“You say Braz was there,” Dwight reminded him as the scrawny little man lifted the can to his mouth and drank deeply.
“Yeah. Bastard was gonna run right over to Tal and Arnold to tell them. Everybody thinks Bubbles took me for everything I had, right? Wasn’t her. It was Braz. He made me sign it all over to him that night. He sold my doublewide and my balloon bust right out from under me. Left me with nothing but my camper truck. Let me say the duck pond was still mine, but he took a percentage of it, too. That’s why Bubbles left me. I couldn’t give her nothing. Didn’t have nothing to give her if I’d wanted to. Everybody laughing at me, and then he was going to sell my Lucky Ducky. Said he was going to cash out end of the season, the little money-sucker. Leave me to starve, would he? Huh! I cashed him out. Gave him a mouthful of money to pay his way to hell.”
So this was really how Braz had accumulated so much money so fast. Not a lucky self-storage buy or a shrewd eBay sell, just plain old ordinary blackmail.
Instead of Polly as I’d first thought, it was indeed Skee who’d taken advantage of the Bowler Roller’s flasher and siren to kill Braz. And it was he who’d ransacked Braz’s trailer and tried to search the shed, looking for the paper records that might let the Ameses figure out where the money came from.
“Polly saw me come out of the Dozer Friday night and she was going to try the same trick.”
“More blackmail?” asked McLamb.
“Like I had anything left to pay her off with, y’know? I told her to come over to my truck after everybody else had gone to bed and I’d sign over the title to her. Stupid cow.”
The rest was as we’d deduced: the faked suicide and the switching of the shoes and their laces.
Bo and I went back to his office and he was shaking his head. “You’d think after he screwed up the murder of his wife, he’d have thought twice about trying his luck a second time.”
“Yeah,” I said, wondering what Tally would say when she realized where Braz’s money had come from and how he’d profited from the death of a woman who was supposed to have loved him like a grandmother. I was glad I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her.
Dwight left the mopping up to his deputies, but it was still full dark when we finally headed back to the farm. He had popped a Willie Nelson tape in the player and ol’ Willie’s wonderfully craggy voice was crooning the words of that sweet, sweet song “Let It Be Me” as the moon rose behind us. We had the windows rolled down, cool autumn air washed over us, and I thought how good it was to be with someone who was as easy with my silences as I was with his. Any other man, I’d have to be doing the charm thing—making small talk, buttering his ego, flirting. But Dwight was just Dwight, so I didn’t need to bother with any games.
The porch light had been left on for us when we got to the homeplace, but I didn’t see Daddy’s truck.
Maidie had heard us, though, and came to the door to peer out past the light and make sure it was us. “Mr. Kezzie’s gone over to Cotton Grove. Y’all eat yet?” she called.
I looked at Dwight and he shook his head.
“Thanks, Maidie,” I said, walking up on the porch, “but I’ve got something at the house and—”
“I’m not inviting you to eat here. I saved something from lunch and I made some fresh cheese biscuits just in case y’all get hungry later—for
I could never slip anything past her.
Plastic boxes stood neatly stacked on the kitchen table and Dwight carried them out to the truck. Maidie had been my rock Mother’s last summer, and as I kissed her warm brown cheek goodnight, I said, “What do you think Mother would say?”
“Well, honey, I reckon she’d say it’s way past time you quit messing around and did something sensible for a change. And then I expect she’d say for you to go on along now and fix your man his supper.”
We drove in tandem through the lanes over to my house and when we got there, we discovered that we were hungrier than we realized. I kicked off those shoes and dumped them in the Goodwill box I keep by the garage door and slid out of my dress and into a light robe while Dwight hung his jacket and tie over one of the chairs and started opening the boxes. I brought plates and utensils. We had our choice of practically everything that had been on the table at lunchtime, and Maidie’s hot cheese biscuits were just the right accompaniment to supper.
While we ate, I pulled out scissors and the stack of photos Dwight had dropped in my car.
“What are you doing?” he asked curiously.
“You did say these aren’t needed anymore, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s a glue stick in that drawer behind you,” I said. “Can you reach it without getting up?”
He could.
In none of the pictures was there enough of the woman’s face to form an image. I snipped the chin and mouth from one, the cheek and ear from another, hair and brow from still others. As I cut, I glued each piece to a sheet of paper as if putting together a jigsaw puzzle. In the end, one eye was still missing and the image looked like an abstract Picasso portrait. Nevertheless, it was enough.
“I’ll be damned!” said Dwight, reaching for a third biscuit. “Brad Needham’s a cross-dresser?” Then he laughed. “Bradley Needham, Lee Hamden. Of course.”
“Different strokes for different folks,” I said, staring at what I’d created and suddenly wishing I hadn’t.
“Suppose his wife knows?”
“If she did, he wouldn’t have had a storage locker since they married. He probably stopped by it and took out a few things or deposited new stuff whenever he was on his way in or out of town. The rooms look like your standard Holiday Inn.”
