middle-class neighborhoods, and entry was always by breaking through a rear door or window. The only items taken were money, jewelry, and small electronics that were easily fenced. From their talk, I gathered that there were no fingerprints and nothing to indicate whether it was the work of a single person or a whole gang. The biggest puzzle was trying to figure out how the perps knew which houses would be empty, especially since all the victims had taken sensible precautions. They had stopped delivery of mail and newspapers, they had used timers to turn lamps on and off at normal hours, they had even alerted neighbors to keep an eye out. Unfortunately, nothing seemed to be working.
“What about the post office?” Mike Castleman asked. “Loose lips? The mail carrier?”
“We’re talking two separate postal zones,” said Raeford McLamb, the black deputy in charge of the investigation.
“Newspapers?”
“Three papers and at least four or five carriers.”
Before others could offer suggestions, Bo Poole asked us to be seated so the waiters could take our orders. I wound up between Bo and Terry with Dwight across the table from us, next to K.C.
I chose broiled catfish and Dwight ordered fried oysters, then Terry caught us up on news of Stanton. Sounded as if his son was breaking hearts rather than breaking a sweat over his grades, “But hell, I never averaged better than a low B or a high C myself, so I can’t cuss at him too bad. Besides, he found my old grade cards up in the attic and every time I say something about whether or not he’s hitting the books hard enough, he reminds me of that D in calculus.”
Dwight laughed and turned to answer a question Bo had about work, so I quickly asked Terry if he knew anything about Martha Hurst. He gave me a puzzled look. “Naw, like I told Dwight just now, when she called me this week, I had to go look up our records.”
Now it was my turn to look puzzled. “Martha Hurst called you?”
“No, Tracy Johnson. Didn’t you hear me tell Dwight?”
“Tell Dwight what?”
“Aw, no, that’s right. That must’ve been when you and K.C. went to powder y’all’s noses. Tracy called me about some other stuff this week, and before we hung up, she asked me, same as you, if I worked the Roy Hurst homicide.”
“Did you?”
He shook his head. “I might’ve interviewed some of the witnesses, but the only reason I remembered the case even after I looked it up is because of how that woman took her bat to his balls. Scotty Underwood was our point man on that one. I don’t know if Tracy ever got in touch with him or not.”
It was a good thing we’d driven over to Jerry’s in Dwight’s truck. When all the after-dinner toasts to wish us a long and happy marriage were finished, Jack Jamison and Raeford McLamb carried in the gift everyone had chipped in on. Wrapped in a green plastic tarp and tied with a huge red satin ribbon, it was clearly heavy and quite large—six feet long, eighteen inches wide, and a couple of feet tall—and it clanked when they set it down.
They made Dwight and me unwrap it right there and then, and I was delighted to see it was a bench swing, complete with long chains and sturdy hooks.
Beaming, Bo explained to those unfamiliar with the farm that there were two large trees on the bank of the pond below the house. “If they hang it there, then next summer they can sit and swing and fish from the shade.”
“Or,” said K.C. with a mischievous smile, “they could pad it with a few cushions and forget about fish.”
I kept my mouth shut and let Dwight respond to that one.
CHAPTER 12
Florence Hartley,
SUNDAY NIGHT, DECEMBER 12
On the drive home that night, their new swing lashed down in the back of his truck, Dwight said, “I really appreciate you not asking any questions back there about Tracy being pregnant.”
“Nice try,” Deborah told him, “but if you’re hoping to guilt me into not asking questions now that we’re alone, that mule won’t pull.”
He glanced across at her with an amused shake of his head. “You want to tell me again how we need to stay out of each other’s business?”
“C’mon, Dwight, be fair. We all knew Tracy. You can’t expect me to pretend I didn’t hear what Mayleen Richards said.”
“Yeah, well, first thing tomorrow morning, Richards and me, we’re gonna have a little come-to-Jesus talk,” he said grimly.
She laid a placating hand on his thigh. “Don’t be too rough on her, okay? It was partly my fault. I mean, you’re her boss and I’m your—your—”
“Yes, you are,” he said as she hesitated, searching for the right term.
She smiled in the glow of the dash lights. “Yes, I are what?”
“Mine,” he said simply.
It was still a thing of wonder that she was there beside him, that in ten days she was actually going to stand up in church before God and the world—not to mention her whole family—and promise to be with him forever. He had loved her and wanted her for more than half his lifetime and now here she was. In his life. In his truck. In his bed. As the warmth of her hand passed through the fabric of his trousers, he felt himself begin to harden. To
