“Next time I came home, I told her about digital shredders that even get rid of cache files. She said she wished she’d known about that before she took apart her old computer and smashed the insides with a hammer. I thought that was a little over the top. I mean, what did she have that was so damn secret? A formula to blow up the world? She laughed and said I was closer to the truth than I knew.”
“And how did you interpret that?”
Dee gave a dismissive shrug of her bare shoulder. “I thought she was just trying to sound important.”
“When was this?”
“Last fall. Before she moved into the new place.”
“It’s an expensive house,” Dwight observed. “She must have been doing very well with the business.”
Cameron Bradshaw looked uncomfortable at that, and Dwight made a mental note to look into the financing of that house.
“I’m sorry, Officers,” Bradshaw said, clearly trying to cover his lapse. “I never offered you anything to drink. Tea? Or I could make coffee?”
“Would you, Dad?” Dee asked, deliberately widening her clear green eyes to coax him. “Dad grinds his own beans and I’m absolutely addicted to his coffee.”
“Flatterer,” Bradshaw said with an indulgent smile, but he was already rising from his chair. “Officers?”
“Yes, please,” Terry said before Dwight could decline. “Let me help you, sir. I know how Major Bryant likes his.” He gave Dwight a significant wink as he followed Bradshaw.
As soon as they were clear of the room, Dee turned to Dwight and in a low and urgent voice said, “You’re right, Major Bryant. Dad’s in denial, but Mom was doing very well. She bought a new car last spring even though her old one was only two years old. She just gave it away to her cousin in Georgia, a cousin she didn’t even like all that much.” Unforgotten resentment darkened her pretty face. “He came through with a load of peaches and a hard-luck story and she just handed him the damn keys. Paid cash for a new one the very next day. Same with the house. She paid cash for it, too. I mean, I guess when she sold our old house, she must’ve got a nice chunk of money, but the new house probably cost half a million and she just wrote a check.”
“Where do you think the extra money came from?” Dwight asked her.
“I’m sure she was skimming from the company. Dad thinks because he hired his own accountant that the books are straight, but I know Mom. There was never a man she couldn’t get around once she set her mind to it and Roger Flackman’s a real weenie.”
“Any other man in particular?”
She shrugged. “Look, you asked if Mom and I were close? We used to be. Not maybe when I was a little kid because she was working so hard and I got left with day care or babysitters, but once I hit ten or twelve and didn’t need a sitter any more, she’d take me along on some of the jobs, especially after she and Dad split. We’d go shopping and eat out a lot. I was proud of her and in her way, I think she was proud of me. Little things. Like, she took me to one of those Chamber of Commerce banquets one year when I was eleven and it totally cracked her up that I knew which was the salad fork and which was my bread-and-butter plate. She told me later that she’d never even seen a salad fork till after she married Dad.
“And that thing about guns? She wouldn’t talk about her parents very often except to say that they were trailer trash and that she used to pretend they had stolen her away from her real parents. But she did let slip once that her father used to get drunk and shoot up the trailer they lived in. Scared the hell out of her.”
She looked up at Dwight in sudden wonder. “I guess I never thought about it before, but she really did come a long way, didn’t she?”
“Sounds like it,” Dwight said.
“I mean, no money, no family connections, no education except a GED. Yeah, marrying Dad helped, but she took advantage of all her opportunities, didn’t she? Making enough of a name for herself to run for the board of commissioners? She was always saying she wanted to be somebody, but it was like nothing was ever enough. Important people could praise her to the skies, but if the Ledger ran a critical letter from some nobody out in the country, it cut her to the quick.
“You want to know what was probably on her flash drive? I guarantee you it had everybody who ever said something ugly about her. She had the memory of an elephant. I’m not saying she used her position to hurt that person, but she certainly wouldn’t have gone out of her way to do him any favors.”
“So who did she do favors for, Dee?”
The girl looked back at him and Dwight saw her jaw tighten.
“You said you weren’t close to her when she died. What happened?”
But the time of confidences seemed to be over. It was as if suddenly realizing why her mother had been so driven to succeed had made her no longer willing to speak of any failings Candace might have had.
“You do know that whoever killed her might have been one of those she did favors for?” he said gently.
“I’d better go help Dad bring in the coffee,” she said, unfolding herself up from the floor just as Bradshaw and Wilson returned.
The coffee was every bit as delicious as promised and Bradshaw seemed as willing as ever to help, but a distinct chill radiated from his daughter.
“When can we have the house back?” she asked as she handed Dwight a cup of fragrant brew.
“My deputies are finishing up there now.” He looked at his watch. “I guess they’re probably done. But if you come across that flash drive, I hope you’ll call us right away.”
She gave an indifferent shrug that promised nothing.
“Of course she will,” said Bradshaw. “Cream or sugar, Bryant?”
“No, thank you. Just a couple of further questions. Can you suggest anyone at all that might want your wife out of the way?”
The older man shook his head. Dee sat motionless, as if her mind were elsewhere and she wished they were gone so that she could go wherever that was.
“Would you tell us, sir, where were you Tuesday evening between four-thirty and six?”
“Is that when it happened?” The man shook his head sadly. “I realize you must ask that question, Bryant, but I could never hurt my wife. I was here at home then.”
“Alone?”
Bradshaw nodded. “Dee dropped her things off earlier, but she was gone by then.”
“There’s no one to corroborate that?”
He placed his spoon precisely on the saucer and set them back on the tray. “Sorry. I sat on my patio with a drink and a dictionary of quotations until dark, but I saw no one until a neighbor came out to walk his dog on the commons. That would have been around seven or seven-thirty.”
“Dee?”
“I was at a friend’s house till four.” She gave the friend’s name and address. “Then I drove back into Dobbs for a five o’clock job interview. After that I went out to supper with more friends and didn’t get back to Dad’s till almost ten.”
“Job interview?” asked Dwight.
“I believe he’s your brother-in-law,” she said with a mocking smile. “Mr. Will Knott?”
CHAPTER 13
Hope is forgetting that one’s
Father will be in the deep, running currents
Forever.
—The Persimmon Tree Carol, by Shelby Stephenson
Shortly before the Friday afternoon break, my clerk leaned over between cases and whispered, “Someone down in the office says Danny Creedmore told his secretary that Candace Bradshaw was murdered.”
“Really?” It had been difficult to think of Candace killing herself, but somehow less surprising to hear that she’d been murdered. “Any details?”
“Not yet. I’ll IM Faye Myers. See if she knows anything.”
Faye Myers is a plump and gossipy dispatcher who’s married to an EMS tech. Between them they know most of what’s going on in the county before anyone else does. Bo Poole keeps threatening to fire her, but somehow he never has, probably because she seldom reveals anything sensitive to an investigation before it becomes common knowledge. It might also be that he regards her as a barometer of public opinion and likes the feedback she gives him. Grapevines do tend to run in both directions and there’s a reason Bo barely has to break a sweat out on the campaign trail every four years.