Jonna’s sister, Pamela—“my nutty sister Pam” was how Jonna always prefaced remarks about her—was married and lived in Tennessee and Dwight had never met her; but Mrs. Shay, their elderly mother, was there to babysit and help out in emergencies.
Shay was still a big name in the furniture industry and the factory had not yet moved offshore, but Shays no longer owned it. Shays no longer owned sawmills or lumberyards either. Jonna’s father had been the last male Shay, and he died while Jonna and her sister were mere infants, leaving behind a wife who could read French ro- mances, could instruct a servant how to make quiche, and knew the difference between a takeout double and a double for penalties, but Mrs. Shay “enjoyed poor health,” as the saying goes, and her husband had carefully shielded her from “boring old business talk.” Jonna thought her mother had received a tidy fortune when she sold the last remnants of the family businesses, even though they had soon moved to a smaller house and the live-in housekeeper became daily, then weekly help.
Nevertheless, the Shay name remained high in the 2 town’s social pecking order, and Shaysville was not the worst place for his son to grow up.
After the divorce became final, he realized that the distance between Washington and Shaysville was about the same as the distance between Shaysville and Colleton County, and there was Sheriff Bowman Poole looking for a good right-hand man.
When the words of that song floated through the truck’s cab, memories of Jonna’s cool propriety were crowded out by images of Deborah’s impulsive warmth and propriety be damned.
As if conjured up by those images, his phone rang and her number appeared on its screen.
“Where are you?” she asked. “Still in North Carolina?
Just passing Durham?”
He grinned. Her foot was always on the accelerator and she loved to needle him about cruise control and slow driving. “Actually, I’m a little less than an hour from Shaysville. Where are you?”
“In Dobbs. At the courthouse. Getting ready to go do some justice.”
“Did you get any sleep after I left?” he asked, muffling a yawn.
“I did. How are you holding up?”
“Not too bad.”
They talked a moment or two longer, then she rang off and he called his boss to explain where he was and why he was taking a day of personal leave. “I should be back before dark,” he said, and filled the sheriff in on last night’s homicide.
“Yeah,” said Bo Poole. “Richards was just telling me.”
“Let me talk to her a minute,” Dwight said, and when Richards came on the line, he told her that she was now his lead detective on the Rouse investigation. “It means you’ll have to call over to Chapel Hill and attend the autopsy,” he warned.
She took the assignment in stride. “And then I’ll check out the brother-in-law’s whereabouts, see if we can find anyone else with motive.”
This was their only active homicide at the moment, and before ending the conversation he asked her to pass on some instructions on other pending felony cases. “I’ll be back this evening, but you can call me if there are problems.”
“Yessir.”
Shaysville’s elementary school lay on the west side of town and was close enough to the house Jonna had bought with her share of the divorce settlement that Cal could ride his bike to school in good weather. It was a one-level brick sprawl with a couple of mobile classrooms parked alongside the main building.
He was still not exactly clear on why his son wanted him here this morning—all Cal had said was, “And could you please wear your gun and stuff?”—but before he left town today, he planned to find out if Jonna was making a habit of leaving Cal alone with her mother at night.
Mrs. Shay was in her seventies now and clearly too old to keep tabs on an active eight-year-old if she fell asleep before he did.
The parking lot had big piles of snow at either end and there were patches of ice where the holly hedges cast their 3 shadows. Dwight parked his truck in one of the visitor’s slots a few minutes before ten, and he did not know if he was pleased or dismayed that the only security on view was a gray-haired secretary at the front desk who smiled and said, “May I help you?”
“I’m Cal Bryant’s dad. Here to see Miss Jackson. I believe she’s expecting me.”
“Which Jackson? Chris or Jean?”
Dwight shrugged. “Whichever teaches third grade?”
“That would be Jean Jackson. If you’ll follow me?”
She led him through a maze of hallways decorated with colorful posters and student drawings to a door marked
“Miss Jean Jackson’s Third Grade,” stuck her head inside, and said cheerfully, “Company, Miss Jackson.”
Halfway down the third row of desk chairs, he spotted his son. The instant Cal recognized him, his little face lit up with such happiness that Dwight immediately forgot how tired he was.
A girl dressed as Snow White stood in front of a map of the United States with a pointer and she stopped talking to stare at Dwight.
The pleasant-faced teacher who came over to greet him wore gray slacks and a blue sweater that sported white snowflakes and a border of snowmen. She told the little girl, “Wait just a minute, Ellie. Major Bryant? If you’ll take this chair, we’ll be ready for you after Ellie finishes.
