It was silly to drive to the sheriff’s office when I could have just as easily walked. Since I skipped Tai Chi, I could’ve used the exercise. I was afraid, however, that if I left my car parked near the diner, I might’ve been tempted to return for more fortification in the form of lemon meringue pie.
I happened to look into my rearview mirror and watch as Bill pulled into the parking space behind me. As I opened the car door, I spotted Monica and Rita approaching from the opposite direction. Rita waved when she saw me. Monica merely grimaced. It appeared we were all headed for the same destination. Did that mean we were all going to be charged with a laundry list of felonies? Could we choose our cell mates?
Bill, always the gentleman, held the door open as we filed in.
Bernie Mason looked up from a dog-eared issue of Field & Stream as we entered. “What’re you guys doin’ here?”
Gus Smith was present, too, but he merely grunted.
Tammy Lynn, drab as usual, dressed head to toe in beige, rose from her desk and did a head count. “Sheriff asked me to show y’all down the hall to the interview room.”
Nervous looks bounced back and forth between us like banked shots off a pool table.
Rita assumed the no-nonsense expression that probably worked well in her former position as branch manager of a bank in Cleveland. “I, for one, would like to know what this is all about,” she demanded.
To her credit, Tammy Lynn didn’t falter. She was no shrinking violet about to default on a loan. “Ma’am, the sheriff will explain everythin’. Kindly be patient.”
“Patient?” Monica huffed. “I want to know why we’re being treated like a bunch of criminals when we haven’t done anything wrong.”
“The sheriff will explain,” Tammy Lynn repeated, holding open the door of the interview room.
I was surprised to step inside and find Claudia along with BJ Davenport seated side by side at the battered metal conference table. It was the Claudia of old-almost. Gone was the fire-engine red hair and back was the softer, strawberry blond shade I’d always admired. But gone still were her sparkle and zest.
“Hey, Claudia,” I said by way of greeting, taking the chair next to her.
She mustered a smile. “Hey, yourself.”
We were freshmen assembled for the class I’d come to think of as Inquisition 101. I peered into the corners for telltale torture devices. No thumbscrews in plain sight. No stakes piled high with kindling. But I didn’t trust wily Sheriff Wiggins. As for stakes and kindling, the ever-efficient Miss Tammy Lynn Snow probably kept a supply handy in the storeroom.
The door banged open. At least, it sounded like a bang because it had that kind of effect. We straightened in our seats, our spines erect, our nervous systems on full alert. The sheriff’s entrance seemed to elicit that kind of reaction, even for the pure of heart. This trick was even more impressive than the one-eyebrow lift thingy he’d perfected.
“Mornin’, y’all,” said the Grand Inquisitor himself.
We seemed to be suffering from an epidemic of lockjaw. Even BJ held his tongue.
The sheriff dragged out the chair left vacant at the head of the table and lowered his two-hundred-pound-plus frame. “Suppose y’all are wonderin’ why I called y’all here…”
My case of lockjaw subsided. Unable to stand the strained silence another second, I piped up, “Not counting you, Sheriff, we have eight people here. Just the right number for two tables of bunco. Anyone bring dice?”
I had hoped to inject a little humor, break the ice so to speak, but not even a coast guard cutter could have broken through tension this thick.
The sheriff shot me a look. If his eyes had been lasers, I’d have been ash. “Let’s start over again-before the interruption,” he drawled. “S’pose y’all are wantin’ to know why I asked y’all here this mornin’.” he repeated for the benefit of the deaf, feebleminded, or terminally irreverent amongst us.
We nodded in agreement. Our movements were so coordinated, I wondered if the others would be game to form a synchronized swim team. Senior Olympics, here we come. Then the image of Bernie Mason in a swimsuit popped into mind, and I scrapped the notion.
“I won’t waste your time or mine any longer.” Sheriff Wiggins slapped a manila envelope on the table and slowly withdrew a report. “Got the results back from the lab in Columbia. Y’all remember bein’ tested for GSR and fingerprinted?”
BJ adjusted his bow tie, this time a polka-dot affair. “I assume since you called all of us here, the evidence incriminates more than just my client.”
“Now wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute.” Bernie surged to his feet, his face an alarming shade of fuchsia. “I object to being lumped in the same category as the one who pulled the trigger and killed her husband-”
“Deader ’n a doornail,” I muttered, louder than I intended.
Bernie gave me a fish-eyed stare. “I was about to say,” he said, sounding miffed, “deader ’n a skunk.”
“Well, excuse me all to pieces.” Take that, Bernie Mason.
