“Guilt by association?” I said dryly.
Dwight had been leaning back in his swivel chair, one foot lazily propped on an open desk drawer. Now he came upright with both feet on the floor.
“Oh, come on, Deb’rah. You’re holding his rap sheets. You think he came over to Colleton County and got religion? He was just getting out of Dodge City before the bullets started flying. You can’t really believe the guy’s clean?”
I thought back to yesterday—was it really only yesterday and not weeks ago?—when Mr. Jap was bragging on Allen’s automotive skills and prowess: “He bought a old wrecker from some man out from Raleigh, he did, and in just two days, he got it fixed up good enough to sell, yes, he did.”
Now that I considered how fast he’d “fixed it up,” there was a better than fifty-fifty chance that Allen had probably bought a wreck and immediately transferred its vehicle ID number plate to a stolen car of the same make and model. He could then register the stolen car as rebuilt and sell it legitimately.
“No,” I said slowly, “he’s—” I broke off as the implication of something on Allen’s printout suddenly leaped out at me.
“What the hell is this?” I asked, pointing at the dateline on every sheet.
Last Monday’s date.
“You started checking up on him before Mr. Jap was killed. Why?”
The guilty look on his face was the mirror image of the look on Daddy’s face when he said Dwight wanted to see me.
Exasperation jetted through me. “I don’t believe this!”
“Now, Deb’rah—”
“Don’t go ‘Now Deb’ring’ me, you egg-sucking hound! Daddy told you about Allen and me, didn’t he? And the two of you thought you’d take care of him. Just run him on out of the county before he got dug in too deep at Mr. Jap’s.”
“It’s not my fault if Mr. Kezzie wants to protect you,” Dwight said stiffly.
“It’s your fault that you keep indulging him,” I snapped. “If you and the boys don’t quit sticking your noses in my affairs—”
“You’re going to get out your trusty butcher knife and chop ’em off?”
The trouble with trying to stay mad at Dwight is that he can usually make me laugh. And once my anger was diffused, I had to admit—to myself if not to Dwight—that getting Allen Stancil out of Colleton County had been high on my list of priorities, too.
“No warrants on him, hmm? I was hoping maybe he was behind in his child support payments or something.”
“Support payments? According to the records, he stayed in hot water over them, but that kid’s way past twenty-one now.”
“No, there’s a minor girl, too. Wendy Nicole.” I riffled through the civil judgments against Allen, but there was nothing about a Wendy Nicole Stancil or her mother Sally. “Probably sweet-talked her into keeping it out of Child Support Enforcement,” I muttered. “Probably told her that he’d pay her what he could when he could and ‘You can’t git blood outn a turnip, darlin’.’ ”
“I thought I read that the little girl’s name was Tiffany and that the paternity case against him was dismissed,” said Dwight.
“Tiffany came later. A lot later.” In amongst the sheaf of papers Dwight had managed to accumulate on Allen, I found a summation of the case and read, “ ‘Tiffany Jane Morgan, daughter of Katherine J. Morgan.’ She’ll be four years old in January. According to Allen, Tiffany’s mother didn’t know
Dwight was more interested in Allen’s present than in his past.
“Everybody seems to know that Billy Wall was coming with all that money,” he mused. “Allen had to know, too.”
“You talked to Wall?”
Dwight nodded. “Said he came by around eleven-thirty. Jap was out in the garage alone. Said he paid him his share of the produce money in cash—forty-nine hundred in hundred-dollar bills—and Jap took his notes out of that old safe, put the money in, and spun the lock on it.”
“Was Allen there?”
“Billy said his truck was gone and he didn’t see him. He didn’t hang around, he said. Just counted out the money, talked a couple of minutes about Jap’s plans for the garage and then left.”
“So now you’re looking at a time of death between eleven-thirty and one-thirty. Did you talk to Cherry Lou?”
“Yeah, but she’s real hostile. Says good riddance to all Stancils and she saw nothing.”
“What about Dick Sutterly?”
“Pretty much the same thing. Says he came in through Gray Talbert’s lane and went out by Jap’s. But I may have to talk to him again because he was real curious about the time frame and who was where, you know? And he was driving around that whole section from Adam’s land to Gray Talbert’s nursery and on back out past Jap’s around one o’clock.”
He paused a second, then assumed an offhand air. “Says Adam and the dogs were on Talbert’s side of the creek when he came up on them around twelve-thirty.”
