“And the black children didn’t?”

  “Not when my older brother was around.” The bishop smiled. “When we were growing up, nobody messed with Jessie. He told everyone to treat Sonny nice and made it stick.”

  Holt glanced past the bishop to the front of the church. The bishop wiped his forehead with a clean white handkerchief.

  “Was Sonny at the house the night Rex Meredith died?”

  “Unless he was off running an errand, Sonny was usually on the property. But I don’t recall if he was inside the house when they found Mr. Meredith’s body or not. I sat next to him at the funeral. He didn’t say anything, of course, but the tears rolled off his cheeks. Mr. Meredith was a hard man, but I think he had a soft spot in his heart for Sonny.”

  “How did you get along with him?”

  “Members of my family were sharecroppers on Meredith land for generations.” The minister shrugged. “I’m not sure he ever saw me as anything except a sharecropper’s son.”

  “What about enemies? I’m sure there were people who didn’t like him.”

  “Yeah, plenty of people he took advantage of in business. But you could start with his ex-wives. He got married before they had those prenup things. His first wife ran off with someone else and disappeared. His second wife raised a huge stink when he put her out of the house. They had a big fight over money. The newspaper didn’t write about it, but that didn’t keep people from talking. It’s hard for me to know what was true; however, there isn’t much doubt in my mind that Mr. Meredith was a mean drunk.”

  “How mean?”

  “Mean enough to hit a woman. I’m not sure about his first wife, but the second one had pictures of the bruises he left on her. I heard he had to give her a big cash settlement before she would turn him loose.”

  “Did you see any of those pictures?”

  “No.”

  “And there weren’t any criminal charges?”

  “I doubt it, but you should be able to find out if she ever filed a complaint against him. Her name was Rose. She was from Moultrie and had a high opinion of herself. I heard she hit him, too. Isn’t that something? People can have everything the world thinks is important and be as miserable as two wet cats tied up in a burlap sack.”

  “No children?”

  “None of his own. Carrie, the third wife, brought Valerie along with her when she came to town. Carrie was real quiet and kind of shy. She opened a dress shop and rented a space from Mr. Meredith.”

  “How old was Valerie when her mother and Meredith got married?”

  “I guess she was twelve or so. Carrie died a year or so before Mr. Meredith; some kind of blood clot in her brain burst.”

  A car pulled into the church parking lot. Bishop Pennington turned away from Holt as the vehicle stopped, and five people piled out.

  “Bishop!” a large woman called out. “We were on our way to Savannah, and I told Bobby we had to get off the highway and see if you were here.”

  “I’ll check with you later,” Holt said as the minister stepped forward to greet his visitors.

  “Do that,” the bishop said and spread his arms wide toward the people getting out of the car.

  Holt jogged the last few blocks to his house. Revived, Henry greeted him by jumping up and down at the backyard gate.

  17

  Trish and Keith attended the young adult Sunday school class, the rural church’s version of speed dating and Internet matchmaking. In the unwritten protocol of the class, a couple slightly interested in each other positioned themselves so they could make occasional eye contact and smile at one another.

  The next step involved sitting close enough to be acutely aware of the other’s presence but without the danger of direct physical contact. Beyond that came sharing a common Bible, which gave an excuse for a man and a woman to put their heads together as they leaned in to read a verse. Finally, there would be casual, yet intense, physical contact when hands touched while turning the pages of the Holy Book or occasional pressure against a leg when the man or the woman shifted in their seats.

  This morning Keith moved directly to the final step. He positioned himself next to Trish and leaned against her several times. Not wanting to hurt his feelings, Trish didn’t shrink away.

  Later in the sanctuary, Trish whispered to her mother, “Keith wants to take us by the property on Cockburn Road after church. Do you want me to tell him that you don’t feel like it and would rather go home?”

  “I’d like to see it. I could stay in the car while you walk around on it.”

  “In these shoes?” Trish looked down at her feet and realized she’d worn flats that would be fine for walking on level ground that hadn’t seen a rain shower for weeks.

  “Yes,” her mother said. “He’ll want to show you the spot he has in mind for the house.”

  “This is way too domestic. I’m not ready to pick out curtains for a kitchen.”

  “Most women would welcome a man who’s thinking about something other than a new deer rifle.”

  Brother Carpenter bounded up the steps to the platform, and the meeting began. Several times during the service, Trish cut her eyes in Keith’s direction. He was sitting with his family two rows in front of her. By the end of the sermon, she’d concluded that letting Keith Pierce show her five acres of soybeans wouldn’t be a terrible way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

  They walked down the narrow rows between bushy green plants to the creek. Even without a recent rain, there was plenty of water in the slow-moving stream. Tadpoles dived for cover when Trish knelt close to the edge of the water.

  “There’ll be a chorus of frogs singing here every night during the summer,” she said.

  “Maybe they can teach me to carry a tune,” Keith replied.

  Trish had heard Keith sing in church. He had two notes—high and low.

  “It’s the melody in your heart that counts,” she said.

