Roots of Murder Page 7

  He opened the floor for questions.

  The first few questions were about his days as a football player for Pelican Bay High. His answers had an ‘ah, shucks, it was fun,’ quality while still working in that they had won the state championship his senior year.

  Carrie was right, Nell admitted; Aaron Dupree was a handsome man. The well-cut suit he wore accented his broad shoulders and trim waist, a physique that could be the envy of some of the current football players.

  “Are you married?” one of the girls asked. Then she blushed and giggled, which caused a wave of titters in the audience.

  “No, I’m not,” he answered. “But I do hope someday to get there.” He gave a quick glance to a woman who was also seated on the stage with him. Nell craned her head to be able to see more than the woman’s knees. It was Desiree Hunter. If she was his intended, he had made a good choice, she thought.

  Nell made a note to find out if this was a fiancé or just a girlfriend.

  Then came Lizzie’s turn. “Do you have plans to involve youth in your administration and if so, in what capacity?” Her voice was clear and strong, no fumbling over the words. Nell felt a surge of pride in her daughter.

  “I would love to involve youth. I think we too often keep young people away from the adult world. I plan to work with the schools to have a program of internships so you can see what goes on in the mayor’s office, at the police station, the library. I’d also like to work with local businesses to create a similar set of internships. For example, we have one of the best local papers in the state right here in Pelican Bay. That would be a great way to find out what the world of journalism is all about.”

  No, Nell silently answered, college is as young as I care to go. But she had to acknowledge his skillful answer. He had paid enough attention to notice she was here and had found a way to flatter without being unctuous.

  He looked directly enough at her to catch her eye. Blue eyes, very blue, she noted. Nell held his glance for a moment, then Lizzie asked her follow-up question. “What’s your time table for implementing this program?”

  Nell was almost relieved to turn to look at her daughter. She was long out of practice in—in what? Had he been mildly flirting? Or was that just a symptom of her loneliness, to read into a practiced politician’s sincere glance, a hint of interest?

  He answered Lizzie’s question. “Ideally in the first six months I’m in office, but I can’t promise the aldermen will let me do everything as soon as I want to.”

  There were a few more questions, then Mr. Simmons managed to grab the mic back and tell the “children” it was time to go back to class. The children milled around the auditorium, their only major movement to the soft drink machine in the hallway.

  Nell made her way to the candidate, with Lizzie following. Somehow Nell couldn’t see Lizzie interning at the paper—even if she wanted to be a reporter; she didn’t think the paper or her sanity could survive a teenage daughter constantly on the premises. But it wouldn’t hurt her daughter to get a glimpse of just what it was her mother did. Nell tried to think of questions that would be both intelligent and impress her teenager.

  Aaron Dupree had been buttonholed by Mr. Simmons, so he quickly turned when he spied Lizzie and Nell approaching.

  “That was a very good question,” he said to Lizzie, offering her an adult handshake. As Nell suspected, Lizzie didn’t burst out and say, “Oh, my mom thought of that.” Instead, she answered, “A lot of us kids want to make a difference, but sometimes it’s hard to find a way to do anything.”

  “If I’m elected mayor, that will change. What is your name? Would you like to be a youth advisor on my transition team?”

  Nell suspected he well knew her name. He might not have memorized all the children of Pelican Bay, but there was enough of a resemblance between them, he could easily guess that Lizzie was her daughter. His glance took in Nell, hovering just behind Lizzie.

  “I’m Elizabeth McGraw, and I’d love to,” she gushed. Then Lizzie—Elizabeth—remembered her manners, in a fashion. “Oh, this is my mom.”

  Aaron Dupree’s hand was already out when he said, “Mrs. McGraw, I’m pleased to see you again so soon.”

  “Hello, Mr. Dupree.” His look was as direct as it had been from across the stage. Nell glanced down at her notebook as if a question was there. “Are you going to raise our taxes to accomplish this program?”

