Crossed Bones Page 7

  “The coroner puts the time of death at between two and four o'clock in the morning. Hampton claims he left the bar at midnight.”

  “Maybe he did.” I was at a real disadvantage since my client wouldn't talk to me.

  “I have a witness that says otherwise.” He put his palms on the counter.

  “A reliable witness?”

  “A strange witness.” He turned back to face me, putting both hands on the counter as if to steady himself. “Nandy Shanahan.”

  “Nandy?” I couldn't hide my shock. “She's out there on the courthouse lawn raising hell because he's in jail. She's president of his fan club.”

  “Right. The Blizzard Heads.” Coleman looked at his fingers instead of at me. “She signed a statement that she saw Scott come out of the club at exactly two-twenty that morning.” He looked at me. “Unfortunately for you, that makes Hampton a liar and the man I believe committed Ivory's murder.”

  I sighed. “You believe Nandy?”

  “Do you believe Hampton?” he countered.

  “He hasn't really talked to me,” I confessed. This case was looking more and more like a quagmire.

  “You'd better get something out of him. Linc's going to push this as hard as he can. He's having visions of the governor's office, and Scott Hampton is going to be his step stool to jump there.”

  What he was saying was true. Lincoln Bangs, the Sunflower County district attorney, was a very ambitious man. It was an unfortunate fact of life that the route to the governor's office, in any state, was often littered with bodies, the guilty and the innocent.

  Coleman pushed off the counter. “So how was your date?”

  I wasn't prepared for that question but I stepped right up to the plate. “Bridge Ladnier is a very interesting man.”

  “I'm sure he is. And successful.” Coleman's hand had gone to his gun belt. He fiddled with his holster. “He belongs in places like The Club, by birthright as well as bank account.” There was a flatness in Coleman's eyes I'd never seen. “I'm glad you finally found a social peer, Sarah Booth. You deserve that and a whole lot more.”

  He walked into his office and closed the door.

  8

  Deputy Dewayne Dattilo let me back into the jail. My greeting there was almost as warm as the one I'd gotten from Coleman. Scott reclined on his bunk, one leg crossed over a knee, and watched me as if I were some odious reptile.

  “We need to talk.” I wasn't in the mood for his attitude.

  “You need to leave.” His foot began to beat a rhythm as he tuned me out completely.

  “Listen, Hampton, your ridiculous bad-boy posturing is wasted on me.” I was angry and he was stupid. “James Dean died a long time ago. You might think you're a rebel without a cause, but you're really just a racist rich boy with a little talent and a long history of making seriously bad life decisions.” I took a deep breath. “So cut the crap. Coleman has an eyewitness that puts you at the scene of the murder at the time Ivory Keys was killed.”

  He sat up suddenly, and in half a second he was across the cell and standing before me. He moved in so close I could feel his breath on my fingers where they gripped the bars.

  “I know about the witness,” he said, each word a hard, fast little bullet of anger. “Stuart Ann Shanahan. That crazy bitch wanted to visit me here.”

  “You admit you know her, then?”

  “I know her. She's the girl who's been stalking me for the past six months. It's a bit ironic that my biggest fan would put the nail in my coffin, isn't it?”

  “Stalking? She's president of your fan club.”

  “And hell has swimming pools and ice-cold beer.” He glared at me. “That girl is a stalker. She's broken into my house three times. She sits on my bike when I park it somewhere. She's always jumping out of shrubs and bushes, trying to get me to fuck her. And she tails me like a hound after a raccoon. I told the sheriff not to let her near me.”

  I nodded while I thought it through. “What you say about Nandy may be true, but she's put you at the murder scene, nonetheless.”

  “Who's going to believe a crazy bitch like her?” He challenged me with his eyes.

  I kept my tone factual. “Most of Sunflower County. Stuart Ann is from a well-to-do family. Most jurors, if it comes down to it, will take her word over an ex-con drug addict's.” I meant to make him angry, and I was rewarded by the snap in his eyes. Yet he held his tongue and his temper. That impressed me.

