Bootlegger’s Daughter (16 page)

“Okay, okay,” he laughed. “What’s this about somebody taking a potshot at you yesterday?”

“How’d you hear about that so quick?”

“I’m a police officer. I’m supposed to hear things quickly, remember?”

“Well, this time you heard wrong. I wasn’t the target. If it wasn’t hunters, then it was probably meant to scare Michael Vickery. He and Denn McCloy seem to be having problems.”

“You’re positive you weren’t the target? Now that you’re poking into Janie Whitehead’s death, it might be that someone’s trying to scare you.”

“That would be a stupid thing to do.” I sipped my coffee. “Hey, you’re not worried about me, are you?”

“Janie’s killer could be somebody you know,” he said sternly, “somebody who’s nervous that you might poke too close.”

“It’d be dumb to say that’s silly,” I conceded. “But honestly, Dwight, doesn’t a migrant worker passing through make the most sense? Or that Janie took pity on someone hitchhiking in the rain and for some reason, what was supposed to be a lift turned violent? Obviously he didn’t mean to kill her since he didn’t take her money or molest her.”

(Dwight was stationed in Germany when Janie was murdered, and I wasn’t sure if knew about the red slicker.)

“First he whacked her on the head and then two days later shot her? That’s not your average migrant behavior, Deb’rah. I’ve been to enough Saturday night brawls-hell, you’ve seen enough of the players in Monday morning court to know the difference.”

“Okay, okay. But even if the killer was somebody local, the SBI’s already worked it twice. If they couldn’t find any loose strings to pull on back then, there’s no reason to think I could come up with anything new. Mainly I’m just going through the motions because Jed thinks it’ll keep Gayle from bringing in some stranger.”

Dwight turned north at the next crossroads, which would head us back toward Dobbs. He finished off his coffee and set the cup in a holder between us. “Just think about this a minute: if the killer’s someone Janie knew, it might make him more nervous to have you out poking around than if it was a stranger.”

I heard concern in his voice. “Hey, you really are worried about me, aren’t you?”

“Not me.” As the road teed into North Twelfth Street, he gave me a mocking smile. “You’re not my little baby girl to worry about.”

“Oh, shit!”

I might have known though. Stupid of me to think I could take a stroll through woods less than a mile from my home-place as the crow flies (or a blabbermouth walks) and not have Daddy know. “Look, would you please make it clear to him that it really was Denn McCloy out there banging away at Michael?”

“If you say so.”

He turned up the radio to catch a code directed at someone patrolling a few miles south. Nothing urgent. We rode in silence till he coasted to a stop in front of my office door.

“How serious do you think Sheriff Poole and I ought to take what happened?” he asked as I reached for the door handle.

I shrugged. “ ’Bout like you’d take any domestic disturbance. Michael’s not one to talk about his feelings and Denn’s only too willing to talk about his. I’ve heard Michael goes over to Durham more than he used to, though. Without Denn.”

“Yeah. If they were straight, you’d say it’s the seven-year-itch.”

“You might,” I jibed, opening the door. “Everybody else these days calls it male menopause.”

“Just the same,” he said through the lowered window, “I think I’ll ride out there and have a little talk with McCloy. And listen, Deb’rah-if they’re going to keep shooting at each other, would you please try to stay out from between ’em? You get hurt and your daddy’s not going to be very happy with us.”

He drove away, leaving me to wonder if “us” was Bo Poole’s whole sheriff’s department or just Dwight and the boys.

The only time I ever saw Daddy take a switch to the little twins was when I was twelve and they brought me home with a broken arm. It didn’t matter that I’d pestered them to death to let me swing out over the creek on their rope swing. I remember being furious that he whipped them and then even more furious with them because they acted like they deserved it. Even at twelve I knew that such protection somehow diminished me.

Mother was usually my ally, but that time she made me wear dresses till the cast was off.

Tracy Johnson was calling one of my cases just as I slid into court.

I was supposed to defend a couple of indigent Haitians who’d been netted in the raid of a crack house in a trailer park off I-95. They spoke almost no English; my college French wasn’t idiomatic enough to get through to them, so we’d had to wait for an interpreter to come out from Raleigh before I could get the whole story.

