“Oh. Yeah. I almost forgot about it,” said Kezzie. He held out his hand and the preacher pulled it from his pocket and held it up in the sunlight. The diamonds flashed and glittered.
“I took it to a jeweler I know,” he said as he reluctantly dropped it in the old man’s calloused hand.
“Yeah?”
“He said it was at least sixty years old and that the pair of them would be worth about two or three thousand dollars.”
“That all?” Kezzie Knott’s blue eyes looked disappointed. “I thought they’d be more’n that.”
“He looked at the diamonds under a magnifying glass and they’re not flawless.”
“They ain’t?” He held them up to the sun again and squinted. “They surely do sparkle.”
“The flaws aren’t visible to the naked eye,” the preacher explained in a kindly tone. “It’s what they call occlusions. Little cloudy spots no bigger than a speck of dust. They don’t hurt the way they look to you and me, but they can bring the price down real quick.”
“You sure your man knowed what he was talking about? The newspapers back then said he jumped out’n that plane with jewelry worth four million dollars. And that was twenty-five years ago. I was thinking that’d come out to be six or seven million these days what with inflation and all.”
“Oh, I imagine the owner might have exaggerated the value a little bit, don’t you? To get what he could from the insurance company? People aren’t always truthful, Brother Kezzie.”
Kezzie Knott nodded. “You ain’t never said a truer word, Preacher.”
He tucked the earring into his shirt pocket and buttoned it securely. “Still and all, every time me and mine’s ever insured anything, the man wants to see it. Wants to see the bill of sale, too, if it’s something that’s worth right much. Don’t you reckon the man these was stole from had to show receipts, too?”
“Hard to know, Brother Kezzie. I went and looked it up online. The owner was a fancy jeweler in Miami. Dealt in what they call estate jewelry.”
“Yeah, I’ve heared my boy Will talk about that stuff.”
“He’s dead now himself. Died about eight years ago, but he did collect on the insurance. If his family were to get these back, they’d have to turn around and come up with the four million he got paid.”
“That could work a real hardship on ’em, couldn’t it?”
“It could, Brother Kezzie. It really could. That man might’ve paid four million for ’em, but that doesn’t mean his people could sell them for that today. My jeweler says there’s auction value and then there’s insurance value and sometimes the two are miles apart.”
Kezzie Knott nodded sagely. “When it comes time to sell something, don’t matter how much you paid for it. You got to find somebody willing to buy what you’re selling.”
“That’s the way of the world, I’m afraid.”
“The thing is, I ain’t never stole nothing in my life, but this ain’t really stealing, is it? I got land, but I ain’t got money. I was hoping maybe them earrings would be enough to buy the Pritchard land so no bulldozer could ever turn up them bones, but if they ain’t worth more’n a couple of thousand, don’t look like that’s gonna happen.”
McKinney swept the gnats away again with his handkerchief. “Tell you what, Brother Kezzie. Why don’t you go get the truck and drive it around here and let me take it to the Lord in prayer? He’s led us together and I’m sure He has a purpose in mind.”
“That’s real kindly of you, Preacher. I ain’t never been much for praying, but I’m feeling easier about this now that I’ve got you to help me do the right thing.”
As he walked away into the underbrush, Kezzie Knott glanced back and saw the preacher on his knees with his handkerchief draped over his head.
CHAPTER 19
The top of my head, Mister Paul, grows bald.
I mean the Old South is gone, ain’t it?
—Paul’s Hill, by Shelby Stephenson
With the death of Dee Bradshaw, the investigation took on a new urgency. Richards and McLamb spent Tuesday morning tracking down the county commissioners and getting statements as to their whereabouts on the previous Tuesday afternoon when Candace Bradshaw was killed and for Sunday evening between six-thirty and midnight, the assumed time of her daughter’s death until the ME told them differently.
Other deputies interviewed her office staff and any janitorial workers with whom Candace might have had words.
Predictably, most could not substantiate their movements. Several claimed to have been on their way home between four and five-thirty on Tuesday, or in church on Sunday evening.
Harvey Underwood, a commissioner and the banker who had handled the sale of Candace’s house, was the only one with solid alibis for both times. On Sunday, he and his wife had made the three-hour drive to Charlotte for their granddaughter’s birthday and had spent the night there. During the relevant time on Tuesday, he had been in consultation with his wife, a plumber, and a handyman about adding a closet for a second washer and dryer next to an upstairs bathroom.
“Damn foolishness, if you ask me,” he’d grumbled to Richards. “The cleaning woman does all the laundry and she’s never complained about having to take the sheets and towels downstairs.”
When pressed to elaborate on the source of Candace’s cash payment in full for the house, he looked uncomfortable, but claimed to know nothing about it. “She deposited a cashier’s check for a hundred thousand dollars ten days earlier, Deputy Richards, and she sold the old Bradshaw house for $140,000. That’s all I know.”
And no, he was not inclined to speculate on who had given her the cashier’s check.
It was duly noted that Candace was the only commissioner who had missed the meeting Tuesday night and none of them had noticed anything odd or constrained about any of their colleagues.
Or so they said.
Cameron Bradshaw would also appear to be in the clear on his wife’s murder. When his neighbors were canvassed, several confirmed that they had seen him sitting outside on his terrace that afternoon. One or another placed him there from around three o’clock till after five. As for Sunday evening, some old friends had called by to offer their condolences and the last did not leave until after nine.
Gracie Farmer had spent Tuesday afternoon inspecting a couple of offices in the area in preparation for drawing up cleaning contracts; and Dee’s cell phone records confirmed the calls between them, although Farmer lived alone and could not prove that she had stayed in all evening. “Too bad my two cats can’t talk,” she had said wryly.
Dee had kept her phone busy throughout the evening. Among the calls was one at 6:47 to Chapel Hill, to the dorm where her boyfriend lived, and an earlier one at 6:32 to Will Knott.
“Yeah,” he said when Dwight stopped by his warehouse. “She wanted to apologize for not showing back up for work. Hell’s bells, Dwight. Her mama’d been killed and she was worried about that? She said she was going to go back to school and wanted me to come over and take a look at the house, give her an appraisal of what the furnishings were worth. Maybe handle a sale for her. I agreed to drop by yesterday afternoon, but—” He shrugged. “Hell of a note, idn’t it? Pretty young thing like that? Why you reckon she was shot?”
“Beats me, Will. We’re starting to think maybe she found some records that her mother kept that might put somebody in jail.”
“And she let ’em know?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time somebody played with dynamite and had it blow up in their face.”