  “Not at all,” he answered. “I’m going to count on the civic pride and duty of the people of our city. I’m hoping if I set the example with all the city functions, others will follow suit.”

  If her daughter hadn’t been standing next to her, Nell might have asked him if he flirted with all the women reporters. But that was too adult for her darling daughter. She still wasn’t sure if he was flirting or if she was just reading it in.

  “Do you really plan to have student interns on the sewage and water board?”

  “Ah, you’ve been to some of the meetings,” he said with a quick smile. “Perhaps we should do everything in moderation.”

  Mr. Simmons took this moment to interrupt. “Young lady, you should be on your way to class,” he told Lizzie, in a tone that seemed meant to curtail her moment of attention.

  “She’ll go in a moment,” Aaron Dupree said. “Right now I’ve got to get her signed up for my transition team. Changing of governments only happens every four years and it may be a while before she gets another chance.”

  Again, Nell had to admire his style, and she silently praised him for preventing her from telling Simmons what she thought of his pedantry in a manner not suitable before her delicate—well, not, but mothers still had to set some standards—daughter.

  Lizzie was happily agreeing to anything Aaron Dupree suggested. Fortunately, his only suggestion was for her to write down her name and contact info. Nell decided he didn’t look like a white slaver, so she pulled out one of her business cards and handed it to Lizzie to write on the back.

  With that, Lizzie happily skipped back to class—via the soft drink machine in the hallway.

  “You have a great daughter,” Dupree told her. “And I can only tell you’re old enough to be her mother when I’m within two feet of you. Your hair color exactly matches hers.”

  “I’m impressed with your skillful use of flattery, Mr. Dupree,” Nell said. “Perhaps I’m an economical mother and buy hair color in bulk.”

  “Call me Aaron. And, Mrs. McGraw, within two feet of you I can spy just a few gray hairs. That rules out economical hair dye.”

  Nell appreciated that he offered his first name without automatically going to hers. It was possible he didn’t know it, but so far his political skill argued that he would damn well know the name of the Editor-in-Chief of the local paper.

  Desiree joined them. “Aaron, darling, we’ve got to get over to the television studio,” she said. To Nell she added, “Time to make some TV ads and they charge by the second.”

  “Of course. I understand the realities of politics and I hardly thought an appearance at my daughter’s school would be a proper grill-the-candidate time,” Nell assured her.

  Aaron said, “Truly her brother’s keeper. Nothing like having your sister as your ex-officio campaign manager. Really keeps you on schedule.”

  Ah, Nell thought, his sister. She kept her face neutral. At least, she hoped she did.

  “‘Campaign manager’ is also a polite euphemism for chief cook and bottle washer,” Desiree interjected.

  “We shall certainly have to set up a time for you to do a proper grilling,” Aaron said to Nell. He again shook her hand, lingering just a touch beyond the usual hearty shake of a politician, and then he and his sister left.

  Nell hung back, letting them get a good distance away before she headed out.

  The evidence of both her intellect and her instincts said he definitely had been flirting. It se
emed important that Nell knew Desiree was his sister. That he knew more about her than their brief meetings suggested was probable. He claimed to have read the Crier, which meant he’d read her articles and editorials. It was an open secret she did most of the editorial writing and Thom’s job was to smooth whatever feathers might have been ruffled. Though Nell liked to think she lived an opaque life, just like most people, she also acknowledged that Pelican Bay was on the smaller side of ponds and the person who ran the local paper was, by default, a big fish.

  Nell considered her looks to be in the “no broken mirrors” range—pleasant, but nothing that would turn heads. Thom had insisted he’d watched her every time he saw her on campus and almost had an orgasm when they’d ended up in class together. She’d laughed off his flattery. After seventeen years of marriage, she still had laughed off his insistence she was good-looking. “Be real,” Nell would answer. “You married me for my brains, ambition, and bust size.”