  The ground rose steadily from the edge of the creek. It didn’t seem likely that the water from the small stream, even if it jumped the banks, would ever come as far as the place Keith had picked out for his house. To do so, it would have to cross two hundred yards of ground and come up at least fifteen to twenty feet. As they walked, Keith’s plans for the property poured from his lips. It was a vivid vision of a rich, rural life.

  The following morning, Trish arrived at the sheriff’s department a few minutes early. Sitting at her desk, she took out her phone and scrolled again through the pictures she’d taken of the land on Cockburn Road. In one Keith stood with his back to her and his arm raised as he pointed toward the creek. It was a classic pioneer pose.

  “Carmichael!” A gruff voice interrupted her so abruptly that she almost dropped her phone.

  It was Detective Clovis.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you have an open file on a man named Vincent Calhoun?”

  “The name sounds familiar,” Trish said as she turned in her chair and clicked open the file on her computer that contained her active cases. “I have a Mitchell Calhoun.”

  “It’s the same guy. Mitchell is his middle name. Close the case and give the paper file to me.”

  While the detective talked, Trish read the summary she’d entered into her computer. The man was more than twelve thousand dollars in arrears for child support payments for two children.

  “That’s a collectible case,” she said. “He has a job.”

  “I’m familiar with his employment status,” Clovis replied. “I’m telling you to shut it down and take if off your docket. Do I need to bring in Sheriff Blackstone to back me up?”

  “Uh, no, sir. I’ll do it this morning.”

  “On my desk before noon.”

  Clovis walked off. Trish looked around the edge of her cubicle at the detective’s broad back as he reached the end of the hallway and turned toward his office. Trish opened a second window that provided more details about Calhoun. One item a few rows from the top immediately caught her attention. Calhoun worked for Greg Stevens.

  Trish pressed the Print Screen button. She’d put everything on Clovis’s desk by noon and close the file, but she’d also make a copy of the file for herself.

  And Holt Douglas.

  Belinda stuck her head into Holt’s office. “Good news,” she said. “Ralph gave me the okay to contact Trish Carmichael about a job.”

  Surprised, Holt said, “I didn’t expect that.”

  “Natasha told him she’s pregnant and won’t be back when she goes out on maternity leave.”

  Natasha worked under Belinda and provided support to all three of the attorneys.

  “Do you think Trish can handle her job?” Holt asked. “Natasha is a certified paralegal.”

  “Which is more important? On-the-job training and real-world experience or sitting in a classroom pretending?”

  “If you look in the mirror, you’ll see the answer to that question.”

  Belinda chuckled. “Very smooth. So, I’m going to reach out to Trish and—”

  “Could you wait a few weeks?” Holt interrupted. “Natasha’s not going to be leaving immediately, is she?”

  “No, it will be months. But why wait?”

  Holt couldn’t tell Belinda the real reason—that he wanted to see if Trish would be able to feed him valuable inside information from the sheriff’s department about Rex Meredith’s death.

  “Uh, I need to decide what I think about Trish. On a personal level.”

  A grin creased Belinda’s face. “Gotcha. Would you like to be the one to mention the job possibility to her when the time is right?”

  “Sure.”

  The grin on Belinda’s face grew to a broad smile. “You’re in charge of Trish’s future,” she said. “Just keep me in the loop.”

  After Belinda left, Holt opened the bottom drawer of his desk and took out the data he’d collected about Rex Meredith’s death. So far it all fell into the circumstantial suspicion category, which was just a cut above a half-baked conspiracy theory. He needed an opinion from someone with the opportunity and training to evaluate evidence that would point to a different cause of Meredith’s death than suicide.

  Having been interrupted by Ralph before he could complete his earlier search for information on Tony McDermott, Holt once again logged on to the secure database site. He entered his personal ID. Since there was no open file on Rex Meredith, Holt grabbed a file from his credenza and entered the number for a larceny case involving a stolen pickup truck. No one in the DA’s office ever cross-referenced use of the database and file numbers used to gain access.

  The requested results for McDermott popped up in seconds, including an address, date of birth, marital status, names of children, Social Security number, work history, and two phone numbers. Anthony Blake McDermott lived near Lake Burton in Rabun County, a mountainous area nestled in the northeast corner of the state. The area around the lake contained houses that cost millions of dollars and one-room cabins built from scrap lumber. Holt checked the tax records for McDermott’s address. The former detective lived in a two-bedroom cabin built in the early 1980s. The next to last entry for employment was the Ashley County Sheriff’s Department. After that, McDermott worked as a private security officer for a resort in the Lake Burton area. Holt pressed the Print button. There was a printer in the hallway directly outside his office. Opening the door of his office, Holt found his way blocked by Ralph Granger, who stood in front of the printer.

  “Hey, Ralph,” Holt said, wondering about the unlikelihood of his boss’s second ill-timed appearance. “I need to grab something off the printer.”

  Ralph turned his head. “Me too. This is the week to clean the deadwood off your docket. What are you working on?”

  Ralph lifted the sheets from the printer tray.

  “An older case,” Holt replied, resisting the impulse to snatch the papers from Ralph’s hand. Ralph turned the pages over. Holt’s stomach knotted up.

