When we’d exchanged the prerequisite greetings a Southern phone call requires, I told him the bad news. “That car Maynard bought Friday was picked up in Orlando this morning with drugs under the fenders.”
He groaned. “You tryin’ to make me feel worse than I do, Judge?”
“Why? I thought you’d like to know.”
“What I know is, I gave Skell MacDonald a speeding ticket on Friday night and let him drive off into the night, with his daddy dead. The chief already wants my hide for that. Now you tell me the car Skell was so worked up over was stuffed with drugs, and you wonder why you’ve ruined my day? Because this is the one thing we’ve been missing in this case: a good reason for Skell MacDonald to kill his daddy.”
“It wasn’t Skell,” I protested. “He wouldn’t—”
Isaac’s words sent a chill to the pit of my stomach. “Don’t let your feelings override your good sense, Judge. Chances are about a thousand to one that he did.”
13
By the time Joe Riddley and I headed home, thick gray clouds had moved in again and trees were being whipped to a frenzy by a wind with icy edges. I was so busy hugging my coat around me in the car and waiting for the heater to kick in, I didn’t notice at first that Joe Riddley was heading in the wrong direction. “Honey,” I asked tactfully when I realized where we were, “where the dickens are you going?”
“Swinging by MacDonald Motors to be sure everything’s okay.”
Maybe he was clairvoyant, because just as we got there, we saw Laura’s Taurus in the lot and Laura herself walking toward the front door. She wore a navy pantsuit with a white turtleneck, and carried her briefcase as if this were any old workday.
Joe Riddley pulled in beside the Taurus and opened his door. “She oughtn’t to be working on Sunday. Her daddy wouldn’t like it.” He started toward the door at a lope. “Laura? Laura.”
After my recent conversation with Isaac, I wanted to see Laura about as much as I wanted to see my oral surgeon, but what could I do but follow the ornery old coot?
Laura turned, surprised but with a welcoming smile. “Hey, Mac. Hey, Joe Riddley.” The wind gusted around the corner as she fumbled with her keys. I shivered, and Joe Riddley rubbed his hands to warm them.
“What’s the matter with you, coming to work on Sunday?” he fussed. “Your daddy would paddle you.”
Laura gave him a sad smile as she turned the key in the lock. “He sure would, and I won’t make it a habit. But I had to get out of the house for a little while. It’s full of people. Besides, I need to count the money in the safe and get it in the night deposit box, because we’re closing tomorrow, too.” She held the door wide and invited, “Since you’re here, won’t you stay for a cup of coffee? I was going to make me some.” She added to Joe Riddley, “We’ve got a new can of Danish cookies.” Joe Riddley was partial to Danish cookies.
Before I could protest that we’d just eaten, he’d said, “That would be real nice,” and followed her. They both headed for a little alcove at the back of the showroom where there was a coffeepot and a sink.
What could I do but follow them?
While she put the coffee on to brew, I asked, “How’s your mother?”
She answered while she filled the pot with water. “Better now. Skell finally called around eight last night. Wanted me to go over and feed his ferret.”
Relief and fear came out of my mouth as anger. “Where in the Sam Hill is he?”
“I wish I knew. He was on his cell phone, and the call got dropped almost as soon as I answered. I expected him to call back, but he didn’t, then all circuits were busy, and finally his phone rang and rang and he didn’t answer.” Her voice was discouraged.
“Did you tell him about your daddy?”
“I didn’t get a chance. When I answered, he said, real fast, ‘Hey, Laura, I’m out of town and I forgot about Marvin. Go feed—’ That’s when we got cut off.”
“And he didn’t call back? How could he be so thoughtless?”
Laura shrugged as she measured coffee. “The worst part was, Mama got mad with me for not making him tell me where he was.”
“I’ll go see her a little later.”
“Wait until tomorrow.” She pulled out the cookies from an upper cabinet. “Like I said before, the house is full of people today. Gran, Grandy, and Uncle Jack and his family arrived this morning, and everybody who wasn’t there yesterday has dropped by this afternoon. It’s a real zoo.” Laura never had liked crowds of people unless they were in the stands and she on a playing field with a fence in between.