  Vivien had been the beauty in the family. Maggie was the oldest daughter, the second mother who took care of them all; Vivien the cheerleader, the beauty queen; and Nell had been, simply, the last daughter, smart because that was all that was left her. She still remembered her mother’s voice: “You’ll never be the beauty your sister is, so you might as well study.”

  The stab in her heart was still bitter at the memory of graduation, giving her valedictorian speech, with only Maggie and Frank, the brother closest to her in age, sitting in the audience. The rest had chosen to cheer Vivien on as she competed for whatever cheap tiara she was going after, Miss Hog Jowls of Indiana. It wasn’t that Vivien was mean or demanded attention, but she seemed to live in a world that existed between her and the mirror and the stage. Their mother egged her on, as if Vivien’s beauty was the best reflection any of her children could give her.

  Nell glanced at her image in the window as she walked down the deserted hallway. Maybe I wasn’t bad looking at twenty-five, but at forty? All those years spent next to Vivien’s beauty had seeped into the mirror. The blurred image in the dusty school window was more blank than ugly. Filling in with memory, Nell saw a woman above average height at five-eight, her hair swept up in a chignon that was easy and quick. It was still the light chestnut color it always had been. Her mother called it dirty blond, as if blond was so clearly better than brown, even dirty was preferable. Her eyes were blue-gray, only the bare beginnings of laugh lines. She didn’t have Vivien’s jutting cheekbones or Maggie’s wide smile, but her face was regular with a strong chin and the hint of dimples. Maggie told her she needed those dimples otherwise her face was too serious, with the eyes, brow and forehead of someone who read books, and studied.

  Is this what Aaron Dupree found attractive? Then she hastily walked on. Even with her intellect and instincts saying that, if only for a brief flirt, yes, he did, she still found it unreal.

  She and Thom met on a class project. They were both getting their masters in journalism at Columbia. They found they worked well together. Thom claimed that he was smitten the first time she edited him, but Nell remembered a more measured courtship, their togetherness while studying slowly and tentatively turning into romance. When Thom had first asked Nell up to his room, for something clearly more than books, she had turned him down. Not because she didn’t want to, but because serious Naomi Nelligan couldn’t imagine dashing and handsome Thom McGraw wanting more that a quick fling with her. He had asked again, and again, and finally asked, “If I marry you, will you sleep with me?”

  Nell had cynically replied, “Already got the divorce lawyer hired?” Only then did she see the hope—and the subsequent hurt in his eyes. That she could hurt him gave her the courage to say yes.

  No, I’m not very good at playing the sexual game, Nell thought as she left the school, hurrying to her car through the rain. She’d had a few lovers before Thom. Starting with, of course, the boyfriend she had dutifully dated in high school. But when she’d gone off to college she’d easily left him behind. They had done little beyond heavy kissing, which had suited Nell. He’d later written her that he was gay and hoped that she wasn’t scarred for life. She had resisted the temptation to write him back saying, no, no scars, only disappointment in his kissing. The first person that Nell actually had kissed had been Sally, a girlfriend of hers; they were supposedly practicing for the real thing. But Sally was a much better kisser than most of the boys she dated. For a while she was worried that Sally’s expert tongue had ruined her for the sloppy thrusts of boys. There were even a few occasions when she wished Sally would write her a letter saying she was gay.

  She had finally lost, or rather thrown away, her virginity, at a frat party. She had simply picked the candidate that seemed both willing and reasonably sane. It wasn’t painful like she was afraid it might be, but no fireworks went off either. Her first passionate affair had been with one of her professors. He was separated from his wife and they had two children. Nell could look back and see it clearly now—he was using her to fill his loneliness and to enjoy that exquisite attention from a young woman newly in love. He was a skilled lover, ensuring that her pleasure equaled his, teaching her ways to touch and explore.

  He had been a bastard ending it, telling her he loved her and yet making excuse after excuse for not being able to see her save in class. She finally heard through the campus grapevine that he was back living with his wife. Nell got an A in the class even though she hadn’t bothered going to the final exam.

