Рита Браун - A Hiss Before Dying

Cooper shook her head. “We got as much as we could. By the way, MaryJo died last night from her internal injuries from the crash, plus the wound from Darrel when he shot her. Damn fool, she’s in the car, door crushed against her and she’s still firing at us. Insane. Gone.” Coop tapped her forehead.

“Conscious?”

“In and out but we did find out a few things. Bruce, her husband, swore he knew nothing. Thought all the money came from her investment business.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know. Rick and I talked about it, well, everyone on the force has talked about it. Rick says if wives don’t know when husbands are crooks, is it not possible that husbands don’t know about their wives? As long as the money rolls in, would you be suspicious?”

“I don’t know. If people came in and out of the house at odd hours, I would be. She fooled us. She could have fooled him.”

“She fooled us to the tune of six million dollars, give or take, over the last three years. She had a bursting account.”

“My God!” Harry exclaimed.

“Selling illegal animal parts, feathers, fur, ground-up bones, is a huge worldwide business and she was the nerve center for the East Coast. She and Panto supplied everyone and anyone, and a big part of the business flowed from the tribal wannabes. The people who declare themselves to be of that blood but have inherited no regalia or implements from their ancestors.”

“Do you think they are tribal members?”

“Not really,” Cooper honestly answered. “Perhaps a few, but remember that white woman who declared herself African American to get a job? People do weird things especially if they believe it confers status. All I know is we now have records from her computer and there will be hundreds of arrests in the original thirteen colonies. People who don’t get wind of this and run away anyway.” Cooper slumped in her chair.

“So she and Panto were in business?” Harry asked.

“Yes, but she was in effect the major stockholder. We’ve got the financial records. Our computer whizzes really are unbelievable. They cracked her codes and we all read the financial statements with our mouths hanging open. The money!”

“So do you have a record of everyone she did business with?”

“Yes, but many of these accounts are under code names like Gray Wolf, Black Bear, that sort of thing. In many instances, the transfer was in cash. She was nothing if not slick.”

“Did she say why she killed Panto?”

“No. She betrayed very little except to say her work involved religion.”

“What?”

“No kidding. She could only say she was supplying goods for religious ceremonies.” Cooper drank a bit more of the coffee, which wasn’t bitter since it hadn’t been sitting that long.

“How can that be?”

“Consider Quakers. Nonviolent people. They can choose not to fight in a war. Yes, they have to register as conscientious objectors but their wishes not to kill are respected. Or the Amish. There are things they can do or not do that the rest of us can’t. This honoring of different faiths, if you will, is even more pronounced for tribes. They have treaties from the United States government allowing them their own government.”

“A recipe for problems.” Harry sighed. “Then again, look what we’ve gone through here just to get our Virginia tribes recognized by that same Federal government that herded people onto reservations.”

“It is confusing. Do I think people are taking advantage of this? No. A few are and the really smart ones like MaryJo do more than take advantage. Once the media gets hold of this it will stir a political hornet’s nest. A lot of MaryJo’s customers are Asian, recently moved here, as well as people from parts of the world we regard as primitive. They believe in spirits and pacifying those spirits. Some of the things, shrunken whale penises, no kidding, are ground up and used as aphrodisiacs.”

“For men, I assume.” Harry started to laugh.

“Well, I’m not going to take it.” Cooper laughed, too.

“It’s a crazy world.” Harry sighed.

“It is and our good old American way allows a certain amount of gaming the system. Remember the First Amendment. There can be no national religion. Mostly it’s good and has served us well. When it doesn’t you have to scratch your head, but remember, Harry, there are people here who believe the earth is flat.”

“Good Lord,” Harry whispered. “Back to all this, you think Panto wanted more money?”

“I do. And I think you were targeted because you shot your mouth off about contraband. Granted, you did not meddle, but somehow you were onto this in your own lopsided way.”

Harry demurred. “I didn’t really figure it out, it just seemed likely, given we found eagle feathers, a cage. Which reminds me, Pierre Rice.”

“We think he was working for the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. They were well aware of game being poached off our national parks and they were also well aware that this was a billion-dollar industry, much of the goods being sold in the U.S. Pierre, bit by bit, was closing in. He narrowed it down to the big rigs carrying contraband from the mid-South to all directions. First, he looked for big box trucks. But these folks are more subtle than that. They filled new cars being delivered with cages, boxes, et cetera, all cleaned up, of course, and hauled them to Afton pass on Route 64. There MaryJo, Panto, and the people who worked for them, we’re still arresting drivers, met the rig, transferred the contraband.”

“The dead driver’s face?”

“Don’t know. The medical examiner believes he was torn up by an animal. Possibly he realized Pierre was tailing him and he had something really valuable, stopped to free the animal or bird and the creature took his revenge.”

“Good,” Harry replied.

“MaryJo placed all the blame for the murders on Panto before she died. Said Panto killed Pierre, shot at you. Panto had killed Pierre at old Cloverfields, crossed the creek, and dumped him at Sugarday. Granted she was loaded on painkillers, but I wouldn’t believe all that anyway. She proved herself an excellent liar and, if you will, a good businesswoman.”

“Ever find Liz’s Sioux Indian dress, the one that hung on the wall of the shop?”

“No. I have no doubt it is in some rich person’s collection. Maybe in time. I’m amazed we’ve pieced together this much. And in some ways I think Bruce may be telling the truth because if he was in on his wife’s criminal business he would probably have destroyed her computer.”

“Didn’t think of that.”

“Pierre was very close,” Cooper said. “But we don’t know why he went to Cloverfields. Was he lured there?”

“The Rices are descended from the Cloverfields Rices.” Harry folded her hands on the table. “Panto must have known about the chits. Lured him in some way.”

“MaryJo swore Panto robbed Liz’s store for his own personal profit. Anything she could pin on him she did.”

“She wasn’t stupid until the end.”

Cooper nodded.

The phone rang. Harry jumped up to answer the old wall phone that she adored. “Harry here.”

“Harry, can you come over to St. Luke’s?” Reverend Jones’s deep, deep voice asked.

“Sure. What’s up?”

“The Taylors’ grave has been opened. You need to see this.”

“I’ll be right there. Coop will be with me.”

—

Within twenty minutes, Harry, Cooper, Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker stood over the opened graves, spades resting on their sides at the piled earth.

“I told you I smelled old bones,” Tucker, self-satisfied, bragged.

“That pearl is as big as a pigeon’s egg!” Harry gasped.