Murder in the Courthouse (17 page)

“OK.” They turned away from the others, opened the fire exit door, which fortunately did not alarm, and headed down a long flight of concrete stairs to the lobby level.

Emerging into the lobby, they found it packed with people—cops, witnesses, county employees—all headed in different directions. Going past the clerk's office and then around the metal detectors, they exited, pushing though the giant doors and onto the front steps of the old courthouse.

“It's gorgeous out here! Let's eat outside!” Hailey said it first, inhaling a deep lungful of warm air. It smelled a little like honeysuckle with just a touch of salt water.

“OK. Good idea. County cafeteria's out. Food court's out. Let me think . . . eat outside . . . eat outside . . .” Finch rambled to himself.

“Hey, guys!” A man's deep voice made them turn to see Chase Billings bounding up the steps toward them.

“Hi, Billings!” Hailey and Fincher said at the same time.

“How's the trial? Todd Adams guilty yet?” He gave a wide grin that showed off a perfectly white smile.

Hailey realized that in the entire time they'd worked the Alton Turner crime scene, she'd never seen Billings smile. In fact, she only remembered his first name was Chase because she'd read it off his uniform. No one had called him anything other than Lieutenant the night Turner's body was found.

“Ha. Not yet!” Hailey returned the smile.

“Where you guys headed?” Billings asked.

“Lunch. Somewhere outside. Want to come? Know of anywhere we can sit outside?” Finch answered.

“Sure! Let's go. I know this place off the old U.S. highway. Williams Seafood. It's between here and Tybee Island.”

Hailey's face lit up. “Oh yeah. Williams Seafood. I remember that. Didn't it . . .”

“. . . burn down? Yep. It did. Arson, I heard it rumored. Never proved. But they rebuilt.”

“Arson? Wow. Who knew? And hey, you gotta stop finishing my sentences for me!” Hailey laughed. All three of them headed toward the parking garage.

“I'll try. How's the trial? I've been working the Turner case like crazy. Mind if we go through it over lunch?” Billings asked, still smiling.

“Aha! I knew you had an ulterior motive other than shrimp and oysters for lunch!” Hailey laughed back at him.

“Hey! We don't have to talk about Alton Turner. I'd love to take you guys to lunch. No murder talk. It's the least I can do since we missed our romantic dinner the other night, Hailey.”

Romantic dinner?
She and Finch both skipped a beat, pausing ever so slightly as they made their way to the rental car.

“Dinner?” Hailey asked. No one, specifically Billings, had ever mentioned a “romantic” dinner to her. Had she missed something?

“Yeah. I texted you about grabbing dinner and going through the Turner notes.”

“Right.” Hailey remembered now. Billings had texted that day in the cafeteria, just before Elle collapsed. But “romantic” had not been part of the message. She looked at Billings standing before her. At six four with light brown hair brushed over to one side and deep blue eyes, Hailey could imagine many a woman falling for him. Something about those blue eyes . . . they reminded Hailey of Will.

Billings spoke, interrupting her thoughts. She shook it off quickly and put his looks firmly out of her mind.

“Hailey, I can't seem to turn it off. Like turning off the hot and cold water spigots. Alton Turner . . . he's just in my head . . . you know? You know how that is?”

“Oh, yeah,” Hailey answered. “I know how that is. Do I ever.” Leaving the bright sunshine and entering the darkened parking deck, her eyes blinked involuntarily.

“Want to ride in the cruiser?”

Hailey recognized Billings's squad car parked just a few spots away from her rental.

“Sure. Maybe we won't get pulled over if we speed,” Hailey answered over her shoulder.

“Speaking of dead bodies, Billings, did you hear about Eleanor Odom, the clerk who died in the cafeteria?” Finch cut in.

“I didn't know we
were
speaking of dead bodies . . .” Hailey gave Finch another playful jab, this time in the arm. The bicep was rock-hard and as big as a Virginia ham from all the weight lifting and working out.

“Hailey, come on . . . you and I are always talking about dead bodies . . . even when we're not . . .”

“True,” Hailey conceded.

“Yeah,” Billings answered. “I heard about Elle. Nice lady. I knew her. She played on the county softball team and the bowling team too. Always brought brownies or something like that to every game.”