If Sumter Wiggins had had a gavel, he would have banged it. The glare he sent us served just as well. In another life, he’d have made a good nun. He tapped a forefinger the size of kielbasa on the pages in front of him. “This came in yesterday. I found it interestin’, to say the least, that so many of you had managed to test positive. Some of you in both categories.”
Next to me, Bill shifted in his seat. Monica studied her manicure while the others all looked as if they longed to be elsewhere-except for BJ. I noticed he had brought out a hand-tooled leather notebook and was busily taking notes on a yellow legal pad.
“Miz Ledeaux,” the sheriff continued, “I can understand how you might test positive for both since it’s a well-established fact that you fired the shot that killed the deceased-Mr. Lance Ledeaux.”
BJ half rose. “I object.”
“Give it a rest, Davenport.” The sheriff motioned him down. “Save your theatrics for the courtroom. I’d like to review”-he picked up the report and began to read-“why fingerprints also belong to Bill Lewis, Bernie Mason, Gus Smith, Monica Pulaski, and Rita Larsen? I’m double-checking to make sure I have my facts straight.”
I’m ashamed to admit I felt a little left out from this illustrious list. What was I doing here anyway? I thought of the Tai Chi class I was missing. This very minute I could be Grasping the Bird’s Tail or slinking through Snake Creeps In.
“Care to explain once more-for the record-why your fingerprints happen to be on the murder weapon? Let’s start with you, Mr. Lewis.”
I gave Bill a sympathetic look. He was on the hot seat and, from the look on his face, wasn’t too happy about it.
“Why wouldn’t my prints be on it? It’s my gun-I told you that before.”
“And so you did.” He made a show of noting this in his ubiquitous black book. “And what about you, Mr. Mason? How do you explain the fact your fingerprints are all over the barrel?”
“Since when is looking a crime?” Bernie picked at a ragged cuticle. “My brother-in-law’s always bragging about his Smith and Wesson. Wanted to see what was such a big deal.”
“Me, too,” Gus muttered. “Just curious, is all.”
The sheriff noted this, then turned his attention to Monica and Rita. “What about you ladies? You the curious types, too?”
“Of course my fingerprints are on the gun,” Monica replied, sounding defensive and frightened at the same time.
“It was part of my job.”
A dark brow lifted. “And your job was…”
Monica raised her nose in the air. “I’m the prop princess.”
“Mistress,” I hissed. “Mistress, not princess.” You’d think Monica would realize by now the task didn’t come with a tiara.
The sheriff ignored my outburst as if it hadn’t occurred. “What about you, Miz Larsen? Handlin’ the gun part of your job as well?”
Rita looked discomfited-a rare occurrence. Normally it took a lot to rattle her. I compared her to the Queen Mary-big and stable, not likely to sink in a storm. “I, um, like to keep things neat. I may have picked up the gun after the shooting and put it with the rest of the props.”
“May have…?”
Rita gave a curt nod. “That’s right. How was I supposed to know Lance was really dead and not just pretending?”
He gave her a hard, unblinking stare. “Guess that’s a tricky call when someone has a bullet hole in their chest and stops breathin’.”
“For crying out loud,” I protested. “Lance was a professional corpse. He got paid good money to look dead. CSI has the best corpses on TV. You’d know that if you ever watched TV.”
“I’ll take that under advisement, ma’am,” the sheriff replied, his tone droll. “Now let’s get on to the next item up for business: gunshot residue.”
“Keep me out of this.” Bernie held up both hands as though warding off an invisible enemy. “I’ll admit, I looked at the gun, but no way could I have gunshot residue on my hands. I handled the gun before Ledeaux was shot, not after.”
“Settle down, Mason,” the sheriff growled. “Your hands tested negative, but the others…”
His coal black gaze crept around the table, resulting in a lot of squirming, a lot of shifting. Yup, I said to myself, he’d have made a good nun. If a person could make adults twitch, fifth graders wouldn’t stand a prayer.
“What about you, Mr. Lewis? Care to explain?”
“How many times do I have to remind you, Sheriff, the gun was mine? I handed it to Ledeaux personally that very morning right after cleaning it.”
The sheriff’s scowl deepened. “I hear that right? You say you cleaned it?”
Bill nodded. “You heard me.”
Although Sheriff Wiggins didn’t look pleased at Bill’s response, he jotted it all down. “Let’s move on, shall we? Miz Larsen, I suppose you’re goin’ to claim you got residue on your hands in an effort to keep things neat and tidy.”
Rita’s face was stony. “More than likely that’s how it happened.”
The spotlight shifted to me. “And you, Miz McCall, how did you happen to come in contact with gunshot residue?”
