A Thorn Among the Lilies (18 page)

C
HAPTER
38

L
eah dropped by the station and got debriefed by Chris. He had talked to Scarlett Graham's mother. Her father had been at work. The picture he got from Scarlett Graham's parents showed a woman who looked nearly exactly like the other two victims, only in this picture her eyes weren't sewn up, of course. It made for a much nicer shot to show around for identification purposes. This would make Leah's job that much easier.

The woman in the picture looked so innocent. If she matched the profile and turned out to be a hooker, Leah would be surprised.

“Did her mother tell you how old she was in this picture?” Leah asked Chris.

“No, I didn't ask. I'm assumin' it's quite recent, she looks to be in her late twenties.”

Scarlett had been living by herself since she was nineteen. She was now twenty-seven and had just lost her job. She worked as an office assistant. In order to make ends meet, she put an ad in the local paper looking for a roommate. Layla Redmond had been the only person to answer the ad.

According to Scarlett's mother, her daughter liked to keep things clean and organized and was very spiritual, so her place was filled with candles and incense and things like that.

“‘It's completely out of character for her to just disappear like this,' Scarlett's mother told me,” Chris said to Leah.

“Did her mom mention her drinking?”

“Not a word of it.”

“Ah, so either her mother's delusional or just puts her head in the sand or Miss Scarlett's good at hiding things.” The possibility of her being a hooker popped back into Leah's head. “When I spoke to Layla Redmond, the woman moving in with her, she said there was a stack of empty wine boxes and bottles by the door that looked near on ready to topple, it was so high.

“Anyway,” Leah continued, “I'm gonna go show this picture around the Six-Gun Saloon. I'm startin' to like that place.”

“Good luck!”

 

Scarlett Graham actually was well-known by the staff and some of the patrons of the Six-Gun Saloon, although everyone Leah talked to was adamant that she was not a “working girl.”

She'd pop in maybe two or three times a week, the bartender told her. Margaret wasn't working tonight. Instead, it was someone whose name tag read TOM. He was a tall, skinny black man with brown hair, high cheekbones, and long fingers like a pianist. He had stubble on his face, as though he hadn't shaved in a day. A black vest covered his starched white shirt, keeping in theme with the rest of the décor of the Six-Gun. Leah couldn't see his feet, but if she could, she was willing to bet he was wearing cowboy boots.

This must've been the brother Margaret told Leah about on one of her visits.

“Do you know where she worked?” she asked, after showing Scarlett's picture to Tom.

He shook his head. “People come here to forget 'bout work, not talk 'bout it, I'm 'fraid. Is she in some sort of trouble?”

“She's gone missing,” Leah said. “We're hoping to find her.”

“Oh my God.”

“Can you think of anything that might help the investigation? Anything unusual lately? Had she been talking to anyone unusual? Anything?”

The bartender thought about it. He continued to think about it as a waitress came up and asked for four pints of beer. He poured them for her, still obviously lost in thought. Turning back to Leah, he said, “I'm sorry, I just can't get over her bein' dead.”

Hesitantly, Leah took in Tom, head to toe. “That's funny,” she said, “I didn't
say
anythin' 'bout her bein' dead. Just that she was missin'.”

“Oh,” the bartender stumbled. “I just . . . I just assumed that since you was askin', she must be . . .”

Leah took down all the man's particulars and once again asked if he could think of anything unusual involving her disappearance.

“I don't
reckon
there was anythin' unusual, but if somethin' pops into my head, do you have a number I can reach you at?”

He just beat Leah to the punch on that one. “Here's my card,” Leah said. “My emergency number's on the bottom, but call the station's line first. Emergency calls forward to my home.”

“Okay . . .” the bartender said, “and I really do hope you find out whoever did this.”

“Oh, we will, Mr. . . .”

“Gherkin. Like the pickle.”

Thank you, Mr. Gherkin.

Leah spoke to some of the regular staff members and even some of the regular patrons and took more notes, trying to keep things as light as possible. She didn't want anyone to know she was conducting official police interviews. As soon as she left, she immediately pulled out her pad and started jotting down everything she remembered. Especially about the bartender. She didn't want him to think she was suspecting him of anything, but the way he substituted “dead” for “missing” had stuck with her. She also thought there were things he was holding back or not quite telling the truth about. It could be he was just one of those people who give out a guilty vibe.