According to them, they’d been hitchhiking back from New York and had heard that they could find a friendly place to flop at that particular trailer. They claimed to have been sleeping the sleep of innocence when DEA agents knocked on the door with a search warrant. Their “host” seemed to have temporarily vanished; and when the trailer was searched, a half-kilo of cocaine and three grams of crack were found in a bedroom at the opposite end from the room they’d been given. Since they were the only ones there, they took the fall. And they’d been lodged in the county jail for two weeks, refusing to give their names or plead until the interpreter could get there.

Even though Harrison Hobart was hearing the case, I didn’t bother asking for a jury trial. All I had to do was put everyone on the witness stand and let them tell their stories. DEA admitted he had nothing to link the drugs to these two other than their being in the trailer that night.

The two youths were quite personable once the linguist translated everything for them. Charming even. Of course it was quite clear to everyone in the courtroom that they were a couple of mules plying the north-south trade route that links Miami to New York. Tons of hard drugs pass up and down I-95, thankfully only a small percentage falls off the trucks here, though of course we’re no more immune than any other area. But as I pointed out to the court, there wasn’t a smidgen of evidence upon which to hold these particular two.

To his regret, Hobart had to agree.

The charming young men shook hands all around and promised to send money from Haiti to repay the interpreter and me for our trouble.

The interpreter and I agreed we wouldn’t hold our breath.

Between getting the facts translated and then fitting the actual hearing in around other cases, it was after four before I was free to leave the courthouse. As I came down the steps, I was overtaken by a tight-lipped Luther Parker.

“I thought this was to be a civilized campaign, Miss Knott,” he said coldly.

“Come again?”

He handed me a sheet of paper. “I suppose you’ve never seen this.”

It looked like my personal letterhead and was headed “An Open Letter to Concerned Voters of Judicial District 11-C.” It wasn’t quite as blatant as He’s a nigger, I’m white, vote for me, but it was the next thing to it, and it carried my signature at the bottom.

For a moment I thought I was going to throw up.

“You can’t believe for a minute that I’d-”

“It’s your stationery, Miss Knott, and your signature, isn’t it?” he asked, his thin black face looming over me in outraged suspicion.

“Would you please cut out that ‘Miss Knott? Okay, yes, this looks like my letterhead, but anybody with a copier could…” I examined the sheet more closely. “Look here, Luther. This is a flat-out cut-and-paste job, a real sloppy one at that. They used the campaign letter I sent out in March and put their own mess over mine. See the cut lines here and here?”

“But then it would look like that, wouldn’t it?” he asked.

I could see his point. If this were the sort of campaigning I’d stoop to, I’d naturally want to be able to deny it. Therefore I’d do it so crudely that it would look as if someone had doctored my original letter without my knowledge. That way, I wouldn’t be blamed for sleazy politics, yet I’d have gotten the message out.

“Where did you get this?” I asked.

“They were stacked on top of every News and Observer box in Makely this morning,” he answered grimly.

“Oh, Lord,” I groaned. “Let’s see. When does the Makely Weekly go to press?”

“Noon on Thursdays.” He glanced at his watch. “Four and a half hours ago.”

“Luther, I swear to God I know nothing about this. My sister-in-law’s helping with my campaign. Let me talk to her and then, if that’s what you want, I’ll meet you at the Ledger first thing tomorrow and we’ll get Linsey Thomas to run a disclaimer, okay?”

Neither of us was very happy with this solution, but we couldn’t think of anything else to do.

At least Luther was back to calling me Deborah before we parted.

When I returned to the office, Sherry had put the dustcover over her computer and was ready to leave.

“Minnie’s been trying-to get you for the last hour,” she said, handing me a sheaf of message slips.

“I’ll bet.”

“Mr. John Claude and Reid-”

“Ah, Deborah,” said John Claude from the doorway of his office. “May Reid and I see you for a few minutes?”

Sherry discreetly left and I crossed the hall to John Claude’s office. He and Reid both had angry expressions on their faces and copies of the same trash Luther had shown me in their hands.

