“That’s real kindly of you, Preacher. I ain’t never been much for praying, but I’m feeling easier about this now that I’ve got you to help me do the right thing.”
As he walked away into the underbrush, Kezzie Knott glanced back and saw the preacher on his knees with his handkerchief draped over his head.
CHAPTER 19
With the death of Dee Bradshaw, the investigation took on a new urgency. Richards and McLamb spent Tuesday morning tracking down the county commissioners and getting statements as to their whereabouts on the previous Tuesday afternoon when Candace Bradshaw was killed and for Sunday evening between six-thirty and midnight, the assumed time of her daughter’s death until the ME told them differently.
Other deputies interviewed her office staff and any janitorial workers with whom Candace might have had words.
Predictably, most could not substantiate their movements. Several claimed to have been on their way home between four and five-thirty on Tuesday, or in church on Sunday evening.
Harvey Underwood, a commissioner and the banker who had handled the sale of Candace’s house, was the only one with solid alibis for both times. On Sunday, he and his wife had made the three-hour drive to Charlotte for their granddaughter’s birthday and had spent the night there. During the relevant time on Tuesday, he had been in consultation with his wife, a plumber, and a handyman about adding a closet for a second washer and dryer next to an upstairs bathroom.
“Damn foolishness, if you ask me,” he’d grumbled to Richards. “The cleaning woman does all the laundry and she’s never complained about having to take the sheets and towels downstairs.”
When pressed to elaborate on the source of Candace’s cash payment in full for the house, he looked uncomfortable, but claimed to know nothing about it. “She deposited a cashier’s check for a hundred thousand dollars ten days earlier, Deputy Richards, and she sold the old Bradshaw house for $140,000. That’s all I know.”
And no, he was not inclined to speculate on who had given her the cashier’s check.
It was duly noted that Candace was the only commissioner who had missed the meeting Tuesday night and none of them had noticed anything odd or constrained about any of their colleagues.
Or so they said.
Cameron Bradshaw would also appear to be in the clear on his wife’s murder. When his neighbors were canvassed, several confirmed that they had seen him sitting outside on his terrace that afternoon. One or another placed him there from around three o’clock till after five. As for Sunday evening, some old friends had called by to offer their condolences and the last did not leave until after nine.
Gracie Farmer had spent Tuesday afternoon inspecting a couple of offices in the area in preparation for drawing up cleaning contracts; and Dee’s cell phone records confirmed the calls between them, although Farmer lived alone and could not prove that she had stayed in all evening. “Too bad my two cats can’t talk,” she had said wryly.
Dee had kept her phone busy throughout the evening. Among the calls was one at 6:47 to Chapel Hill, to the dorm where her boyfriend lived, and an earlier one at 6:32 to Will Knott.
“Yeah,” he said when Dwight stopped by his warehouse. “She wanted to apologize for not showing back up for work. Hell’s bells, Dwight. Her mama’d been killed and she was worried about that? She said she was going to go back to school and wanted me to come over and take a look at the house, give her an appraisal of what the furnishings were worth. Maybe handle a sale for her. I agreed to drop by yesterday afternoon, but—” He shrugged. “Hell of a note, idn’t it? Pretty young thing like that? Why you reckon she was shot?”
“Beats me, Will. We’re starting to think maybe she found some records that her mother kept that might put somebody in jail.”
“And she let ’em know?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time somebody played with dynamite and had it blow up in their face.”
As for the boyfriend, his roommates confirmed that he’d been drunk and semi-comatose by late afternoon on Sunday. No way could he have driven from Chapel Hill to Dobbs. Last Tuesday evening? “Hey, man, who can remember that far back?”
The Honorable Woodrow Galloway, North Carolina state senator for their district, was unavailable for questioning about the deaths. Or so said his office. The senator, they said piously, was personally saddened by Mrs. Bradshaw’s death. The county and the state had lost a dedicated public servant who had worked tirelessly to further the growth and prosperity of her county and her state, but he himself could add nothing substantive to the investigation. They were friends and colleagues, nothing more, and any attempts to paint them as lovers were merely the usual smear tactics of the Democratic party. If Sheriff Poole insisted, Senator Galloway would try to make time in his busy schedule, which was posted on the senator’s website.
A few phone calls to disinterested parties confirmed that Galloway had indeed been in a committee meeting in Raleigh last Tuesday afternoon until after six and at a church function on Sunday evening that broke up around ten o’clock.
Dwight himself questioned Danny Creedmore, another man with no confirmed alibis. To Dwight’s complete and utter lack of surprise, Creedmore was indignant that he would be asked to account for his movements and insisted that all his dealings with Candace Bradshaw had been open and aboveboard. “Yeah, okay, so we got it on for a couple of years, but that part was ending with no hard feelings on either side.” He sat back in his chair with the air of a man who thought the world was his for the taking. “We were still working together to help the county grow and prosper.”
That cashier’s check for a hundred thousand dollars?
“Maybe somebody gave it to her as a housewarming present.”
