A Field of Poppies (9 page)

Poppy tensed. “Okay.”

“
I visited your mama four days ago,” Gladys said.

“
You did? She never mentioned it, but I’m grateful. Mama loved you so much.”

Gladys’s eyes welled as she took a tissue out of her pocket and blew her nose, but when she spoke, it was very matter-of-fact.

“
You do know she was ready to die.”

Poppy shrugged. Even though she’d sensed more than once that her mother had wanted to talk about it, Poppy had never been willing to go there. Now it was too late.

“
Well, she was,” Gladys said. “She was plain wore out from the sufferin’ and you need to accept that. Everyone dies and it was your mama’s time. She made me promise to tell you and make sure you understood that if a doctor had come in and told her there was another treatment to try, she was gonna tell him no.”

Poppy was shaking. It took her a few moments to realize that it was from a feeling of relief.

“
I think I’m most upset that she died alone, without any of her family there,” Poppy said. “It’s something that’s been weighing on my mind.”

Gladys waved her hand as if she was shooing away a fly. “Honey, I can’t tell you how many times in my life I’ve heard Helen say, ‘there are only two things in life you have to do alone, getting yourself born, and figuring out how to die.’ Ain’t no one on this earth who can help you through it or do it for you. Understand?”

Poppy bit her lip in the hope she wouldn’t cry again. There were still things she needed to say and bawling all over the place wouldn’t help.

“
Can I ask a favor of you?”

Gladys beamed. “Anything.”

“
I need a ride across the bridge tomorrow. I saw a pink dress in Bolton’s window display that I want to get for Mama’s viewing, and I need to take it to the funeral home so they can get her ready.”

“
I’ll do better than that,” Gladys said. “When you’re ready to go tomorrow, you just come down to the house and get my car. Do all the running around you need to do tomorrow and bring it back when you’re done.”

Poppy sighed. Huge problem solved.

“
Thank you, Gladys. Thank you, so much.”

“
It’s the least we can do.” Then she remembered why she’d come. “I swear, I almost forgot. I brought you some of my chicken pot pie. All you need to do is pop it in the oven for about twenty minutes to heat it back up and it’ll be good to go. Now I need to be gettin’ on home to see to Mel’s dinner. He don’t like to be kept waitin’. ”

“
I appreciate your thoughtfulness and help,” Poppy said, and then followed her to the front door.

Gladys stopped long enough to put on her coat and give Poppy a kiss, then she stood in the doorway watching Gladys hurry down the steps, waiting for Gladys to turn around and wave, which she did. Predictability was oddly comforting.

Poppy waved back then took the pot pie into the kitchen to reheat. Once it was in the oven, she got the notepad out of the junk drawer and wrote down the first name.

Gladys Ritter – chicken pot pie.

She knew the rules of the house for when someone died. Keep track of the food and flowers for thank you notes later. She’d just never thought about being the one on the sad end of the situation.

The aroma was beginning to fill up the small room. On any other night, she would be waiting anxiously for it to come out of the oven. Tonight, the last thing she wanted was food, but again, she knew she would eat.

Only the strong survive.

Chapter Five

Early the next morning, John Sadler notified his boss he was going home. For the most part, he was a self-sufficient man. He was twenty-eight, fairly solvent, and women thought he was good-looking, but he knew something the rest of the world didn’t. He was an emotional coward.

The guilt of what he’d done to his mom was overwhelming. She’d literally wasted away and died without seeing him again. He couldn’t even use the excuse that she wasn’t his birth mother as a reason, because she’d loved him without boundaries.

He’d just turned eight, and had no memory of a mother when his Dad married Helen. Never once had she made him feel less important than Poppy, who was born less than a year later. And because he was loved, he knew how to love the new baby, too. There were no words to explain his act of cowardice. All he could do was get home and start over with his sister – if she’d let him.

He crammed the last of his shirts into the suitcase, zipped it shut, and within minutes was out of the apartment and in the midst of Atlanta traffic. Thirty minutes later he was eastbound on I-85 heading toward North Carolina. From there he would hit I-77 north and take it all the way to West Virginia. After that it would be small roads and back roads, but it didn’t matter. John Sadler was going home.

****

Mike Amblin came into the precinct carrying a box of doughnuts and a to-go cup of black coffee. When Kenny Duroy saw the Franny’s Bakery logo on the side he started to grin.

“
Did you get any bear claws?”

“
Good morning to you, too,” Mike drawled, as he opened the box and took out two doughnuts, then passed the box. “Help yourself and then put the box in the break room, will you?”

“
Glad to,” Duroy said, as he fished out a giant, sugar-glazed bear claw and laid it on a napkin, licking his fingers as he walked away.

Mike was downing the last bite of his first doughnut when Kenny returned.

“
What did you find out from Harmon?” Mike asked, as Duroy took a big bite of his sweet roll.

Kenny talked around the bite he was chewing. “He’s in a shitty mood. Yesterday on the way to the mine where Sadler worked, he ran over some kid’s dog. He says he doesn’t want to talk about it, but then brings it up every time there’s a break in the conversation.”

Mike grimaced. “That’s tough.”

Duroy nodded. “He said he went to Caulfield’s office to ask him why Sadler had been fired. Caulfield admitted he didn’t know the man or the situation, which I suppose is understandable considering how many aspects there are to Caulfield Industries and the number of people he actually employs. However, once he learned where Sadler worked, Caulfield hooked Harmon up with the foreman, a man named Tom Bonaventure, who happens to be the man who fired Jessup Sadler. Bonaventure said Sadler got fired because he came to work drunk. I have a list of names of the men who worked the same shift Sadler worked. That’s your copy.” He tossed a sheet of paper on Mike’s desk and took another bite of his sweet roll.

