AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER 18
D.D.
ARE YOU TELLING ME that didn’t bother you?” D.D. asked.
Sheriff Smithers had just pulled into Niche’s town office. Now he killed the engine, stared at her. “What?”
“That girl. The way the mayor and his wife treat her. She’s just a kid. She should be in school, not working as a maid.”
“In Georgia, school is mandatory from six to sixteen. Now, that girl looked old enough to be a teenager to me. Could be she already graduated from some special school, or that she’s homeschooled. You don’t know what you don’t know. And Mayor Howard and his wife... they’ve done a lot for this community. You can’t just assume the worst.”
“I can, too,” D.D. muttered, as she popped open her door. She didn’t like Mayor Howard or his wife. Everything was a little too perfect. She was always suspicious of people whose houses seemed more like set pieces than real homes. And everything about that grand inn, from its wraparound porch outside to the silver coffee service inside... it smacked of pretense. Look here, not there. Admire appearances, then move along before peering beneath.
“There must be a record of the girl,” D.D. said, joining the sheriff on the steps of the town office. “You realize we don’t even know her name?”
“I’ll make some inquiries,” the sheriff offered, “but I can tell you there’s no real dirt on the Counsels. Any legitimate misdeeds would’ve already crossed my desk. For that matter”—the sheriff nodded his head toward the administrative building—“Dorothea, the town clerk, knows everything about everyone. Better yet, she likes to show off she knows everything about everyone. You want to know more about the mayor and his wife, she’s the one to ask.”
D.D. perked up. “Meaning we can kill two birds with one stone.”
“We were due for a break sooner or later.”
—
THE NICHE TOWN OFFICEWAS small, looking more like a white double-wide to D.D. than a traditional government building, but then the town was so tiny maybe this was all it needed.
They walked into the middle of the squat space. To the right was a large open area with chairs lined up against the wall. For town meetings, D.D. would guess. To her left was a raised counter, marking the clerk’s office. An older woman with silver-framed glasses on a long glittering lanyard stood up from her computer to greet them. She wore a pink turtleneck, though D.D. would’ve thought it too warm for such things.
“Dorothea.” The sheriff reached out a hand.
The older woman batted her heavily mascaraed eyes. She had a mass of platinum blond hair arranged in a French twist, and the too-thin build of a woman who’d spent her entire life denying herself dessert for the sake of her girlish figure.
D.D. held out a hand. She didn’t get the same lingering look as the sheriff, but Dorothea was polite enough.
“Sure you heard about the excitement yesterday,” the sheriff began. He’d taken off his hat as soon as they walked through the door. Now, he turned it in his hands. D.D. was starting to recognize his routine: The sheriff liked to approach his constituents with folksy charm. Hat in hand, literally, just one of the neighbors, asking a few questions.
As Dorothea nodded, D.D. decided the sheriff might be onto something. You attract more flies with honey than vinegar, as the saying went.
She’d never been particularly good at that approach, given her own blunt, take-no-prisoners style. She smiled now, forced herself to slow down, make eye contact.
Dorothea appeared momentarily uneasy, so maybe D.D.’s expression wasn’t quite as neutral as she hoped. Probably, even things like smiling took practice.
“We’re interested in some property records,” the sheriff said.
“Well now, Sheriff, of course I want to help. You know I do. But I have a responsibility to this town and the privacy of its citizens.”
“Tax rolls are public domain, Dorothea. Nothing to worry about. We just need to dot some i’s, cross some t’s. This is gonna be a very big investigation and we want to put our best foot forward. Show these Yankees”—he grinned, elbowed D.D.—“we know what we’re doing.”
So that’s how it was going to be. Dorothea beamed at the sheriff. D.D. stopped with the smiling, returned to her more traditional role as bad cop. Or as the case might be, stern Northern cop.
“Which property records, Sheriff?”
“Well, that’s the thing. We don’t exactly know. I’m guessing we’re going to need you to do some fancy database searching. Not that I imagine that’s any problem for you.”
Indeed, Dorothea had already returned to her computer, hands hovering over the keyboard.
“We want to go back... I’m gonna say, fifteen years.” The sheriff nodded, as if that number sounded good enough. “Let’s say homesteads that include at least an acre.”
Dorothea gave him a look. D.D. was guessing, given the rural location, at least an acre was pretty common for property around here.
