TheCart Before the Corpse (27 page)

“They calmed down once they convinced the family to sell them the other parcel. Much bigger. Over a hundred acres and prettier too, for a resort and a golf course. Not so good for horses. They paid more per acre than Hiram did, which made Whitehead even madder.” He chortled. “I enjoyed that. Always thought it was kind of strange Whitehead backed off on harassing Hiram about his property. He doesn’t usually fail. He’ll do just about anything to impress the Governor and make sure he’s indispensible. His master has a short temper and has been known to whack him on his tail when he doesn’t deliver. He knows the Governor has plans for the future. Thinks he can go to Washington, God help us.”

“Would Whitehead go so far as to kill Hiram?”

“Why?” Robertson’s feet came off his desk and he sat up straight. “Place goes to his daughter, and it’s free and clear now.”

“Because she might be more willing to sell? Funny that he’d be killed just before she came to visit.”

Robertson nodded. “Thought about that myself. Doesn’t seem like the kind of lady to back off from a fight, and I get the feeling she might actually stay around and run the place.”

“But Whitehead may not have known that. He might have thought the death would lead to a quick sale.”

“He didn’t know about the mortgage insurance.” Robertson snickered. “Mad as a wet hen when he found out, not from me, let me tell you.”

“Would you happen to know who inherits if she dies?”

Robertson took a deep breath. “I don’t know for certain, but she has a daughter who is a newly-hatched broker in New York City.”

“And probably would sell.”

“Might well. Want another beer?”

“No thanks.” Geoff waved his empty bottle. Robertson nodded toward a leather-covered wastebasket beside his desk. “Drop it in there.”

On his way out, Geoff said, “If you hear anything you think could be of help, would you call me?”

“Sure thing. Oh, I almost forgot. Some peckerwood named Tom Darnell showed up outside of court yesterday evening ranting and raving about wanting his momma’s carriage back right now. You know anything about that?”

“Indeed I do. He won’t be getting it anytime soon. Thanks for telling me.”

Robertson watched him to his car, then closed his front door and went back to whatever Saturday afternoon football game he’d been watching.

Geoff called Amos from his car and said, “Merry Abbott might be in real danger from Whitehead.” He repeated the salient facts of his interview with Marks. “Time to check his alibi very closely. He looks to have the best motive for killing Lackland.”

“Better warn her not to work alone out at the farm,” Amos said. “Better yet, I’ll tell Peggy Caldwell to go with her when she’s out there. Peggy could use a hobby. Ida says her heart’s never really been in gardening, although she gives it a go every year. We got an email for you from your office, by the way. They’re fast, and on Saturday. Impressive.”

“Hey, old buddy, crime never sleeps and neither does the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Want to take a run over to talk to Imogene Darnell?”

“Sure thing. Pick me up.”

Sandy stopped Geoff in the moment he walked into the hall of the police station and handed him a sheet of paper. “Your office emailed this. I printed it off for you.”

“What’s it say?”

Sandy blushed. “I would never read your emails, Agent Wheeler.”

As they closed the door to the police station behind them, Amos whispered, “Sure she would. You’re just lucky she decided you could have it.”

Geoff shook his head, laughing, and followed Amos out the door. He read as they drove out of Mossy Creek toward Bigelow. “Well, well, well. I think I know why Whitehead backed off.”

“You gonna tell me or keep it a deep, dark secret?” Amos asked as they turned onto the highway. He sped up. Even the sheriff wouldn’t dare stop Amos’s car for speeding.

“Hiram had extensive soil and water tests done after he bought the land. Apparently he didn’t confine his activities to his own land, but had the surveyor move over the border into the governor’s parcel and take samples there. Lackland’s soil and water are fine. The streams run off straight down his side of the hill. The other side, however . . . ”

“The governor’s side?” Amos asked and passed an eighteen-wheeler before swinging back into his own lane.

Geoff nodded. “The other side once hosted some hard-scrabble diamond mining in the early twentieth century. Know what you use to clean diamond dust? Arsenic and Cyanide.”

Amos slammed on his brakes, pulled over onto the shoulder and stopped. “Sweet Mother. The ground water’s contaminated?”