When the coffee was done, Laura looked around, puzzled. “Where . . . ? Oh, I know. The mugs are in Daddy’s office.” Customers got Styrofoam cups, but friends used “Skye blue” mugs with a little white Model T on them. “I’ll be right back.”
Generally, Laura had the temperament of a cow I raised as a 4-H project back in fourth grade. My daddy used to say if a tornado picked up that cow, she’d go on chewing her cud, waiting to be set down. Laura had that same gift for taking life pretty much as it came, so we were startled to hear her yell. She ran back with eyes big as salad plates, shaking so she could hardly gasp, “We’ve been robbed.”
She turned and stumbled back to the office with Joe Riddley right behind her.
I followed, of course. What else could I do?
There’s a reason I keep asking “what else could I do?” About the time I reached Skye’s office, it occurred to me I’d better start practicing what I was going to say to Charlie Muggins when he demanded, “And what were you doing on the scene of
this
crime, Judge Yarbrough?”
A closet door in one corner of Skye’s office stood open. The door to a safe at the back of the closet also stood open. Laura went to the safe and pulled out a sheaf of papers and a little white box. “There’s not a penny of cash in here.”
She sank into her daddy’s big chair and burst into tears, holding the papers and that little white box on her lap. Joe Riddley stood there wishing he was anywhere except where a woman was bawling. I hurried over to pat her on the back with one hand while, with the other, I rummaged around in my pocketbook for a tissue. I also took a quick peek around for a scarf, in case Marilee hadn’t been lying, but I didn’t really expect to see one, and I didn’t.
When I handed Laura the tissue, she sniffed, blew, and managed a watery smile. “Thanks. I guess we’d better call the police.” With a sigh, she reached for the receiver.
“Don’t use that phone,” Joe Riddley ordered. “It may have fingerprints.”
“Right.” Laura hauled herself to her feet, dropped the papers on the desk, pocketed the little white box, and followed him.
I stood there looking at the telephone, wondering why people always say that. How often do burglars make a phone call from the scene of a crime without gloves on? Chances are, most of them have cell phones anyway.
I was running through a scenario in my head—“Hello, Ma? This is Bill. I just rifled the safe down at MacDonald Motors. Need any groceries from the Bi-Lo on my way home?”—when Joe Riddley called, “Little Bit, what are you doing in there?”
He thought I was detecting, and few things make him madder. “Talking to myself,” I called back. “We were having a right interesting conversation.”
Laura was talking on the phone at Nicole’s desk, rubbing a wisp of hair across her bottom lip. Catching my eye, she dropped it.
As soon as she’d finished talking, Joe Riddley jerked his head toward three big “Skye blue” leather chairs set next to the plate-glass windows so customers could admire the merchandise in comfort. “You all go sit down. We might as well drink that coffee. I’ll get it.”
“I’ll get it.” Laura turned toward the coffee room, but he waved her back.
“Sit down, woman. Enjoy being waited on whenever you get a chance.”
“He is such a treasure,” she told me, wiping her eyes with one sleeve.
“Most days,” I agreed, rummaging for another tissue.
“Thanks.” She blew her nose. “I don’t cry very often, but this—this is too much.” She collapsed into one chair and let out her frustration in a long breath. “Everything is such a mess. The house is full of people, Mama can’t think straight and keeps wanting Skell to come home, the undertaker wants all sorts of decisions made, and now this.” She spread her hands, then let them fall to her thighs with a
plop.
Joe Riddley came from the back with three steaming cups on a tray, the whole can of cookies, a box of sugar packets, and a small carton of half-and-half. “You even remembered stirrers and napkins,” I congratulated him.
He handed me a mug. “Been drinking coffee longer than you’ve been born. I know what goes with it.”
“Stop it, you two,” Laura said tolerantly. She knows that picking at each other is one way we show affection.
We were so comfortable, sitting in butter-soft chairs drinking coffee, warm and toasty when it was so chill and gray outside, I could have persuaded myself for a few minutes none of the bad stuff had happened if Laura hadn’t observed sadly, “All I wanted to do was count the money and drop it in the overnight depository. Was that too much to ask?”