“It was awful. So full of life one moment, dead lying there on the cafeteria floor the next.” Hailey slid into the front passenger seat after Finch took the whole back to himself.

Billings reversed out of the spot, driving the short distance to the employee exit. He swiped a plastic card over a black pad at the parking gate and within minutes, the high-rise buildings of downtown Savannah, Forsyth Park and its famous fountain, the crowds, the courthouse, and the Todd Adams murder trial all melted away.

Heading out toward the old U.S. highway, buildings were magically replaced by tall pine trees, live oaks, azaleas, camellias, and magnificent magnolias bursting with sweet-smelling blooms. Hailey rolled down her window to take it all in. Looking out the window and upward, she saw the canopy of trees above them, draped in a veil of Spanish moss.

The conversation lulled as they drove along, Billings's left arm laying across the driver's window, also rolled down. Even Fincher was uncharacteristically quiet in the back seat, taking in the gorgeous scenery.

And now, she could smell the marsh. Vibrant green and flooded with water at high tide, the tide was out and areas normally underwater were now revealed. The marsh laid bare was full of soft, brown mud and countless birds flying low, searching for an easy meal. The low tide of the marsh had its own pungent smell, and Hailey inhaled it all deeply.

Just beyond the marshes, there it was, old Williams Seafood. Getting out of the county cruiser, Hailey slammed the car door shut behind her and headed across the sandy parking lot to a table under a big umbrella on the outdoor patio. A sign read “Try Our Cheese Grits!” That was exactly what she intended to do.

“I was thinking about Elle last night.” Hailey picked up the conversation where they'd left off. “I looked her up on Facebook for the heck of it.” Hailey didn't mention she looked up Billings, too.

“And?” Billings dropped into a seat beside her.

“Great gourmet cook by the looks of it, jogged, loved softball, bowling, beautiful, unmarried . . .”

“Yep. All true. I guess she was single. Never thought of that before. Didn't she have a boyfriend? Come to think of it, she was always alone.” Billings perused the menu the waitress just handed him, studying it as if he hadn't been to the place a hundred times before. Hailey looked over in the corner and saw an elderly man dressed in all white bearing a striking resemblance to the Kentucky Fried Chicken founder, Colonel Sanders, making his way from booth to booth to table.

“Who's that?” she asked, nodding her head toward the man in the white suit, white shoes, and white shirt.

“It's old man Williams. He always gets decked out in all white and works the crowd.”

“Hmm. OK. So back to Elle Odom, what was the official COD? The cause of death? What did the ME say?” Hailey studied the menu too, homing in on the fried shrimp and cheese grits.

“They don't have one yet. I guess they're still sorting it out. Her body's still at the morgue. At first they thought it was a heart attack
or a stroke, but it was neither one.” Billings added, “I'm having the raw oyster platter. Anybody want to share?”

“No, I think I'm going with cheese grits and a salad. Maybe a fried shrimp starter. Want to split some, Finch?” Hailey was still looking at the menu in front of her.

“Oh yeah. That reminds me,” Billings added. “I got a notice. They're looking for her purse. They thought the EMTs must have collected it in the cafeteria, but it's gone.”

“They should try the lost and found in the clerk's office. That thing's a treasure trove. We got Hailey's sweater and bag out of it last night.”

Hailey looked up over her menu as the waitress set tall, clear plastic glasses filled to the brim with ice water in front of each of them. She gently dropped down three long straws in white paper wrappers in the center of the table next to a metal paper napkin dispenser and several bottles of hot sauce.

“A purse?” Hailey asked, mulling it over. “I didn't see that. Did you, Finch?”

“I don't remember, Hailey. It was all kind of a blur. I was focusing more on the dead lady on the floor. OK, I've decided. I'm having the Captain's Platter. Fried.” Finch put away his menu.

Suddenly, pushing back her chair, Hailey stood up, knocking over the tall glass of water in front of her. The waitress came rushing over, producing two handfuls of white paper napkins seemingly out of nowhere to clean up the table, now soaked.

Oblivious, Hailey stared over Billings's and Fincher's heads into the marsh. “Hailey, what is it? Are you all right?” Finch asked her first.

