no marks or bruises on her body, no broken fingernails or any signs of a struggle, so the autopsy would be pro forma with no expected surprises. Word came up that Deanna Bradshaw was pitching a fit all over the sheriff’s department downstairs, insisting that never in a million years would her mother kill herself. “And she never wrote that note either. Okay, maybe Mom cut a few corners, did a few favors she maybe hadn’t ought to’ve, but, hell, that’s the way things work if you want to get anything done. No way would she have gone to jail for such little stuff. She knew where too many bodies are buried for anybody to try to prosecute her. Besides, Mom would never,
“Hmpf,” my clerk sniffed. “I heard she and Candace had a huge fight yesterday. The kid’s feeling guilty.”
Normally Dwight leaves Dobbs at least an hour earlier than I do, but we had ridden in together that morning because his truck needed a new taillight where someone had backed into him in the parking lot, and our mechanic had said he’d work it in if Dwight could leave it there all day.
When I got downstairs Melanie Ashworth, the department’s recently hired spokesperson, was patiently answering questions from the two reporters who were still there. One of them was Ruby Dixon herself, although she was slurring her questions and her pencil kept slipping off the lines of her reporter’s tablet as she tried to record Melanie’s comments.
I found myself remembering how Linsey Thomas would have handled this. He would’ve sent someone sober to question Melanie, while he himself would be on the phone, running down Candace Bradshaw’s cleaning woman, questioning the other commissioners, interviewing staff members at Bradshaw Management, talking to Candace’s daughter and maybe her former husband. By now, he might even have the contents of the note she’d left behind and a definite answer as to whether or not it was in her handwriting.
I found Dwight in his office, so absorbed in some reports that he wasn’t immediately aware of me. He had loosened the knot on the tie that I’d bought him the week before and the cuffs of his blue shirt were turned back.
Dwight doesn’t consider himself the least bit handsome and always says he looks like the Durham Bull in a pea jacket, muscle-bound and ungainly. Believe me. No.
He’s taller than most of my brothers and okay, he’s built a little more like a football player than the skinny basketball hotshot he was in high school, but there’s nothing muscle-bound about him at all. Solid, yes, with big hands and feet, brown hair and eyes, and an honest, open face.
When he realized I was there in the doorway and looked up with that warm smile, my heart turned over. “Hey there,” he said. “I was just about to go see how near done you were.”
“You can leave now?” I asked.
“Sure. Why not? Oh, you mean because of Candace Bradshaw?” He shrugged. “I’ve got Richards and Dalton out going through the motions, taking statements.”
“So what was in the note she left?”
“Now you know I’m not going to talk about that right now.”
“But she really did break the law?”
He shook his head at me and buttoned the cuffs of his sleeves. “Give it up, shug.”
“At least say whether it was suicide.”
“That’s what it looks like. Why? You hear something different?”
“No. Just that her daughter’s refusing to believe it.”
“Yeah, well, when we spoke to her this afternoon, she was blaming herself.” He picked up his jacket and slung it over his shoulder.
“Because of their fight?”
“You heard about that?” He held the door for me, then switched off the lights.
“I heard Candace took her keys and threw her out of the house. True?”
“Appears to be.”
He checked out with the dispatcher at the end of the hall and paused to leave some instructions for a couple of deputies, so I waited till we were outside in the mild spring air to ask what Candace and her daughter had fought about.
“The usual,” Dwight said. He took my arm to keep me from stepping out into the street even though the nearest car was half a block away. “She said her mother was upset that she’d dropped out of college at Easter. Plus she didn’t approve of the guy Miss Bradshaw’s seeing. Did you know she’s working for Will?”
“I was over there when she got the phone call.”
“Since when does Will need a private secretary?”
“Is that what she told you? Will said she’s just a temp that he hired last night to help him take inventory for his spring sale, but I guess private secretary sounds better. Wonder who they’ll appoint to take Candace’s place on the board?”
“Nobody you’ll take any comfort in,” he assured me as we reached my car.
Even though judges no longer run on a political slate, everyone pretty much knows who’s a liberal and who’s a conservative and who’s a yellow dog like me.
The head of the county’s Republican party would get to appoint Candace Bradshaw’s replacement. The best I could hope for was that they’d slip up and name someone who could think for himself.
Or herself.
Once again, I found myself thinking of Linsey Thomas, who would have had a lot to say on the subject of civic-minded commissioners as opposed to those who always seemed to think of personal profit first and public good last. As I turned the key in my ignition, I said, “I guess you and Bo have quit trying to find who ran down Linsey Thomas?”