  “We might balance Nandy out with some background about your family.” I'd done my homework. “Your mother is head of the United Way Drive each year, and your father single-handedly started the drive to build a new shelter for abused women. That should count for something.”

  “Leave my family out of this,” Scott said in a way that let me know he'd divorced them long before they cut the umbilical on him.

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  He hesitated. “Thirty-five. How old are you?”

  His question caught me off guard, as did the curiosity in his gaze. He was really looking at me. “A woman never reveals her age.” I didn't want Scott to have a lot of personal information about me.

  “Did you give Ida Mae back her money?” he demanded.

  I was tired of his attempts to wrest control of the conversation from me. I was helping him. “If you're so worried about Ida Mae and her money, why don't you call your own family for help? They're loaded.”

  His laugh was bitter. “They gave up on me a long time ago. The only reason they'd trouble themselves to come down to Mississippi would be to tell me they told me so.”

  His past wasn't my problem. His future was. “Then it looks like you have no choice but to accept Ida Mae's largesse.” I leaned toward the bars. “So I suggest you get cooperative and quit wasting that old woman's money and my time. And you'd better pray she doesn't hear any of that music you wrote and sang in the early nineties. I don't think Ida Mae would be a big fan of the Brown Shirts.”

  My words were like a slap. He recoiled but he didn't lash out. I was again impressed. I'd heard Scott had a bad temper, but so far, he'd been able to control it. That indicated he might be able to avoid the classic “crime of passion,” where a man's temper overrode his reason and his self-preservation. On the one hand, that was a good thing. On the other hand, that might put Ivory's murder as premeditated.

  “I don't want anyone's help. Least of all Ida Mae's.” He rubbed both eyebrows with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.

  “Guilty conscience?” I jabbed.

  He stared at me. “No. I don't have anything to be guilty about. I didn't kill Ivory.”

  I was watching him closely when he spoke. “And you didn't lie about what time you left the club?”

  He turned so suddenly that I stepped back from the bars. At my reaction, something flashed across his face. Surprise, or shock, I couldn't be certain. The hand he'd raised dropped to his side, as all of the energy seemed to drain from him.

  “I wasn't going to hit you.”

  I didn't deny that was what I'd thought. “Did you lie to Coleman about the time you left the club?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “What would you have done? I was the last person to see Ivory alive, except for his killer. I was with him until nearly two in the morning. We were arguing. We argued a lot.” He shrugged one shoulder in more of a jerk than a gesture.

  “Argued about what? Money?”

  He shook his head, a strand of hair falling over his forehead. “Never about money.”

  “About what?”

  “Things.” He gave me a searching look. “We talked about lots of things.”

  “And you argued about . . . ?”

  “We argued about music. Nobody would understand but another musician.”

  “Try me,” I said, wondering if one of those musical things they argued about was the two-year contract that tied him to Ivory and the club.

  “There are things that can be done to make money in a club. Things that are just go
od business.”

  I was intrigued. The anger had dropped out of Scott's face, and he spoke with unintentional passion. “Such as?”

  “In a club, entertainment is the draw. The money comes off liquor sales. I wanted Ivory to bring in more acts, different things like hip-hop and rap. Something to draw in the younger folks. He wouldn't even consider it. He said that stuff wasn't music and he didn't want any part of it. For Ivory, it was the blues or nothing. He was hardheaded as a mule, but he was a man of principle.”

  With each conversation about Ivory, I garnered another fragment of who he was. The picture that was coming to life was of a man who bent into the wind.

  “In a way, Ivory was the luckiest man I ever knew,” Scott said, almost as if he were talking to himself. “He had such a strong belief in his music. No matter what went wrong or how hard he got set back, he never lost his belief. It must be wonderful to believe in something—anything—that much.”

  Scott's words struck home with me. Once, long ago, I'd believed in a lot of things. “So on the night Ivory was killed, what time did you leave the club?”

