The Buzzard Table - By Margaret Maron Page 0,60

quick and looked like they’d been scrubbed with his toothbrush or something, but I didn’t see any nail clippings and the plastic liner from the bathroom wastebasket was gone.”

“Somebody making sure there was nothing under the dead man’s nails that could tie him to the scene?”

“Or he could have given himself a manicure in front of the TV with all the clippings buried in the rug,” Dwight said. “We’ll never get a chance to look for ourselves, and I doubt if Agent Pritchard’s gonna tell us.”

Bo Poole leaned back in his chair and his wise brown eyes crinkled with cynical amusement. “Well, now, there’s more than one way to rob a henhouse, ol’ son. And I bet we both know a few black snakes. You talked to Terry Wilson lately?”

“A couple of weeks ago, but he’s SBI, Bo, not federal.”

“And you think he don’t know any of them?”

“Wouldn’t hurt to ask,” Dwight agreed.

Back in his office, Dwight put in a call to his longtime friend. He and Terry Wilson were old fishing buddies from when he first came back to the county and Mr. Kezzie invited them out to try their luck with his bass. It was inevitable that Deborah would meet him, too. Just as inevitably Terry made a play for her, since everyone, including Deborah herself, assumed that Dwight felt only a brotherly affection for her. He’d been forced to watch their flirtation and to show no emotion when she confided to him that it might be getting serious.

In the end, Deborah realized that Terry’s son and his job would always come first. “And I don’t want to come third,” she told Dwight. “He’s fun to hang out with, but he’s not marriage material.”

Terry took the rejection philosophically. “Hell, Dwight. After three divorces and two broken engagements, this ain’t the first time a woman’s told me no. Probably not the last time either. Tell you one thing, though—I’ve bought my last diamond ring.”

“You bought Deborah a diamond?”

“Well, naw, but I was thinking about it till I saw what Lee’s first year at State was costing me.”

After that Deborah treated Terry like yet another brother and the three of them stayed friends. Terry still came out to the farm to fish with Mr. Kezzie and Cal even called him Uncle Terry as if he were Rob or one of the Knott brothers.

“Hey there,” Terry said when he recognized Dwight’s voice. “Guess what? I just bought me a diamond ring.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, I know I said never again, but we’ve been living together almost as long as you and Deborah, so—”

“You and K.C.?”

“Well, who the hell else would it be?” he asked indignantly.

K.C. Massengill was a sexy little blonde, one of the SBI’s best narcotics agents until she was promoted to a division head and an office job around the same time that Terry came in off the streets. Dwight remembered Deborah’s glee when she told him that Terry had moved into K.C.’s house out at Lake Jordan and how K.C. had shrugged and said, “He’s probably only interested in my bass boat.”

“Y’all settin’ a date or is she just in it for the jewelry?”

“Right now, we’re looking at the last Saturday in June, after Lee’s graduation. You know what they say, Dwight—fourth time lucky. You and Deborah be sure and save the date.”

Dwight congratulated him, then asked if he’d heard about the death out at the Clarenden Motel.

He hadn’t, but after listening to as many of the details as Dwight could give him, Terry promised to see what he could learn. “It may be on into next week ’fore I can tell you anything.”

“That’s okay.”

“Pritchard’s a tightass, but why do you care if he takes over? Less work for you guys.”

“I just like to know what’s going on under my nose,” Dwight said.

And why, he wondered after hanging up, was it under his nose anyhow? Why Colleton County?

According to an in-depth story in the New York Times, a story that he’d heard confirmed in sub rosa conversations, the usual scenario for small jets had them flying from Gitmo to here for refueling, then from here to Bangor and back again. In Maine, it was said that prisoners were put on a larger plane and flown to Shannon, Ireland. From there, the destination would be to some hellhole that wasn’t hampered by human rights watchdogs.

Despite the Times story, most people around the county neither knew nor cared about those flights, so who in Cotton Grove would want the man dead? Maybe he