“What was that about?” Dwight asked as she moved toward the door.
“She and a Raleigh advertising agency were asked to submit proposals for the ads for Grayson Village last year. The other company got the job.”
“So?”
“So one of Linsey’s diagrams linked that agency to Grayson Village through Danny and Candace. You might want to point that out to the Ginsburgs.”
He made a note of it and signaled our waitress that he was ready to pay. As we walked back to the courthouse, he offered to pick up a pizza for our supper. “I suppose you’ll want a side of those disgusting anchovies?”
“Yes, but I always keep a jar on hand, so don’t bother getting more.” One quick kiss in the momentarily deserted atrium, then we parted at the stairs, I to the courtroom upstairs, he to his office down below.
“I’ll try not to be late,” I promised.
In the end though, it was Dwight who was late. Cal and I had to settle for scrambled eggs instead of pizza.
The reason Dee Bradshaw wasn’t answering her phone today was because someone had shot her the night before.
Once in the back, once in the head.
CHAPTER 17
Then it was gone . . .
The world takes back its toys, my mama used to say.
—Paul’s Hill, by Shelby Stephenson
Mid-afternoon on Monday and Deputy Percy Denning turned to Major Bryant. “You remember that slug I dug out of the rug here on Friday?” He had photographed the crime scene from one end of the room to the other. Now he gingerly pried a new slug from the wall. “This looks like the same size. A .22, I’d say. What do you want to bet that when I get them under a microscope they’ll both match the two in her?”
“No bet,” Dwight said, as he tried to reconstruct the shooting. Dee’s body lay facedown in the living room, on a line with the hole in the wall, a hole that was almost chest-high to Denning.
“She was running away from the shooter,” he theorized. “The first bullet missed, the other got her square in the back. Or the first bullet took her down before the second one arrived.”
From behind him, Deputy Richards said, “Then to make sure she was dead, he stood over her and fired again through the side of her head.”
Three days ago, she had been vibrant and sexy and looking forward to her inheritance, thought Dwight. A spoiled slacker, Stevie had called her. The daughter of a woman who didn’t know how to be a mother, according to Gracie Farmer. From his own observation, she had been a conflicted young woman who had not finished growing up.
Now she never would.
“Did she surprise an intruder or was the shooter someone she let in herself?” Dwight wondered aloud.
“I think she let him in.” Richards pointed to the dead girl’s bare feet. “Looks like she kicked off her shoes there by the couch. There’s her wineglass, the cork, and the opener. Her glass is still half full, but the bottle’s almost empty. She might have drunk it all herself, but someone else could have had a glass with her.”
“Make a note of it for the ME,” Dwight told Denning. “You check the kitchen, Richards?”
“Yessir, and there are dirty dishes and fast-food cartons but no used wineglass. Either he washed it clean and put it back on the shelf or else took it with him. Seems like everybody’s heard of DNA these days.”
Her rueful tone reminded him of something Bo Poole had said about one of the county’s high sheriffs. “I heard that a sheriff back in the nineteen-twenties tried to keep Linsey Thomas’s granddaddy from describing fingerprint technology in the Ledger. He thought it was telling the criminals how not to get caught.”
“Yeah,” said Denning as he bagged and tagged the slug. “Even if we had the time and equipment to process this house like one of those CSI shows on television, so many people have tromped through here the last few days, there’s no way you could separate out what’s relevant from what isn’t.”
From his aggrieved tone, Dwight knew he was still smarting over having to admit in court last week that no, he had not lifted fingerprints off the digital camera that a thief, the meth-addicted son of a local businessman, had walked out of the store with.
“He had it inside his jacket,” Denning would say to anyone who would listen. “Why the hell would we bother to match his fingerprints to it? He was holding the fricking thing when he was arrested!” Nevertheless, until someone with a little common sense finally spoke up, the jury had almost declared the shoplifter not guilty because of that lack.
“Anything else disturbed or different from when you were here last?” Dwight asked them as two more deputies returned from canvassing the neighbors, who, predictably, had seen nothing.
Richards shrugged. “Denning and I think that her room is messier than it was before. But then she moved back in on Saturday, so she had at least a day and a half to trash it some more. Drawers and cabinet doors are open all over the house, and there’re some cardboard boxes in her bedroom and in the kitchen, like she was starting to pack up whatever she planned to keep.”
“Can’t say for sure if she tossed the house or someone else did,” said Denning. “Looking at the kitchen, I’ve got her pegged as a natural slob. Most of the drawer knobs are too textured to show prints. I got a couple of smears off the smooth knobs in the kitchen, but that’s it.”
One of the EMS techs pointedly tapped his watch. “How ’bout it, Major Bryant? Can we transport her now?”
“Yeah, okay,” Dwight said, and watched as they zipped Dee Bradshaw’s small stiff body into a body bag, lifted her onto the gurney, and wheeled her through the doorway.
Outside, beyond the yellow tape that bounded the yard, a knot of uneasy neighbors had gathered to watch. More deputies were keeping them back, but he saw cell phones raised to record the scene. No doubt it would soon be on someone’s website. The local TV crew left when the door of the EMS truck swung shut.
The days were steadily getting longer. Four o’clock and the sun was only now starting to settle into the trees. A shaft of sunlight through the leaves caught Richards’s auburn hair and turned it bright as a new copper penny.
The EMS truck pulled away just as Terry Wilson’s car coasted to a stop on the circular drive.
“Sorry,” the SBI agent said as he opened the door and got out and slipped on his jacket to cover his shoulder holster. “Got held up on another case. What the hell’s going on here, Dwight? Why was she killed? You reckon she found that flash drive?”
“Who knows?” Dwight turned back to his deputy. “Where’s Bradshaw?”
“In the sunroom with his office manager,” Richards said. “McLamb’s babysitting them.”
“Show me,” he said.
The east-facing sunroom was at the back of the house and looked out onto a grassy berm that was topped with a thick mixture of evergreens—cedars, hollies, camellia bushes, and boxwood—that disguised the highway beyond and effectively screened the house from both passing motorists and nearby neighbors. The far wall consisted of wide arched windows with French doors that opened onto a flagstone terrace, where a set of white wrought-iron patio furniture waited invitingly.
The room was furnished in the colors that Candace Bradshaw apparently favored: white carpets, rose-patterned fabrics on the chairs and couches, deep rose accent cushions, and crisp white shades on the table lamps. A wet bar had been discreetly hidden in a cherry armoire, but the doors were folded back at the moment and a bottle of bourbon sat on the counter.