torney will argue that the divorce doesn’t really matter
because there had been no formal division of property
yet so the terms of the LLC will still be in effect. On the
other hand, if the divorce was finalized before he died,
then the ED could go forward, with his estate taking
whatever he was awarded. It could be a pretty little legal
problem. Of course, he did own property and money in
his own name and his will should stand as to the dispo-
sition of that part of his estate.”
“How much are we talking?”
“His personal estate? Maybe three million, give or
take a few thousand.”
“So answer me Deb’rah’s question. Who inherits?”
“I can’t tell you that, Dwight.”
“Sure you can. Like she said, it’s all going to be pub-
lic record soon enough. Is Flame Smith in the will?”
Reid thought about it a minute, then threw up his
hands in surrender. “Oh yes. To the tune of half a mil-
lion. Except for a few small bequests, the daughter gets
everything else, which he thought was going to be half
of Harris Farms.”
Dwight leaned back in his chair. “What was Buck Harris
really like, Reid?”
“He was okay. Blunt. To the point. Knew what he
wanted and was willing to pay for it. Expected full value
for his money though.”
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“So why would someone take an axe to him like that?”
“Damned if I know.” Reid took a first swallow of
his coffee and grimaced. “Y’all need to let Julia Lee
start buying your coffee beans. This stuff ’s like battery
acid.”
“I doubt if Bo’s budget runs to a coffee grinder and
gourmet beans,” he said, remembering how he used to
look for excuses to drop by the firm of Lee, Stephenson
and Knott, before Deborah ran for the bench. Coffee
was always good for one visit a week and they did have
the best coffee of any office in town.
Not that he was ever there for the coffee.
After Reid left, Dwight phoned Pete Taylor. “I’d ap-
preciate it if you could get Mrs. Harris to come in and
see me this afternoon?”
Taylor promised that he would try.
Down in the detectives’ squad room, he gave out the
day’s assignments as to the lines he wanted pursued and
the people they should interview.
“One thing, boss,” said Denning. “I found a hammer
at the back of the shed. There was blood on the peen
and one strand of hair that I compared with hairs from
the comb in Harris’s bathroom. I’ve sent them both to
the state lab, but the hairs look like a match to me.”
“Which means?”
“He was probably coldcocked over the head with the
hammer first. We’ll have to wait till we find the head to
know for sure.”
As Dwight returned to his office and the rat’s nest of
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MARGARET MARON
paperwork awaiting his attention, he heard Jamison say,
“Talk to you a minute, Major?”
“Sure. Come on in.”
The deputy followed and closed the door. There was
a troubled look on his round face.
“What’s up?” Dwight asked. He gestured to the chair
Reid Stephenson had vacated, but Jamison continued
to stand.
“I need to tell you that I’m resigning, sir.”
“What? ”
“Yes, sir. Effective the end of next week, if that’s okay
with you.”
“What the hell’s this about? And for God’s sake, sit
down.”
The detective sat, but he looked even more uncom-
fortable and was having trouble meeting Dwight’s
eyes.
Dwight studied him a long moment. “What’s going
on, Jack? If it’s a better offer from another department,
you’re about due a raise. I don’t know that we can
match Raleigh, but—”
“It’s not Raleigh, Major. It’s Iraq.”
Dwight frowned. “I didn’t realize you’re in the
Guard.”
“I’m not. It’s DynCorp. They’re a private security
“I know what DynCorp is.” He realized that he should
have seen this coming. Police departments all over the area
had lost good men to private security companies. First war
America’s ever had to contract out, he thought sourly.
“They’ve accepted me into their training program. If
I qualify, I’ll be helping to train Iraqi police officers.”
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“And that’s what you want to do?”
“Not really but the pay’s too good to pass up, Major.
We’re just not making it on thirty-seven thousand a year.
Cindy wants things for our son and I want them, too.
Over there, I can start at around a hundred-thirty.”
Dwight leaned back in his chair, feeling older and
more tired than he had in a long time. “No, we cer-
tainly can’t match that. But you say you want things for
your son. What about a father? Civilian personnel are
getting killed over there.”
Jamison nodded. “I know. But like Cindy says, police
officers are getting shot at over here, too.”
“You ever been shot at?”
“Well, no sir, but it does happen, doesn’t it? A couple
or three inches more and Mayleen could have died back
in January. Anyhow, I figure two years and we’ll be out
of debt with enough saved up to put a good down pay-
ment on a real house. It’s worth the risk.” He took a
deep breath. “And if I do get killed, she’ll get a quarter
million in insurance. That should be enough to get Jay
through college.”
