“
“
Linsey had kept news clippings and public tax records and scraps of notes to himself. There was also a very rough chart that appeared to list cause and effect. It would seem that Danny Creedmore had given Candace Bradshaw specific directions on how to vote on certain issues. Okay, that was generally known. What I couldn’t immediately understand was that Candace seemed to have given him information on deals that hadn’t actually come before the board, deals that allowed him to get in early and either buy up land before it had been offered at a public sale or put in bids for jobs that weren’t yet formulated.
It looked as if Candace had a network of spies all over the county. Maybe we’d underestimated her. Maybe she was a lot more savvy than we’d thought. Linsey had felt the same way, because scribbled after one of those deals was his frustrated “How the sandpaper did she know?” and it was circled in heavy black lead.
Seeing that gave me a bittersweet smile. One of Linsey’s more endearing traits was his refusal to use regular cusswords.
If Linsey’s facts and figures were right though, Candace must have been doing very well from her liaison with Danny. For sure, he had gotten rich off of her information. What’s weird is that the partnership began long before she ran for the board.
Was her board seat a reward for services already rendered instead of a positioning for services to come?
No matter which, if Terry Wilson’s Ginsburg twins could substantiate these charges, Candace could well have been looking at jail time.
Danny, too.
How lucky for them that Linsey had died and Ruby Dixon had taken over the paper.
“
Dwight and Cal came back to the house about a half-hour later. They had found and tagged three young redbuds that Dwight planned to move the next time rain was predicted. I thought he was running out of places to put trees, but he seemed to think that because they don’t make heavy shade they could go in one of the azalea beds.
He was ready to stretch out on the couch and watch a ball game, but Cal asked if he could ride his bike over to Andrew’s. One of the rabbit dogs had a new litter of puppies and he was anxious to see them.
“Finished your homework?” Dwight asked.
“Yessir.”
“Okay with you, Deborah?”
“Sure,” I said. “Just don’t try to talk Uncle Andrew out of one. Bandit might get jealous.”
“Okay,” he said and promised to be home before dark.
Dwight wandered out to the kitchen, where I was pouring myself a glass of wine. “Any of that peach cobbler left?”
“One serving. With your name on it.”
Dwight sat down at the table to eat it and I gave him Linsey’s file on Candace Bradshaw. “You may think this is crazy, darling, but what if Candace found out that Linsey had all this material and was getting ready to write about it in the paper? What if she was out in her car the night he was killed?”
“Huh?”
“Well, you heard Stevie. Dee’s still sulking because Candace gave away a practically new Toyota last spring and then immediately bought another one. And y’all never found the Toyota that hit him.”
He paused with his fork in midair. “She griped about it to Terry and me Friday, too. And you know what else? Dee even said it galled Candace every time Linsey wrote something negative about her. A no-good cousin from Georgia, huh? Be a real convenient way to get it out of the area.”
He put down his fork, picked up his phone, and punched in some numbers. When he reached the detective on duty, he said, “See if you can run down Dee Bradshaw or her dad and find out when Candace Bradshaw got rid of her old car last spring. And while you’re at it, get the name and address of the cousin she gave it to.”
CHAPTER 16
On Monday morning, we learned that Candace’s body had been released and that there had been a private cremation the afternoon before. Only Cameron Bradshaw, her daughter Dee, her office manager Gracie Farmer, and the minister of her church were present. There was mention of a future memorial service once her killer was found and locked away. In the meantime, it was said that Cameron wanted to buy space in a columbarium for the two of them, but that Dee thought she should be scattered over Colleton County from a helicopter. No one seemed to know exactly where her ashes were at the moment, only that Cameron had bought a very expensive and very tasteful urn for their eventual repose.
I was callous enough not to care about the whereabouts of her ashes so much as the whereabouts of her previous car.
“Sorry, hon,” Dwight said when we passed in the back halls sometime in mid-morning. He was upstairs to
