Sleep Softly. Gwen Hunter
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disappearing behind his truck. Ramsey glanced curiously at me.
I turned into my mother, God help us all. “I don’t think so. You see, C.C., I’ve had a course in the approved method of evidence collection and preservation, so I don’t think I’ll be messing up anyone’s crime scene.” I turned big, innocent eyes to the cops. “But if I were using woman’s intuition, I’d say the body is thatta way—” I pointed “—about a half mile into the woods, the path clearly marked with bright orange paint.”
C.C. shoved his cowboy hat back on his head and turned slowly from his map to me. He wasn’t happy. “I don’t think you’re—”
“Cheeks found the body,” I clarified sweetly. Skye glanced between us, then busied herself at the passenger seat and a big denim bag planted there. The other cops were promptly busy as well. Ramsey crossed his arms over his chest, cocked out a hip and watched me a little too closely for my comfort level, but I was mad. I hadn’t been anyone’s easy-to-dismiss little woman in four years and wasn’t about to start now.
“You took a dog to the body?” C.C. growled.
I smiled with all the force a Southern woman can offer such a simple act. “C.C., how is Erma Jean?” It was a polite way of telling a grown man that you know his mother and if he kept talking like a fool, she’d hear about it sooner than later. “She and my nana are on that county homeless-shelter committee together.”
C.C. cleared his throat and repositioned his cowboy hat yet again. Probably to keep the steam rising off his bald pate from curling the brim. My grandmother was a big contributor to local political campaigns. So was I. He wanted to shout at me, but there were witnesses. After a moment, C.C. said, “Well, I reckon we got ourselves a crime scene, boys and girls. Miz Davenport, would you please be so kind as to guide us in?”
There were a lot of other things I would rather have done than return to the wooded grave, but my hackles were up and I wasn’t about to head home now. “I’d be happy to, Sheriff.”
Raising my voice, I called, “Johnny Ray?” The stable hand lifted his head so only his cowboy hat and his eyes showed above the back of his pickup bed. “I want you to ride Mabel to the barn, see that Elwyn rubs her down with that liniment Nana made up, wraps her legs, and gives her some TLC. You can leave your truck here and when the other cops get to the farm, ride back with them to show them the way. Then drive your truck to the barn and take Cheeks with you.”
“Yes, ma’am, Miz Ash.”
I wasn’t sure Johnny Ray’d remember all that, so just in case he was a long time returning, I took the Tylenol and gave Cheeks the last of the water from my bottle. “Me and my big mouth,” I muttered to the hound. Cheeks rolled his eyes up to me in sympathy. Johnny Ray set the bit back in Mabel’s huge mouth, adjusted bit and bridle, gathered the reins and climbed into the saddle, sending Mabel’s huge hooves into a slow, stationary patter. Mabel didn’t like men, but she tolerated Johnny Ray well enough.
“Effective technique. Exactly who were you channeling just now?”
I closed my eyes hard for a moment and took a deep breath before turning to face Jim. “My mother. Josephine Hamilton Caldwell. She’s a debutante socialite in Charlotte.”
“A what?”
“Well, she’s a socialite who thinks she’s still a deb. Josephine is sixty-something going on sixteen, with a mouth so sweet, candy won’t melt in it.”
“And she’s why you get sugary as rock candy when you’re pissed off?” He was laughing at me, staring down from his nearly six feet in height, brown eyes glinting.
“As a technique for getting my way, it seemed just as effective as grabbing the sheriff by his privates and has fewer side effects than violence. Being Mama has never resulted in a lawsuit or my being arrested. At least, not so far.”
Jim barked with laughter, the sound startling Mabel, who jerked up her head and blew hard. She wasn’t happy about the stable hand being on her back and was looking for a reason to startle or kick. “Be good, Mabel,” I said. The mare flattened her ears and looked around at the human planted on her back, as if pondering how much effort it might take to dislodge him.
“I said, be good.” She rolled her eyes at me and seemed to consider my command. With a grunt, the mare lifted her tail and dropped an aromatic load, seven distinct plops before she moved away, into the sunlight, and headed toward the barn. The cops found it funny, but I knew when I’d been dissed. “Thank you, Mabel,” I muttered. But at least she did as she was told.
“You want to tell me about the land around here?” Jim asked, controlling his laughter admirably as we walked deeper into the shaded wood.
“The better part of valor?” I asked.
“Retreat isn’t a cowardly action. Not when dealing with a woman who can channel her mother.”
I decided I should let that one go and moved with Jim to the first orange paint mark, set waist-high on a poplar. Behind us, the cops shouldered equipment and followed. One cop complained about having to walk when there was a perfectly good four-by-four right there. C.C. handled that one, growling that the deputy needed some exercise and if he didn’t take off a pound or two, he’d be out of a job.
I didn’t know what Jim was asking about, so I decided on a tutorial. “We’re at the edge of Chadwick Farms, heading toward the eighty acres, give or take a few, of Hilldale Hills. The property between the farms is partial wetland, marked by a sandy riverbed left over from the Pleistocene Age, I think. Anyway, the Chadwicks haven’t farmed this area in decades and the Hills acres were left to go fallow for ten years.”
“Why?”
I told Jim that Hoddermier Hilldale had lain fallow himself in a nursing home, the victim of a stroke that had left him in a vegetative state. His son lived in New York and was less than interested in being a farmer. “Hoddy died in early winter,” I said, “about sixteen months ago. The son, Hoddy Jr., came home and leased out most of the acreage to my nana, who bush-hogged it and put it into half a dozen crops. Hoddy Jr.’s in the middle of investing heavily in the house, outbuildings and grounds as part of a bed-and-breakfast-slash-spa he and his gentleman friend think they can make a go of. Why do you want to know?”
Instead of answering, Jim asked, “Any graveyards nearby?”
It wasn’t an idle question. The man who walked beside me had morphed into a cop as I spoke, his face unyielding, warm eyes gone flat.
“Graveyards? I’m not…Wait a minute.” I stopped and turned slowly, looking up the old riverbed and back down, orienting myself. “I wasn’t thinking about where I am, but yes. This land’s been a family farm since the 1700s. The first Chadwick settled here because of the access to creeks and several spring-heads. When the original cabin burned down, the family moved closer to where Nana’s house is now. Somewhere near here are the old foundations and a small family plot. Why?”
Jim glanced back at C.C. and the men nodded fractionally. The cops seemed abruptly tense, as if I had said something important, but I had no idea what part of my soliloquy it might have been. Why would my family plot make them react? I pointed off to the left and jumped over a ditch, leading the crew to the next mark, this one on a low boulder buried in the earth. “What’s up, Jim? Why are you here?” I asked softly.
“The sheriff asked me in on this.”
“And?”
He seemed to consider what he wanted to say. “The red sneaker.”
“You’ve got a missing child, one who was wearing red sneakers?”
“Something like that.”
I figured that was all I was going to get from him so I just pointed to the next marker, but Jim surprised me. “You might remember that Amber Alert in Columbia last September?” When I shook my head no, he went on. “We’ve had four preteen blond girls go missing in Columbia in the last twenty-four months.