Rituals of the Season

“Hey, way to go!” said Castleman, who’d been working the next box over.

The others crowded around to see the slug Jones had picked up.

“I was just taking it slow and easy, like you said, checking every damn ping. Not that there’s as many up here as down closer to the road, and there it was on my first sweep of this box. Looks like a .44 to me, don’t y’all think?”

The bullet was surprisingly undamaged.

“But then it wouldn’t be banged up much, would it?” mused Percy Denning as he slid the slug into one of his small collection bags, then labeled and dated it. “It only passed through soft tissue and her side window before ending up here in the clay. If I’m lucky, I might even find some of her DNA material. Good work, Jones.”

Silas Lee Jones stripped off his latex gloves and lit himself a cigarette. “And y’all thought I wadn’t being careful,” he said. “Reckon that shows y’all.”

“So what were you hoping for?” asked the medical examiner as her diener began to empty out Don Whitley’s digestive tract. “Bruises? Traces of tape on his wrists where he’d been constrained? Cut knuckles to show he’d tried to fight off somebody?”

Dwight gave a tired shrug.

“We’ll run the gut just to cover all the bases,” she said, “but I’m afraid that what you see is what you get. It’s suicide, Major. Sorry.”

CHAPTER 19

Avoid, at all times, mentioning subjects or incidents that can in any way disgust your hearers.

Florence Hartley, The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, 1873

Although it was only seven-thirty when Dwight left, I knew Miss Sallie Anderson would be up. Indeed, she answered on the first ring. She was sorry to hear that Dwight wouldn’t be with me that evening, “but I do understand. You knew them, didn’t you, honey? That poor woman that got shot and her little girl, too? And then I heard on television about people needing to check their cars for bullet holes. What in the world is Colleton County coming to, Deborah?”

“Feels like the world is coming to Colleton County, doesn’t it?” I said.

“Oh, honey, you know it!”

When I called over to the Stewart house, Bessie told me that Kayra was still asleep, but Nolan was up. I reckon he was if he’d slept on Bessie and Willie’s couch. Even though this is the winter lull for farm chores, I doubt if either of them do much tiptoeing around once the sun is up.

Yes, he said, they’d finished with those files and they planned to sit and read the transcripts in Ellis Glover’s file room today. No, they hadn’t found any loose strings to pull on and help unravel the case against Martha Hurst.

“If you’re still in the courthouse around noon, I’ll take you to lunch,” I offered.

I’d already hung up before I remembered Deenie Gates. It probably wouldn’t help their cause to track her down, but then again, she might remember others with a better reason to kill her ex-boyfriend.

I showered and dried my hair, all the time wondering why Brix Junior had scribbled her name when there was nothing in his notes about her.

Eight-fifteen. Surely he wouldn’t be on the golf course this early?

“Was just leaving for breakfast at the clubhouse,” he told me when he answered the phone. “Baked cheese grits and the best link sausage I’ve had since your mama died.”

The healthy bowl of cereal I was holding turned to sawdust in my mouth as I remembered the sausage Mother and Maidie used to make after hog-killing every winter. They would grind together just the right balance of fat and lean, season it with fresh sage, flecks of red pepper, salt and black pepper, mix it by hand in a large dishpan, then stuff it into the well-cleaned intestines.

Daddy and the boys continue to raise hogs for our own tables, but now those hogs are slaughtered at a nearby abattoir, and come back from the butcher as neatly packaged hams and chops and roasts, ready for the freezer. Maidie still gets fifty pounds of ground pork that she seasons herself. She takes down the old cast-iron sausage stuffer and makes long ropes of link sausage with commercial casings.

It tastes better than anything I can buy and I’m always grateful that she shares, yet it lacks something. Mother’s strong and capable hands maybe? She died the summer I was eighteen, but as my wedding day gets closer and closer, I keep thinking of her. She had talked about my eventual marriage someday, had even said, “I wonder if you’ve met him yet?”

I wish she could have known it was Dwight.

“You want to speak to Jane?” Brix Junior said, bringing me back to the moment.

“No, I just had a quick question about your Martha Hurst file.”

I heard his impatient huff, but I pressed on and asked him about the scrap of paper with Deenie Gates’s name on it.

“Sorry. I have no idea who she is.”

“Amy says she was hooked up with Roy Hurst at the time. That she was pregnant by him.”

“Oh, yes . . . I do sort of remember now. They had a fight, right? ’Cause he’d moved on to somebody else?”

“Knocked out a couple of teeth is what Amy said.”

“These people,” Brix said, distaste in every syllable. “Not much better than cats in heat. I cannot tell you how glad I am to be through with them. Best I recall, though, she did have an alibi for the killing. Can’t think what it was right now, but I’m pretty sure it was good or I’d’ve had her on the stand to cast doubt on Martha Hurst being the only one with a quick temper.”