Hard Row Part 26

"Your personal life's your own as long as it doesn't compromise your handling of the job." He kept his tone neutral.

Her eyes flashed indignantly. "You think I let our relations.h.i.+p get in the way of the investigation?"

"That's what I'm asking. Did you?"

She shook her head. "No, sir. I really don't think I did. I didn't know Mike had gone to court for Palmeiro till Friday. McLamb mentioned that he'd seen him at the courthouse and when I asked Mike, he was absolutely up front about it. He said he felt sorry for the guy because his baby had died and his wife had left him. He didn't describe the baby's condition, just that it was stillborn. We didn't know the body parts were Harris's yet and I certainly didn't know till this morning when your-when Judge Knott told us that Palmeiro had worked for Harris. That was the first time I'd heard it."

"It wasn't the first time Diaz had heard it, though," Dwight said.

Richards let the implications of his words sink in. "Did he know Palmeiro killed Harris?" she asked hesitantly.

"He says not."

"Do you believe him?"

Dwight shrugged. "Know is one of those slippery words. Did Palmeiro confess to him? Did he see the guy swing the axe? Probably not."

"But you think he knew," Richards said.

"Don't you?"

They rode in silence another mile or two, then Richards said, "My family. My dad and my brothers and my sister? They say that they'll never speak to me again if I marry him."

"What about your mother?"

"She'll go along with them, but she'd probably sneak and call me once in a while."

"Family's important," he observed as they reached the Dobbs city limits.

She sighed. "Yes."

Dwight pulled into the parking lot beside the courthouse and cut the engine. As she reached for the door handle, he said, "Look, Richards. Your personal life is none of my business as long as you can keep it separate from the job. But I'm going to say this even though I probably shouldn't. If you're going to break up with him because you don't love him, that's one thing. But don't use the job or what he knew or didn't know as an excuse if it's really because of your family. You owe it to yourself to tell him the truth."

CHAPTER 35.

The retention of the old family homestead and farm by a long line of ancestry for successive generations is, in many respects a desideratum, whether we regard it in the practical light of an investment or of a pardonable pride, as the basis of the sentiment of family honor and respectability that is to be a.s.sociated with the name and the inheritance.

-Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890.

DEBORAH KNOTT.

THURSDAY EVENING, MARCH 9.

By the time I adjourned for the day, the news had gone all around the courthouse that Buck Harris had been murdered by one of his field hands because his wanton carelessness with pesticides had caused the stillbirth of that field hand's baby.

The news media had swarmed around the courthouse and out to the Buckley place as well, not that they got much joy there. None of the workers wanted to talk, and Mrs. Harris refused to meet with them; but her daughter, while sidestepping any statements that would admit culpability, was ready to use the situation as a soapbox to propose a more socially responsible program for "guest workers." Reporters came away with an earful of statistics about the appalling conditions most growers imposed on their laborers, all for the saving of a few pennies a pound on the fruits and vegetables they harvested. While it was interesting that the "tomato heiress," as they were calling her, planned to move down from New York and turn the family homeplace into a center for bettering the lives of migrants, Susan Hochmann was not photogenic enough to hold their attention for long.

Here in the courthouse, sympathies seemed to take a slight s.h.i.+ft from the dead man to his killer as more and more details came out about the baby and about Harris's deliberate violations of OSHA and EPA regulations, not to mention simple human decency.

"You hate to blame the victim," said a records clerk who had just come back from maternity leave with a CD full of baby pictures as her new screen saver, "but d.a.m.ned if he wasn't asking for it."

"I'm not saying it's ever right to kill," one of the attorneys told me, "but I'd take his case in a heartbeat. Bet I could get him off with a suspended sentence, too."

All cameras focused on the sensational gory murder. It would be the lead story of the day. Not much attention would be paid to the shooting death of a young woman by her abusive ex-husband who then turned the gun on himself. Nothing particularly newsworthy about that. Happens all the time, doesn't it?

As soon as I heard, I adjourned court an hour early and went around to Portland's house.

"She's upstairs,"Avery said when he let me in. "Dwight was here before. It was good of him to come tell her himself."

I found her standing by a window in the nursery. Her eyes were red and swollen when she turned to me. "She couldn't make it to high ground, Deborah."

"I know, honey," I said and opened my arms to her as she burst into tears.

The baby awoke as we were talking and she sat down with little Carolyn and opened her s.h.i.+rt to nurse her. "If it weren't for you," she told her daughter, "I'd be killing a bottle of bourbon about now."

Her eyes filled up with tears again. "I guess I'll call Linda Allred tonight. Tell her to add another statistic to her list."

When I got home that evening, Daddy was sitting on the porch to watch Dwight and Cal finish cleaning out the interior of the truck before carefully smoothing a Hurricanes sticker to the back b.u.mper. Cal wanted to clamp our flag on the window, but Dwight vetoed that idea.

"Save it for Deborah's car," he said. "My truck's not a moving billboard."

Bandit was frisking around the yard in an unsuccessful attempt to get Blue and Ladybell to romp with him, but those two hounds were too old and dignified for such frivolity.