“This is quite unconscionable,” said John Claude.

“Really stinks,” Reid agreed.

“Now wait a minute,” I said. “You don’t think I knew anything about this, do you?”

“Of course not!” John Claude snapped.

Reid handed me a gin and tonic, the gin poured with a stingy hand, the way I take it these days when I drink at all.

“John Claude thinks it’s Hector Woodlief’s people.”

Hector Woodlief had run unopposed on the Republican ticket in Tuesday’s primary, even though the only way he could realistically expect to win in November was if the Democratic candidate was dead or under indictment for something major.

“I take it Hector Woodlief doesn’t get your vote?” I asked Reid.

“Seems more likely this came from some of Luther Parker’s people.”

“What?”

“Foolishness,” muttered John Claude.

“No, it’s not! Reid argued. ”Think about it, Deborah. This kind of crap hurts you a lot more than it hurts him. Gets the race thing right out in the open with you as the bigoted villain.”

I thought about it and then shook my head. “No. It just doesn’t compute. If Parker’s that Machiavellian, wouldn’t he do it closer to the election for maximum impact?”

“I didn’t say Parker himself; I said his people.”

“No,” I said again. “I just spoke to Luther on the courthouse steps not ten minutes ago and he accused me of writing this. He’s a good attorney, but I’ve never seen him try out for any of the Possum Creek Player’s productions. He really and truly thought I-or somebody belonging to me anyhow-did this.”

John Claude was distressed. “Oh, surely not.”

“I think I convinced him.” I took a deep swallow of my drink and sat down on the blue leather couch to leaf through my messages. Most were from Minnie. “I’ll talk to Minnie tonight and I told Luther I’d meet him in Linsey Thomas’s office tomorrow morning so we can issue a joint statement.”

John Claude shook his head pessimistically. “Reid’s right, I’m afraid. This does have the potential to harm you more than it harms Parker.”

Supper with Minnie and Seth brought us to pretty much the same conclusion.

I’d driven over to the modern farmhouse they’d built on the northwest side of the Grimes place-still called that even though Daddy’d bought it at auction back in the early sixties when North Carolina’s short-staple cotton took a double blow from polyesters and boll weevils. Farm acreage was going dirt cheap then, but even if it’d been high, Daddy still would have bid it in since it bounded his own land. He’d deeded it to Seth for a wedding present and Seth seemed to be doing pretty good with tobacco, sweet potatoes, and soy beans.

Minnie’s in her midforties, old enough to be accepting of people and their shortcomings, yet wise to how they enjoy scandalous gossip. She was seriously disturbed over the potential damage the scurrilous flyer could do and had sent the kids off for pizza over in Cotton Grove so we could talk without the distraction of TV or stereos.

“I just wish you didn’t have to give it more publicity with a Ledger story,” she said.

“I don’t see that I have much choice,” I said as Seth poured steaming cups of coffee all around after supper.

“No,” Minnie sighed. “But right now, not that many people know about it. I called around the whole district. Makely’s the only place they were distributed.”

We went over it and over it from every angle, then worked on my statement until my nieces and nephews came home.

As I drove through Cotton Grove on my way home to Dobbs, I passed by the neat house on the edge of town that my brother Will had once shared with Trish. It was still early, barely dark good; and through the thick trees, I saw that a light was on in Trish’s living room.

I braked with such abruptness that the pickup behind almost rear-ended me. Well, what the hell, I thought. Talking with Trish about Janie Whitehead would at least make a change from worrying about my campaign.

Will’s ex-wife is a vice president in charge of customer service at my bank in Dobbs, so I’ve run into her frequently over the years. We’re friendly enough, but I hadn’t been in her house since Mother died.

Mother was what everyone called a “good woman” (as distinct from “a good ol’ gal”) even though I realized right before she died that a narrow streak of wildness lay just beneath her surface serenity. Most of the time she kept it repressed, but when it got out of hand… well, that little streak of wildness was what took her off to Goldsboro during World War II and what later made her want to marry a widowed bootlegger with a houseful of motherless boys after the war.