  She hadn’t learned her lesson and repeated the same pattern on her first job, having an affair with the news editor while he was separated from his wife. It, too, had ended, but he at least was decent enough to sit down with her and tell her, and even admit he had been wrong; he was older and should have known better.

  The end of that affair was what prompted her to apply to graduate school and get out of the Midwest.

  Driving back to the office, Nell reflected that even before Thom, her experience hadn’t been extensive. Not bad, though, for the one who wasn’t beautiful. Another bitter wash came over her.

  With Thom, whatever early awkwardness they’d had was made up for with ardor. Until Lizzie announced herself, they’d had quite a randy time in bed. “I’m a married woman, I get to be promiscuous with my husband,” Nell had often told Thom while doing something like unzipping his pants.

  This is not a safe topic to think about, Nell admonished herself as she pulled into the parking lot. That ease and knowing touch was gone. In a flash of anger, she pounded her fist against the steering wheel. With the pouring rain to cover her, she yelled out, “Goddamn it! Five minutes … and you’d still be here.”

  Now she was single, alone, and one man with one glance seemed impossible to handle. She and Thom had once or twice talked about what they would do if something happened to one of them. Go on living, find someone else to love. Occasional flowers on the gravestone is all you owe me, they had told each other. Those words had been easily said in the comfort and belief that it would never come to be.

  “Find someone else to love. How the fuck do I do that?” Nell asked the pouring rain. As her anger ebbed, she admitted she felt a mark of attention to Aaron Dupree, not just appreciation for a handsome man. Safely in her car, she felt the slight tingle of possibility and attraction. He was a handsome man, he seemed interested. She was lonely.

  I’ve barely been a widow a month, Mr. Dupree, she thought. But then she wondered if she was saying that to him or to herself.

  five

  After returning to the Crier, Nell withdrew to her office, afraid her recent anger would be too palpable. Or, worse, her coworkers might read the lust that had flitted through her head. She used the energy to tackle stacks of paperwork. When that energy started to flag, she had to just look at the two phone messages from Tanya Jones to renew it. Just as she was approaching closing time, the end of her stack of paperwork, and her anger, Sheriff Clureman Hickson came knocking on her office doo
r.

  “Miz McGraw, I have a story for you,” he boomed, even though she was close enough to see the gray in his nose hair.

  He had often come to Thom with story ideas, most close to thinly disguised promotions of Sheriff Clureman Hickson. Thom usually managed to find some story angle in it, minimizing the sheriff’s starring role although leaving enough to appease him. Nell left those for Thom to write. She couldn’t help pointing out that the deadly snake the sheriff (with the able help of his deputies) managed to catch on someplace like the very doorstep of the Orphans & Small Dogs Home looked more like a garter snake than a water moccasin. Thom would take the copy and say that there were some times when it might be better not to check the facts.

  Now the sheriff was back with another of his story ideas. Somehow she didn’t think Sheriff Hickson would see the humor if she suggested channeling Thom.

  He took her expressionless face for interest and continued. “Yes, ma’am, blood is thicker than water.” With that pronouncement, he flipped open an oversized piece of paper that Nell recognized as a genealogy chart. His massive pudgy finger stabbed at the top of the sheet. “Turns out I’m descended from Alred Ellington, the master of the Fair Haven Plantation. He’s my great-great-grandfather. Didn’t know I came from such worthy stock, did you?”

  The sheriff didn’t wait for an answer, as if suspecting that Yankee Nell might not think slave owners worth much.

  “His eldest son produced two family lines. One of them led to me, and the other led to a newly discovered cousin of mine.” Here he consulted another piece of paper for her name. “Beatrice Carver. Seems that Miz Carver has done quite well for herself—I’m guessing it was her husband—and she did this chart and wants to connect with her family. This next Saturday, at noon, she’s coming to town to donate the funds to buy a new highway patrol car, one with all the bells and whistles. Now what do you think of that story?”