Dwight followed me into our bedroom while I changed out of heels and panty hose into jeans and sneakers. "You hear about Karen Braswell?"

I nodded. "Thanks for going over there yourself."

"She gonna be okay?"

"The baby helps."

"G.o.d, Deb'rah. What's it gonna take? This is the second one in three months. We took his d.a.m.n guns. Where'd he get that one?"

"Don't beat up on yourself, Dwight. You said it yourself. There's no stopping somebody who's determined to kill and doesn't care about the consequences. If it hadn't been a gun, it would have been a knife or even his bare hands."

We went back outdoors and the blessed mundane flowed back over us. Cal was antsy to leave because they planned to pick up a new pair of sneakers for him on the way in. The lower the sun sank, the cooler the air became and my sweater was suddenly not thick enough.

"Come on in," I told Daddy, "and I'll fix us something to eat."

"Naw, Maidie's making supper. Why don't you come eat with us? You know there's always extra."

"Okay," I said, but he didn't get up.

"Are we expecting somebody?" I asked.

"Some of the children said they was gonna stop by, show us what they plan to grow on that land we give 'em last week."

Even as he spoke, a couple of pickups drove up and several of my nieces and nephews tumbled out-Zach's Lee and Emma, Seth's Jessie, Haywood's Jane Ann, and Robert's Bobby, who carried a large sunflower that he handed to me with a flourish.

"Sunflowers?" I laughed. "You're going to grow sunflowers?"

"Hey, they're real trendy now," he told me.

"The short ones make great cut flowers," said Jane Ann, "but those that we don't sell fresh, we can wire the dried heads and sell as organic sunflower seeds to hang from a bird feeder. Cardinals go crazy over them."

"But this is going to be our real moneymaker." Jessie set a bud vase with a single stem of pure white flowers on the table and an incredibly sweet fragrance met me even before I leaned forward to smell. "Polianthes tuberosa. Almost no pests, doesn't need a lot of fertilizer, and we can market them for fifty cents to a dollar a stem depending on whether we sell them retail or wholesale. This one cost me two-fifty at the florist shop in Cotton Grove and he said he'd much rather buy locally than getting them s.h.i.+pped in from Mexico."

"Yeah," said Lee. "Judy Johnson, Mother's cousin up near Richmond, has an acre that she and her husband tend pretty much by themselves. She says we'll probably be able to cut ours from the end of July till frost. Up there, they cut anywhere from a hundred and fifty to six hundred stems a day."

"That's a gross of close to nine thousand dollars an acre," said Emma, who seemed to be channeling the soul of an accountant these days.

"What about fertilizer?" Daddy asked. "I hear that organic stuff's right expensive."

"Chicken manure," said Bobby. "You know that poultry place over on Old Forty-eight? He raises the biddies from hatching to six weeks and he's got a mountain of it out back. Says we can have it for the hauling. We'll compost the new stuff and go ahead and spread the old soon as we can afford a spreader."

Daddy laughed. "Y'all ever take a good look at some of them things a-setting under the shelters back of those old stick barns?"

Lee's face lit up. "You've got a manure spreader?"

"Parked it there twenty-five years ago when we got rid of the last of the mules and cows. It probably needs new tires and some WD-40, but y'all can have it if you want."

Jane Ann jumped up and gave him a big hug that almost knocked his hat off. "You just saved us four hundred dollars and trucking one down from Burlington, Granddaddy!"

They all rushed off to check it out before dark, as excited as if Daddy had told them he had an old s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p they could use to fly to the moon.

He straightened his hat and stood to go. "What you reckon Robert's gonna say when they drag that old thing out?"

I laughed. "Myself, I can't wait to hear what Haywood and Isabel have to say about growing flowers for a crop."

"Beats ostriches," he said slyly.

"What about you?" I asked as we walked out to his truck. The hounds jumped up in back and I put Bandit in the cab between us. "What do you think about growing flowers?"

He smiled. "Tell you what, shug. Flowers or mushrooms or even ostriches-it don't matter one little bit. Anything that keeps 'em here on the farm another generation's just fine with me."

Deborah Knott novels:.

HARD ROW.

WINTER'S CHILD RITUALS OF THE SEASON.

HIGH COUNTRY FALL.

SLOW DOLLAR.

UNCOMMON CLAY.

STORM TRACK.

HOME FIRES.

KILLER MARKET.

UP JUMPS THE DEVIL.

SHOOTING AT LOONS.

SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT.

BOOTLEGGER'S DAUGHTER Sigrid Harald novels: FUGITIVE COLORS.

PAST IMPERFECT.

CORPUS CHRISTMAS.

BABY DOLL GAMES.

THE RIGHT JACK.

DEATH IN BLUE FOLDERS.

DEATH OF A b.u.t.tERFLY.

ONE COFFEE WITH.

Non-series: LAST LESSONS OF SUMMER.

b.l.o.o.d.y KIN.

SUITABLE FOR HANGING.

SHOVELING SMOKE.