been murdered. “Any details?”
“Not yet. I’ll IM Faye Myers. See if she knows anything.”
Faye Myers is a plump and gossipy dispatcher who’s married to an EMS tech. Between them they know most of what’s going on in the county before anyone else does. Bo Poole keeps threatening to fire her, but somehow he never has, probably because she seldom reveals anything sensitive to an investigation before it becomes common knowledge. It might also be that he regards her as a barometer of public opinion and likes the feedback she gives him. Grapevines do tend to run in both directions and there’s a reason Bo barely has to break a sweat out on the campaign trail every four years.
If Faye knew more than the bare facts though, she wasn’t responding to my clerk’s instant message, so I wandered around to Luther Parker’s office during the break. As soon as I walked in, he said, “I hear Candace Bradshaw didn’t kill herself. That true? What does Dwight say?”
“Sorry, friend. I buzzed his office but he’s not there and I don’t like to bother him on his cell phone during working hours.”
“Yeah?” He lifted an eyebrow and grinned. “Since when?”
Roger Longmire, our chief district court judge, stuck his head in. “Y’all hear that Candace was murdered?”
We batted it around for a few minutes, wondering if the motive was personal, a love affair gone wrong, something connected with her business or with her position as a county commissioner.
“I’m guessing it was something to do with kickbacks for approving some of those iffy housing developments,” Longmire said.
“I don’t know,” said Luther. “I heard she and Creedmore had a falling out over a clerk down in Ellis Glover’s office.”
Ellis Glover is our clerk of court and gives a lot of young women their first jobs. Like us, he has to run for office every four years, too, so he always seems to have an opening for the sister or daughter of constituents. Many important men—and yes, dammit, men still hold most of the power in our county—are grateful to him for looking after their female relatives. He makes sure that his “girls” are the first to hear of any opening in other county departments so that he can cycle them out and cycle in a new group to keep widening his circle of supporters. Democrats or Republicans, it doesn’t much matter to Ellis. He knows that men are daddies and brothers and uncles and grandfathers first, party members second.
I didn’t recognize the name of the young woman that Danny Creedmore was supposed to be lusting after, but it wasn’t important. Most courthouse affairs have a sell-by date from the get-go and they usually end with no hard feelings on either side.
“From all I’ve heard, it wouldn’t really matter if Danny and Candace weren’t lovers any longer. They were still in bed together, weren’t they?” I asked.
Convoluted but Luther and Roger knew what I meant.
“Yeah,” said Roger. “She was still saying ‘How high?’ when Danny said ‘Jump.’ Although I did hear that she wanted to be taken seriously if she filed for Woody’s seat. She really thought she could be a state senator.”
“Hey, if Dubya could be president,” said Luther.
We laughed and returned to our separate courtrooms.
Dwight is normally finished by four and I had no compunctions about calling his cell number then. Now that Cal is part of our lives, one of us has to pick him up every afternoon.
He answered on the first ring. “On my way. What about you?”
“I may be a little late,” I told him, virtuously refraining from asking about Candace. “I need to swing past Seth’s for a few minutes.”
That encounter with Daddy at lunchtime was still bothering me. When I got to Seth’s house, though, no one was home and I decided the hell with it. Go to the source. Ask Daddy flat out what was going on. Yes, he can be touchy as a hornet when questioned about his private business, but you don’t deserve any honey if you’re not willing to get stung. And don’t bother telling me that hornets don’t make honey. You know what I mean.
There was no sign of his truck at the homeplace, and Maidie was putting his supper in the oven so the pilot light would keep it warm.
“I never know when he’s gonna be home these days,” she said. “Walk on down to the house with me, honey, so I can start Cletus’s supper. And you’re welcome to eat with us.”
“Thanks, Maidie,” I said, “but Dwight and Cal are probably waiting for me.”
Maidie was my mother’s right arm after Aunt Essie married a policeman up in Philadelphia when I was a little girl. Cletus was working for Daddy back then, too, and it got to the point that they couldn’t keep him away from the kitchen. He was eight or nine years older than Maidie, yet way too shy to pop the question.
Exasperated because he could never find Cletus when he was needed, Daddy stormed into the kitchen one day and said, “Now look here, Maidie. This man’s acting like a moonstruck calf and it’s got to quit.”
That’s when Mother and Maidie started laughing.
Daddy was too wound up to stop and Cletus had turned ashen beneath his brown color. Daddy gave him a sour look and said, “I don’t know why on earth you’d want to marry him, but if you do, for God’s sake and mine, tell him so I can get some work out of him. All right?”
Still laughing, Maidie said, “All right.”
“Huh?” Daddy and Cletus were both dumbfounded.
“She said yes,” Mother told them. “Now will you two please get out of my kitchen? We’ve got a wedding to plan.”
The little clapboard house that Maidie and Cletus have shared for thirty-odd years is just past the barn and down the lane from the main house. The garden that he and Daddy had planted was growing vigorously. Peas and potatoes were blooming and the first planting of sweet corn was almost knee-high. No stakes yet for the tomatoes
