“Nicole was an angel,” she said. “An angel.” She then turned her head to the side and looked up as if thinking of something for the first time. “Maybe that’s why God took her-to join the other angels.”
“There’s no doubt she’s with God now,” I said. “And the angels, but God didn’t kill her. Who do you think killed her?”
“She was too good,” she continued, in her own world now, no longer talking to me. “She was just too good for this fallen, sinful world.”
Over the intercom, a pleasant-sounding woman with only a slight southern drawl announced the boarding call for their flight, but Bunny didn’t seem to hear her.
“Bunny,” I said sternly. “Who killed Nicole?”
She looked at me, our eyes locking, as if she were really seeing me for the first time. “We did.”
“You and Bobby Earl?”
She nodded. “We-” She broke off, her eyes growing wide, her face filling with alarm, as she spotted something over my shoulder.
I turned to see Bobby Earl quickly approaching us, DeAndré Stone following behind him at a distance.
“Honey, it’s time for our flight,” Bobby Earl said. “Why, Chaplain Jordan, what’re you doing here?”
“I came to see you two,” I said.
“To minister to us or ask us if we killed our daughter?”
“Both,” I said.
He looked at me for a long moment, shaking his head. “DeAndré, take Bunny to the plane. I’ll join you there in a minute.”
Zombie-like, Bunny stepped forward and DeAndré took her by the arm. When he turned to walk out with her, Merrill was in front of him, blocking the aisle.
“We gonna do this here?” DeAndré asked.
Merrill looked over at me.
I shook my head.
“Guess not,” Merrill said to DeAndré, “but I’d like a rain check on that.”
“Bet on it,” DeAndré said.
Without moving, Merrill relaxed his posture, and DeAndré led Bunny over to another aisle and out of the store.
“I’m sorry again for your loss, Mrs. Caldwell,” I called after her.
“Do you really lack spiritual discernment to such an extent that you suspect me or Bunny of killing our daughter?” Bobby Earl asked.
“When I asked Bunny who killed Nicole, she said, ‘We did.’”
“She meant by taking her into the prison,” he said. “She’s very upset right now, as you can imagine. She feels enormous guilt. It’s unthinkable that you would come and-”
“Whose daughter is she?” I asked. “Is Mrs. Caldwell her biological mother?”
Before he could prevent it, his eyes widened briefly and flickered in confirmation, and he shook his head. “How can you do these things?” he asked. “Talking to another man’s devastated wife when he’s not around, accusing a man of God of murdering the underprivileged little black girl he’s taken in and loved as his own? Sir, I ask you, are you a minister or a… or something else? I have to go now, but I will keep you in my prayers-and the men whose souls you’re meant to shepherd.”
He turned and began walking toward the terminal.
I followed.
“Weren’t you and Bunny the only ones in that locked office with Nicole last night?” I asked.
Without stopping, he said, “Obviously not. She was brutally murdered-and we didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Why did you have her in the prison in the first place?” I asked.
He shook his head, but didn’t answer.
He walked quickly, weaving in and out of slower moving passengers. A few of the stragglers from recently landed planes headed in our direction, recognized Bobby Earl, reacting to him the way most people respond to celebrities-with wide-eyed excitement, pointing him out to others or with attempted nonchalant coolness, undermined by surreptitious glances.
“Why have security if you’re not going to use him to protect your daughter in the most dangerous place she’s ever been?” I asked.
We had reached the security checkpoint, beyond which Merrill and I couldn’t go, and I realized that was my last question for the night.
“I gave DeAndré the night off so he could visit with his uncle,” he said, dropping his bag onto the small conveyer belt and stepping through the metal detector. “I was assured y’all would provide security for Nicole. Maybe rather than harassing us, you should be asking yourself why your chapel-your own office wasn’t safe for my little girl and how culpable you and the Florida Department of Corrections are.”
“He actually said ‘culpable’?” Merrill asked.
I nodded.
After continued attempts to engage Bobby Earl across the security checkpoint, and making sure they did, in fact, get on the plane and that it did, in fact, leave the ground, Merrill and I were walking back through the mostly empty airport.
“Sound just like an inmate,” he said. “You can take the convict out of prison, but…”
I laughed.
The recently deplaned had picked up their luggage and departed, and the airport was much quieter now, though it still had that high-ceiling, tile floor, open-air hum large enclosed spaces like malls get.
“Bobby Earl’s put the fear of God in his old lady,” Merrill said as we walked back toward his truck. “And that ain’t all he’s put in her either.”
“I didn’t smell alcohol on her,” I said. “And if she’d been drinking, I’d’ve known. I can smell booze the way a vampire can smell blood.”
“Man like him can get as much script as he want.”
I nodded.
“‘Course she could be medicating herself,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, “but for guilt or grief?”
“Maybe both,” he said. “I hear moms make real sensitive murderers. They kill they kid just like anybody else, but then they all ‘oh-shit-what-did-I-do?’ and tore up about it.”
Merrill stopped and looked around the nearly empty building. “Damn, I’s hoping we could pick up some stewardesses to party with-do a little layover.”
“This is a work trip,” I said. “Besides,
“It’s not like anybody was gettin’ frequent flyer points from you when you thought you wasn’t.”
I laughed and we started walking again.
“We need to do a real interview with them,” I said. “Even if we have to go to New Orleans to do it.”
“Just let me know when,” he said. “’Cause I wanna conduct a little interview of my own with that nigga’ that works for them. And it’s gonna be real-real painful for his black ass.”
I smiled.
“So which one of them you think did it?”
I shrugged. “Maybe both. Maybe neither.”
“You think it could be one of those other fools hangin’ out in the hallway?”
I nodded. “I think while we’re setting up a real interview with Bobby Earl and Bunny we should try to find out.”
CHAPTER 19
