“Good Lord, Sheriff Brad,” Estelle said. “I couldn’t leave that for Miss Leigh and Cyn to see. After your people left it was a terrible mess out there. They got most everything up, but…” Her lip trembled. “Anyhow, I rolled that plastic line up on a stick and left it in the garage for you.” She wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. “I can’t believe that baby’s dead. Sherry was a bright, churchgoing child. I’ve known her since she was born.”
“And I know you were upset when I first asked, but since then have you thought of anybody who would want to hurt her?” Brad asked.
“No, sir. Everybody loved her,” Estelle said. “She was an angel. Pure angel. She was going to be a nurse. Got herself a scholarship to Fisk. Only reason she didn’t start college was because her mama was down again with the breast cancer.”
Estelle turned back to the dishes in the sink.
“Sherry worked for us since she was Hamp’s age,” Leigh interjected. “She was a serious, sweet girl and the idea that anyone would purposefully kill her is absurd. Some hunter must have shot at a deer and the bullet went astray. A high-powered rifle bullet can travel a couple of miles.”
“No,” Brad said. “Whoever did it shot from the tree line straight behind the house.”
“From way out there?” Leigh asked, pointing out the kitchen window at the trees that were amazingly small in the distance. “Preposterous.” She continued, “I’ve shot rifles myself and those woods are too far away for it to have been done on purpose. There must have been a deer in the field. He missed it and hit Sherry.”
“I found the place he fired from,” Brad told her. “And he sat there and waited for her to come out of the house.”
“A sniper?” Leigh asked, frowning.
Brad nodded.
“There’s only one sniper around here that I know of,” Leigh said, putting her hand to her mouth in a gesture of surprise, then turning her eyes away. “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry. I’m not myself.”
“Mama!” Cyn said.
“There’s this one man,” Hampton said in a low voice. “Sherry said he wanted to talk to her. He got mad and grabbed her when she told him to leave her alone.”
“Talk about what?” Brad asked.
“Talk doesn’t mean talk,” Cyn said, smiling coyly. “That talk means he wanted to-you know.”
Hamp continued, “He bugged her. He’d sit in his hoopty and watch her house sometimes. She said he followed her around a lot.”
“He ever sit and watch this house?” Brad asked.
Hamp’s brow creased in contemplation. “I don’t think so. If he did, I never saw him.”
“Did you see him last night, Hamp?” Brad asked.
“I saw him last night at the Shell station when we were going to the video store. He waved at Sherry and she told me not to look at him.”
“Do you know his name?”
Hamp nodded. “Alfoons.”
“Alphonse,” Cyn said. “Sherry told me all about him. He totally grossed her out.”
“He got thrown out of the Army,” Hamp said.
“Why?” Brad asked.
“He told Sherry he punched a white general for disrespecting him. Sherry said he gambles away all of his money and he owes people he doesn’t pay back. Sherry said even if he was kind of handsome and dressed up fancy, he was no good.”
“Handsome?” Cynthia blurted. “He looks like a bowlegged monkey in a pimp suit. He has creepy eyes and freckles.”
“Cyn!” Leigh snapped. “You know better than to say such a thing. If that is what they teach you at LSU, young lady, maybe you’d be better off at the junior college in Senatobia.”
“I didn’t say it because he’s black,” Cyn said. “Girls like bad boys, but not stupid, ugly ones.”
“Jefferson,” Estelle said, without turning around. “That’s his name. Alphonse Jefferson. It isn’t Christian to talk bad about people, but that is one lazy, liquor-boned, good-for-nothing boy that comes from shiftless people.”
“What’s liquor-boned?” Hamp asked.
“On account he’s mean-tempered when he drinks, which is most of the time. He stays at his grandmother’s and hangs out at Bugger’s juke joint with other no-accounts. He does look like a organ grinder’s monkey in those flashy getups, like Miss Cyn said.”
“Don’t encourage her, Estelle.”
Estelle threw up her wet hands.
Brad opened his murder book and made a note. “I know who he is. We’ve had him in the jail for drunk and disorderly a couple of times. I’ll check his Army records to see about his marksmanship ability.”
“Well, there you have it. Pick him up,” Leigh said. “Obviously he did it. Put him where he belongs, doing hard labor on Parchman Farm for the rest of his life. Sherry Adams had a productive life ahead of her. She mattered, and if you don’t remember anything else, remember that.”
“Parchman Farm be the only work he ever did,” Estelle threw in. She put the last plate in the rack, dried her hands, and let the water out of the sink.
“I’ll check him out, Leigh.”
“Good,” she said.
“Hamp,” Brad asked. “Have you remembered anything else about last night since we talked this morning?”
“Nope,” the boy said, absently spoon-stirring the grits on his plate. “I showed Sherry some new tricks I got yesterday.”
“Tricks?” Brad asked.
“Magic stuff,” Hamp said.
“Hamp is a magician,” Estelle said proudly. “He about the best there is around here. He can make about anything disappear.”
“And I always get them back,” Hamp added.
“The Great Memphister,” Estelle said, nodding. “That why he wears that cape he bought at the magic store in Memphis. You wouldn’t believe what those little thingamajigs cost.”
“It’s the Great Mephisto,” Hamp corrected.
“He can sure make his mama’s money disappear with them tricks he buys,” Estelle said, laughing.
“I use my own allowance,” he said defensively.
“That’s what allowances are for,” Leigh said, smiling.
Brad looked through his notebook. “Sherry came yesterday morning just before your mother left for Baton Rouge. At around seven last night, Sherry drove you to town to the video store and y’all got two movies. You both watched them until around midnight. There were no phone calls or visitors during that time. And you didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary.”
“Except for Alphonse Jefferson at the Shell station,” Hamp said.
Brad made a notation about the encounter. “The Shell station.”
Hamp nodded. “Yay-ah, Mr. Barnett.”
“Yes, Sheriff Barnett,” Leigh chided.
“Yes, Sheriff Barnett,” Hamp said.
“Stop playing with your food,” Leigh said.
Hamp frowned and put the spoon down on his plate.
“And you were asleep until the gunshot woke you up?” Brad asked.
“Yeah. It was real loud. I heard Estelle screaming and then I came down and she made me get in the utility room while she called nine-one-one. I didn’t see Sherry.”
“Thanks, Hamp,” Brad said, patting the boy’s shoulder.
“Leigh, why did you drive to Baton Rouge?” he asked, turning to her.
“To bring Cyn home for Christmas break.”
“I mean, why did you drive all the way to Baton Rouge instead of letting her fly home?”
“Good question,” Cyn said, frowning.
Leigh looked at Brad like he was an idiot. “Do you have any idea what it costs to fly from Baton Rouge to Memphis? The cotton is already ginned. Brad, have you ever known me to waste money?”
“There’s meals and a motel room and time away from the place,” he said.
“Motel?” Cyn said, laughing. “Mom spent the night in my room at the dorm and she made ham sandwiches for the trip.”
Cyn’s cell phone buzzed and she took it out of her pocket and looked at the display. With well-practiced thumbs she typed a message and closed it.
“Not wasting money is why I still own Six Oaks and not some damned conglomeration of suit-wearing, citified windbags who don’t know a cotton boll from a golf ball,” Leigh said flatly.