“Osborne’s body’s still in Chapel Hill. She do him, too?”
He shrugged. “Our DA and Judge Knott both say she was playing a dulcimer the whole time before Osborne went missing.”
Horton’s face brightened. “That’s right. So if she didn’t kill her husband, she didn’t kill Ledwig. She was probably scared to say she was there. Afraid we’d jump to the same conclusions we almost did. You go talk to her, George. Be easy with her. I bet she’ll tell you what really happened.”
“I’ll give her a call. See if I can run up there now.”
On the way back to his office, Underwood paused at the dispatcher’s station. “Any word on Proffitt yet?”
The owner of the Trading Post hadn’t shown up yesterday morning, and when a deputy went to collect him today, he was not to be found.
The dispatcher shook her head. “Nobody’s seen him since night before last. Faye says his shotgun’s still there, but if he went hunting, nothing’s in season for another week. Course that wouldn’t stop ol’ Proffitt, but his truck’s still parked out back. You reckon he’s skipped town?”
“In what?” asked Underwood. “Don’t make it official, but I’ll send somebody out to check his house, and you tell everybody to keep a stray eye out for him, okay?”
“Sure, Captain.”
He went on down to his office and called the Osborne house. The housekeeper who answered said she thought that Mrs. Osborne and her daughter had gone to a funeral home in Howards Ford. “To make the arrangements,” she said with a catch in her voice.
He left his number and asked her to tell Mrs. Osborne to call when she got back.
THURSDAY, 4:30 P.M.
The intercom on Lucius Burke’s desk gave a preliminary crackle, then his secretary’s voice said, “Billy Ed Johnson on line two, Mr. Burke.”
He pressed the right button. “Hey, Billy Ed! How can I do you?”
“Well, I was just wondering if that lady judge is still around the courthouse?”
“Judge Knott? I’m not sure. You want me to have somebody check and see?”
“Well, I’d appreciate it. She was supposed to meet me up here at Eagle Rest, but looks like she’s running late. Only she’s not answering her cell phone either.”
He gave Burke his number and said, “Call me back, hear?”
“Sure thing.” Burke cut the connection and touched the intercom button. “Suanna? Would you see if Judge Knott’s still in the courthouse?”
Out in the anteroom, that young woman rolled her eyes, but pushed back from her computer and went down the hall to the courtroom the visitor had used today. The lights were out. The light was also out in Judge Rawlings’s chambers, but Suanna was nothing if not diligent. She took the stairs down to the lower level and peered out over the parking lot. “Anybody know what kind of car that judge drives?”
Fletcher, on his way back from flirting with the evening dispatcher, said, “Captain Underwood might.”
“Might what?” Underwood called, having heard his name.
“Know what kind of car your judge friend drives,” Fletcher called back.
Underwood came to his doorway. “Who wants to know?”
“Mr. Burke.” As the DA’s secretary, Suanna usually took notes on his calls unless he specifically told her to get off the line. “She was supposed to meet somebody at Eagle Rest at four o’clock and she’s not answering her phone, so they want to know if she’s left yet.”
“Eagle Rest? That’s what? Eighteen, twenty miles?” Underwood went over to the wide glass doors and scanned the lot, but didn’t see her black Firebird. “Mary Kay Kare said she left around three-thirty. She should be there by now.”
He accompanied Suanna back to Burke’s office and was soon dialing the number Billy Ed Johnson had given Burke.
“How did you route her out there?” he asked when Johnson answered.
Within thirty minutes he had retrieved her license plate number from Motor Vehicles, and as the sun sank low in the west he had three units prowling the roads Johnson had specified.
There might be a dozen reasons why she was late, but how many reasons could there be for not answering her cell phone? And maybe he was jumping the gun, but if it was Annie, he’d sure want to know.
With a sigh, he pulled out his wallet and found the number he’d scribbled on the back of a card three days ago, then picked up his phone and dialed the area code for Colleton County.
Deputy Ray Elkins was only twenty-one. He had joined the sheriff’s department in July, shortly after finishing a two-year criminal justice course at the local community college, and he was very much aware of being the new kid with something to prove. Accordingly, he drove fast down the stretch of road he’d been assigned, looking for a black Firebird in obvious trouble—maybe something as simple as a flat tire or broken radiator belt.
Along the way, the young deputy stopped to examine a set of fresh skid marks on the outer lane at the bottom of the second long hill. There were shards of silvered glass on the pavement and he found a smashed side mirror that had been recently torn off a black vehicle and bounced over to the base of the mountain wall; but after walking fifty feet in either direction from the skid marks, he saw no sign that a vehicle had gone over the side.
He wasn’t real sure if this mirror came off a Firebird, but he stuck it in the trunk of his unit anyhow and drove on.
When the quick and dirty failed, Elkins turned around at the end of his assigned stretch and drove back more slowly. As he came up the same hill and rounded a sharp curve, there, about fifty feet past the crest, he saw a short set of skid marks. They continued off the pavement and on across the narrow, leaf-strewn shoulder.
He got out of the car and looked down, taking care not to step on the torn-up weeds and dirt. The tire tracks were so fresh, the exposed dirt had barely begun to dry. If a vehicle had gone off here, though, into this thicket of head-high mountain laurels and hardwoods, it wasn’t immediately apparent. Nevertheless, he climbed down to make sure, holding on to young saplings and laurel branches. Just as he was ready to turn back, a breeze parted the leaves and sunlight gleamed off black metal another twenty feet down.
A crumpled form lay in the bushes beyond the vehicle, and Elkins hesitated. The only dead bodies he’d seen in his short life were properly laid out in caskets in Sunday clothes. For a long moment, he stood there cussing the stupidity of people who don’t buckle up automatically, before his training kicked in and he forced himself to walk over to the body, to squat down and feel for a pulse.
Nothing.
He located the victim’s wallet and driver’s license, then climbed back up to the road, where he thumbed his mike and radioed for help.
CHAPTER 27
My alarm clock was ringing—ringing with such infuriating loudness that I fumbled for it on my nightstand, ready to slap it across the room, anything to make it stop. I seemed to be lying on my left arm and it was half numb as if I’d slept on it wrong. My head throbbed like the worst hangover of my entire life and the front of my neck was so sore I could barely turn it.
And still the alarm shrilled, sending daggers through my pounding head. I cracked one eye and groaned. It wasn’t even full daylight yet. The sky was the gray of predawn without a single rosy-fingered sign of sunrise. Why the hell had I set the alarm for such an early hour? And where was the stupid thing anyhow?
Abruptly it stopped.
Good.
Now I could turn over and grab another hour of sleep. Get rid of this headache.
Except that I seemed to be all tangled up in the covers.
I struggled to free myself, every part of my body hurting as I clawed at the constricting sheets—
Sheets?
I opened my eyes and looked down. Not sheets.
Seat belt.
I was hanging almost upside down against the left door of my car. No wonder my arm had gone numb. The deflated air bag hung like a limp balloon from its space on the steering wheel and there seemed to be a white powder all over my jacket. I twisted around, and as I shifted my weight, the car gave a sickening lurch, then slowly rolled over, crashing through the undergrowth. My head socked against the window and I blacked out again.