  “I'm not certain. Sometime around two o'clock. I knew someone killed him not long after I left, so I lied about the time I left the club because I knew I'd be the primary suspect. I'm an ex-con. So you tell me, Miss Private Investigator, what would you have done in the same circumstances?”

  I had not always walked hand in hand with the truth, even when the stakes weren't nearly as high as they were for Scott. But my decisions weren't on trial; my life wasn't at stake. I didn't have to admit to anything. “You've only made yourself look more guilty.”

  “And you think I don't know that? I may be an ex-con, but I'm not an idiot.”

  That was true. “Look, I see where you might have felt it was smarter to lie about the time. We can explain that to Coleman and—”

  “The high sheriff has already convicted me.”

  “Scott, you need to get this once and for all. This isn't about your martyr complex. The evidence has put you in jail, not the sheriff. Coleman's a fair man.”

  His shoulders sagged almost imperceptibly. “I was guilty of everything I was convicted of in Detroit. Everything and more. I never pretended to be innocent. But I didn't kill Ivory.”

  There comes a moment between two people when trust is either established or destroyed. Against all common sense, I found that I believed what Scott was saying. I didn't have a hope he could convince a jury of his innocence, but if music was his talent, charisma was his charm. He'd won me to his side.

  “Who would want Ivory dead?” I asked, striving for a professional tone that hid all personal emotion.

  He didn't answer immediately. He weighed what my question meant. When he finally spoke, his voice was calmer. “I don't know.”

  “Whoever killed Ivory went to a lot of trouble to make it look like you did it. The place was robbed and nearly three thousand in bloodstained money was found in the saddlebag of your bike. They'll know if it's Ivory's money before much longer.” I didn't have to add that if the blood tests came back positive, it would be harder than ever to prove Scott's innocence.

  “If I'd killed Ivory and robbed the place, would I have been so stupid as to leave the money in my saddlebag?”

  It was a good point, but it led me to another. “So who would want you back in prison, or the gas chamber, badly enough to kill a man?”

  Scott's mouth thinned. It wasn't a pretty sight. “A whole lot of people, Miss Delaney. I missed the Dale Carnegie seminar on how to win friends. I'm more adept at making enemies.”

  He did seem to have a knack for pissing people off. “My suggestion to you is to put your thinking cap on and come up with some names, Mr. Hampton. I can't help you unless you're willing to help yourself.”

  He didn't get a chance to respond. The door to the jail opened and Deputy Dattilo walked toward us, keys jangling on his belt.

  “You've got visitors, Hampton,” he said, making it clear he didn't like it. “Fifteen minutes.”

  Behind Dattilo, two men entered the narrow hall between the cells. They walked abreast, laughing and punching each other as they approached.

  The light in the jail wasn't the best, but I caught the image these men wanted to project. They wore tight jeans, leather jackets, bandanas tied around their heads, gold hoop earrings in one ear, and one man had on dark sunglasses.

  “Hey, man!” The one without sunglasses brushed past Dattilo and stepped in front of me. “We'll have you outta here in no time flat. These yokels can't keep you locked up.”

  Scott, too, seemed to have forgotten that the deputy and I were in the vicinity. He reached through the bars and grasped the biker's hand. That's when I noticed the tattoo on the newcomer's hard-muscled arm. It was exactly the same as the one Scott had on his arm. Crossed bones and a skull.

  The one with the sunglasses stepped up for the secret handshake. “They won't get away with this,” he said. He held out a wadded-up paper sack. “We brought you some beer, but the law-and-order man wouldn't let us bring it in here. He confiscated it. I guess they don't pay him enough to buy his own.”

  Scott laughed and nodded his head. When he finally remembered I was there, he gave me a cool look. “That's all for now,” he said, dismissing me.

  I was about to give him a piece of my mind when I felt Deputy Dattilo's hand lightly touch my arm. He nodded at me, and I followed him out of the jail and into the main office of the sheriff.

  “Who are those guys?” I asked.

  “Trouble.”

  I wasn't going to argue that.

