Reid watched him compare the two pens. “Would you really have thought I killed her if I couldn’t put my hands on it?”
Dwight shrugged. “Let’s just say it moves you down the list a couple of notches.”
“Come on, Dwight. I’m a lover, not a killer. You know that. I’ve told you—I saw her twice and that was one time too many.”
Dwight just nodded and took out his little notebook. “Now as I recall, you got out of somebody’s bed and over to the ball field around six. But you left as soon as the game was over. Where’d you go after that?”
“I came back here, showered and changed, then drove over to Raleigh. You remember Wilma Cater?”
“Jack Cater’s sister?”
“We went to see that new Tom Hanks movie, then stopped by the City Market for a couple of drinks.”
“Who’s
Reid laughed. “Don’t let it get around, but I do go out with
* * *
At noon, Deputy Mayleen Richards appeared in Dwight’s doorway with some papers in hand. “I called the jewelry store and spoke to the manager. The
“Oh?”
“Yes, sir.” A tall and solidly built ex-farmgirl, Richards had only recently been pulled off patrol duty. Dwight had decided that her diffidence with him and Sheriff Bo Poole was because she was still ultraconscious of protocol. “There’s been a complete change of personnel from when Mr. Lee bought those pens four years ago.”
“But?”
“But they do keep pretty good records.”
Dwight waved her over to the chair in front of his desk. “So what do these pretty good records show?”
Richards sat down stiffly. “Well, for one thing, the store makes a point of offering exclusive merchandise. They won’t carry items you can find at every mall in North Carolina. The pens were made in England and distributed only through an importer in New Jersey. So I went ahead and called them and they confirmed it. The store in Cary Towne Mall was the only outlet between New York and Atlanta that carried the line. There’s one in Boston, another in New Orleans.” She looked down at her notes. “The rest are Chicago, Scottsdale, Vail, Seattle and L.A. for a total of six hundred pens—a hundred and fifty of them were this design.”
“Good work,” Dwight said approvingly. “So who owns ours?”
“The jewelry store’s old invoices show that they stocked twenty silver pens from that company in four different designs. Five were the ‘Windsor Ivy.’ They have no documentation as to who bought three of the pens—those have to be Mr. Lee’s three—but they do know that two pens were sold at employee discount to the then-manager, who now works in their flagship store in New Orleans.”
“Did you call him?” asked Dwight.
“Her,” said Richards, allowing herself the smallest of smiles for the first time. “She’s not there today, so I left a message that I’d call tomorrow.”
“Excellent,” said Dwight. “Keep me informed.”
“Yes, sir.” She handed him some papers. “These are Jamison’s interviews with the rest of the motel staff. Nothing useful. And the ME faxed over his preliminary report.”
Dwight skimmed through the technical terms that basically said yes, Lynn Bullock had indeed died of strangulation. And based on testimony that she had been seen eating peanuts at approximately 4:45 p.m., it was safe to say that death occurred between the hours of 4:45 and 7:45 p.m.
* * *
Jason Bullock looked at his mother-in-law and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Vara, but it’s what Lynn wanted. We discussed it when I drew up our wills and that’s what we both decided to do.”
“She never!” Vara said stubbornly. “She ever tell you that, Lurleen?”
“Wills?” said Lynn’s half-sister. “She always said she was going to will me her pink ice necklace and earring set. Did she?”
The older woman was skinny as a tobacco stick inside a pair of tight black slacks and a sleeveless top patterned in tiger stripes. Her orangy-blonde hair had been colored and bleached so many times it had thinned until you could see the scalp between the hair follicles. “You mean they’s not going to be a church service or nothing?”
“We don’t—Lynn didn’t—neither of us belong to a church, Vara. It was something we meant to do, but . . .”
Jason Bullock’s voice trailed away in regret. A church would have given structure to this hopeless morass he seemed to be floundering through. There would have been churchwomen bringing food and offering comfort, a minister who could have guided him into a traditional ceremony. Instead, he was suddenly thrust into unfamiliar territory and Lynn’s only two relatives (if you didn’t count her father and a bunch of half-siblings in Florida, and Lynn certainly never had) weren’t making it any easier.
He hadn’t been able to reach either of them by phone till early Monday morning. Lurleen immediately drove down from Roxboro, swinging through Fuquay to pick up Vara and bring her over. Now they were back again this afternoon and while there was grief in their eyes, there was also greed in Lurleen’s.
