“Good day, Mr. Stafford. I’m Sheriff John Lee Warren. Welcome to Graniteville, suh.”
Stafford returned the greeting, offering his left hand, which caused an awkward moment, but then the sheriff took it in his own right hand.
He wondered how the sheriff knew his name. The sheriff anticipated his question. “Mrs. Warren told me you’d be comin’ up from the city. Asked if I might show you out to Willow Grove.”
“I’d appreciate that, Sheriff. Should I call Mrs. Warren first?”
“Oh, I don’t think so, Mr. Stafford,” the sheriff replied. He had a deep, authoritative voice. “But you might want to grab a bite; the food here isn’t bad. If you’d care to join me?” “My pleasure, Sheriff,” Stafford said. He put his bags back in his car, locked the doors, and followed the sheriff over to the diner. Propriety required he tell the sheriff why he was here. He hadn’t exactly been sneaking into town, not with the big white government sedan. But he knew about the power Georgia county sheriffs exerted within their rural fiefdoms, and he guessed that up here in the mountains, that power was not trivial. He also wondered about the name Warren.
“What happened to the arm?” the sheriff asked as they entered the diner.
“Zigged when I should have zagged,” Stafford said. “Caught a nine through the humerus. I’m working on getting it back again.”
The Waffle House was full of locals, but the sheriff walked confidently to a back corner table, which was evidently his for the lunch hour. A waitress followed them back. He invited Stafford to order and told the waitress he’d have his usual. When she left, he gave Stafford an expansive look and asked what might be bringing a federal officer to Graniteville. He had a southern accent, but it was not very pronounced.
“Not quite sure myself, Sheriff,” Stafford replied. “I got a call from a Ms. Gwen Warren that she would like to talk to me, so here I am.”
“And how might that lady know you, suh?” The sheriff’s expression remained amiable, but those dark eyes never wavered. Stafford was aware that people in the diner, mostly men, were giving the two of them covert glances.
Stafford explained a little bit about the DCIS, then briefly described the incident at the airport. “I’m following up on an ongoing investigation involving possible fraud at one of the Atlanta military bases. I gave her my card that day in the airport. Her call came as a surprise, frankly, but she didn’t want to discuss it over the phone, so here I am. Oh, and here are my credentials.”
The sheriff examined his ID and then handed it back. “Thank you, suh. I knew about the FBI, the CIA, the ATF, and the DBA. I must admit that DCIS is a new one to me. And I apologize for all the questions, but sometimes we have federal officers who come through and, uh …”
“I understand, Sheriff. It’s my agency’s policy to keep local law-enforcement officials informed anytime we operate off the federal reservation. I would have checked in with you in any event, except that I still don’t know what this is about.”
The sheriff nodded as the waitress brought Stafford his hamburger. The sheriff had a platter of scrambled eggs, bacon, grits, biscuits, and hash browns. The sheriff fell to his late breakfast without further conversation, so Stafford did the same. The diner was noisy, with waitresses calling in raucous orders in the code peculiar to Waffle House restaurants throughout the South, acknowledged by ribald comments from the cook amid the clash and clatter of crockery from behind the counter. When they had finished, the waitress brought them both a cup of hot black coffee without their asking, then cleared the plates away.
“So, Mr. Stafford,” the sheriff began. “You think mebbe Mrs. Warren knew this man — what was his name, Carson?”
“I don’t know, Sheriff,” Stafford replied. “Well, actually, when Carson went down, he appeared to be engaged in a staring match with a young girl who was with Mrs. Warren.”
The sheriff paused with his coffee mug in the air and gave Stafford a searching look. “Can you describe the girl, suh?”
Stafford did, and the sheriff began to nod his head slowly. “That there would be Jessamine,” he said. “She’s one of the children at Willow Grove.”
“Jessamine? And Willow Grove is what, an orphanage?” — The sheriff nodded again. “They’re not called that in
” Georgia anymore, of course. Orphanage is no longer politically correct. Now they’re group homes. State-licensed, inspected, and, to a degree, funded. Mrs. Warren is the director.” “Jessamine,” Stafford said. “Interesting name.”
The sheriff gave him a speculative look. “A jessamine is an Appalachian flower,” he said. “And, yes, she is an interesting child. A very interesting child. And I suspect that’s what Mrs. Warren wants to talk to you about, but I think we should let her do that. When you’re finished, I’ll show you the way up there. The motel will keep you a room.”
They left the diner after paying at the register, and Stafford followed the sheriff in his own car. They drove back into the town center, went around the square, and headed out the eastern road. They crossed what appeared to be that same deep creek that ran by the motel, then began to climb through a narrow canyon, flanked on either side by sloping slabs of dynamited rock. After a few minutes, a small plateau opened up on the left, revealing a large two story farmhouse set back about two hundred feet from the road. The house was an old Victorian with screened porches surrounding all four sides on both floors and a dark green copper roof.
A landscaped driveway led up from the road to a graveled circle at the front of the house. On the left was a large pond surrounded by a dense stand of willow trees; on the right was an orderly grove of old pecan trees. There was a sloping open field with protruding rock ledges to its right. The pond dam, which overlooked the road, was partially obscured by the willows at the lower-left side of the property. A small creek flowed under the road from a deep pool at its base. There was a rambling white picket fence running from the corner of the pond across the front of the property, with drooping double wooden gates at the driveway.
There appeared to be horse paddocks and outbuildings behind the main house, although Stafford did not see any horses in the fields. A tree covered mountain slope on the opposite side of the road loomed close above the road, and the fields’ behind the house were shaded by an even larger hill. The pastures behind the house occupied what little flat land there was on the property.
The sheriff turned in at the drive, drove straight up to the house, and parked. Stafford followed, parking off to one side. The sheriff went up onto the front porch and rang a bell. Stafford waited on the steps until the door opened, and the woman from the airport greeted them. She was wearing a gray dress and had a light sweater draped over her shoulders.
She appeared to be perfectly composed, except that Stafford noticed that she was gripping the edges of the sweater with the fingers of her right hand.
“Gwen, this is Mr. Stafford from Washington,” the sheriff said. “We had lunch down at the Waffle House. Had us a little chat.” He paused for a second, as if suddenly lost for words. Stafford noticed that some of the sheriff’s authority seemed to have deserted him. “Well, I guess I’ll leave y’all to your business, then,” he finished.
“Thank you, John Lee,” the woman murmured, dismissing him with a brief smile as she opened the screen door for Stafford to enter. She did not offer to shake hands, sparing Stafford the embarrassment of the left-handed dance. The sheriff nodded once at Stafford and went back to his car. She looked after John Lee Warren for a moment, long enough to give him a parting wave, which gave Stafford a moment to examine her.