factored in his affection for Bessie Stewart. Not only was he not annoyed, he was actually pleased because Bessie had called him earlier that afternoon and asked him to help her granddaughter and “her young gentleman friend.”
“Kayra’s over at Bessie’s right now,” he said, “so I’ll tell her to meet us at the house and I’ll pick up an extra pizza.”
“Don’t forget my anchovies.”
“How you can eat those disgusting things, I’ll never understand.”
That’s what he says every time I ask for them. “Yours not to reason why,” I said.
“Yeah, well mine not to kiss you either.”
“Hey, what about for better or for worse and all that?”
“In sickness and in health, yes. In anchovies, no.”
I laughed, told him what landmark I was passing at the moment, and clicked off. Rain fell in slower, thicker drops, but so far the interstate was ice-free and I was able to keep it up to the speed limit. Nolan Capps’s headlights stayed right with me.
We passed the cutoff I’d taken Friday evening to get away from the backed-up traffic and, a few miles later, the overpass where Tracy had crashed. The lights from the cars around me picked up shards of broken glass, which twinkled briefly in the darkness. By the time we got to my usual exit, the wipers were clearing icy slush from the windshield. Driving became more iffy on the back roads and there was a definite fishtail effect when I cornered too sharply at Possum Creek. It was a relief to turn off the hardtop into the dirt lane that led to the house.
An unfamiliar car sat next to Dwight’s truck and both were sheeted with a thin glaze of ice. Dwight met us in the doorway. There might not be any post-anchovy kisses in my immediate future, but the pre-one would hold me for the moment.
I introduced Nolan Capps and he, in turn, introduced me to the young woman seated at the table in front of two large flat boxes that had filled the dining area with the entrancing aroma of tomato sauce, cheese, and oregano.
Kayra Stewart appeared to be in her early twenties. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, but she had good bones that would probably age well. I looked for a resemblance to Bessie but couldn’t see any beyond her yardstick-straight posture and her level appraisal of me as we shook hands. Her smooth skin was the color of mellow oak, her dark eyes were widely spaced and flashed with good-humored intelligence when she greeted Nolan. Her hair curled even more tightly than my friend Portland’s and she wore it clipped short like Portland, so that her shapely head sat elegantly on a long slender neck. She was dressed in formfitting jeans and a slouchy old red crewneck sweater over a white jersey turtleneck. No jewelry beyond a mannish-looking square-faced wristwatch with a black leather band.
Nolan Capps hung his hooded jacket on the back of a chair and tried to look casual when he sat down beside her, but it was clear that he could eat her with a spoon.
I divested myself of coat and scarf and Kayra got up to help me put together salads.
“It’s really nice of you and Dwight to talk to us,” she said as I set out a bag of mixed greens and some bottled dressings. “This has to be a busy time for y’all. Grandma says the wedding’s next Wednesday week?”
“That’s okay.” I quickly filled the bowls and she carried them over to the table. “I think everything’s pretty much under control.”
“That reminds me,” Dwight said, pointing to a small box on the counter. “Is that what you’ve been waiting for?”
I examined the return address and tore it open as soon as I saw that it was from California. “Finally!”
Inside was the cake topper I’d ordered off the Internet, and I immediately excused myself to go call Dwight’s sister-in-law and tell her to get out her brown paint.
“Oh, good,” Kate said. “Bring it with you tomorrow night.”
She must have heard my mental wheels spinning. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.”
“Of course not,” I lied, belatedly remembering that she and Dwight’s two sisters were throwing a shower for me tomorrow night. “I was trying to think if I gave you a snippet of my dress so you could match the color.”
“You did. And don’t worry. I won’t let anyone else see it.”
When I returned to the dining area, the others were already transferring slices of pizza to their plates and I joined in after opening the tin of anchovies Dwight had picked up at the grocery for me. To his chagrin, both of the budding attorneys accepted my offer to share.
Conversation was general at first—schools, mutual acquaintances—but it soon got down to specifics about Martha Hurst. Nolan told Dwight about his mother’s connection to the condemned woman and how he’d wheedled a promise out of Tracy to look up the case.
“She took you seriously enough to speak to an SBI agent,” I said, and told them what Terry Wilson had told me last night about the phone call he’d gotten from her. “But he didn’t really work the case except for interviewing a couple of the witnesses for the prosecution. Agent Scott Underhill was their lead investigator in conjunction with Sheriff Poole’s department.”
I had met Underhill four years ago when my nephew Stevie’s girlfriend asked me to look into the unsolved murder of her mother. He seemed like a nice man, ethical and honest. “I don’t know that he’s necessarily the most effective investigator in the Bureau, though.”
Dwight frowned. It’s not that he’s naive about the possibility of sloppy or unethical officers, but he thinks the public’s too eager to blame the law whenever something goes wrong.
Kayra delicately lifted an anchovy filet from the flat tin and laid it across her slice of pizza. “You think he might have overlooked something?”
“Something that would prove who really did kill Roy Hurst and the killer shot Ms. Johnson to keep her from telling?” Nolan asked.