 

Despite being dead tired, when Leah got home that night, she popped the videotape she had gotten from Detective Truitt into her VCR and watched the crime scene again. It showed the dark inside of the mine with the body lying there being tended to by cops. She could make out Dan Truitt. She saw the forensic team. Then the image panned the onlookers. There were probably twenty, maybe twenty-five. And again, she got that feeling in her stomach.

Something about the tape was wrong.

She watched it twice more, but each time, she couldn't place what it was that was giving her the feeling that something on the video was trying to tell her the secret to everything. She decided she'd bring it into the station and let Ethan take a look at it. He had a VCR hanging below that television in his office. Maybe he had keener senses than she did. Maybe he could spot what she could only feel.

C
HAPTER
39

D
eciding the mayor should know about a potential killer in his town, Leah told Chris she had decided to drive out to Mayor Robertson's house and give him a surprise drop by, that was, if he was home. She didn't call first and hoped she wasn't being too rude.

On her way over, she remembered the mayor had lost his wife in a motor vehicle accident a long time ago. She shared some history with him; her husband, Billy, had also died in a motor vehicle accident. Leah couldn't remember the details of the mayor's wife's accident—she only knew that anytime you lost a loved one was bad. You never really got over it.

The mayor lived in a log cabin–style home on a winding road called Maple Drive, which ran between Blackberry Trail and Main Street. The area was highly wooded, mostly with maples, and driving around the curving streets made you feel like you were a hundred miles from home. Up here, there were no other houses around, so you didn't see any traffic on the road either. The mayor's closest neighbor on Blackberry Trail lived about four miles away. To Leah's knowledge, nobody else lived anywhere closer.

His house was beautiful. Something about log cabins had always appealed to Leah. She guessed it was on account of when she was a little girl, her family used to rent one every summer up in Mississippi. The memories of those trips were good ones, and they were tied in to her memories of log cabins.

Leah came up the hill that always took her breath away. The wooded area was to her right. To her left, Clover Creek ran lazily along. In the spring and summer, it could rise to quite a height and become dangerous, but this time of year there was hardly any water in it. What little there was rolled slowly down its twisted route. The sun had just fallen behind the hills of sage and brush on the other side of the creek, but it still cast an aura of orange, red, and yellow over the sky above Leah's head.

It reminded Leah of a song. It was something the band The Eagles would probably call a “Tequila Sunset.”

When she came to the cabin belonging to Mayor Robertson, Leah pulled into the wide, circular driveway and parked near the end closest to the road. The driveway was just dirt, but very hard, packed dirt.

Getting out of her car, Leah walked up to the mayor's doorstep. She gave the door a couple of raps. When nobody answered, she began thinking nobody was home. She knocked again, a little louder this time—just to be sure—and waited a tad longer. Then she saw the doorbell button and gave that a try. She really didn't want to have to go home having come all this way for nothing.

Sure enough, a minute later, Mayor Hubert James Robertson opened the door wrapped in a towel and possibly not wearing a stitch of anything else.

Hubert James was a large man. Tall and broad with a bit of gray hair around the edges of what was once black. He still looked like he could beat anyone in a wrestling match. But his most distinguishing feature—to Leah, anyway—was his eyes. They were a bright blue with black specks in them that literally captivated her.

During the few conversations they'd had, she'd always managed to just catch herself before she started staring into his eyes instead of listening to the man speak. Frankly, she found politicians boring. Every one of them said the same thing; they just wrapped it in a different package.

“Leah!” the mayor said, taking her hand.

Leah kept glancing discreetly to his waist, hoping the towel wouldn't slip.

“Sorry, I was in the hot tub. As you can see, you have me at a disadvantage.” He looked down at the red towel wrapped around him.

“I'll come back some other time,” Leah said, managing to hold her composure together. “When you're not so . . . busy. Sorry for botherin' you. Next time, I'll call first.”

“Oh, nonsense. I've got the rest of my life to sit in hot tubs. Come on in. I don't suppose you brought a bathin' suit?” He smiled. Unlike his eyes, she didn't like his smile one bit. He had a politician's smile—it sort of reminded Leah of the mouth of a shark.