Something had been bothering me. “Why do you all have cash on the premises? I mean, selling cars isn’t like selling bags of feed and tomato plants, and even at Yarbrough’s we don’t take in much cash anymore. Folks use credit or debit cards, or checks.”
She took a swig of coffee and nodded. “Car dealers don’t get cash as a rule, but we take in some in the service department and down at Sky’s the Limit, some people come in and pay cash for a car. Recently we’ve even started selling a few on a layaway plan. That was my bright idea.” Her mouth twisted in a rueful smile. “It’s a lot more trouble than it’s worth, but we have so many folks in the county who need transportation and don’t have credit, so I persuaded Daddy and Skell to let people pick the car they want and pay ten percent down, then come by after payday each week and pay a little more. In most families, several members pitch in to help. When they’ve paid fifty percent, we let them take it home and keep paying.” She finished her coffee and set the mug down by her chair. “Daddy didn’t think it would work, but it has so far. Most folks don’t want to lose a car they’ve already got half paid off, and you have to have a car around here.”
She was right about that. Public transportation in Hopemore was limited to school buses.
“Most of them pay on Friday or Saturday,” she continued, “so Skell goes to the bank Friday for change; then he makes a deposit Friday night and Saturday afternoon. Yesterday, when we closed early, I threw all the money in the safe without counting it. I hadn’t even counted out their Friday take, because I was waiting for him to come back and tell me how much he had on hand Friday to start with.”
“We ought to see how somebody got in,” I suggested.
Joe Riddley waved me back to my chair. “Leave that to the police.”
I rummaged around in my head for something else we could be doing instead of sitting around. “You might call Ben and see if he heard anything here last night,” I suggested. “He didn’t leave until late.”
“That was Friday,” Laura corrected me. “We closed yesterday before four.”
“I know, honey, but Ben and his men came back.”
Her mug stopped halfway to her mouth. “Came back?”
“Yeah. We ate pie with him last night—at least, we had pie, he had supper—and he said he told the mechanics to pretend to leave, then to come back and finish the cars promised for yesterday. He didn’t leave here until he called you last night.”
Laura sipped coffee and digested that. “Ben’s the best thing that’s happened to this business in years.”
I hated to burst her balloon, but my own mind was on another track. “Can he get into the safe? If he was here alone toward the end, you don’t reckon—?”
I hated to even suggest such a thing. Business owners have to trust our managers. If we didn’t, we’d all go crazy. Yet every one of us knows that for all the wonderful employees we have, there’s the odd bad one.
Laura was a good businesswoman. She should have at least taken time to think it over, but she didn’t take a second to make up her mind. “Ben wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t.”
“Could he get into the safe?” Joe Riddley asked again.
She nodded. “Daddy—” Her voice stopped and she had to clear her throat before she could go on. “Daddy gave him the combination when he made Ben manager, so he could put away the money when we were all out of town. We didn’t generally leave much in there,” she added. “Daddy usually went by and made a night deposit on his way home. But he didn’t like me carrying money around town, so the nights I closed, I left it overnight and we made the deposit the next day.”
Joe Riddley set his cup down on the floor beside his chair with a click. “What about Skell? Could he have borrowed the money before he left town?”
Laura took longer to consider her brother than she’d taken to consider Ben, but her conclusion was the same. “I don’t think so. Back when he was in college, he took money from the safe once, and Daddy told him if he ever did it again, he was finished here.”
I shivered in the warm air. I could think of one set of circumstances under which Skell would have felt safe taking the money: if he knew his daddy was dead. The way Joe Riddley was suddenly fascinated with something outside the window, I knew he was thinking the very same thing—and probably afraid I’d mention it.
In our silence, Laura’s eyes filled with tears again. Angrily she swiped them away. I handed her my third and last tissue and realized I’d have to fetch toilet paper if she kept crying. Come to think of it, I needed to go back to the ladies’ room anyway.
She sniffed hard and stood up. “I ought to go wash my face before the police arrive.”
That answers the question for people who wonder why women always go to the bathroom in pairs. Most of us wait to go until somebody else suggests it.
Washing my hands reminded me of what I’d overheard on Friday. “Did your daddy and Ben fight a lot?” I asked, trying to sound casual.