She tilted her head to one side, those bright eyes never leaving his face. “Are you in search of truth?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m trying to help a woman who has been unjustly accused.” In Max’s view, designation as a person of interest qualified Elaine Jamison as falsely accused.
The deep voice intoned: “ ‘But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.’ ”
Max smiled. “Justice might get a big boost if you were rocking on your porch Tuesday morning.”
“Sit, boy.”
He didn’t take umbrage at the designation. He would guess she was ninety, perhaps older. He settled on the rocker beside her. “I’m Max Darling.”
“Lula Harmon.” She rocked and the runners squeaked on the wood flooring. “I been sitting here most days. My boy don’t let me work anymore. He says, ‘Mama, you rest and read your Bible, that’s the best work you can do for me and for God.’ So if I can serve the Lord from my rocking chair, I will. ‘Learn to do good: seek justice, reprove the ruthless; defend the orphan, plead for the widow.’ ”
A bumblebee, striking in its black-and-yellow stripes, hovered near honeysuckle on a trellis at the end of the porch. The summer afternoon murmured with the chirp of birds, the hum of insects, the rustle of live-oak leaves. Max looked into intelligent eyes, bright and sharp, despite age. He had a sense of wonder. Had Lula been sitting on this porch on this sunny day waiting for his question? He shook away the thought as fanciful, yet he could not keep the eager hope from his voice. “On Tuesday morning about ten o’clock a yellow car came this way and stopped at the intersection. Which way did that car turn?”
Annie contrasted Richard Jamison’s vigor with her memory of his older, thinner cousin. But Richard’s hair was brown and his skin tanned. He looked ruddy, outdoorsy, masculine, and attractive. Light green eyes looked at her curiously. “Hello.”
He listened politely as she spoke, then shook his head. “I see no reason why I should talk about Tuesday morning with you.”
Annie felt a flicker of anger. “Don’t you care what happens to Elaine?”
His eyes narrowed. “If Elaine needs help, she can hire a lawyer. And now I’ve got things to do.”
As he started to brush past her, Annie said sharply, “Cleo’s a widow now. Are you still leaving the island?”
He stared at her, his eyes glinting with anger. “I guess Kit’s been spinning stories. I don’t owe you any explanation. But if it makes you feel better, lady, I never for a minute forgot that Cleo was Glen’s wife.” The muscles in his jaw bunched. “Believe it or not, I cared about Glen. I don’t know who shot him. Or why. I hope the cops figure it out. Fast.”
At the stop sign, Max turned left. A right turn led eventually to the island’s small downtown and the ferry landing. Side roads offered other possible routes. But turning left, the road—Sea Oats Lane—plunged into untamed brush. Foliage crowded to the very edge of the dirt road. Trees and ferns encroached on the sandy soil. Branches interlocked as the lane narrowed. He drove the Jeep deeper and deeper into a dim and shadowy tunnel of greenery. The lane ended in a turnaround. Faded red letters on a worn wooden sign announced: KITTREDGE FOREST PRESERVE.
A quick thought made Max jam the brakes. He stopped about five yards from the widened area that was mostly clear except for broken palmetto fronds and a portion of a broken live oak split by lightning.
He turned off the motor. A faint path near the side curved into woods and was lost from sight. Ferns, vines, and creepers flourished. In an instant, no-see-’ums swirled through the open window. Birds chittered and insects hummed, a symphony of summer sound. Max stared at the trail. This was the Lowcountry unhomogenized, unfiltered, as raw and wild as it had been when hardy rice growers cleared the land. Death was common then, from fevers, malaria, smallpox.
Max opened the door, studied the ground before he stepped onto a broken palmetto frond. He waved at the cloud of insects. There was nothing he could do about the wheel marks of his Jeep, which likely had obliterated previous tracks. But he had stopped well short of the turnaround. It would take a careful piece of maneuvering to turn the Jeep for his return, but he would manage somehow. He was determined to leave the turnaround as he had found it.
He gazed slowly, carefully, back and forth across the semicircular patch of ground. He spotted tire tracks, fresh and deep in the sandy soil. He would have bet a bundle that the tracks matched the tires on Elaine Jamison’s Corolla.
He lifted his eyes to the narrow entry to the woods. Whatever Elaine had done when she reached journey’s end here on Tuesday morning, she had not come this way to commune with nature. She had been visibly distraught when she had hurried out of her cottage. Apparently, she had thrown something into the marsh, turned away clutching a blue cloth. Then she’d driven away. Mrs. Harmon had seen her car turn onto the nature preserve road at shortly after ten, so this must have been her destination.
Max stared at the inhospitable woods, thick and dark and deep, home to rattlesnakes and water moccasins, wild boars, cougars, and alligators. The preserve encompassed acres of wild country.
Billy Cameron suspected that Elaine had thrown the murder weapon into the marsh. Annie saw Elaine lowering her arm. In her other hand, she held a cloth. She’d turned away from the marsh, carrying the cloth, and in only moments, her car had come careening from behind the cottage. She had driven here. If her objective had been to discard the cloth, she’d chosen a wild area where hundreds of searchers could look and look again and never find anything hidden beneath a log or thrust into a hollow of a tree or shoved deep into a thick tangle of underbrush.
Elaine’s actions might further convince Billy of her guilt. But Max had discovered too much to stop now.
Swatting at the insects, evading a buzzing yellow jacket, he climbed into the Jeep, shut the windows to avoid the assault of the insects, and turned on the motor. In the stifling air, sweat slid down his face. As he punched his cell, the air-conditioning began to cool the car’s interior. “Hey, Billy, I may have found something of interest to you. You remember how Annie saw Elaine Jamison leave in her car on Tuesday morning? I followed the same road. At the first four-way stop, I asked a few questions. I think I’ve found where she went.”
Chapter Ten
