“That was during the monastery case.”
“Good memory.”
“Susan’s great-uncle.” He thought a moment. “A good fellow. Shame about how he died. People.” He shook his head. “But then, if this were a crime-free world, you and I wouldn’t have a job.”
“Not one so exciting.”
“Except for the paperwork.” He winked at her.
“Got that right.” She used the old expression with the correct intonation, a Tidewater lyricism.
“This is a good cigarette. Burns too fast, though.”
He replied, “Does. If I were a rich man I’d smoke Dunhills and Shepherd’s Hotel, but this is a good compromise. Some of the cheap stuff that’s out there.” He inhaled gratefully. “Don’t know how the French can smoke what they do.”
“Or eat snails.”
“I like snails.”
Cooper made a face. “You would. Well, boss, if we start rooting around Mike McElvoy, we’d better do the same with Tony Long. Otherwise, we’ll frighten Mike more than we need to, and this way we can make it look like a department check.”
“Authorized by whom?” Rick had to face the county commissioners.
“By Carla Paulson’s murder. We can say we are working with the Bedford County Sheriff’s Department—no lie—and we need to check everything and everybody involved with her.”
“Tony Long and Mike take different construction jobs.”
“True, but that doesn’t mean if Mike were indisposed that Tony wouldn’t go out to the site to inspect. So we have to be fair-handed and check both.”
“Sounds like a plan.” He looked up at the bright September sky. “Isn’t it something how the haze disappears come fall?”
“Love that sky blue, that deep sky blue.”
“Looks good on you.”
“When did you see me in sky blue?” She was surprised.
“July. You wore a T-shirt that color. I stopped by the farm.”
She tried to remember and finally did. “Oh, yeah. The women’s magazines say men don’t remember clothes, details.”
“Wrong. Men remember a lot. All that stuff is bunk. Anyway, I’m a cop. It’s my job to remember, and you look good in sky blue.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “Which women’s magazines?”
Blushing slightly, she answered, “Cosmopolitan and O.”
He grunted. “Helen reads them all. House is littered with them. I’ll give her credit, she reads my Men’s Health from cover to cover, too.” He crunched the cigarette butt again, for he spied a dim glow. “I think I have to accept that I am not going to stop smoking.”
“Oh, you might.” Cooper put out her Camel. “I stick to one a day.”
“From me.”
“All right. All right. I’ll buy a pack just for you. After all, I have that five dollars I won from you. Want the black kind?”
“No, I want Dunhills.” He grinned.
Cooper’s eyebrows lifted. “Well, I do owe you.”
A rap came on the door, then the front desk officer stuck his head out and said, “Herself is here, along with Junior.”
The two friends and partners looked at each other. Then Rick held out his hand and Cooper swept through the door, as the young officer smiled devilishly. “Lucky man, boss. Twice in a day.”
“Shut up, Dooley.” He smacked the young man in the stomach, hard and flat. “Working out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, try working the brain, too,” Rick kidded him.
Cooper said, “Your closed office or the big room?”
“Office.”
“Too bad you don’t have a floral display. She’d feel more at home.”
Rick growled, “Big Mim would be at home in a flooded house in New Orleans or the Taj Mahal. Woman is remarkable.”
The two met Big Mim and Little Mim as though this was the highlight of their day.
The cops ushered them into the private office, which Rick kept scrupulously clean mostly because he usually sat outside at a desk in the bullpen. He liked being among his “men”—even though one was a woman—and this way, his glassed-in sheriff’s office was tidy.
The sheriff did not sit behind his desk. Mother and daughter sat in two worn but comfortable leather chairs, Rick leaned against his desk facing them, and Cooper sat on a stool.
Wordlessly, Little Mim produced the airmail envelope, handing it to Rick.
As he read, his face betrayed a hint of questioning. He passed it to Cooper.
“Arrived in today’s mail.” Little Mim started the ball rolling.
Cooper handed the letter and envelope back to Little Mim. “What a scam.”
“Exactly,” Big Mim spoke at last.
“I’ve received three letters before this, all before Will was killed. Each asked for ten thousand dollars in a postal order made out to Jonathan Bechtal.”
“You paid.” Rick knew she had; it was a given.
“I did.”
Cooper put her hands on her knees. “What I want to know is, how did he get this letter out of jail? We’d know. He’s allowed to write, this isn’t a hellhole in the Sudan.”
“No hellholes. They’re too busy killing one another to bother with incarceration,” Big Mim said without sarcasm. “Do you read the letters?”
“I don’t, but there is censorship. There has to be, because some of these creeps would write vile stuff to the people they hold responsible for their plight and they’d go right onto someone’s blog. So, yes, the letters are read.”
“Paid someone off?” Cooper hated the idea.
“I don’t think so.” Big Mim repeated what she had said to her daughter earlier. “There’s someone on the outside.”
“Then why send the money orders to Love of Life?” Cooper wasn’t discounting the idea, just pondering, as well as realizing Big Mim was one step ahead of her.
“I don’t know,” Big Mim replied. “It’s more than possible that his accomplice is an officer or member of Love of Life. Someone who can access the treasury or bogus accounts. Most charities have a variety of very imaginative slush funds.”
Rick and Cooper glanced at each other. They had questioned the officers of the organization as well as those of other right-to-life groups.
Rick spoke. “Who else knows about this?”
“No one. Not even my husband.” Little Mim, finding her courage, spilled her story in an abbreviated fashion. “I had an abortion in college. Will was my doctor. The other letters threatened to expose me. So I paid like a stupid—cow.”
“For a woman being blackmailed, you’ve remained sensible.” Cooper smiled.
“Coop, I should have come to you right away, but I was ashamed and, even more embarrassing, I put my career first.”
Rick exhaled from his nostrils. “Most people who find themselves in your situation pay if they can and hope their tormentor will go away. Naturally, it emboldens the blackmailer.” He shifted his weight while he leaned against his desk.
“Mother knew nothing. She didn’t even know I’d had an abortion.” Little Mim wanted the two officers to know that her mother hadn’t helped her make the payoff. “I’m done with it. I don’t look forward to what happens next.”
“What do you mean?” Cooper spoke as though this were an ordinary conversation, no hard edge to the questioning.
“They go public and try to ruin me. How they’ll do this, I don’t know, but the deadline for payment is this Friday.”
Cooper reached for the letter again, which Little Mim gave her. “P.O. Box Fifteen, 22905.”
“I noticed that, too,” Rick mentioned. “We’ll have this dusted for fingerprints, test the seal on the envelope to see if whoever did this licked it. You’d think by now people would wear rubber gloves and sponge envelopes shut, but there are still a lot of stupid people out there, thank God.”
“I hope so.” Little Mim sighed, knowing the hard task would be finding whoever did lick the envelope, DNA notwithstanding.
“I’ll keep this, then?” Rick’s tone of voice asked more than demanded.
“Of course,” Little Mim agreed.