about last spring.”
“Not Flame Smith,” Dwight agreed. “Take Jamison
with you.”
“Is he really going to resign?” Richards asked.
Dwight sighed. “ ’Fraid so.”
266
C H A P T E R
30
Deborah Knott
Wednesday Afternoon, March 8
% The stars were in alignment that day. It wasn’t
simply one more case that settled, it was two. I
caught up with all my paperwork and even heard one of
Luther Parker’s cases—a couple of teenage boys drag
racing after school—before wandering downstairs to
meet Dwight around three-thirty.
Bo Poole was seated in Dwight’s office and looked
particularly sharp in a dark suit, white shirt, and somber
tie.
“Hey, Bo,” I said. “Whose funeral?”
He grinned and shook his head at Dwight. “You got
my sympathy, son. She don’t miss a thing, does she?”
“I better plead the fifth,” Dwight said, smiling at me.
“So who died?” I asked again. “Anybody I know?”
“They buried poor ol’ Fred Mitchiner this afternoon
267
MARGARET MARON
and I figured I ought to go and pay my respects. He’s
the one showed me how to skin a mink when I wasn’t
knee-high to a grasshopper and I feel real bad that we
didn’t find him before he drowned in the creek.”
“Surely his family doesn’t blame you for that?”
“Well, I think they do, a little. His daughter does,
anyhow. I went by the house afterwards. Thought I’d
give her a chance to vent on me. Figure this department
owes her that much. McLamb and Dalton were out
there yesterday, she said. They’d told her about how
somebody cut his hand loose and moved it and she was
still pretty hot and bothered about that, as well.”
“Poor Bo,” I said sympathetically. “I guess her son
gave you an earful, too. I hear he was over there faith-
fully.”
“Ennis? Naw. He’s a good kid. I think he’s just glad
to have it over with. In fact, I think he’s about talked
Lessie out of suing the rest home.”
“Yeah, that’s what McLamb told me,” said Dwight