“No.” She didn't laugh. She tried to keep
some
semblance of decorum.

“Didn't think so. I might be able to dig somethin' up for you if you're interested.”

“I'm not really interested.”

“Okay, then you come on in and have a seat in my livin' room.” He gestured to the wide, expansive room the foyer opened into. You had to walk up four polished maple stairs to get to it, but it certainly looked worth the effort. Everything was polished maple and glistened in the sun, which, from up here, you could still see going down.

“And I'll go change into somethin' more appropriate,” the mayor said.

“That sounds great.” It sounded great to Leah because deep inside, she wanted him to sit and be interviewed wearing that red towel all night. And that couldn't be a good sign.

Mayor Robertson went upstairs to change. Leah sat down on one of the most comfortable sofas she'd ever sat on. One thing about this living room: You could tell right away only a man lived here and that he was single. There was a bearskin rug on the floor in front of the stone fireplace, along with a four-and-a-half foot amberjack mounted on a plaque above it. He also had four mounted buck heads around the room: three six pointers along one wall, and a five pointer on another. His coffee table looked completely carved from one big stump of a tree, with the top shaved flat and the roots curved to create legs. However, the main tip that there was no feminine input into how this house was decorated was the smell. Leah couldn't place it, but something about it just smelled “manly.”

When she saw all the dead animals everywhere, a voice inside of Leah spoke up and told her something she hadn't thought of before. The northern parts outside of Alvin are a hunter's paradise. Maybe it wasn't the farmers and ranchers she should be interviewing, but the hunters (even though in most cases, they were the same).

“You look comfy,” Leah said.

“You like this?” The mayor was wearing a red hoodie and gray sweatpants. He took a seat on one of the two wing chairs sitting kitty-corner from the sofa. Strangely, there was no television in the room. Leah only now noticed.

He pulled the hoodie down tight so Leah could see the logo. It had an Alvin Alligator logo on it showing a gator with a football in its mouth. Alvin didn't have a high school, but they did have a high-school football team. “Isn't this great?” he asked, looking down on it. “They gave me this for kickin' the first ball of the season out last year.” He laughed. “Funny part was: I have no idea how to kick a football. I think my kick went ten yards—sideways.” And then that smile came back. That white, toothy, shark grin.

“So,” he asked, “what brings you out this way? Oh, first I shouldn't be so rude. Would you like a tea? Coffee? I think I have some juice, or a soda.”

“No, I'm fine. Do you mind if I ask you who these pictures are of? I recognize the ones of your son, Paul, and your daughter, Ginger, but I don't recognize the other lady. Do you have
two
daughters?”

He laughed. “Does she look that young? I guess she does. She'd be fourteen to sixteen or so years younger than me in most of those pictures.”

Leah didn't know what to say. She laughed along but was kind of lost.

“No, Leah, those are pictures of my wife, Susan Lee.”

She hesitated. “Oh, of course. Actually, I did know you had a wife.”

The mayor let out a breath. “Well,
had
is the big word in that sentence. I lost her three months ago. Well, actually, I lost her twice. Three months ago
and
I lost her near on thirteen years ago.”

Leah tried to figure out what he meant but couldn't. She just stared back at him. “I . . . I'm sorry, I don't understand.”

The mayor slapped the arm rests of the chair he was in. “She drove to the store to get a quart of milk for our baby. That would've been Ginger.”

Leah smiled. “She's a very sweet girl.”

“She is. Practically everyone in town knows her. She so much reminds me of her ma.”

“So what happened to your wife? If you don't mind me askin'? I was quite young when she had her accident.”

“A drunk driver came roaring through the stop sign at Sweetwater Drive and put an end to my marriage.”

Leah's hand came to her mouth. “Oh my God. I'm so sorry. I remember hearing of the accident. I didn't make the connection.”