Mike scanned the list, recognizing several names, but knew talking to them wasn’t going to be easy. Since they worked the day shift at Caulfield #14 they were, at the moment, somewhere deep inside a mountain. He’d have to catch them at home after dark.

“
I’ll take the top half, you take the bottom, okay?”

“
Sure,” Kenny said, circling the names on the list.

Mike took a sip of coffee as he sorted through a stack of new reports. He paused then picked one up from the coroner.

“
Did you see this?”

It was a report listing Sadler’s time of death between 11:47 p.m. which was when his wrist watch stopped, presumably when he went into the water, and no later than 2:00 a.m. with an addendum that he couldn’t be more specific due to the cold temperature of the water in which Sadler had been found.

“
Yeah, I did. Did you get any security footage from that quick stop?” Kenny asked, licking sugar off his thumb.

“
I have some, but the clerk wasn’t all that positive about us being able to see anything on it. He said the quality of the footage isn’t good, even when the sun is shining.”

Kenny frowned. “I never understood that. Spend money to put up security but use shoddy equipment. Then you’re screwed if you ever really need it because you can’t see a damn thing.”

“
I think a lot of people believe just the appearance of having security cameras is enough to do the job.”

“
It’s still stupid,” Kenny said.

Mike shrugged. No need to argue with the truth. He grabbed the last bite of doughnut and shoved it in his mouth, then picked up his coffee.

“
I’m going to get the security tapes from the evidence locker. I’ll be in the tech room if you need me.”

****

It didn’t take long for Mike to fast-forward through the footage from the gas station to the time when they knew Sadler had left the hospital. But it took a little more than two hours watching seriously shitty footage before he finally saw Sadler’s car arrive at the station.

He leaned forward, watching intently to see who emerged from the car. What he wasn’t expecting to see were two skinny white boys. They looked like kids, but it was hard to judge age when he couldn’t make out a face. They jumped out and ran off into the downpour without ever looking toward the station. There was no way he would be able to identify them from this, but at least they knew they were looking for two killers, not one. He reached for the phone and called his partner.

“
Kenny, come look at this.”

“
On my way.”

Mike played the tape again for his partner.

“
It is seriously bad footage, but now we know there were two of them,” Kenny said.

Mike picked up the phone again, this time to call the crime lab.

“
Crime lab. Bonnie Kirk.”

“
Hey Bonnie, this is Mike Amblin. Where are you on the Sadler car they towed in yesterday?”

“
We’re just starting on it, but I can tell you for certain Sadler was not in this car when he got shot. No blood or broken glass like you would expect to find.”

“
So I still don’t have a crime scene,” Mike said. “Do you have any prints on file for the daughter? The family only had the one car so there would be hers for sure, and possibly even her mother’s prints, although I don’t know how long it’s been since she was well enough to drive.”

“
The only prints I have are for Jessup Sadler. You need to send an officer to tell the mother and daughter to come in so we can print them for elimination.”

“
Nix the mother. She died of terminal cancer the same morning Jessup’s body was found. You’ll have to send someone to the funeral home to get her prints.”

“
Wow, that’s tough on the daughter.”

Mike thought about Poppy Sadler. “Yeah, it was a bad day for her yesterday and I doubt today will be much better. Since we have the family’s only car, I’ll get a print kit and go get her prints myself. I’ll drop them by the lab afterward.”

“
Thanks.”

“
If you get any hits, give me or Duroy a call.”

“
Will do,” Bonnie said, and hung up.

Kenny had been listening. “So nothing yet, I take it?”

“
The car was not our crime scene.”

“
Well hell. So, unless those two men killed him inside some building then dumped the body in the river afterward, we’re not going to have a crime scene to process. Not after yesterday’s rain.”

“
Possibly, which means we need an ID on those two. Maybe they weren’t wearing gloves and we’ll get lucky,” Mike said.

“
So you’re going to Sadler’s residence to print the girl?”

“
I’ll call first to make sure she’s there, but yeah. What about you? Are you coming?”

“
Might as well. We can’t interview any of the miners on Sadler’s shift until late this evening. Until we get IDs on the guys who drove that car we’re on hold.”

“
Hang on a sec and let me see if she’s home,” Mike said, and called Poppy’s number.

****

Poppy woke before daylight and couldn’t get back to sleep. She started a pot of coffee but as she walked through the house, was lost by how empty it felt. Before her mama’s illness, her parents would have already been up. Mama would be in the kitchen making breakfast and packing Daddy’s lunch, with the television playing in the background to catch the morning news and weather. Daddy would have been in the shower, or reading what he could of the newspaper before he had to leave to catch his ride to the mine. She had taken it all for granted until it was gone.

While the coffee was brewing, she headed for her parents’ bedroom. She hadn’t been in it since their passing, and was met with the aroma of Jessup Sadler’s aftershave when she opened the door.

“
Oh Daddy.”

Tears quickened, but she blinked them away. She had to go in. There were things that needed to go to the undertaker and no way to get them but to go through their things.

Since she intended to buy her mama a new dress, she didn’t have to go through her clothing, and it didn’t take long to find the needed undergarments. The funeral home had already told her not to bother with shoes because the lower half of the body was never shown during a viewing. Still, Poppy added a pair of white socks to the pile. After Mama got sick, her feet had always been cold and she wasn’t going to bury her with bare feet.

She moved from the clothes to the jewelry box to get the wedding ring. It had finally fallen off Helen’s finger after three months of chemotherapy and she’d worn it on a chain around her neck until her final hospitalization. It was a simple gold band with one tiny diamond – an unassuming ring that had been symbolic of their lives.