“Cal,” she said. “Oh dear God, where
“I’ll let you know as soon as we find him,” Dwight promised.
He wrote down his numbers again. Mrs. Shay’s cousin matched his promise to call if there was any news and then she raised him one. “My husband owns the local radio station. We’ll have everyone in the valley keeping an eye out for him.”
C H A P T E R
12
Saturday morning, 22 January
While Jack Jamison headed back to Cotton Grove to question some of the people known to have had run-ins with J.D. Rouse, Mayleen Richards asked Raeford McLamb to go with her to interview Nita Rouse again. “They might talk to you quicker than to me alone,” she said.
McLamb arched an eyebrow. “Because I’m black?”
“I doubt if that’ll help,” she said with a grin. “I was thinking more because you’re a man and her brother struck me as pretty macho when we talked to him Thursday night.”
“So you’re gonna let me do all the talking?”
“Heck, I’ll even let you drive,” she told him.
A small neat sign on the shoulder of the road modestly announced that this was Diaz y Garcia, Landscape Design 11 and Lawn Service. When she was there before, it had been quite dark and Richards had been so aware of Major Bryant that she had not paid much attention to the Garcia family setup. Now, in the morning light, she was rather impressed by the compound they had created.
Two double-wide mobile homes were separated by a driveway wide enough for larger trucks. Both homes backed up to a pleasant variety of hollies and tall evergreens, interspersed with accents of golden cypresses, that completely screened them from the road. The shrubbery continued all around the lot so that the head-high chain- link security fence was almost indiscernible. Across the courtyard were equipment sheds for some trucks, a couple of low trailers, a midsize tractor, and several riding lawn mowers. More esoteric bits of equipment stood along the back walls. Four or five little dark-haired children were clambering over the machines, pretending to drive. They ducked down out of sight as soon as they saw the unfamiliar car.
An older, single-wide trailer abutted the sheds, probably a bunkhouse for seasonal workers; and judging by the curtains in an upper window, Richards guessed there was an apartment over one of the sheds. Tucked into the remaining corner of the open lot was a henhouse. The run was split in half so that as soon as the chickens finished off the winter oats on one side, the new oats in the other half would be big enough to feed them. Eight or ten Rhode Island Reds pecked away at the greens beneath their feet and their combs were a bright healthy red in the thin win-try sunlight.
Through the closed chain-link gate at the rear of the yard Richards could see their tree nursery. In all, she esti- mated that the compound and nursery occupied slightly less than six acres.
“Nice,” said McLamb as he parked in front of the double-wide on the left. “Boy, I’d love to have me a dozen of their eggs. I bet the yolks aren’t that pitiful pale yellow you get in the grocery store. Your folks still keep chickens?”
Richards shook her head. “Nobody wanted to shovel out a henhouse anymore.”
He laughed. “No pain, no gain.”
She laughed, too. She loved her job and had no desire to ever again mess with gummy green tobacco or to deal with the backaches and heartbreaks a subsistence farm could generate. Nevertheless, the sight of those glossy brown hens made her suddenly homesick for the life of her childhood, chicken droppings and all.
Before they had the car doors fully open, two men emerged from the house. Both were dressed in heavy red plaid wool jackets and both wore black leather cowboy hats. Richards recognized the shorter man from two nights earlier.
“Senor Garcia,” she said, extending her hand. In halting Spanish, she reminded him of her name and that she had been there before with Major Bryant.
He nodded acknowledgment and she introduced Detective McLamb, then moved back a half-step as if in deference.
In turn, Garcia nodded to the taller man beside him.
With absolutely no idea what
Diaz grinned at them. “I’m his brother-in-law,” he ex-11 plained in lightly accented English. “His wife is my sister.
Have you come to tell us who killed his other
“Wish we could,” said McLamb. “We were hoping to talk to Mrs. Rouse again and we have a few questions for Mr. Garcia here, too. I’d sure appreciate it if you could translate for us.”
“Of course.” He turned and spoke rapidly to Garcia, who hesitated, then gestured to the concrete table and wooden benches that sat under the bare branches of a nearby oak. While Diaz led the way, Garcia went back inside, presumably to fetch his sister. At least that was what Richards thought she understood as she followed the other two men over to the picnic area. In summer, this would be a pleasantly shady place to sit and talk. Today, the sun shone through the bare limbs and kept them from being uncomfortably cold.
As they sat down, McLamb laid a yellow legal pad on the table and wrote the time and place at the top before
