The Ranger - Ace Atkins [41]
She dozed off.
Jett Price’s mother was a big woman, so big she could barely fit through the door of her small ranch house out toward Drivers Flat. She wore an enormous housecoat, and fuzzy pink slippers caked with mud, and didn’t seem a bit impressed when Lillie introduced herself as a deputy sheriff and asked if she might come in to talk. Connie Price just turned, not shrugging or changing expression, but just headed back into the darkened house, switching on an overhead light that shined on a table filled with several framed photos of a boy and a girl mixed in with statues of angels and Jesus, the same children that Quinn had seen in the file on the fire.
The school pictures had been paper-clipped to details on their death.
Cakes and cookies and pies, neatly wrapped in cellophane, covered a dining-room table. Big Connie Price pulled out a cigarette from a little cove by the kitchen and lit up, taking a seat by her bounty of food, explaining—talking now for the first time—that she had an event at the church and was running late. “Will this take long?”
“No, ma’am,” Lillie said.
She nodded.
“Very sorry to hear about your family.”
“They were supposed to be with me. Their mother, that’s the one who left ’em with Jett. Jett had no business taking on those children.”
Quinn didn’t know what to say, offering only another “Sorry.”
“Everybody’s sorry,” Connie Price said. “I’d prefer not to discuss this, if it’s all the same. Why are y’all here anyway?”
Lillie said, “There’s some questions about the fire.”
“You mean about how my son could have been so damn almighty stupid to leave a skillet on his cookstove?”
“No, ma’am,” Lillie said. “We were wondering about the relationship your son had with Jill Bullard.”
“He was seeing her.”
“And Keith Shackelford?”
“He was from somewhere abouts in Memphis. They were in the Army together, drinkin’ buddies. My son killed his own children’cause he was drunk. That’s what you want to know?”
“My uncle was Sheriff Beckett,” Quinn said. “He’d taken a personal interest in what happened to your family.”
“How’s that?”
“Did you ever speak to my uncle?”
“He was at the service for the children,” she said, nodding. “He came by twice after that. He was a fine man. I was sorry to hear of his passing.”
“Did he ask you questions about the fire?” Quinn asked.
“No,” Connie Price said, stubbing out her cigarette and checking her watch. “Why would he?”
“I don’t think he was convinced it was an accident.”
“They did an investigation,” Connie Price said. “The fire marshal said things like this happen all the time and not to blame my son. But who else would you blame? He killed his own children.”
“Ma’am,” Lillie said. “Did you know anyone who’d want to do Jett harm?”
“Not like this. Who’d want to kill children?”
“Did my uncle ever give you reason to think he doubted what happened?”
She shook her head.
“Jill Bullard was found dead today,” Lillie said. “She’d been shot.”
Price put one hand to her mouth and placed the other on a chair to steady herself. She reached for the gold cross on her neck and kept her fingers there. She shook her head over and over.
“Could Jett have owed anyone money?” Quinn asked.
“Jett always owed people money. When you get yourself into drinking and drugs, that’s what happens.”
“You recall any names?”
“I really got to be going. I was supposed to be at church twenty minutes ago to help them set up.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Quinn said.
“Do you know anyone we might speak to?” Lillie asked. “Folks who knew Jett or Keith Shackelford or Jill?”
“You can talk to Jett’s ex. She’d be glad to heap some blame on my son. Not that I disagree.”
Quinn helped carry the pies and cookies to Connie