Now that I considered how fast he’d “fixed it up,” there was a better than fifty-fifty chance that Allen had probably bought a wreck and immediately transferred its vehicle ID number plate to a stolen car of the same make and model. He could then register the stolen car as rebuilt and sell it legitimately.
“No,” I said slowly, “he’s—” I broke off as the implication of something on Allen’s printout suddenly leaped out at me.
“What the hell is this?” I asked, pointing at the dateline on every sheet.
Last Monday’s date.
“You started checking up on him before Mr. Jap was killed. Why?”
The guilty look on his face was the mirror image of the look on Daddy’s face when he said Dwight wanted to see me.
Exasperation jetted through me. “I don’t believe this!”
“Now, Deb’rah—”
“Don’t go ‘Now Deb’ring’ me, you egg-sucking hound! Daddy told you about Allen and me, didn’t he? And the two of you thought you’d take care of him. Just run him on out of the county before he got dug in too deep at Mr. Jap’s.”
“It’s not my fault if Mr. Kezzie wants to protect you,” Dwight said stiffly.
“It’s your fault that you keep indulging him,” I snapped. “If you and the boys don’t quit sticking your noses in my affairs—”
“You’re going to get out your trusty butcher knife and chop ’em off?”
The trouble with trying to stay mad at Dwight is that he can usually make me laugh. And once my anger was diffused, I had to admit—to myself if not to Dwight—that getting Allen Stancil out of Colleton County had been high on my list of priorities, too.
“No warrants on him, hmm? I was hoping maybe he was behind in his child support payments or something.”
“Support payments? According to the records, he stayed in hot water over them, but that kid’s way past twenty-one now.”
“No, there’s a minor girl, too. Wendy Nicole.” I riffled through the civil judgments against Allen, but there was nothing about a Wendy Nicole Stancil or her mother Sally. “Probably sweet-talked her into keeping it out of Child Support Enforcement,” I muttered. “Probably told her that he’d pay her what he could when he could and ‘You can’t git blood outn a turnip, darlin’.’ ”
“I thought I read that the little girl’s name was Tiffany and that the paternity case against him was dismissed,” said Dwight.
“Tiffany came later. A lot later.” In amongst the sheaf of papers Dwight had managed to accumulate on Allen, I found a summation of the case and read, “ ‘Tiffany Jane Morgan, daughter of Katherine J. Morgan.’ She’ll be four years old in January. According to Allen, Tiffany’s mother didn’t know who the father was so she picked him as the nearest warm body. Wendy Nicole is his, though. By his second wife. She’s seventeen, which means he still has a year to pay on her.”
Dwight was more interested in Allen’s present than in his past.
“Everybody seems to know that Billy Wall was coming with all that money,” he mused. “Allen had to know, too.”
“You talked to Wall?”
Dwight nodded. “Said he came by around eleven-thirty. Jap was out in the garage alone. Said he paid him his share of the produce money in cash—forty-nine hundred in hundred-dollar bills—and Jap took his notes out of that old safe, put the money in, and spun the lock on it.”
“Was Allen there?”
“Billy said his truck was gone and he didn’t see him. He didn’t hang around, he said. Just counted out the money, talked a couple of minutes about Jap’s plans for the garage and then left.”
“So now you’re looking at a time of death between eleven-thirty and one-thirty. Did you talk to Cherry Lou?”
“Yeah, but she’s real hostile. Says good riddance to all Stancils and she saw nothing.”
“What about Dick Sutterly?”
“Pretty much the same thing. Says he came in through Gray Talbert’s lane and went out by Jap’s. But I may have to talk to him again because he was real curious about the time frame and who was where, you know? And he was driving around that whole section from Adam’s land to Gray Talbert’s nursery and on back out past Jap’s around one o’clock.”
He paused a second, then assumed an offhand air. “Says Adam and the dogs were on Talbert’s side of the creek when he came up on them around twelve-thirty.”
“Oh?”
“And somebody’s dogs were around the garage after the rain stopped.”
“Lot of dogs still run free,” I observed. “See any footprints?”
“Just yours going back. And the dogs, of course. And I had somebody walk that lane all the way to the creek.”
“It wasn’t Adam,” I said.
“Never said it was. I’m just thinking that somebody was mighty lucky with that many people all around the place that morning—Adam, Mr. Kezzie, Cherry Lou, Dick Sutterly.”
“For what it’s worth, G. Hooks Talbert and a couple of his friends were out there, too. Hunting.” I gave him an edited version of that meeting. “They could’ve seen someone.”
Dwight smiled, knowing that Knotts and Talberts are polar opposites. “You’d love it if G. Hooks was involved, wouldn’t you?”
“Wouldn’t break my heart”
“Whoever did it probably didn’t go there planning to,” Dwight said thoughtfully. “Say somebody dropped in on Jap and maybe he bragged about how much money his corn brought. The killer might’ve just acted on the spur of the moment.”
“Carpe diem,” I said. It was the motto on a coffee mug Dwight had given me when I first filed for judge.
“Exactly,” he said. “Seize the damn day. Smash an old man over the head and burn open his safe and take his money. So what do you think, Deb’rah? Was it Allen?”
“If it was, it’s the second dumbest thing he ever did in his life. Mr. Jap planned to spend all that money on him, Cherry Lou Stancil was going to sign her half of the farm back over on Monday, and what I bet John Claude didn’t tell you was that he was also supposed to sign a will on Monday.”
“Huh?”
When I told him the terms, Dwight frowned. “If he dies before the will’s signed, Allen gets it all?”
“If Cherry Lou’s convicted.”
He waved aside the possibility that she might not be. “So with a will, Allen gets half; without one, he scoops the lot. How much you reckon we’re talking about?”
I shrugged. “Ninety acres of land with good frontage, say five thousand an acre and that’s on the low side. Say another fifty thousand for the house, garage and equipment—that’s half a million right there. Then all those old classic cars sitting around under the sheds and shelters? Everybody says they’re worth thousands in mint condition, but I couldn’t begin to say what they’re worth as is.”
Evidently Dwight hadn’t done the math in a while either. “Raw Colleton County farmland’s going for five thou an acre?” he shook his head in amazement. “I don’t think Mom and Dad paid more than three hundred when they bought their place.”
“Welcome to the twenty-first century,” I said.
By the time we left to pick up our pizzas, Dwight and I had sketched out a rough list of possible killers.
He wanted to put Allen at the head, I opted for Cherry Lou’s two kids.
“After all, they connived at Dallas’s death. Who’s to say they really understand inheritance laws? Or maybe they do, but think Avery Brewer’s going to get their mother off.”
“After they’ve cut a deal with the DA to testify against her?”
“They haven’t testified yet,” I said. “Put ’em down.”
With an exaggerated sigh, he wrote down Ashley Wentworth and Bradley Fletcher. “But if they go on the list, so does Merrilee Grimes.”
“Waste of time,” I told him. “She gains only if the will’s signed.”
“But she gains if he dies before Cherry Lou gives the farm back because she’s no kin to Jap.”