Dwight shook his head. “Do the math, Jack. Divide
a quarter million by eighteen years. Cindy won’t have
enough left to pay your son’s application fees.”
By the determined look on Jamison’s face, his mind
was clearly made up.
“So. The end of next week?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay. I’m really sorry you feel you need to do this,
but notify human resources and make sure your paper-
work’s caught up.”
Jamison came to his feet. “Thank you, Major. And I
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MARGARET MARON
really do appreciate all you’ve done for me, making me
a detective and all. Maybe when I get back . . .”
“We’ll see. You’re not gone yet though, and I expect
another full week of work from you, so get out there
and see what you can dig up on the Harris murder.”
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21
It is a matter of paramount importance to the prosperity of
any community or State to have its surplus lands occupied
by an industrious, enterprising, and moral population.
—Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890
Deborah Knott
Tuesday Morning, March 7
% Because I had nearly forty-five minutes to kill after
leaving Dwight and Reid, I stopped by
the dis-
patcher’s desk out in the main lobby where Faye Myers
was on duty.
Faye’s in her early thirties, a heavyset blonde who strains
every seam of her uniform. She has a pretty face, a flaw-
less complexion that seems to glow from within, and the
good-hearted friendliness of a two-month-old puppy. She’s
married to Flip Myers, an equally plump EMS tech, and
between them, they have a finger on almost every emer-
gency call in the county, which means she also has the best
gossip—not from maliciousness but because she genuinely
likes people and finds them endlessly fascinating.
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MARGARET MARON
“New hairdo?” I asked with what I hoped was a guile-
less tone. “Looks nice.”
She immediately touched her shining curls. “Well,
thank you, Judge. No, it’s the same style I’ve had since
Thanksgiving. I did get a trim yesterday but I might
should’ve waited ’cause this wet weather’s making it
curl up more than usual.”
“Detective Richards tells me she goes to the Cut ’n’
Curl. You go there, too?”
“No, I just get my sister to clip it for me. She cuts
everybody in the family’s hair.”
“Lucky you,” I said. “You must save a ton of
money.”
She beamed.
“But the new stylist at the Cut ’n’ Curl did a great job
on Mayleen Richards, didn’t she? She looks like a differ-
ent person these days.”
“Yeah, well . . .” Myers gave me a conspiratorial look.
“She’s real happy right now.”
“Oh?” I encouraged.
Within moments, I was hearing how Richards had re-
cently become involved with a “real cute Mexican guy,”
who ran a landscaping business “out towards Cotton
Grove,” someone she’d met last month when investigat-
ing a shooting over that way. A Miguel Diaz. “Mayleen
calls him Mike.”
A naturalized citizen, he had been in North Carolina
for eight or nine years and had bootstrapped himself
up from day laborer to employer who ran several crews
around the area, contracting with some of the smaller
builders to landscape the new developments that were
springing up all over the county.
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Faye was under the impression that he wanted to
marry Richards but that she was hanging back because
of her family.
“They’re sort of prejudiced, you know,” the dis-
patcher confided. “But I told Mayleen that’s prob-
ably just because they don’t really know any Mexicans.
Think they’re all up here to take away our jobs and get
drunk on Saturday night. Not that some of ’em don’t.
Get drunk, I mean. But Mike— Oh, wait a minute! You
know something, Judge? You actually talked to him.”
“I did?”
“That guy that stole the tractor and messed up a
bunch of yards ’cause he didn’t know how to lift the
plows? Wasn’t he in your court Friday?”
“That’s her new boyfriend?”
“No, no. Mike was there to speak up for him, least
that’s what one of the bailiffs told me anyhow.”
“Oh yes. I remember now. The Latino who said he’d
see that the rest of the damage was repaired?”
“That’s the one. It’s real nice when people take care
of their own, isn’t it?”
I couldn’t exactly recall Miguel Diaz’s face, but I did
retain an impression of responsibility and I remember
being surprised by how fluent his English was.
“Mayleen says Mike felt so sorry for the man, what
with all his troubles, that he’s hired him on after he got
kicked out of the camp he was staying at.”
“That’s right,” I said, as more of the details came
back to me. “His wife left him, didn’t she?”
“Went right back to Mexico after their baby died.”