“Not the ground water so much,” Geoff said. “The topsoil itself, down the hill where there were tailings. Acres of it. And not badly contaminated, just enough so you wouldn’t want to drill wells for private homes into it.”

“Could it affect Mossy Creek? Can it be fixed?”

“I don’t have the whole report, just a summary. And a snide note from one of my colleagues about not asking for miracles on the weekend. Mossy Creek is not involved. Any ground water flows the other direction, away from town and away from Lackland’s property. The soil problem can be fixed, but it will cost a bundle to remove the topsoil and replace it, which would entail cutting down trees, and test anywhere they want to drill a well. Bringing water from Mossy Creek or Bigelow would cost an arm and a leg. Have to build the lines and a new water tower.”

“Those reports are a matter of public record,” Amos said.

“Only if the public is looking for them, and they wouldn’t be, would they? Not if Whitehead and his buddies don’t mention them in their real estate prospectus. He’s not above burying them or removing them entirely if he gets the chance.”

“Now that, my friend,” Amos said as he started the car and pulled onto the road, “Is a dandy motive for murder.”

Imogene Darnell lived in a big old farmhouse that had once been white and needed to be scraped and repainted. The old paint was peeling like the bark of a birch tree.

A large barn that looked as though it had once been used for cattle stood behind the house. If it had ever been painted, the paint had long since flaked away leaving unpainted gray clapboards. The whole structure canted slightly towards the pastures in back of the house.

“Hard to tell how much acreage she has,” Amos said as they bumped into the rutted circular driveway and stopped at the sagging front porch. “Probably not nearly enough left to support a cattle operation, but it could have been a thriving farm once upon a time.”

The house might be in bad shape, but the foundation plantings of old English boxwood, azaleas and roses were meticulously trimmed. Jonquils were already blooming, and the azaleas were in bud. Interspersed with the jonquils were grape hyacinth and sprouting iris that would bloom in another month. This was a woman who loved her garden.

“Wonder whether son Tom ever helps her,” Amos said. “Nah.”

“She’s no spring chicken,” Geoff said. “But she looks as though she’s worked hard all her life. Probably outlive us all.”

The steps to the porch sagged under their weight, but the porch felt secure enough. When Geoff twisted the old-fashioned doorbell, he heard it snarl inside the house. Even a deaf person should be able to hear that sound.

He thought she might be off with Tom doing her shopping, but after a long minute, he saw her tall, gaunt figure moving toward them through the etched oval of glass in the old front door.

She peered at them, then held the door open wide with a welcoming smile. “Why, if it’s not Amos Royden and Agent Wheeler.” She stepped aside. “Y’all come right on in.” She led them into the front parlor that was probably only used for company. The furniture dated from the fifties, but was immaculately clean, and the room smelled of lemon furniture polish. A dried fan of magnolia leaves stood in a brass vase on the hearth. “Now, y’all sit right down. I’ll just go get us some sweet tea.”

“Please, ma’am,” Amos said, “Don’t go to any trouble.”

“It’s no trouble. I was about to have a glass myself. It’s all made.” She strode out of the room, and a moment later they heard the clink of ice in glasses.

When she came back in carrying a big wooden tray with glasses, pitcher, and a dish of lemons, Geoff jumped up to take it from her and sit it on the coffee table in front of the sofa.

“Why, thank you, Agent Wheeler.” She poured and handed round the glasses. “Now, what can I do for y’all on a Saturday afternoon?”

“We wanted to ask you about your carriage,” Amos said. “Your son seems extremely anxious to get it back.”

Her face darkened. “Huh. I am flat tired of making excuses for that boy. What’s he done now?”

The boy in question was probably in his forties. “Nothing illegal,” Amos said. “How’d it wind up in Mr. Lackland’s shop?”

She leaned forward and put her large, arthritic hands on her knees. Unlike most of the women of Geoff’s acquaintance, she was actually wearing what his mother would call a housedress instead of jeans or slacks. She wasn’t wearing stockings, however, and wore flip-flops on her bony feet. “Hiram was helping me clear out the barn. I’m going to have a big yard sale when we get it all done.” She sighed. “Or I was planning to. Now I don’t have anyone to help. Hiram knew how much things you find in a barn would sell for. He’d been around barns and rich people a long time. I don’t want to be selling any treasures for fifty cents if I can help it.”