“No, it's fine. It took a lot of time, but I can talk about it now.” He sort of drifted off for a minute and stared at the tops of the trees rising up over the hills. “Yeah, well, it was pretty bad. The details are even worse. Susan Lee was on her way back from Fanta's Main Street Five-and-Dime—it's not there any longer, can't say I was upset to see 'em tear it down—and I guess, from what police could tell, a car just ran the stop sign doin' 'bout forty over the speed limit and slammed into the side of her vehicle. Broke both her arms and severed a portion of her spinal column. She didn't have her seat belt on, they figure, since she was thrown through the windshield in a shower of glass that got into her eyes and blinded her.”

“Oh, Jesus, how horrible,” Leah said.

“The blindness was no big deal on account of she was in a coma and they couldn't wake her up. They put her on life support for twelve years before finally pullin' the plug. Her eyes never opened again anyway. So that part was almost a bit of a blessing.”

Leah was at a loss for words. She tried searching for a way to react but came up at a loss. This was such a terrible thing to be sharing with someone. Her own Billy was killed in a car crash, but nothing this horrific.

“She was in Providence Hospital down in Mobile,” the mayor said. “And I made that trip near on every day to sit at her bedside on the off chance she might wake up. Of course, she never did.” He looked away as he said this, staring at the carpet. Leah could tell he was starting to tear up.

“So, Miss Leah, when you ask me about my wife, I count the twelve years on life support as being part of the time since I lost her. For me, she died the day she went through that windshield.”

“Oh my God,” Leah said. “I'm so sorry.”

The mayor slapped the arm rests again and continued looking away to the floor. “Yeah, it wasn't very easy. I didn't deal with it well. I'm still not dealin' with it well.”

“I
guess
it wasn't easy. I would be worried if you
did
deal with it well.”

“Anyway, she managed to survive for twelve years in that hospital until they finally decided it was long enough. And it was.”

Leah couldn't believe what she was hearing. “And then what?”

“They pulled the plug on the machines keepin' her alive.” He gently closed his eyes and Leah could tell he was holding back tears. “It was time. I didn't want to make the decision. But it
was
the right decision. I see that now. I kind of hoped she might wake up in those final moments, but she didn't. She did die in my arms, though. I take some solace in that.”

“Oh my God. What happened to the person who hit her? How drunk was the driver?”

“Zero point one two. Probably shouldn't have been
walkin'
home, never mind drivin'. Originally, the court basically gave her a slap on the wrist, but that all changed when my wife actually died. Then the driver got five years for reckless manslaughter. That's the maximum sentence in Alabama, can you believe that? Had it happened in Georgia, she'd have gotten ten years. Before that, she'd only gotten a first-offense DWI and revocation of her license. But the minute my wife died, it became vehicular homicide.”

“Well, at least there's a tiny bit of justice left in the world.”

The mayor was still looking away. He lifted his hand and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. “I'm sorry. Talkin' 'bout this still gets to me. I thought I was over it.”

“That's okay. I totally understand. You know I lost my husband in an automobile accident. I don't reckon you ever get over it.”

“Oh, yeah, that's right. I forgot. So you
do
understand. Was his a drinkin' and drivin' thing, too?”

“No, I imagine yours is worse, because you can actually blame someone. I can't. The only one at fault was him.”

“And you're okay with it now? How do you get past the anger?”

“I'm starting to accept it now. It took eleven years and the influence of my son to get me to this point. I dunno if I'll ever fully accept it. And for me it was less anger and more me having to forgive him. For years I was unable to forgive him for leaving me alone to raise two children. How nuts is that? Like he meant to have that car accident?”

“My daughter and son helped me, too. We all deal with death different ways. The main thing is that we get through it, whatever it takes. You see the other picture?”

Leah wondered why the sudden shift of topic, but looked at the mantel. There were two pictures that looked like the same woman, only younger. She was standing with another woman. They looked very similar. “Is this your wife, too?”

“Yeah, but that's from before I met her.”

“Who's the other woman, if I may ask?”

“Her sister.”

“They look alike.” And something about the one on the right looked somewhat familiar, but Leah couldn't place her. Both women had dark hair down to their shoulders, blue eyes, and the same smile.

“Everyone says that.” He was still looking away from Leah. Now she heard him sniffling as he rubbed tears out of his eyes. Finally, he turned his face to her, his eyes swollen and red. “So tell me, Leah, what brings you here today? I think I've had enough conversation 'bout my dead wife.”