  “Your client, there, has friends in low places. Couple of ex-cellmates. They go by the names Spider and Ray-Ban. They actually tried to walk in here with a six-pack. Cute, huh?”

  “I'm charmed.” These were the guys Millie had told me about.

  Dattilo closed and locked the door to the jail. “Those two rode into town yesterday, and we've had three complaints on them already. They've been riding through The Grove, gunning their motors, yelling, throwing beer cans at kids. That kind of stuff. As soon as we can catch them in the act, they'll be in the cell beside their buddy.”

  The Grove was a part of Zinnia that was predominantly black. “Does the word self-destructive come to mind when you look at Scott Hampton?” I asked, disgusted with my client. He'd greeted the two bikers like long-lost brothers.

  “The word guilty comes to mind,” Dattilo said. “Guilty and not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.”

  9

  Sitting astride Reveler, I greeted the sun Friday morning as it nudged against the water oaks along the banks of the Tallahatchie River. In August, the heat provides a half-light in those hours before true sunrise—a time when past and present mingle in shadows and whispers.

  A thick mist hung over the cotton fields that grew right to the edge of the river. The fields stretched into the fog, and as I stared, I saw the silhouettes of slaves walking the rows, checking the plants for insects and fungus, pulling the weeds.

  They moved silently, intent on their tasks. Harvest would come in mid-fall. The pickers, long sacks dragging behind them, would bend to the white tufts of fiber that burst from the boles. A fast picker could harvest up to three hundred pounds in a day.

  Reveler stomped his hoof in impatience to be moving, and Sweetie Pie came bounding out of the Tallahatchie, shaking the cool water from her fur. My horse, my dog, and I were the present, but there was another presence in the fields. The past seemed to rise from the dirt and blend into the fog, creating shapes and images down the rows of cotton. One of the distant shadows craned his neck to look at us. He turned back to his work, singing as he did. The low, mournful sound seemed to wind itself into the mist, hanging in the air.

  Farther away, another shadow answered, and the song spread across the field. It told a story both joyful and sad. Like the history of this land that I loved, the blues were a contradiction.

  The sun topped the trees and sent a shaft of light into
the misty field. The silhouettes of the men and women evaporated, and I was alone again.

  Those images still in my mind, I nudged Reveler into a canter and raced through the last cotton field. Ahead, Dahlia House rose solid and real against a pink-and-mauve sky. I dismounted in the front yard, intending to walk Reveler cool.

  “Red sky in the mornin', sailors take warnin',” Jitty said from the porch. “We'll have rain this afternoon.”

  She was wearing a sleeveless orange shift and matching pumps. The way she stood, determined yet vaguely unsure, she reminded me of a young woman setting out for her first job interview.

  “So now you're a weather forecaster,” I said, hoping to make her smile. My own thoughts were troubled by both the past and the present.

  “Your great-great-grandma used to say that about the sky. She was more often right than wrong. Back then, bein' able to predict the weather meant survivin' for another day. Maybe for a season, if a crop was at stake.”

  “Did you ever harvest cotton?” I asked Jitty.

  Instead of answering, she looked down at her hands. They were long and elegant, the palms soft. “We've both done hard labor, Sarah Booth. I'm more interested in what you're gonna do today than what I did yesterday.”

  “Scott's bond hearing is this morning.” I walked Reveler the length of the porch, turned, and circled back toward her.

  “Do you really believe he's worth helpin'?” Jitty asked.

  I pondered her question. Yesterday, in his presence and under the full blast of his charisma, I'd believed him when he said he was innocent. This morning, I was having second thoughts. “I can't be sure.”

  “A man like Scott Hampton can make a woman believe just about anything he wants her to believe.”

  I looked at Jitty and realized that she knew I was attracted to Scott. I hadn't even admitted it to myself until that moment. It was an attraction fraught with paradox. He worked on me in a strange way, making me wary of him and yet wanting more of him. In that way, he, too, was like the blues.

  “Scott isn't interested in making me believe anything,” I told her.