Faye looked around to make sure no one was near and
leaned even closer. “I might not ought to be telling this,
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MARGARET MARON
but Flip was on call that night and he helped deliver the
baby and he said—”
Her phone rang then and, judging by the sudden
professional seriousness of her voice, it sounded like an
emergency for someone, so I gave her a catch-you-later
wave because Reid walked past at that moment.
He held the door for me and we walked around to
the stairs. When we reached the atrium on the ground
floor that connects the old courthouse to the new ad-
ditions, the marble tiles were slick where people had
tracked in muddy water. A custodian brought out long
runners and laid them down to cover the most direct
paths from one doorway to another before tackling the
floor with a mop.
We paused to speak to a couple of attorneys, then sat
on the edge of one of the brick planters filled with lush
green plants to finish our coffee and enjoy the rain that
was sluicing down the sides of the soaring glass above
us. At least, Reid was enjoying it. My agenda was to get
him to tell me everything he’d told Dwight.
“I suppose his daughter scoops the lot? His house-
keeper told Dwight that he was close to her. Poor Flame
Smith.”
“Not too poor,” said Reid, half-distracted by the
weather he was going to have to brave to keep an ap-
pointment back at his office. “The daughter’s the resid-
ual beneficiary, but Flame’ll get half a million. I don’t
suppose you’ve got an umbrella you could lend me?
Flame took mine and John Claude keeps his locked up
for some reason.”
I had to laugh. I know exactly why John Claude
keeps his umbrella in a locked closet and I immediately
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HARD ROW
began to chant the exasperated verse our older cousin
always quoted whenever he discovered that Reid had
once again “borrowed” his umbrella:
“The rain it raineth every day
Upon the just and unjust fellow,
But more upon the just, because
The unjust hath the just’s umbrella.”
“Very funny,” Reid said grumpily as he stood to dump
our cups in the nearest trash bin. He spotted Portland
Brewer coming up the marble steps outside and, ever
the gentleman, he rushed over to hold the heavy outer
door for her. Her small red umbrella hadn’t warded off
all the wet, but she was so angry, it’s a wonder the rain-
drops didn’t sizzle as soon as they touched any exposed
skin. “Dammit, Deborah! I thought Bo and Dwight
were going to take away all of James Braswell’s guns!”
“Huh?” I said.
“He got out of jail yesterday morning and last night
he shot up Karen’s condo.”
“What? Is she okay?”
“No, she’s freaking not okay! She’s scared out of her
mind.”
I made sympathetic noises, but Por was too wound
up to be easily calmed. The rai
n had curled her black
hair into tight little wire springs. Reid took her dripping
umbrella and made a show of holding it over the green
leaves.
“You in court this morning?” he asked her.
“After I get through blasting Dwight and Bo. Why?”
Too riled to give him her full attention, she continued
venting at me. “The only reason Karen’s still alive is that
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MARGARET MARON
she’s been staying at her mother’s. She could have been
killed for all they care.”
“Now wait a minute,” I said. “That’s not fair. They
can’t put a twenty-four-hour watch on her. And besides,
how do you know it was Braswell?”
“Who else would it be? You think a sweet kid who
works at a Bojangles and takes care of an invalid mother
has that kind of enemies? Hey! Where’re you going with
my umbrella?” she called as Reid pushed open the door
for one of our clerks and kept walking.
“I’ll drop it off at your office,” he called back and
hurried down the marble steps and out into the unre-
lenting rain, Portland’s umbrella a small circle of red
over his head.
As Por stormed off in one direction, I was joined on
my walk upstairs by Ally Mycroft, a prisspot clerk who
had pointedly worn my opponent’s button during the
last election whenever she had to work my courtroom.
Making polite chatter, I asked, “You working for
Judge Parker today?”
“No,” she said, with equally phony politeness. “I’ll
be with you today.”
I made a mental note to drop by Ellis Glover’s office
sometime today, see if it was me our Clerk of Court was
annoyed with or Ally Mycroft.
“In fact,” Ally said, “Mr. Glover has assigned me to
your courtroom for the rest of the week.”
In my head, Brook Benton began singing his world-
weary “Rainy Night in Georgia.”
“Lord, I feel like it’s rainin’ all over the world.”
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C H A P T E R
22
I’ve got an old mare who will quit a good pasture to go into
a poor one, and it’s just because she got into a habit of let-
ting the bars down.
—Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890
Deputies McLamb and Dalton
Tuesday Morning, March 7
% “Better not block the driveway,” Deputy Raeford
McLamb said and Sam Dalton, the department’s
newest detective trainee, parked at the curb in front of a
shabby little house in sad need of paint. A white Honda