Deputy Raeford McLamb stood up when they entered the room, and Mrs. Farmer gave them a sad smile, but Cameron Bradshaw remained huddled at one end of a couch and seemed oblivious of their presence. He cradled a highball glass in his hands and looked closer to eighty than sixty.
If ever a man had a right to look shattered, though, it was this man, thought Dwight. First the wife that he had continued to love, and now his only child. And he had been the one to find her.
“We were supposed to have lunch together,” he told them in disjointed sentence fragments, as if it was an effort to think in logical sequence. “We were going to go over Candace’s will again—she left the house to Dee. Talk about selling it, decide what to do with the furniture. She wanted to get your brother-in-law to come over and give us an appraisal. He was nice to her, giving her a job like that. She liked him. But she was going to go back to school. Make up the work she missed. Get her life on track. But she didn’t meet us and she didn’t answer her phone, so Gracie and I came over. Her car was here, and—and—”
“You have a key?” Richards asked gently.
He nodded. “I opened the front door and called and there she was. On the floor. Soon as I saw her, I knew it was no use. Blood all over Candace’s white carpet. So much blood for such a little thing. My beautiful little girl. All that blood.”
He lifted the glass to his lips with both hands and drank deeply. It was clear that this was not his first nor even third drink.
Tears puddled in Mrs. Farmer’s eyes as she watched, but she didn’t try to stop him.
“Who would do this, Bryant?” Bradshaw asked in a voice that was rough with grief. “What did Dee ever do to make a monster shoot her down in her own house? She was just a girl still.”
“When did you last see her?” Dwight asked.
“Yesterday. After the service for Candace. Gracie made us come home with her for supper so that we wouldn’t have to go to a restaurant. Not that any of us were very hungry, but Dee left before dark. She wanted to get started packing up her clothes and the things she wanted to keep.”
“Did you talk to her later that evening?”
“I didn’t, but Gracie—?”
Gracie Farmer nodded. “We talked a couple of times on the phone. I asked her to look for an umbrella of mine that Candace had borrowed last week. It cost more than I usually pay, but it has parrots and tropical flowers, so . . . Silly to even think of such a thing when Candace . . .” Her voice trailed off and they could see her try to recover control.
Unlike the cacophony of clashing colors they had seen her in before, today’s outfit was almost somber: dark red linen slacks and white silk shirt, a zip-up white cotton sweater randomly striped in thick and thin red lines. Black patent shoes with low Cuban heels, a black leather purse. Her short fingernails were painted the exact same shade as her lipstick and slacks.
“You said you talked a couple of times?”
Mrs. Farmer nodded. “Around six, I think. She called me about the dollhouse. Wanted to know if she could store it in my attic till she had a place for it. I told her of course she could.”
Bradshaw turned to her in wonderment. “She was going to keep it?”
“That surprises you, sir?” asked Mayleen Richards.
“She always made fun of Candace for playing with it and buying new furniture and things for it. She didn’t care much for dolls even when she was a little girl, but Candace? Candace never had the toys and pretty things that Dee had, and the dollhouse was important to her in ways I’ll probably never understand without talking to a psychiatrist. Wish fulfillment? Restructuring her childhood? Candace seldom talked about her family and home life to me. I think it embarrassed her. But I gather it was most”—he hesitated, searching for the discreet term—“chaotic and thoroughly unpleasant and—”
He lapsed into silence.
Gracie Farmer patted his arm consolingly and said, “When she came to me for a job, she was sixteen and pretty much on her own. She had left home and moved in with her grandmother, who died two or three years later. But Cam’s right. Dee did make fun of the dollhouse. But when she called to ask if I’d keep it for her, she was crying and blaming herself for not understanding Candace better.”
“And that was the last time you spoke to her?”
“No, she called back around eight and said she’d found the umbrella. She was going to give it to me today when—” Her voice broke and she reached for her handbag and some tissues to wipe away the tears that were freely coursing down her cheeks.
“The night she was born, I was there. Remember, Cam?”
He nodded without looking up from the empty glass in his hands.
“Little blond ringlets all over her tiny little head.”
Dwight stood up and said, “Mrs. Farmer, may we speak with you privately somewhere?”
She nodded, wiped her eyes, and suggested they go into the dining room next door.
As she stood, Bradshaw handed her his glass and nodded toward the bar. “Don’t fuss, Gracie. Please?”
Without comment, she poured him another stiff one, then led Dwight, Richards, and the SBI agent through the double doors into a formal dining room. The long polished table had seating for twelve. The centerpiece was an arrangement of silk roses and baby’s breath so realistic that Richards had to touch one to convince herself that they were not real. At least five dollars a stem, she thought, and not from any local discount house.
“This is an awfully big house for one person,” Terry Wilson said as they sat down at the table.
Gracie Farmer looked around the room, almost as if seeing it for the first time. “Candace thought she might start entertaining if she ran for the state senate. This would have been a great place for a dinner party, the way the double doors open into the sunroom.”
“How did she pay for it?” Dwight asked bluntly.
“Pay for it?” The older woman’s voice faltered for a moment. “She owned half of Bradshaw Management, Major, and she had just sold her old house. She could afford it.”
“Afford to pay cash?”
She looked at them in bewilderment. “Is that what she did? I assumed she took out a mortgage. I mean, this is one of the smaller houses in this development, but I’m sure it must have cost her close to half a million by the time she added on the extras and the landscaping. She wasn’t taking that much money out of the business and the old house was in such bad shape that—are you sure she paid cash?”
“That’s what they told us at the bank.”
“Dee thought she was skimming from the business,” Richards told her.
“Never!” Mrs. Farmer said indignantly.
But then a shadow crossed her face and Dwight glanced at Wilson, wondering if his old friend was thinking the same thing he was—that here was a woman who should never play poker for money. She sat silently for a moment, pleating the fabric of her red slacks as she thought about what they had said.
“Okay, look. I told y’all that she sometimes probably took money for some of the favors she did a few developers and real estate people? She really did care more about power and having people think she was very important than about money, but I guess she probably liked the money, too. If she was skimming though, Roger Flackman had to know about it.”
“Mr. Bradshaw’s auditor?” Wilson asked.
The office manager nodded. “I hate speaking ill of the dead, but it’s not as if Candace was really married. And you know how beautiful she was. Looked more like thirty than forty. I don’t know if he would have cooked the books for her, but she could be very persuasive when she was trying to sell something.”
“And sometimes she paid with sex?”
Gracie Farmer had quit meeting his eyes. “You’ll have to ask Flackman about that. I truly don’t know.”
“Tell us about her cousin down in Georgia,” Dwight said.