  “Tony McDermott?” Ralph said. “I’m sure the sheriff’s office would give you his contact information.”

  Holt tried to keep his voice nonchalant. “I didn’t want to bother anyone. It was easier to punch his name into the system.”

  “What’s the old case?” Ralph asked. “McDermott wasn’t here for long.”

  In a split second Holt considered all his options, from an outright lie, to the total truth, to a hybrid couched in ambiguity. Stalling for time, he glanced around as if seeing who was within earshot.

  “I need to talk to you about it in private,” he said.

  “Okay, let me pass these documents along to Belinda, and I’ll be back in a minute.”

  His heart pounding, Holt returned to his office. He put the information about Tony McDermott in the Meredith folder and returned everything to the bottom drawer. He stared across his desk at his office door and tried to figure out what to do. A minute passed. Then another. Ralph didn’t appear. Holt fidgeted. Getting up from his desk, he cracked open his door and looked down the hallway toward Ralph’s office. There was no sign of the DA. Holt walked around the corner to Belinda’s workstation.

  “Have you seen Ralph?”

  “You just missed him. He got a call from the county commissioner’s office a few minutes ago and left for a budget meeting. We’ve been working on figures for the next fiscal year. It was a good thing I had them ready this morning because he thought it wasn’t coming up until the end of the week.”

  “Okay,” Holt said with relief.

  Belinda leaned closer and lowered her voice. “Ralph included a line item so he could give you a raise from discretionary county funds. More money will help you plan for the future.”

  Holt’s base salary was paid by the state of Georgia, but a local government could supplement an assistant DA’s salary if it chose to do so.

  “He really wants to keep you,” Belinda continued. “And he knows you could make a lot more if you jumped over to private practice. He never went to bat like this for Skip.”

  “Skip was ready to try something else. I’m not, at least for a while.”

  “But Ralph doesn’t know that. And you know how paranoid he can be.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Holt returned to his office. Shortly before noon, Skip called.

  “How was your steak?” he asked.

  “Very good. That place is going to do well.”

  “I got a nice thank-you note from Angelina. Yours must be delayed in the mail.”

  “Or buried under the checks piled up on your desk from your monthly billings. Do you want to do lunch? It’s a slow week for us over here.”

  “Absolutely. That’s why I called.”

  “No barbecue,” Holt replied. “I want something light.”

  “Let’s join the ladies at Camille’s.”

  “See you there in fifteen minutes.”

  After the call ended, Kathy brought a packet into his office.

  “The courier from the sheriff’s department dropped this off for you,” she said.

  Holt sliced open the envelope with a sterling silver letter opener, a present from his mother when he passed the bar exam. He quickly read Trish’s notes and supporting documentation about Greg Stevens, Butch Clovis, and Vincent Calhoun. Holt wasn’t naive about powerful people influencing the administration of justice, but that didn’t make him like it.

  He’d found an ally in Trish Carmichael. And she needed to stay employed exactly where she was.

  18

  Camille’s was a pastry shop that featured a soup du jour and fancy salad options on the lunch menu. The tables and chairs were delicately shaped wrought iron, painted in pastel colors. Skip was sitting at an aqua table when Holt arrived. There weren’t any other men in sight.

  “I like the peach table,” Holt said as he walked up.

  “Sorry, but I’m in a blue mood,” Skip replied.

  “Why?”

  “I asked the woman at the counter if the soup of the day was chili, and she looked at me as if I had two heads.”

  “What is the soup?”

  Skip turned in his chair and squinted at a chalkboard behind the counter. “Uh, butternut squash bisque. She said they make it with organic squash. Can you imagine a farmer bragging to his buddies that he sold a pickup truck load of squash to this place?”

  “Yes, if he made money doing it.”

  They both ordered a salad. Holt took a bite and nodded his head. “You have to admit the stuff here is fresh,” he said.

  “Sure. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have agreed to meet you here. Give me details about your dinner at the steak house. I’m meeting with the owners later this afternoon and want to give them an unbiased review.” Holt told him about the meal and concluded by saying, “By any standard, it was five-star.”

  “Wow. The owners may want to use you in a commercial for the local cable channel.”

  “I don’t know about—”

  “I’m kidding. If they were going to shoot a commercial, they’d want to feature Angelina. Her legs are better than yours.”

  “Along with everything else.” Holt stabbed a bite of salad with his fork. “What do you think about Brittany, the receptionist at the salon?”

  “I don’t really know her.”

  Holt told as much of Brittany’s story as he could remember.

  “I had no idea she was in her mid-twenties,” Skip said. “I would have guessed she was just out of high school.”

  “Would you be interested in asking her out? Maybe the four of us could go back to the steak house.”

  “Is this your idea or is Angelina behind it?”

  “You know the answer to that question, Counselor.”

  “Right.” Skip nodded. “And is Angelina acting as Brittany’s agent?”

  “Can you think of any other possibility?”

  “No, but I want to know when I’m being manipulated by a couple of women. It’s not necessarily a negative feeling.” Skip grinned. “Actually, I kind of like it. Can I think it over and get back to you?”

  Holt checked his watch. “I’ll give you five minutes, but I already know your answer.”