The acetylene torch lay atop the safe door, which had been burned off its hinges, and papers were scattered all around.
Adam started to walk over there, but Daddy pulled him back. “Better not mess with anything till Dwight gets here,” he said and we stayed clustered just inside the doorway.
“Why was he killed?” I asked.
Daddy pushed his white straw hat back on the crown of his head and said, “Don’t know, shug. He sure won’t worried about dying when I seen him down at the crossroads this morning.”
He gestured to Mr. Jap’s truck parked just beyond the door and we could see some conical bushel baskets sticking up above the tailgate. “He brought some of that fancy corn, a few squash and pumpkins and a dozen bags of turnip greens down to the flea market to sell. I told him I was going to eat a sandwich at the store when I finished getting my haircut. Asked if he was going to be there, but he said he had to come on back. Said there was somebody he was expecting.”
“Who?” Adam wondered.
“He didn’t say, but I expect it was the Wall boy. He was supposed to come sometime this weekend and settle up with Jap about the com.”
“Did you know Mr. Jap was thinking about selling some of his land?” I asked.
Daddy gave me a hard look. “Who told you that?”
“He did. Sort of.”
“How could he do that?” Adam protested. “You said it was going to be tied up in court till after the murder trial on Dallas’s wife.”
“He said John Claude had about talked Cherry Lou into renouncing any of her rights to the land. She thinks it would take away her motive, maybe get her a lighter sentence.”
“When’d he tell you all that?” asked Daddy.
“Yesterday.” I felt my face flush as I added, “Jimmy White was too busy to look at my car, so Allen Stancil changed the alternator for me here. Mr. Jap was here, too.”
I wasn’t sure if Adam remembered my involvement with Allen or even knew about it in the first place since he was off in California then, but certainly Daddy did. Neither of them said anything, although Adam looked around as if wondering for the first time where Allen was. “I never knew him too well, but didn’t he used to be even rougher than Dallas when he was growing up?”
Daddy shrugged. “Elsie did what she could for both of ’em. Dallas got hisself straightened out a long time ago. I don’t know about Allen. Jap didn’t talk much on him.”
And with good reason, as Daddy and I both knew.
We heard the patrol cars first as they made the turn off New Forty-Eight, then we saw the flashing blue lights come over the rise.
“Well, now,” said Daddy, and Adam and I automatically snapped to attention. “I don’t believe we ought to say nothing to Dwight—not right yet anyhow—that Jap was talking about maybe gonna sell some of his land.”
12
« ^ » I venture this brief account under the eye of the public and as it may be supported by the concurring testimony of many gentlemen of repute and credit who have been among our settlers in North Carolina...“Scotus Americanus,” 1773
Dwight Bryant hung around our house so much when he was growing up, he could have been another of my brothers, fitting in somewhere between Will and the little twins. He has a football build now, but back then it’d been one-on-one basketball down at the barn and baseball out in the pasture. Whatever ball was in season, he’d be out there with the boys when they were free to play even if it meant he first had to help with their chores after he’d finished his own chores at home. Dwight’s father was killed in a tractor accident when he was young and his strong-minded mother never remarried, so I guess Daddy is the closest thing he has to a father figure; and Daddy’s always been partial to him, too.
That doesn’t mean though that Dwight didn’t cross-question us three ways to Sunday after the crime scene unit got there and he could give us his full attention. As Detective Chief of the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department, he would never stint his duty; but at least he didn’t start right in lecturing me for getting myself mixed up in another murder, not with Daddy sitting there on the tailgate of his old pickup.
Adam said he hadn’t seen anyone while he was burning trash back near the creek. Nor had he noticed the sound of a truck or car passing on the far side. Both of us had forgotten to wear a watch, so we didn’t know when it was that Dick Sutterly drove off toward Mr. Jap’s place, but Adam said they’d been talking about ten minutes when I got there. We both agreed that it was probably close to twenty minutes from the time he left till the time Daddy arrived.
“According to my piece, when I got back in my truck after finding Jap, it was exactly twenty-two minutes after one.”
Daddy pulled on the slender gold chain that was linked to a belt loop and his pocket watch slid into view. He flipped back the lid and compared the old-fashioned dial with Dwight’s digital wristwatch. They were less than a minute apart.
“And no,” he said, before Dwight could ask him, “I didn’t see Sutterly nor his truck neither when I turned in here.” He paused, remembering. “Did see Dallas’s wife when I passed. Least I reckon it was her, raking up leaves in her backyard. She might’ve noticed something.”
There were too many trees between the two houses for a clean view even if all the leaves had fallen, but it was true that she might have noticed if someone left by the far drive or if someone circled around by the back lanes.
Dwight made a note of it. “Now, you say you saw him at the flea market this morning. Did he seem any different?”
Daddy shook his head. “Nope. He was just Jap. This close to Thanksgiving, he reckoned it was the last time he could put out his corn and pumpkins before folks started wanting holly and mistletoe. He was thinking of shooting some down for next week. I thought it was a little early myself, but then I seen Christmas trees shining in some windows already, so maybe he was right.”
Mistletoe is an evergreen parasite on hardwoods. The seeds ripen inside waxy white berries and many cling to a bird’s beak while it’s eating. When the bird next lands in an oak or pecan tree, it cleans its beak on the nearest twig and the sticky seeds are glued to the spot. If conditions are just right, the seeds will sprout and send feeder roots down through the bark and soon there’s a bushy green ball of mistletoe putting out more white berries. Since the bird usually does its beak cleaning out on the tips of a tree’s branches, twenty or thirty feet off the ground, this does not make for simple gathering. Nevertheless, with a .22 rifle, a good marksman can prune you off enough mistletoe to kiss half the county.
“Jap did say he needed to come on back before dinner,” Daddy told Dwight. “Said he was expecting somebody.”
“He didn’t say who?”
Daddy shook his head. I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t speculate about the Wall boy. He wouldn’t put suspicion on somebody unless he knew it was true.
“What about Allen Stancil?” asked Dwight. “Any of y’all see him today?”
We told him no.
Even though Dwight had met Allen back when he and my brothers were messing around with their first cars, he was in the army and stationed in Germany at the time Mother died and I started college. There was no reason for him to’ve heard about my running off to Martinsville with Allen and I didn’t see any point in bringing him up to speed on it at this late date. I just hoped nobody else would either.
J.V. Pruitt, who’s acted as the county’s coroner most of my lifetime, stepped out of the garage. He’s an undertaker, not a doctor, but he’s seldom second-guessed by the ME over in Chapel Hill.