“I have no idea,” I said, surprised at finding my name on the list.
“Did you at any time handle the weapon?”
I replayed the events immediately following the shooting. “No,” I said at last. “Not that I recall.”
He drummed his fingers against the metal table. Tap, tap, tap. Slow, incessant, irritating to the max, the sound was like a leaky faucet at two a.m. “Are you telling me GSR-as they say in the trade-flew through the air and, by chance, happened to land on your hands?” Not waiting for a reply, he went on as though ruminating. “Another strange finding. Miz Ledeaux’s hands were negative, almost like she washed them. Or wiped them clean.”
Just like in the Sunday comics, a lightbulb went on inside my brain.
“Judgin’ from your expression, I can see your memory is returnin’.”
Coming back like a bad dream would be more like it. I debated what to say, but since we’d all seen Claudia pull the trigger, I decided there wasn’t any harm in relating how I’d probably come into contact with GSR. Just hearing the acronym-GSR-gave my confidence a boost and reminded me I wasn’t a rank amateur when it came to crime solving.
“Once we realized Lance was really dead and not faking it, I went to comfort Claudia.” I envisioned myself on the witness stand, calm, poised, relating my account before a packed courtroom in an intelligent, precise fashion while the jurors listened with rapt attention. I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille. “Claudia appeared to be in shock. When I took hold of her hands, they were cold as ice. We sat her in a chair. Then I went to get her some water. She was shaking so badly, the water spilled, and she wiped her hands on her slacks to dry them.”
“Mmm.”
That it? Mmm?
The sheriff made a production out of writing everything I’d said in that darn book of his. I’d love to get a peek at his notes. Then again, they might prove boring. Miz McCall twiddled her thumbs. Mr. Lewis shrugged his shoulders. Miz Pulaski failed to make eye contact. Etc., etc. You get my drift.
Rita stared pointedly at her Bulova. “Are we done yet, Sheriff?”
“You have somethin’ more important waitin’?”
Mama always said you catch more flies with sugar than you do with vinegar. This seemed a good time to take the old adage out for a stroll. I smiled sweetly. “You’re a busy man, Sheriff Wiggins. My friends and I don’t want to take up any more of your valuable time. We’ve answered your questions. Unless we’re under arrest…?”
“Temptin’ as that may be…”
Bad Jack snapped his portfolio shut. “Since my client’s already been charged with manslaughter, isn’t this meeting a little superfluous, Sheriff?”
The sheriff remained unruffled. “I’m well aware, sir, we’re not at a loss for witnesses who’ll testify they saw Miz Ledeaux fire the fatal shot. That said, I don’t want some slick city lawyer tellin’ the jury my department failed to do its job properly. I’m a man who likes to dot my i’s and cross my t’s.”
Claudia rose to her feet, her voice shrill. “How many times do I have to tell you I never intended to kill Lance? Why can’t you believe it was all a terrible accident? That somehow a bullet left in the chamber went unnoticed?”
“Miz Claudia, please,” BJ remonstrated.
Claudia jerked free of his attempt to catch her sleeve. “I planned to divorce the bastard. Not kill him.”
The sheriff didn’t blink, didn’t miss a beat. “So you admit to havin’ marital problems with the deceased?”
I heard a collective intake of breath.
Claudia, my friend, what have you done?
BJ sprang to his feet. “My client admits no such thing. Even a blind man could see the dear woman’s overwrought as a result of your constant badgerin’.”
Claudia flung her head back and laughed. “I’m done mourning the son of a bitch. Should have known better than to marry a man as phony as his dyed hair and fake tan.”
BJ turned to his client. “Unless you plan to find another attorney, Miz Ledeaux, I advise you not to say another word.”
Claudia seemed about to object, but one look at her attorney and she wisely kept silent. Right before our very eyes, Badgeley Jack Davenport IV changed from affable to formidable. For the first time in our brief acquaintance, I could see how the man had earned the sobriquet Bad Jack. If I ever accidentally shot and killed a sleazy con man, he’d be first on my list of lawyers.
Bad Jack tucked his gold ballpoint into the inner pocket of his suit. “Finished, Sheriff?”
“For now.” Sheriff Wiggins flipped his notebook shut but made no move to rise. He pinned us in our places with a hard, penetrating stare. “Accordin’ to the evidence from the state crime lab, I could consider y’all suspects along with Miz Ledeaux. Y’all had means and opportunity. Only thing lackin’ is motive. Once I find that, the case is pretty well sewed up.”
Motive? Oh, boy! Claudia was up the proverbial river without a paddle. Up the river, in this case, being the state pen.