“Nothing definite.” He shifted in his chair and said, “Who were her friends?”
The woman knitted her brows. “Close friends? I don’t know if she had any. Not women friends anyhow. There were some women in her party that she would have lunch with once in a while, but someone to sit around and dish the dirt with?” She shook her head. “I told you about her childhood and upbringing. I think she felt inferior because she didn’t come from money and she didn’t have much of an education.”
She removed a loose thread from the sleeve of her orange tunic. “Poor Candace. I don’t think she really fit in anywhere once she left home and moved to Dobbs. The caste system’s everywhere, isn’t it? The women here in the office tend to look down on the janitorial staff, but once she married Cameron and started working here in the office, she was their boss. She joined the Republican Women and went to all the meetings but if she ever got close to anyone in particular, I never heard her say. Most of them have college degrees and can talk about art and music and things that went over her head.
“Cameron—Mr. Bradshaw, he tried to educate her taste, but she wasn’t much interested. I think that’s one of the reasons they broke up. She got tired of trying to meet his expectations. I remember once she slammed down the phone on him because she wanted to go to a Willie Nelson concert and he wanted to go to Raleigh to hear some ‘effing harpsichords.’ Those were her very words. I don’t know what she had against harpsichords, but it was about a month later that she filed for divorce.”
“Which was never finalized,” said Terry Wilson.
“No. Actually, Cameron’s probably the closest thing to the kind of friend you’re asking about. He really is a nice man and once he was out of the house and not trying to improve her mind, she liked him again. It was like he was her favorite uncle.”
“What about her daughter?”
“Dee?” Gracie gave a sour laugh. “Dee might have been her ticket to becoming Mrs. Cameron Bradshaw, but Candace was no touchy-feely mommy. Not really her fault though, was it? I don’t know how she could’ve been anything else, coming from the home she did.”
“What about you, Mrs. Farmer?”
“Me?” She seemed a bit surprised by that question. “I suppose so. I mean we liked each other, and I guess she talked to me as freely as to anyone else, but . . .” She shrugged. “Again, it’s boss and employee, isn’t it?”
“You hired her,” Dwight said. “Did you resent it when she became your boss?”
“No. Not really.” She heard the doubt in her voice and gave a rueful laugh. “Okay, it was a little awkward in the beginning, but I knew way more about this job than she did and she knew it. Once I realized she was here to work and that she would be capable of running it profitably herself, I quit worrying about it. I’m not ambitious, Major Bryant. I live alone. I make a good salary. I’ve had good luck with some of my investments and I don’t care about power. She didn’t have to watch her back with me.”
“Who did she have to watch?” asked Terry.
“Nobody, so far as I know. Well, maybe Roger Flackman at first. He’s the accountant Cameron hired to go over the books twice a year. But we keep accurate books and he’s never found that she was holding back so much as a dime. Cameron told me about her letter, though. Is that what you mean? You think someone was going to blow the whistle on her?”
“Was there a whistle to blow?” asked Dwight.
She shook her head. “But isn’t that what politics is all about these days? On every level? Both sides playing one long game of gotcha?”
CHAPTER 10
No one knows what’s going on. A sense of drama
Seems inviting, but nothing happens.
—Paul’s Hill, by Shelby Stephenson
FRIDAY NOON
When Dwight and I remodeled the house to add a new bedroom, bath, and two walk-in closets, he’d had the usual male reaction while helping me switch closets.
“I didn’t know I was marrying Imelda Marcos,” he said. “Who needs twenty-three boxes of shoes?”
I laughed. “This from a guy who has about three dozen old ties hanging in his own closet?” I took the boxes from him and stacked them on the shelves, happy that he hadn’t noticed that at least four of those twenty-three boxes held two pairs of summer sandals.
Fancy Footwork is the moderately priced shoe store that used to get a big chunk of my income till I became an old married lady. I haven’t dared step foot in it since I ordered satin slippers to match my wedding dress back before Christmas, but they were having their big semiannual sale, so I decided to skip lunch that day and feed my shoe appetite instead. Besides, I rationalized, hadn’t I broken the heel on my favorite pair of boots? This was the time to replace them. And I hadn’t spent a penny on the blue plaid summer dress Aunt Zell made me, so surely I’d still be ahead if I accidentally came across shoes that matched the scrap of blue cloth in my purse?
As I drove through town, headed for the mall on the outskirts of Dobbs, I saw in the lane far ahead of me a beat-up old red pickup. Trucks like that are by no means unique to the area, which is why Daddy likes his so much. Goes with the I’m-just-a-poor-ol’-farmer image that he likes to hide behind. More than once, I’ve overtaken similarly battered trucks only to see a complete stranger at the wheel, so I didn’t bother to try to catch up to this one, especially when it continued on past the first entrance to the mall parking lot.
While I waited in the left turn lane for the green light, I saw that pickup signal for a left turn at the far end of the parking lot and when I had parked and glanced down that way, I saw my father’s tall figure, topped by his trademark straw panama. For a brief moment, I hesitated between shopping for shoes and seeing if he wanted to grab a bite of lunch together.
Shoes won.
The store was crowded and yes, there were bargains, but none I could justify and nothing that really called out to me. I did find a pair of boots that were exactly what I wanted. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any left in my size. I put my scrap of blue cloth next to several pairs of sandals and was amused to see Jamie Jacobson on the other side of the rack trying to match the same sandals to a blue silk scarf. We agreed on the difficulty of finding the right shade of blue and that we ought to get together for lunch again soon.
“Have a good weekend,” she said as she held her scarf next to a pair of aqua flats.
“You, too,” I said.
Ten minutes after entering the store, I was back outside and in my car. Two minutes after that, I was parking it alongside Daddy’s truck.
I hadn’t watched to see which store he’d gone into. It was a fairly safe bet though that he wasn’t there for maternity clothes or computers. That left the pawnshop in the middle and before you start thinking cheap guitars and zircon rings, think again. This one was more like a consignment shop for expensive jewelry and tabletop accessories such as silver boxes and leaded crystal candlesticks.
As I entered the store, several women were browsing the front display cases and a clerk was helping a white-haired woman select from a tray of antique cameo pins. I saw Daddy in consultation with someone at the rear. They were so absorbed in the object on the counter between them that they were not immediately aware of my presence and I heard the other man say, “—estate jewelry in New York. Maybe thirty thousand retail, but down here in this market, I could only get twenty for the pair.”
“Hey, Daddy,” I said and the object disappeared into his pocket, but not before I caught the flash of a glittery earring.
The other man immediately dropped his jeweler’s loupe into the breast pocket of his jacket.