Some days, if I’m pressed for time, I do drive down, but I always feel so guilty that it takes the edge off the morning. You think it’s silly to equate walking with righteousness and driving with sin?
Me, too.
But my Southern Baptist upbringing is such that nine mornings out of ten will find me puffing down the long drive. Which is why I was standing in a clump of yellow coreopsis at the edge of the road reading about Lynn Bullock’s death when Dwight drove by around nine that morning and stopped to ask if I wanted a lift back to the house.
“Sure,” I said, opening the passenger door of his cruiser. (Riding in someone else’s car doesn’t seem to bother my conscience.)
I was wearing sneakers, a sports bra and denim shorts with no underpants because I planned to swim as soon as I got back and half the time I don’t bother with a suit.
“So who killed the Bullock woman?” I asked. By then I’d scanned both papers and seen little new since both went to press before the victim’s identity had been announced.
“Now you know I can’t talk to you about this.”
“Sure you can,” I wheedled. “I don’t gossip—”
He snorted at that.
“I’ve never repeated anything you ever asked me to keep to myself,” I said indignantly, “and you know it.”
“True.”
“And homicide cases are never heard in district court, so it’s not as if you’re tainting a trial judge.”
“Also true.” He gently braked and I felt the underside of the car scrape dirt as we eased over a patch where the tire ruts were deeper than the middle.
“Well, then?”
“You need to get Robert or Haywood to take a tractor blade to this drive again,” he said.
“Dwight!”
“Okay, okay. Not that there’s much to tell yet. Bullock gave me his sister-in-law’s number up in Roxboro, but she never answered her phone till this morning. Said she hadn’t talked to Mrs. Bullock since Tuesday night. Didn’t know anything about a trip to Danville this weekend. She herself spent the weekend with a sailor in Norfolk.”
Dwight pulled into my yard and cut the engine when I invited him in for coffee. I’d turned on the coffeemaker just as I left for the papers and it was fresh and hot. I poured us each a mugful, toasted a couple of English muffins, added figs from Daddy’s bush and the last of the blueberries from Minnie and Seth’s and then carried the full tray out to the porch table. Dwight had switched on the paddle fan overhead and it stirred the air enough to make the difference between pleasant and uncomfortable.
Hurricane Edouard was still dumping water on New England, but here in Colleton County the skies were bright blue with a few puffy clouds scattered overhead.
We buttered our muffins and topped each bite with the fresh fruits.
“Anybody see anything at the motel?”
“We don’t have statements from all the help yet, but so far, nothing. That unit was the end one on the back side of the building and the trees and bushes back there are so thick that Sherman’s army could’ve camped for a week without anybody seeing ’em. The people in the nearby units checked out yesterday before the body was found and we’re trying to contact all of them. The O’Days run a clean business, but if someone wants to pay by cash, they don’t ask to see ID and that’s what happened with the guy in the next unit. Connecticut license plate. We’re just hoping he didn’t lie about his plate number.”
“How’s Jason really taking it?” I asked, popping a plump and juicy blueberry against the roof of my mouth.
“’Bout like you’d expect. Doesn’t know whether to be mad or sad. She was his wife, but she was screwing around on him.”
“Any chance he could’ve done it?”
We’re both cynical enough to put spouses at the top of any list of suspects.
Dwight shrugged. “Always a chance. He seemed pretty shook when I told him last night. He was at the ball field when you and I got there and his car was in front of us all the way back to Cotton Grove. Of course, he could have got home, found something that told him where she really was, and roared back to Dobbs by ten-thirty. We’ll have to wait for the ME’s report. One good thing though—they ought to be able to pinpoint the time of death pretty close.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. The motel’s shorthanded right now since school started, so Tom and Marie were both working the weekend. He had a bowl of peanuts on the registration counter and she ate a few when she checked in. Tom thinks that was around four-thirty, quarter to five.”
He didn’t have to draw me a picture. Depending on how far along digestion was, the ME should be able to bracket the time of death rather narrowly.
“Tom had never met her, didn’t know who she was and he didn’t think twice when she paid cash in advance and gave him a phony name. Benton.”
“Her maiden name,” I said.
“Now how you know that?”
“She was an LPN at the hospital. Amy and Will got here after you left yesterday.”
That was enough. He knows Amy, knows where she works, knows how she picks up information and stores it like a squirrel laying up pecans for winter.
“Amy says she played around.”
“Any names?”
“Not recent ones,” I hedged as I nibbled more blueberries.
“Her sister swears she’d hung up her spurs and was walking the straight and narrow these days,” said Dwight, “but you wouldn’t know it from the way that room looked.”
He took another swallow of coffee. “Anyhow, Tom O’Day says she knew exactly where she wanted to be. Asked for a ground-floor room in back, said she liked it quiet and didn’t want stairs. It was the last non-smoking room left on that side. According to the switchboard records, she made only one outgoing call on her room phone after she checked in. Around five.”
“To her husband. I was sitting in front of Jason when he talked to her.”
“And the switchboard says she received an incoming call about ten minutes after that, someone who asked if Lynn Benton had checked in yet.”
“Male?”
“The operator thinks so, but can’t swear to it. She also says somebody called around three o’clock asking the same thing and that it could’ve been the same person.”
“Impatient lover just waiting to find out what room she was in before rushing over?”
“Sounds like it, since he knew what name she was using.”
“Nobody saw her at the drink machine? Filling her ice bucket? Letting strange men into her room?”
“If they did, they’re not saying.”
“I guess you’re pretty sure it was a man?”
“Dressed like that? Or rather, undressed like that? And she was pretty well-built. Taller than you. Probably stronger, too. Nurses do a lot of lifting and pulling. It would’ve taken somebody just as strong.”
“He could’ve caught her off-guard,” I said, picturing the scene. “He could’ve been undressing her, took off one of her stockings. Maybe trailed it along her neck.”
My mind flinched from the rest of the scenario. Lynn Bullock had thought he was making love to her. Instead—
Across the table from me, Dwight pulled a fig apart to reveal the soft fleshy interior and I wondered what he was thinking as he ate it. Ever look closely at a fig? It’s male on the outside, explicitly female on the inside. Erotic as hell, but I doubt if Dwight notices.
“We bagged her hands,” he said, “but if the killer came up from behind with that stocking and threw her down face-first, she may not’ve had time to do more than claw at the thing that was choking her. If that’s the case, we’ll only find her own DNA under her nails.”
“Poor Jason Bullock.” I sighed and got up to fetch the coffeepot for refills.
When I came back from the kitchen, Dwight was holding a couple of plastic evidence bags in such a way that his big hands concealed the contents.