“How’d he come to be doing that, ma’am?” Amos asked.

“First pickin’s.” We looked at her blankly and she continued. “My son is bound and determined he’s going to get me out of this house and into a retirement community. I tell him if he’ll just wait a few years, I’ll be dead and gone for good, but he’s anxious.” She looked at the room with its faded cabbage rose wallpaper. “I tell him I intend to die here just like his father and his grandparents before him did. It’s hard to keep the place up on the little money I get, so I put an ad in the
Mossy Creek Gazette
for a yard sale. Just some junk I didn’t need any longer. Hiram came to see what I had. He was such a nice man, I told him my old barn was packed with things I needed to get rid of but couldn’t find the time or the energy to go through. He offered to help.”

“That’s where the carriage was?”

“Tell the truth, I’d forgotten it was there,” she said and ran her hand down her cheek. “Been in my family forever. We got to talking, and he said he could refurbish it so I could sell it, maybe get as much as two thousand dollars net out of it.” She beamed at them. “With two thousand dollars I could pay part of the back taxes and keep a little bit to fix the porch steps. I never planned to tell Tom about it, but he went looking in the barn for whatever he could run off with, and saw it was missing. He dragged the whole story out of me.” She drew a cavernous sigh.

“He was so mad, but I finally got him to see that having Hiram fix it up was a good thing. He let it go until he saw about Hiram being dead. He thinks he can find somebody else to fix it up cheap enough to sell and keep the money himself to make a down payment on one of those tiny little apartments in that retirement community.” She lifted her head and Geoff could see tears in her eyes. “I won’t let him have it. It’s mine and the money’s mine too.”

“Of course it is,” Amos said. “Mrs. Darnell, has he . . . threatened you in any way?”

She gave a sharp bark of laughter. “I could still spank his bottom if he tried and he knows it.” She looked away and touched her cheek again.

Geoff and Amos exchanged looks. Geoff thought that whatever she said, at some point the bastard had slapped her. Although no bruise remained, her memory of it did. Geoff knew Amos agreed. Tom was going to pay. If not for murdering Hiram, then for domestic violence. She might not be a pushover, but she was probably over seventy, and her son was a man in his prime.

“He threatened you, didn’t he?” Amos asked gently.

When she turned to look at him, her eyes brimmed with tears that threatened to spill over. “He said if I didn’t do what he said, he wouldn’t take me to the grocery or church or the funeral ladies or the garden club or anywhere. He knows I can’t drive anymore. The other ladies are real good about toting me, but I hate to keep asking them.”

She was obviously
embarrassed
to ask them, to have to admit that her rotten son was for all practical purposes keeping her a prisoner in her own house.

“Mrs. Darnell, you let me know if he so much as hollers at you,” Amos said. “Here’s my card with my cell phone number on it. I’m
serious
now.”

She took the card in trembling fingers. “But I’m not in Mossy Creek.”

“You let me worry about that. Now, may I have your son’s address? I think it’s time I introduced myself.”

She sucked in a breath and her eyes widened. “You mustn’t talk to him about any of this. Please, promise you won’t.”

“Ma’am, we can’t promise,” Geoff said. “We have to talk to everyone. I promise we won’t mention we’ve talked to you, though.”

“He didn’t do anything to Mr. Lackland,” she said, twisting her liver-spotted hands in her lap. “He’d never hurt a living soul. He yells sometimes, and he drinks a little when he’s upset, but he’s never raised a hand to Charlene that I know about.”

Geoff noted she didn’t say he’d never raised a hand to
her
. This was one of the times he wished he wasn’t hamstrung by the law. He’d like to take Tom Darnell out into the woods and beat the crap out of him.

Actually, arresting him for murder might be equally satisfying. They just had to prove he’d commit murder for a couple of thousand bucks. Geoff had seen murders committed for
five
bucks, so killing a man over two thousand didn’t seem much of a reach.

Mrs. Darnell waved to them as they drove away, and stood in her open door until they reached the road.

“I hate him,” Geoff said quietly.

“Me too,” Amos said. “Want to go haul his ass in and keep him until Monday morning just for fun?”

“Great idea, but I’d rather leave him loose until we can prove he’s our killer. Then we can keep him much, much longer.”

Chapter 27