, Maynard only got one call, and he didn’t know who to call except you folks. And then your mama wasn’t even here.” She paused for the reproach to sink in. “They haven’t had a bite to eat, and they won’t let him talk to Selena—he’s fit to be tied.”
Maynard wasn’t the only one.
“Let me talk to Walker a minute, then call you right back. Stay there.”
“I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
I hurried downstairs, where Walker was explaining to Joe Riddley and Cindy what was going on. I collapsed onto the sofa beside my husband and took his hand. “We can’t tell Hubert,” was the first thing he said. “His heart still isn’t strong.”
“At least now we know why Skell was so upset when Skye sold that car,” I muttered. “He’d hidden drugs in it.”
“I don’t believe Skell is selling drugs,” Joe Riddley insisted.
“You think Maynard is?”
He kept shaking his head. “I don’t know what to think. Or even how to think.” I knew what he meant. I felt so sick right that minute that somebody ought have called me an ambulance—except nobody else in the room looked well enough to make the call.
Joe Riddley’s eyes asked a silent question. I nodded and said, “You need to go to Orlando, Walker. We’ll pay for your plane ticket and their bail. This is just damnable. And don’t everybody look so shocked,” I added. “It’s exactly the right word for this situation.”
“Sure it is,” Cindy hurried to agree.
The way Walker’s lips were twitching, he wanted to say something else—probably related to times when he’d used similar words and had his mouth washed out with soap. “How soon can you leave?” I asked, to forestall him.
“As soon as I can pack a few things. But I’ll drive. I’ll get there sooner than if I have to drive all the way to Atlanta, park, get through security, and catch a flight. And I’ve got a college buddy who’s a lawyer in Jacksonville. I’ll give him a call on the way down and see if he knows lawyers in Orlando.”
“Pull off to call,” I reminded him. I hate it when people drive and talk. “Anything we can do for you while you’re gone?”
Walker skewed his eyes toward his wife. “Do you and the kids want to come?”
She opened her mouth, but Joe Riddley spoke first. “This won’t be a vacation, son.”
“I agree.” Cindy went over and put a hand on Walker’s arm. “You go down and do what has to be done. We’ll be fine here. Mac and Pop will take care of us.” She gave us a brave smile. I had never been prouder or happier to have her for my daughter-in-law.
“Where are you going, Daddy?” Jessica stood in the doorway. None of us knew how long she’d been there.
“I have to go down to Orlando for a day or two.”
“Without us? You’re going to Disney World without us?” Her voice rose in disbelief.
“I’m not going to Disney World, honey. I have to go on business.”
“Maynard’s in jail down there,” I explained. She’d already heard enough to need to know the rest. “Your daddy has to go help him get out.”
“What did he do?”
“Nothing. The police just think he did.”
Her eyes narrowed. With both hands on her hips, she turned back to him. “Don’t you dare go to Disney World without us. You hear me?”
Walker guffawed. Cindy covered her mouth with one hand and emitted what sounded to me like a snort. Joe Riddley’s shoulders shook, he laughed so hard. “Honey,” he asked her, “did anybody ever tell you you’re the spittin’ image of your Me-mama when you’re mad?”
Her face grew pink with indignation. “Don’t be silly, Pop. Me-mama’s old.” She turned back to Walker, hands on her hips. “What are you going to do to help Maynard?” She made it more of a demand than a question.
The rest of them were still grinning like dogs who’ve spotted dinner.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “Your daddy will get down there and straighten everything out.”
Jessica believed me. I wished I did.
Walker and Cindy went up to pack, and Joe Riddley challenged Jessica to a game of checkers. I slipped into the kitchen where I’d left my pocketbook and called Isaac James on my cell phone. I called his cell phone, too, because if I remembered correctly, Chief Muggins was at the station this afternoon and Ike was home.