I have never seen Pruitt when he wasn’t dressed in a three-piece suit, white shirt and dark tie, and a plain felt hat—tan in the summertime, dark gray in the winter. He tipped his winter hat to me and nodded to Daddy, who always contributes to his campaign and hangs his poster in the crossroads store.
“Just what it looks like, Dwight,” he said now. “A single blow to the back of his head with that tire iron. Wouldn’t take much strength, just determination.”
“When?” asked Dwight.
“Now, Dwight, you been doing this long enough to know we can only approximate. When was he last seen?”
Dwight glanced at Daddy, who said, “Well, I seen him down at the crossroads around ten-thirty and I found him at one twenty-two.”
“Well, there you are,” said Pruitt, straightening his already straight tie. “Death occurred sometime between ten-thirty and one twenty-two. Chapel Hill won’t get it any tighter than that.”
The garage was a good hundred feet off the road, but a hundred feet back wasn’t enough to deter the curious. Cars were starting to clog up both lanes as people slowed to a crawl and craned their necks to see what had brought the blue-lights out to Jap Stancil’s. A highway patrolman arrived and began directing traffic in an effort to keep things moving.
As we stood out there talking, the crime scene unit had strung yellow tape across the drive to preserve the tracks. Their photographer finished up inside and came out to take close-ups of the separate tread marks, carefully laying a foot rule beside each one so as to have an accurate scale if and when the tires were found.
Unfortunately, that yellow tape only covered the entrance to the drive. Before anyone realized what was happening, a white Subaru sedan circled around behind Jap Stancil’s house and came jouncing down the lane toward the photographer, who hastily stood and tried to wave it back.
Merrilee Grimes ignored him till she was less than four feet from hitting him where he stood. Then she slammed on the brakes, slipped out from behind the wheel, and came running toward us. “What happened? Where’s Uncle Jap?”
Slender and small-boned, Merrilee probably gets all her clothes from the Petite Lady, while her husband Pete is limited to Big ’n Tall. It’s not that he’s fat, just really, really solid with lots of shaggy brown hair on his head and hairy arms and legs. He pried himself loose from the passenger side and lumbered after her. “Now, Merrilee, honey—”
I couldn’t help noticing Merrilee’s dainty black velvet slippers. They were almost instantly caked in damp sand. Not many women would wear velvet shoes outdoors in the country, but maybe she hadn’t planned on taking a hike. Pete was marginally better in his suede ripple treads. Both wore black slacks and casual white windbreakers over oxford shirts. Merrilee had knotted a silk scarf around her neck and its gold and orange design was flecked with reddish brown rings that echoed her auburn hair and her close-set brown eyes. Papa Bear and Mama Bear off on a Saturday afternoon outing, but from the way they were dressed, their original destination had probably been Crabtree or North Hills Mall, not Possum Creek.
Merrilee didn’t seem to recognize Dwight or Adam. Instead, she looked from me to Daddy. “What’s happened to Uncle Jap, Mr. Kezzie? That yellow ribbon says crime scene. Did somebody try to rob him? Is he hurt? Did they take him to a hospital?”
Daddy stood up awkwardly. “I’m real sorry, Merrilee, but somebody seems to’ve hit him purty hard. Mr. Pruitt here don’t think he ever knowed what happened, it was probably so quick.”
Tears filled her eyes as his words sank in. “He’s gone? Just like that? Who hit him? Deborah?”
“We don’t know yet,” I said and put out my arms to her just as Pete caught up and engulfed the two of us.
We stood in that unwieldy bear hug until I managed to detach myself, still patting her slender back and murmuring sympathetic noises.
For a moment, there were only the sounds of traffic and her muffled sobs on the mild November air, then she sniffled and her hand groped for Pete’s pants pocket. Without asking what she wanted, Pete automatically pulled out a large white handkerchief. Even after she blew her nose, tears continued to spill from her eyes. She remained in the protective circle of Pete’s arms, but we could almost see her spine stiffen.
“Where is he?” she said. “I want to see him.”
“Now, Miz Grimes,” said Dwight.
“Aw, now, honey,” said her husband, “you don’t want to go in there and remember him like that.”
She pulled away and headed toward the open side door.
Young Jack Jamison, one of the sheriff’s deputies, looked inquiringly at Dwight, who shrugged and followed.
Jamison stepped aside and Merrilee and Pete entered with the rest of us close behind.
“Poor Uncle Jap,” she whispered and knelt on the dirty concrete floor to hold his hand for a moment as her eyes closed in silent prayer.
When she opened them again, Pete held out his big hairy paw to her and she came to her feet as gracefully as swansdown.
“You could look that delicate and graceful, too, if you always had a two-ton Mack truck around to hoist you up,” the pragmatist whispered snidely into my ear.
“For shame!” scolded the preacher.
Merrilee’s eyes fell on the wrecked safe. “So he was robbed! Did they take all his money?”
“We didn’t find any cash,” said Dwight. “Did he keep much on hand?”
“Just what he got from Social Security and from selling vegetables at the flea market.”
“If that’s the only money he had, it doesn’t seem worth going to all that trouble cutting the safe open with the torch,” said Dwight. “What about papers? Could you tell if anything’s missing?”
She shook her head. “He never opened it for me. I’d forgotten it was even out here. Dallas may’ve kept his deeds in it, but except for that, I never knew him to have anything worth taking.” She looked around the shabby garage hopelessly and her eyes came sadly back to the body still sprawled on the concrete floor.
“When did you last talk to your uncle?” asked Dwight.
“Wednesday night,” she answered promptly. “Pete and I come by every Sunday morning and I call him every Wednesday night to see if he’s all right. We live just below where Forty-Eight and Old Forty-Eight join up, and sometimes we drop by on our way in and out from work, but Sunday and Wednesday, regular as church bells, he knows—knew—he could count on me.”
“Did he sound normal Wednesday night?”
“Well, actually—” After all that bragging, she seemed a shade embarrassed to admit that maybe it was Pete that talked to Mr. Jap that night, not her. “I got home late and then had to get ready for prayer meeting.”
“How’d he sound to you?” Dwight asked her husband.
“Same as ever,” said Pete. “Allen answered the phone and put Uncle Jap on and—”
“Allen!” shrieked Merrilee. “That’s what’s missing— Allen Stancil!”
Dwight looked around at the rest of us, but no one had seen Allen that day.
Daddy didn’t remember seeing Allen’s pickup when he came through the lane on his way to the crossroads. “ ’Course, I won’t looking for it, but I believe I’d’ve noticed if it was there.”
Adam said he hadn’t seen anyone except Dick Sutterly come through the back lanes while he was out by the creek, and I’d come Old Forty-Eight by way of Cotton Grove from the north, which meant I hadn’t passed the Stancil place on the way to Daddy’s.
“I’ll bet he did this,” Merrilee insisted. “I bet he and Uncle Jap had a falling-out and he hit Uncle Jap and took his corn money and ran.”
“Corn money?” asked Dwight.