would he have known how to find that dead-end drop-off in the dark?”
He grinned. “Probably the same way I would, and don’t tell me you never parked out there with some horny teenager either.”
“Moi?” I said, knowing that my own grin was an admission of guilt. “Did Todd grow up over that way?”
“Not sure. He may be one of those Todds who used to farm some of the Creech land on Old Forty-Eight.”
Dwight lifted a forkful of cubed steak and butter crunch lettuce and paused with it in midair. “If he did, that scenario of yours might work. Becca Jowett told the hairdresser that she didn’t like it that rough and that whoever marked her wasn’t going to get another try. So he sees her going into the house, thinks he’ll have a little romp before going out to catch rats, she refuses, he flies off the handle, and bang! He’s got a dead woman bleeding out on the couch. He stashes her in the truck, pulls the afghan over the bloodstain, and the rest is like you said.”
He carried the fork to his mouth and I could almost see his mind working as he chewed and swallowed. “And you know something else? Ms. Coyne told me that he was the one who drew attention to that couch. And he was the one who whipped off that afghan. They were supposed to close today, so if they hadn’t found the blood, they would have handed over their check. Now that it’s known the murder took place there, they’re balking at going through with it, and they may even get their earnest money back, but once their check was deposited, the bank could probably string it out for who knows how long?”
With Dwight eager to get a search warrant for Wes Todd’s truck, we didn’t linger over the rest of our lunch and I went back upstairs a little early to find Anne Harald and Richard Williams waiting to show me the community service plan they had worked out for Jeremy Harper.
Among Richard’s many interests are gardening and flowers. Winter or summer, there’s almost always something blooming in his and Carolyn’s yard, and even in the throes of February he had put together a small vase for my desk: a fistful of fragrant daphne blossoms mixed with cedar and boxwood, the whole thing no bigger than a baseball.
“Lovely,” I said, lifting it to my nose and breathing in the clean, sweet aroma. “So tell me what you plan for the Harper boy.”
They quickly laid it out for me.
Richard was a volunteer for the disabled vets’ chapter in town. “Mostly I just sit and listen to them,” he said. “They want to tell their stories, to make sense of what they’ve gone through. We have an old man who lost an arm and a foot at Iwo Jima and a Marine who had his spinal cord severed in Afghanistan.”
Anne said, “We think Jeremy can use his camera and computer skills to put together an essay about their views on war and why it was worth the sacrifice, maybe even get their views on torture and whether or not they think it works. It could be an article that one of the service magazines would want to run.”
“You’ve spoken to them about it?” I asked. “And they’ve agreed?”
“They’re looking forward to it,” Richard said.
“And Jeremy’s on board with this, too?”
“I think so. Of course, Anne’s sweetened the pot a little.”
“Oh?”
She nodded. “My cousin Martin that you met Tuesday night? He’s agreed to talk to Jeremy about some of the interesting places his cameras have taken him.”
“And Anne’s giving him a tutorial in how to ask tactful questions,” Richard said.
“That won’t take too much time from your mother, will it?” I asked.
Anne gave a wry smile. “She and Sigrid are making an inventory of the house and I’m in the way.”
That surprised me. “I should think you’d know more about what things are than Sigrid.”
“I do,” Anne said, and for a moment her blue-gray eyes misted over. “That’s part of the problem. Sigrid can look at them more objectively than I can.”
I suppose “objective” is a kinder word than “cold.” I was more drawn to Anne’s warmth, but if I were dying and saying goodbye to things I’d held dear, cool objectivity might not wear me down like teary-eyed emotion.
I added a note to Jeremy Harper’s file. “This sounds good to me,” I said. “Just make sure one of you documents his hours.”
CHAPTER
16
Its primary