“I’m ready.”
He flicked the light switches and the windowless prop room was plunged into darkness.
As we came down the hall, I thought I saw something move beyond the open outer door.
“See? What’d I tell you?” said the pragmatist.
“Oh dear!” sighed the preacher.
The patrol car was parked so that the pickup was completely blocked. A uniformed sheriff’s deputy leaned against the truck’s hood with a happy grin on his pudgy face and a meaty hand resting lightly on his holster. Deputy Jack Jamison.
“Major Bryant’s on his way over,” he drawled. “He said he’d ’preciate it if y’all’d wait on him.”
21 i never said it would be easy
Okay, so it turned out not to be as bad as it could have been. The fact that I’d called Ambrose from Raleigh supported my claim that I really was escorting Denn to the sheriff’s office even though, strictly speaking, Possum Creek Players Theatre wasn’t on the route.
Dwight arrived a little after six and took me off to one of the side rooms to hear as much as I could tell without compromising Denn’s attorney-client privileges, even though I hadn’t formally said I’d represent him. We sat down at a table across from each other; and starting off, it was Mr. Deputy Sheriff and Ms. Lawyer as I described how I’d wound up meeting Denn at Pullen Park. No meaningful glances, no locked eyes this go-round, and soon he was back to treating me like the Knott boys’ kid sister.
“What’s your gut feeling on him, Deb’rah?”
“Did he kill Michael Vickery?” I asked. “No.”
“Well, who does he think?”
“I don’t believe he has a clue. But if your next question’s is he telling everything exactly like it happened, your guess is good as mine. I keep trying to pin him down about why he wanted me to meet him out here, and he keeps prevaricating. You going to charge him?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Why? Just because they fought? Lots of couples fight.”
“Oh, come on, Deb’rah. He took a gun out to the woods. He damn near killed Vickery right in front of your eyes last week. That’s no little domestic squabble.”
“He was trying to scare Gayle and me from involving Michael in Janie’s death again. He said Michael still had nightmares.”
“Yeah? Like a war vet’s post-traumatic stress syndrome?” Dwight looked skeptical.
“I don’t know. Denn keeps bringing up religion. Maybe Michael felt guilty because she lay over there so long and he didn’t know, didn’t help.”
He leaned back in his chair and propped one of his size elevens on the edge of the table as if he were back in my mother’s kitchen, arguing with my brothers around the dinner table. He’s big all over, Dwight is. Played basketball in high school and could have played at Carolina if he hadn’t joined the army. Dean Smith liked the way he could handle a ball enough to send a scout over to some of his games. Big hands, big feet, big shoulders.
And yeah, everything else in nice proportion, too.
The summer I was ten, to teach me patience and keep me out of trouble, my mother gave me a good little pair of binoculars and a bird book and told me to go find a sheltered place and just sit quietly without making sudden movements and I would see nature’s wonderful secrets. There was a thick stand of grapevines and honeysuckle that overlooked the creek bank where the boys used to swim and horse around buck naked after their farm chores were done. I always came back to the house with chigger bites and scratches, but Mother was right. To this day, there’s a whole bunch of men walking around Colleton County whose natural endowments are no secret to me.
Oblivious to my memories, Dwight was still laying out reasons to arrest Denn.
“-besides, you know as good as I do how many homicides come from domestic fights. If Denn was a woman whose husband’d been cheating on her, you know he’d be the prime suspect. How’s this any different?”
“For one thing, I talked to his friend in Raleigh who swears Denn didn’t leave his place till a quarter past nine. Say thirty-five minutes to get to the theater, you’re talking what? Nine-fifty, almost ten?”
Dwight doodled a clock face on the yellow legal pad in front of him. “It was nearly twenty-four hours before you found the body. The ME said everything was ‘consistent’ with nine P.M. being when he died, but fifty minutes more or less don’t make an alibi.”
He sat back, clicking and unclicking his ballpoint pen.
“Denn’s friend also helped him unload the truck,” I said, “and can swear categorically that there was no shotgun in it.”
Before Dwight could say the obvious, I beat him to it. “Yeah, yeah, I know. He could have stashed it anywhere between here and Raleigh.”
Dwight grinned. “Now you’re starting to sound sensible. One drawback though: nobody at the Pot Shot ever saw a shotgun out there. Just the rifle.”
He took his foot off the table and the chair came down with a bang. “I guess I’ll just get his statement first and see what happens. You going to sit in and advise him?”
“If I can’t get Ambrose to come over.”
“Is that a smart thing to do?”
“Somebody has to.”
“Yeah, but should it ought to be you?”
“Probably not,” I sighed. “Is that all?”
“I reckon. For now anyhow.”
On the way out of the room, I remembered something and shut the door before I even had it open good.
“What?” he asked.
He’s a lot taller than me, so I had to reach up to pull him down to my level. It wasn’t mouth-to-mouth resuscitation or anything like that, but it was still a damn good kiss.
“Hey, wait a minute,” he said and stepped back, breathing heavily.
I laughed and fluttered my eyelashes outrageously. He was just Dwight again, only more so. “Well, you wanted to know, didn’t you?”
He was still looking dazed.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I did.”
“Anything else?”
“Naah,” he grinned. “I think that’ll just about get it.”
Using the theater phone, I tried one last time to make Ambrose Daughtridge come over and sit in on the interrogation, but even after I told him that Dwight probably wouldn’t book Denn, he still declined.
“I am not now and never have been Mr. McCloy’s attorney,” he said. “I may’ve drawn up his will as a favor to Michael Vickery, but I do not consider him my client.”
Ambrose Daughtridge is silver haired and soft spoken and looks like he should be cataloguing rare books in a university library somewhere. Unlike a lot of us who are ham actors at heart, Ambrose avoids courtroom appearances when he can, prefers civil cases to criminal, and never defends anything more serious than a misdemeanor if he can help it, even though his courtroom skills are quite adequate.
“I hope you won’t take this wrong, Deborah,” said Ambrose, misinterpreting my silence. “It’s not that I’m prejudiced against homosexuals or anything. I always got along just fine with Michael.”
“Because he didn’t flaunt it and Denn’s more obvious?” I asked caustically.
“Because he was a gentleman,” came the soft reply. “Now I do appreciate your courtesy in calling me and your concern for the proprieties, so let me assure you, for the record, that there is nothing in my former dealings with Mr. McCloy that would preclude your representing him, if you and he so choose.”
What could I say except, “Thank you, Ambrose”?
Actually, as I walked back down the hall to tell Denn I’d look after his interests tonight if he still wanted me to,
