Seven Sisters - Earlene Fowler [45]
“What?”
“A full metal jacket. Also, we didn’t find a casing at the crime scene, so they must have taken it with them. Add that together with the switching of the guns and you have a premeditated murder, darlin’. Unless you or one of your family members had a grudge against Mr. Norton, it appears one of his family members most definitely had this planned all neat and pretty or was a pretty quick thinker.” He couldn’t resist adding, “Just like I told you that night.”
“But it doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Why would someone take that chance when all of us are there? They could have killed him when he was out in the fields or in his office alone or any number of better times than when a party is going on. I think you’re stretching the facts to fit your theory.”
His face stayed genial. “You don’t want to face the fact that someone in one of your most prominent families, a family your stepson is marrying into, is nothing but a cold-blooded killer.”
I stood up. “I think this conversation is over.”
He caught me again upstairs in the art section where I was glancing through a new book on Outsider artists from the South.
“Anything worth reading?” he commented from behind me.
I didn’t turn around. “Don’t you think you’d be serving our county better harassing someone who had some genuine involvement in this case?”
“Just one more thing before I take your subtle hint and leave. Aren’t you wondering even just a little who called the paper hours before Mr. Norton was shot to say that there was something going down at Seven Sisters?”
I didn’t answer and in a few minutes I could tell he was gone. I took the Outsider artist book to the front counter where Elvia stood leafing through a book catalog.
“Put this on my account,” I told the clerk working the cash register.
“What’s up with the rhinestone cowboy?” Elvia asked. “You two were really going at it over there.”
“Let’s go outside,” I said.
We sat on the bench in front of her store, and I told her what he said and how I didn’t want to get pulled into this whole mess.
“Looks like you already are, amiga. And what else is wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
Her look could have withered a hundred-year-old rosebush. “This is your hermana, you dope. I’ve known you since second grade. I know when things aren’t right with you.”
I described the happy little scene in the Italian restaurant.
She clucked under her breath, causing me to laugh because she sounded so much like her mother, though I wasn’t stupid enough to say that out loud.
“She wants him back,” she said.
“Dove thinks so, too.”
“Listen to your grandmama, then.”
“And do what?”
“Don’t let her have him.”
“Are you, of all people, telling me to fight for my man? Elvia, that’s the most unliberated thing I’ve ever heard you say. I’m going to report you to the feminist police. They’ll revoke your NOW card.”
She laughed, poking me with one of her red nails. “Benni Harper, feminist or not, if and when I ever decide a man is mine, you can bet mucho dinero that I’ll never let any other woman have him until I’m through with him. If you need it, I have a great book on poisons at the store.”
“Maybe I’d better warn Emory.”
Her smile turned into a tiny frown. “He’s not even close to being important enough for me to poison, so don’t worry about it.”
We made plans to have lunch at her mother’s next week, then I went back inside and reclaimed Scout from his bed in the storeroom. The walk home went quicker than usual since my mind was reluctantly worrying over the case. Who had called the paper hours before the murder, claiming something was going to happen at the Brown estate that night? Did someone know Giles was in danger? Why not warn him directly, then? Had the killer called? No, it didn’t make sense that anyone planning to kill Giles would want a newspaper reporter there. Unless there was some other announcement that was going