The Buzzard Table

CHAPTER

15


Vultures have excellent eyesight, but, like most other birds, they have poor vision in the dark.

—The Turkey Vulture Society



The clock at the rear of my courtroom showed two minutes past noon and the orange juice and scrambled eggs I’d had for breakfast over five hours ago was long since gone. I had virtuously skipped the bacon and buttered toast I’d made for Dwight and Cal, so instead of misdemeanor felonies and supervised probations, my mind was wandering over to Sue’s Soup ’n’ Sandwich Shop across the street from the courthouse. Mushroom and barley soup. Grilled cheese on whole wheat.

While Julie Walsh, who was prosecuting today’s calendar, pulled the shuck on the next case, I mentally turned the pages of the café’s menu. Thursday’s soup of the day is always cream of broccoli with a heavy sprinkle of bacon. Or what about Sue’s stuffed potatoes? Cheese, bacon, chopped onions.

A door opened in the wall behind me and a clerk handed my clerk a note that she passed up to me. I opened it to see Dwight’s familiar scrawl: “Lunch in my office in 15 minutes?”

I scrawled back, “Make it 10,” and caught the eye of the ADA. “Ms. Walsh?”

“Sorry, Your Honor. Call Ruben Oliver.”

Oliver had light brown skin and shoulder-length black curls. At first I thought he was African American until he spoke and I heard the Latino accent. Twenty-four, charged with misdemeanor larceny and resisting arrest. After taking a beer from the Quick Stop’s cooler, he had given the clerk the finger and strolled out of the store. Gothic black letters and symbols on his fingers spelled out the name of a gang down in Fayetteville, one that was not active in our county so far as I knew.

The clerk’s testimony was brief and to the point. As was that of the police officer who had responded to the call and had to chase Mr. Oliver through a parking lot and down an alley. I had no doubt that Oliver was guilty as charged. When I questioned him about his tattoos, he swore he was no longer in a gang and wanted to start his life over in Durham, where he had relatives.

“But aren’t those gang symbols on your fingers?” I asked.

He grudgingly admitted that they were and said he wished he’d never had them put on.

“If you really want to get rid of them,” I said, “there’s a doctor here in town who’ll remove gang tattoos for free.”

He thought about it a minute, then shook his head; but after I had pronounced him guilty and told him the penalties, he pushed back his hair and pulled down the collar of his shirt. There in vertical black letters on the side of his neck was the name “Estrella.”

“That doctor—can he get rid of this bitch’s name for me?”

“Sorry,” I said and remanded him to the jailor. “This court will be in recess until one-thirty.”

“All rise,” said the bailiff.



Downstairs, Dwight immediately closed the door to his office and gave me the long slow kiss we had forfeited this morning so as not to embarrass Cal. I put my arms around his neck and pressed my body against his, giving myself up to the sensual pleasure of his mouth, his hands, the smell of his skin.

“Too bad your office is so small,” I said when the kiss reluctantly ended. “We could really use a couch in here.”

He laughed and pushed aside the papers on his desk to clear a space for the salads he’d sent out for. Tuna for me, steak for him. He’s never going to give up red meat altogether, but he does try to humor me with more green veggies. Last year, that salad would have been charbroiled hamburgers and a double order of french fries.

“I hope this doesn’t mean you won’t be home for supper,” I said.

“Nope. Not unless something breaks in this Jowett case, and I’m not holding my breath.” He handed me a can of tomato juice and snapped off the plastic lids of our salads.

“Rough morning?” I shook the can hard, then popped the top and inserted a straw.

“Just that my two prime suspects seem to have solid alibis,” he said gloomily.

While we ate, he told me what they’d learned about Rebecca Jowett—how she was reputed to be promiscuous and how the lingerie in her laundry hamper seemed to confirm it. “That hairdresser you told me about? She told Mayleen that she had a fresh hickey on her neck last Wednesday and it was still faintly visible when we found her. We’re pretty sure Dave didn’t give it to her. Anyhow, he was in Louisiana all weekend.”

He described Wesley Todd, a macho type, and Paul Kendrick, who appeared more than strong enough to move a slender corpse. “We’ve sent her underpants out for DNA testing. See if the semen on them matches the couch. We’re also sending the foam cups both men used when I interviewed them. So far as we’ve learned, they seem to be the only men she’s been involved with who fit the time frame for that love bite.” He paused and grinned at me. “Unless we count your Don Juan cousin.”

“Reid?”

“He was supposed to have drinks with her that night, but he got ordered to Southern Pines instead.”

Remembering Reid’s exasperation with his parents’ determination to see him settle down, I had to laugh. “The debutante with her own breeding stable? Yeah, he told me about that.” I took another swallow of my tomato juice. “But why would Todd or Kendrick kill her? Rough sex that got out of hand?”

