Alice Taylor worked in the business office of PCI where she was in charge of inmate accounts. When she learned that I was trying to find out who killed Nicole, she got word to me that she had information that might be helpful.
“But I’m serious,” I said. “If you’re not comfortable, I really can-”
“You kiddin’? I’d love to be a part of catching that bastard,” she said.
“You mean whoever killed Nicole?” I asked. “Or did you have a particular bastard in mind?”
She smiled, but there was tension in her eyes, and as she pushed her silky black hair away from her face, her hand trembled. “Bobby Earl.”
One by one, the yuppie after-work crowd was being replaced by the less yuppie, more rowdy crowd, as if by an unspoken agreement each knew their allotted time. Mixed drinks were being replaced by bottles of beer as conversations about today’s headlines were replaced by small talk about fishing and football.
“Ever wonder why a televangelist with a weekly national broadcast would come into a humble little prison like PCI?”
“I just assumed he was trying not to forget the pit from which he was dug,” I said.
“Huh?”
“That he’s got a soft spot for inmates or feels a loyalty to Warden Stone.”
“That’s because you’re a good man,” she said. “But you’re giving Bobby Earl way too much credit.”
“Uh oh,” I said.
“What is it?”
“I’m thinking maybe Bobby Earl’s innocent,” I said.
“Why?”
“By admitting you think I’m a good man, you’ve just lost all credibility as a judge of character.”
She smiled and punched me playfully-maybe even flirtatiously. “You are,” she said. “Good-looking, good dresser, good chaplain-”
“Good God,” I said. “I had no idea you felt this way.”
She blushed, her creamy white skin turning a pale pink.
Simultaneously, we both reached for our drinks.
As she smiled up at me, I could see the gold flecks sprinkled throughout the green of her eyes even in the dim light of the bar.
“Do you want to know or not?”
“Yes,” I said. “Why does a national televangelist treasure like Bobby Earl come into PCI?”
“To pass the plate,” she said.
I shook my head. “We don’t have plates in the chapel,” I said. “And inmates don’t have money.”
“Oh, hell, yes, they do,” she said, her drink seeming to kick in.
“Well, you ought to know, managing their accounts and all, but there’s no money on the compound so-”
“They mail it to him,” she said.
“Even so,” I said, “they can have-what? — sixty-five bucks a week? How much could they send?”
As she slid a little closer to me, I became conscious of having Coke breath, and slid a piece of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum out of my pocket and into my mouth.
“Sixty-five dollars is what they can spend each week with their cashless card in the canteen,” she said. “There’s no limit to how much they can have in their accounts. Some of them have a quarter of a million dollars or more.”
It took me a minute to process that one, and as I thought about it, she went on to explain some things I already knew, which was fine because I wasn’t really listening anyway.
“There’s no cash on the compound,” she said. “They buy food and certain personal items from the canteen by swiping the magnetic strip on their ID badge. By limiting it to sixty-five dollars, we curtail the amount of bribing and bartering that goes on down there, but it doesn’t stop it. That has nothing to do with how much they can and do have in their accounts, just how much they can spend in the canteen each week.”
“So if one of them wanted to-ah, sow a seed into Bobby Earl’s ministry, how would he do it?”
“Simple,” she said. “Fill out a withdrawal form and submit it to me with a stamped envelope addressed to where he wants it sent.”
“And this happens often?” I asked.
She nodded. “This past year, PCI inmates donated nearly a hundred grand to something called Setting the Captives Free, a Bobby Earl Caldwell Ministry.”
“A hundred thousand American dollars?”
“Yes, American,” she said and punched me again.
“Does that amount come from just a few large contributions or several small ones?”
“Large ones primarily, but there’re more than just a few,” she said. “It’s funny though-” She paused long enough to take a sip of her drink, a Fuzzy Navel from the look and smell of it, and then continued. “-there are small ones, but they go to a different address than the big ones. The Captives ones go to a P.O. Box in New Orleans, the small ones to a street address that I know is his ministry headquarters address because I’ve seen it on his literature.”
“Is there any way you can get me a list of the inmates who’ve made contributions?” I asked.
“I don’t think I could do that,” she said with a smile as she withdrew a sheet of paper folded lengthways from her purse and slid it along the bar to me. “That would be wrong.”
“And being the good man I am,” I said, “I don’t want to encourage you to do anything wrong.”
She smiled, obviously enjoying herself.
“Who’s his single largest contributor?” I asked.
“Was a drug dealer from Miami named Brawer, but he’s no longer with us,” she said.
“Transferred?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “To hell. He OD’d last weekend.”
My eyebrows shot up. “That was him?”
She nodded.
“Sounds like a clue,” I said.
“The strange thing is, you’d think there would be a big increase in donations after one of his visits.”
“There’s not?”
“There’s a small increase,” she said, “but the majority of contributions are made before he comes.”
“Just before?”
“Yeah, why?”
“The clues just keep on coming,” I said.
She smiled. “So that helps?”
“More than you’ll ever know.”
“Good,” she said, and when I saw how pleased what I said made her, I was glad I had said it.
She had the same look on her face when she asked, “Are you going to stay for Karaoke?” Which is why an hour later I was wishing I were drunk as I listened to people who were singing songs that they wouldn’t have if they weren’t.
CHAPTER 27
When I got home, Anna was waiting for me (I never lock my doors-I don’t know anyone in Pottersville who does), and I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to come home to her every night.
Home for me is an old, dilapidated single-wide mobile home- the only thing I could find when I moved back to Pottersville about a year ago, the only thing I could afford after the divorce. After living a very different life for over thirty years, I had become trailer trash, hurricane bait, downwardly mobile. It was as embarrassing as it was liberating.
“Honey, I’m home,” I said as I walked through the door, and I realized that finding her here was the first
