“Cousin? Oh, yes, the one with the peaches. Someone from your office called me about that this morning, asking about her car. All I know is that he showed up at the office last spring and said his name was Manny and that Candace had called him, asked him to bring some peaches up for the office staff. There were like five bushels. Even the cleaning crews got a few. Candace said his truck broke down and she was going to lend him her car to get back.”
“Lend it to him?”
“But then she decided to just give it to him because the peach orchard wasn’t doing so good and she felt sorry for him. I told you she liked doing people favors.”
“And that’s all you know?”
“He was scamming her with that hard-luck story about the orchard,” the woman said, as if remembering an old grievance. “He didn’t own any orchard. Those peaches came from north Florida, not north Georgia. When I went out to the truck to take a look at them, one of the baskets had a label. I said something about was that the name of his orchard and he immediately shifted it around. I’d already seen the Florida address though. By the time those baskets came inside, every label had been torn off. And something else. That wasn’t his truck either. It was one of those rent-a-wrecks.”
“Did you tell her that?”
“I tried, but she got mad and said it was none of my business, so I backed off.”
“Do you remember the date, Mrs. Farmer?”
“The week after her birthday,” she said and told them the date.
Exactly one day after Linsey Thomas was killed.
They allowed Mrs. Farmer to rejoin Bradshaw and were discussing the implications of what she had told them when Denning appeared in the hall doorway. “Major Bryant? You might want to see this.”
They followed him back to the front of the house. In the foyer, opposite a large coat closet, was a small powder room. When Denning opened the door, a strong odor of a chlorine-based toilet bowl cleanser hit their noses. He had removed the lid of the tank and left it propped against the wall. The three crowded into the room and peered inside the tank, where a wineglass lay completely submerged in the cleanser.
“Cute, huh?” said Denning from behind them. “Try getting DNA off that glass.”
CHAPTER 18
Quiet lies the body under the limb . . .
The ground’s a harp strung with shadows.
—Middle Creek Poems, by Shelby Stephenson
MONDAY AFTERNOON
Sweat poured from Faison McKinney’s face, gnats whined in his unprotected ears, and the pace that old man had set was giving him a painful stitch in his side. How in the dickens could a man who was at least forty years older and six inches taller eel his way through briars and vines and low-hanging limbs without once tripping or banging his head? He himself had already fallen twice and he knew he had a nasty scrape on his forehead where he had misjudged a pine limb.
“ ’Fraid I’m gonna have to ask you to slow down a little, Brother Kezzie,” he called, embarrassed that the man ahead should be in such better shape. Maybe it was time to cut back on the cakes and pies the ladies of the church insisted on sharing with him and Marian. Cut back on the barbecue, too. Marian didn’t seem to gain an ounce, he thought irritably, but he’d had to let out his belt another notch recently and the gold band with the nice diamond inset that he used to wear on his ring finger when it was new only fit his pinky now. He was going to have to talk to her, make her—no, not make, he corrected himself—ask her to quit serving the rich foods he liked and learn how to prepare healthy low-calorie meals that still tasted just as good and rich.
“Sorry, Preacher,” Kezzie Knott said when McKinney caught up with him, huffing like a steam engine. “It ain’t much further now. Just on the other side of that big oak yonder.”
A few yards on and he came to a stop by a large tree that must have fallen in the last hurricane. He sat down on the trunk and a grateful McKinney sank down beside him, trying not to breathe too strenuously. Kezzie Knott seemed to be breathing normally and if the man had broken a sweat, McKinney couldn’t see it.
“It was right here,” the old man said. “Twenty-five years ago. I had me a still down the slope there on the creek bank and I come along this way that day. Never went to any of my stills the same way twice. You don’t want to make a path, see? Laziness’ll give you away quicker’n the smoke or the smell.”
He paused as if remembering old secrets of his craft. “It was just a little still. I’d purty much got out of making it myself by then. My wife didn’t like me messing with it and you know how women are. You got to promise them things, don’t you?”
“Well . . .” said McKinney, mopping his sweaty face with his handkerchief. “I believe it’s a woman’s place to abide by her husband’s wishes, but moonshining? She was probably trying to save your soul.”
“And my hide, too,” the old man said with a chuckle. “Them ATF men was plumb aching to catch me out and stick me in jail. That’s why I put my still down here on Sid Pritchard’s land so that—”
“Pritchard’s land?” McKinney exclaimed. “This is part of Frances Pritchard’s land?”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t never do stuff like that on my own land. Ain’t safe. Didn’t I tell you?”
“No, Brother Kezzie, you did not tell me. Isn’t there a road right over there? Why did we have to walk a mile through the woods when we could’ve driven almost right to the spot?”
“And park my truck on the road out yonder for every passing busybody to wonder what I was doing in here?” asked Kezzie. “No, sir. That ain’t my way. Iffen you don’t want people asking questions, then you don’t give ’em nothing to ask questions about.”
He stood up and pointed up into the limbs of the tall oak. “Right here’s where I found him hanging, all tangled up in them parachute lines. He was dangling just a few feet off the ground, and every time the wind blew, the branches make it look like he was still alive, but he won’t. His neck was broke. I cut him down and after I seen what was in his backpack, I buried him right here. Him and his parachute and everything on him except that backpack.”
“I see,” said the preacher.
“It’s been a-eating on me for twenty-five years,” the old man said, “and I just can’t go to meet my maker knowing he didn’t have a Christian burial and I didn’t take the opportunity to make things right when I got the chance. That was pure-out providence meeting you Friday.”
“The Lord still works in mysterious ways,” McKinney agreed solemnly. He waved away the gnats that were buzzing around his eyes. “I think He led us both to that fishpond for his own reasons.”
“I reckon you’re right, Preacher. Anyhow, his people never knowed what happened to him and that man he stole from never got his stuff back. So I’d really appreciate it, if you’d do what you can and say a few words over him for me.”
“Of course,” said the other man. He came to his feet and pulled out a small Bible. “How exactly did you bury him?”
“Right here,” said Kezzie, sketching a narrow rectangle with his hands. “Head up there, facing east, his feet right about down here.”
He sat back on the tree trunk again and listened respectfully as McKinney read from the Bible and then prayed for the repose of “thy servant, Nicholas Radzinsky. And, Father, we ask that You forgive his sins and let him enter into the paradise of Your blessed radiance, for we ask it in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.”
“Amen,” said Kezzie. “Thank you, Preacher. I surely do appreciate it and I believe he does, too.”
They sat in silence on the tree trunk for several long minutes as the sun sank lower in the west. McKinney was thinking of the long walk back to Kezzie Knott’s truck, but there was something even more important on his mind. When the other man remained silent, he said at last, “When you told me about this and asked my advice, it sounded so fantastic that if you hadn’t shown me that earring—”