Dwight shrugged and uncapped a bottle of water, his choice of on-duty beverage when he’s OD’d on coffee. “Whatever the motive, it’s no good without opportunity. Becca Jowett’s neighbor says she left the house around seven and the autopsy puts her time of death about an hour or so after eating some celery and pimento cheese. I suppose Kendrick could have sneaked out while his wife was sleeping off a headache, but she was pretty detailed about the early part of the evening.”

“Any tomato juice in her stomach?” I asked, hoisting my can. “Could she have stopped off somewhere for a Bloody Mary?”

“With a side order of pimento cheese?”

“You’re right. That sounds like a light snack out of her own refrigerator. So that would mean she couldn’t have been killed much after eight?”

“I’m guessing eight-thirty at the latest. At which time, Wesley Todd was setting out rat traps in the Creekside subdivision and Paul Kendrick was banging pots and pans in his kitchen if we can believe their wives.”

“But if she ate the celery earlier than seven…?” I frowned in concentration. “What if Todd drove down East Cleveland Street on his way out of town, saw her going into the house alone, and stopped his truck—it was a truck, wasn’t it?”

“I guess,” said Dwight. “We’ll have to check.”

“So he stops his truck, goes in with her. They fight for some reason. He kills her and slings her in the back of his truck and covers her up with a tarp or something. Then he goes on to the client’s house, sets his traps, and dumps the body on his way home.” Even as I spoke, I saw the big hole in my theory. “Only there wasn’t much of a moon that night, so how would he have known how to find that dead-end drop-off in the dark?”

He grinned. “Probably the same way I would, and don’t tell me you never parked out there with some horny teenager either.”

“Moi?” I said, knowing that my own grin was an admission of guilt. “Did Todd grow up over that way?”

“Not sure. He may be one of those Todds who used to farm some of the Creech land on Old Forty-Eight.”

Dwight lifted a forkful of cubed steak and butter crunch lettuce and paused with it in midair. “If he did, that scenario of yours might work. Becca Jowett told the hairdresser that she didn’t like it that rough and that whoever marked her wasn’t going to get another try. So he sees her going into the house, thinks he’ll have a little romp before going out to catch rats, she refuses, he flies off the handle, and bang! He’s got a dead woman bleeding out on the couch. He stashes her in the truck, pulls the afghan over the bloodstain, and the rest is like you said.”

He carried the fork to his mouth and I could almost see his mind working as he chewed and swallowed. “And you know something else? Ms. Coyne told me that he was the one who drew attention to that couch. And he was the one who whipped off that afghan. They were supposed to close today, so if they hadn’t found the blood, they would have handed over their check. Now that it’s known the murder took place there, they’re balking at going through with it, and they may even get their earnest money back, but once their check was deposited, the bank could probably string it out for who knows how long?”



With Dwight eager to get a search warrant for Wes Todd’s truck, we didn’t linger over the rest of our lunch and I went back upstairs a little early to find Anne Harald and Richard Williams waiting to show me the community service plan they had worked out for Jeremy Harper.

Among Richard’s many interests are gardening and flowers. Winter or summer, there’s almost always something blooming in his and Carolyn’s yard, and even in the throes of February he had put together a small vase for my desk: a fistful of fragrant daphne blossoms mixed with cedar and boxwood, the whole thing no bigger than a baseball.

“Lovely,” I said, lifting it to my nose and breathing in the clean, sweet aroma. “So tell me what you plan for the Harper boy.”

They quickly laid it out for me.

Richard was a volunteer for the disabled vets’ chapter in town. “Mostly I just sit and listen to them,” he said. “They want to tell their stories, to make sense of what they’ve gone through. We have an old man who lost an arm and a foot at Iwo Jima and a Marine who had his spinal cord severed in Afghanistan.”

Anne said, “We think Jeremy can use his camera and computer skills to put together an essay about their views on war and why it was worth the sacrifice, maybe even get their views on torture and whether or not they think it works. It could be an article that one of the service magazines would want to run.”

“You’ve spoken to them about it?” I asked. “And they’ve agreed?”

“They’re looking forward to it,” Richard said.

“And Jeremy’s on board with this, too?”

“I think so. Of course, Anne’s sweetened the pot a little.”

“Oh?”

She nodded. “My cousin Martin that you met Tuesday night? He’s agreed to talk to Jeremy about some of the interesting places his cameras have taken him.”

“And Anne’s giving him a tutorial in how to ask tactful questions,” Richard said.

“That won’t take too much time from your mother, will it?” I asked.

Anne gave a wry smile. “She and Sigrid are making an inventory of the house and I’m in the way.”

That surprised me. “I should think you’d know more about what things are than Sigrid.”

“I do,” Anne said, and for a moment her blue-gray eyes misted over. “That’s part of the problem. Sigrid can look at them more objectively than I can.”

I suppose “objective” is a kinder word than “cold.” I was more drawn to Anne’s warmth, but if I were dying and saying goodbye to things I’d held dear, cool objectivity might not wear me down like teary-eyed emotion.

I added a note to Jeremy Harper’s file. “This sounds good to me,” I said. “Just make sure one of you documents his hours.”