with him. Maybe he’s loco.”
But all they heard was
“Oh Mayleen, baby, you can’t
mother sobbed.
“You do and you’n forget about ever setting foot in
“Shirlee?”
Her sister’s eyes dropped, but then her chin came up.
“Steve’s right, Mayleen. I’d be ashamed to call you my
sister.”
“Daddy?”
She saw the pain in his face. “I’m sorry, honey, but
that’s the way it is.”
“Fine,” she had said and immediately turned on her
heel and walked out.
With each absorbed by personal problems, Richards
and Jamison drove the rest of the way in silence, a silence
underlined by the back-and-forth swish of their wind-
shield wipers. Just before they reached the westernmost
of the Harris Farms, they met a camera truck from one
206
HARD ROW
of the Raleigh stations. A long shot of the shed was all
they could have gotten though because Major Bryant
had posted a uniformed officer there to keep the site
secured from gawkers. With rain still pouring from the
charcoal gray sky, they passed the main house and went
first to the white frame bungalow occupied by the farm
manager. Richards stopped near the back door, and at
the sound of their horn, Sid Lomax walked out on the
porch and motioned for them to drive under the car
shelter, a set of iron posts set in a concrete slab and
topped by long sheets of corrugated tin.
“I was afraid you might be those reporters back,” he
said as Percy Denning pulled in right beside them with
his field kit in the trunk.
“We need a list of everybody on the place,” Richards
told Lomax when the courtesies were out of the way.
“And Deputy Denning’s here to take everybody’s finger-
prints.”
“He was dumb enough to leave prints on the axe
handle?” Lomax asked.
“And on the padlock, too,” Denning said with grim
satisfaction.
“If you want to start with the names, come on in to
my office,” Lomax said and led the way back into the
house.
The deep screened porch held a few straight wooden
chairs. A couple of clean metal ashtrays sat on the ledges.