“You OK, Hailey?” Billings echoed.

“Was it a little black beaded carry pouch on a black string, a shoulder strap thing?”

“I don't remember the bead part, but it's black. And it's got her driver's license in it. I guess her family wants it . . . why?”

In a lightning flash, it all fit together. The purple face, tongue so swollen the EMTs couldn't get a breathing tube down her throat, the sudden inability to breathe, the clutching at the throat, the missing purse, the pink lipstick on the Styrofoam coffee cup on the floor . . .
the Facebook photos, the recipe for fruitcake and banana bread. It all raced before Hailey in her mind's eye.

“Banana bread without the nuts . . .”

“Hailey, what are you talking about?” Finch grabbed her hand as she still stared straight into the marsh as if she were in some sort of a trance.

“Eleanor's fruit cake . . . fruity, not nutty!”

Hailey answered as if she hadn't even heard him or noticed he'd grabbed her hand.

“She wore a little black beaded pouch everywhere. Even when she was at the softball game and the bowling alley.
Elle Odom died of anaphylactic shock
.”

Finch and Billings stared at her. Both their mouths hung slightly open, their faces registering a lack of understanding, as if she were speaking some foreign language.

“Listen to me.” Hailey grabbed Billings's hand, urgency in her voice. “Call the clerk right now. Get that purse out of lost and found. Hurry, before it's too late!”

“Too late? Hailey, I don't get it. Too late for what?”

“For whoever took it to find it. And get the EpiPen out of it.”

“Whoever took it? What EpiPen?” Finch stood up now, too, as did Billings.

“Eleanor Odom took her EpiPen everywhere: jogging, Christmas parties, bowling, softball. She always had it with her . . . I saw it in all the pictures but it didn't really register. But she didn't take it to lunch? Now it's missing? Not in the cafeteria? Not in her cubicle? Not anywhere she'd be? She wore it over her shoulder so she wouldn't leave it behind.”

They all stood there in a moment of shocking clarity.

Billings pulled out his radio. He held it to his mouth and started calling out a series of numbers.

“The point is, if she had left it behind innocently, they'd have found it by now . . . in her cubicle, in the courtroom, in the cafeteria. That means somebody took her purse. We've got to get it before they do.
Eleanor Odom was murdered
.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“B
ut who put it there?”

Billings carefully enunciated the question, yet again, as if in slow motion. Hailey leaned close in to his ear and whispered, “Just because you say it loud and slow, like they're deaf, doesn't mean they're going to remember anything.”

Hailey, Billings, and Finch stood beside the lost and found bin, looking down into it. There, where Hailey had first seen it, lay the black beaded pouch. It was still zippered shut with its long, thin shoulder strap resting limply beside it. Two county clerks were standing beside the bin as well, all five looking down at the little zippered pouch.

The clerks they were questioning looked as if Billings was speaking Swahili. The two kept making darting glances at the purse as if it were a small, but deadly, exotic animal about to leap out of the bin and bite them on the neck.

“Lieutenant, we just don't know who put it in here. But I'll ask around . . .” The taller clerk's voice trailed off without finishing the sentence. The armpits of his short-sleeved poly blend were darkening with sweat and his eyes blinked rapidly under Billings's questions. The short, chubby one just stood there, remaining silent, his eyes as wide as saucers at the thought of murder
in their very midst . . . here at the courthouse
.

“Ask around where? And when?” Billings wanted answers, and now.

“I guess, here on the floor?” The tall one's answer came out more like a question.

Hailey elbowed Billings in his side, and none too gently. Leaning into his ear, she whispered again,
“Catch more flies with honey than vinegar!”

“Snodgrass . . . what's your first name, Snodgrass?” Billings tried to soften his voice.

“Cecil.”

“Cecil, do you have access to an ‘all-personnel' email?”

“You mean can I write the whole courthouse staff at once? Soup to nuts? The whole shebang?” Cecil Snodgrass's previously dead eyes now seemed to show a tiny glint of life.

“Exactly.
Excellent
. Can you do that?” Billings was still playing good cop. He gave Hailey a
How's that for honey?
look. She rewarded him with a congratulatory smile plus an arched left eyebrow.