He himself was so numb and conflicted at this point that he thought, Well, why not? What else was he going to do with Lynn’s things?
“You and Vara can take what you want,” he told Lurleen, “but first you’ve got to tell me. Who was Lynn sleeping with?”
“Just you, honey,” she answered guilelessly.
“Ah, cut the crap, Lurleen,” he said, suddenly angry. “You know where she died. And how.”
She gave a petulant shrug. “She didn’t tell me and that’s the gawdawful truth. We used to be like this.” She held up two crossed fingers. “But ever since y’all got so high and mighty with your fancy jobs and fancy money, she didn’t tell me shit. And every time I asked, she’d just smile and say nobody, so she could’ve been blowing the governor, for all I know.”
Tears and mascara cut dusky tracks through Vara’s makeup. “Poor little Lynnie. She wanted to be somebody and now she’s just ashes. And I didn’t even get a chance to kiss her goodbye.”
* * *
At the stoplight in Mount Olive, as a patrol car pulled even with him in the next lane over, Norwood Love kept his face expressionless, but his eyes went nervously to the pickup’s rearview mirror. Everything back there was still secure. There was no way that trooper could see what was beneath the blue plastic tarp covering the truck bed. Besides, even if he
The light changed to green and the young man pointed his truck back toward Colleton County.
* * *
Reid Stephenson’s first court appearance of the day was scheduled for two o’clock. As he left the office, he tucked the silver pen securely in the inner breast pocket of his jacket and wondered if Deborah by any chance left her doors unlocked out there on the farm.
Otherwise, he was going to have to figure out another excuse to drop by and get her pen back on her bedside table before she missed it.
CHAPTER | 10
The air is calm and sultry until a gentle breeze springs from the southeast. This breeze becomes a wind, a gale, and, finally, a tempest.
Despite the long Labor Day weekend in which to get it out of their systems, courthouse regulars were still titillating each other with gossip of Lynn Bullock’s death on Tuesday. Who was she having an affair with? Reid? Brandon Frazier? Millard King? Or was it someone yet unnamed? The more malicious tongues favored Millard King, simply because he’d become more priggish now that he was romancing the very proper Justice’s debutante daughter. Malice is always entertained when prigs try to squeeze their clay feet into glass slippers.
There were those who thought it was tacky of Lynn Bullock to sleep with so many of her husband’s peer group. “Why didn’t she keep it at the hospital?” they asked. “All those beds going to waste. Why didn’t she crawl into one with a doctor?”
“How you know she didn’t?” came the cynical reply. “And come to think of it, wouldn’t a doctor know exactly how much pressure it takes to strangle somebody?”
I’d never met the dead woman and I’d had very little to do with her husband so I shouldn’t have been drawn into the discussions, yet, given Reid’s peripheral involvement, I couldn’t help being interested.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t hearing much new.
* * *
I sat juvenile court that morning—emancipation, termination of parental rights, even a post-termination review, where I learned that two badly neglected twin brothers had been adopted into a loving family. In fact, the new parents were there with the babies, who were clearly thriving. Seeing your decisions vindicated like that is one of the happier aspects of being a judge.
In the afternoon, it was domestic court. There were the usual no-shows and requests for delays, along with a couple of unexpected meetings of minds that only required my signature rather than a formal hearing. By three o’clock, I was down to the final item on the day’s docket.
Jason Bullock was scheduled to argue a domestic case in front of me that afternoon—contested divorces seemed to be turning into his specialty, and, under the circumstances, I would have granted a delay. But the plaintiff, one Angela Guthrie, wanted to be done with it and was willing to let Portland Brewer, one of Bullock’s senior associates, represent her since she clearly felt any judge in the land would side with her.
Daniel Guthrie was represented by Brandon Frazier, a lean and intense dark-haired man who was also one of the men linked to Lynn Bullock’s name. Frazier was about my age, divorced, no children. A lot of women around the courthouse, single
It was the first time I’d seen Frazier since the murder, and if he was walking around with a load of guilt, it wasn’t immediately visible. But then it wouldn’t be, would it? Every good attorney—and Frazier’s pretty good—is an actor and a con man. He has to be able to sell snake oil to a licensed doctor and he does. Why? Because he can make the doctor believe that he himself believes in it—one honorable man to another.
The Guthries were both in their mid-thirties. They had a nine-year-old son and an eleven-year-old daughter. Mr. Guthrie looked somewhat familiar. I seemed to recall him sitting in the witness stand to testify, but for what? Something criminal? My memory was that he’d sat up resolutely and spoken confidently. Today, he had a half- sheepish, half-defiant look about him.
His wife was suing for a divorce from bed and board (which in North Carolina is basically a court-approved legal separation) on the grounds of mental and physical cruelty. She asked for retention of the marital home, custody of
