“Big Holl and Dorcas recanted their statement, as soon as we got Davis Hoffman locked up. But I’ve got ’em on tape, and Hoffman signed an affidavit that he saw them move Lanier Ragan’s body. If I’ve got any say in the matter, they’ll do time.”
“What about Holland Junior? He just goes free?”
“I don’t like it any better than you do, but the best we can do is hope the grand jury indicts him, along with his parents, for concealing a death and hindering the apprehension of a criminal. The concealment carries a ten-year sentence, hindering apprehension is twelve months.”
Hattie looked out the window of the cruiser. They were headed south on Bull Street. He turned left onto East Fifty-Seventh, crossed Abercorn Street, and on the next block, pulled to the curb in front of a redbrick cottage with wrought-iron burglar bars on the windows, and a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary on the front porch.
“What are we doing here?” Hattie asked.
“I thought we might pay a visit to Mavis Creedmore,” Makarowicz said. “I just want to clear up a couple last details that have been bothering me.”
“What makes you think the nasty old bat will talk to you?” Hattie asked.
Makarowicz pointed to the badge clipped to his belt. “Her generation generally has at least a begrudging respect for law enforcement.”
* * *
The detective rang the doorbell and waited. “Who’s that?” The old woman’s voice was muffled by the thick wooden door.
“Tybee police, Miss Creedmore.”
The door opened a crack and Mavis peered out, eyes as hard and black as coffee beans behind thick-lensed glasses. “I don’t live on Tybee and I didn’t call no police.”
“No, ma’am, but this is in regard to the property you formerly owned there.”
“What about it?” Mavis opened the door wider, but glared when she saw her other visitor.
She pointed a bony finger at Hattie. “That one stole my family’s beach house out from under us. She’s got no business standing right here on my porch. I’ll talk to you, but not her.”
“I’ve got as much right to be here as you did when you snuck onto my private property,” Hattie shot back. “You’re lucky I didn’t call the cops on you that night.”
Mavis Creedmore scowled, but she opened the door and stepped out onto the concrete porch. Her sparse white hair had been teased into a pouf that revealed patches of pink scalp. She wore a white short-sleeved blouse, navy-blue slacks, and lace-up black walking shoes.
“What is it you want, then?” she asked Makarowicz. “Be quick about it. I don’t want my neighbors thinking I’m some kind of a criminal like those low-life cousins of mine.”
“It’s about Lanier Ragan’s wallet,” Makarowicz said.
“Never met the woman.”
“But you did find her wallet at your beach house, isn’t that right, Miss Mavis?”
“Not saying I did, not saying I didn’t.”
Makarowicz shook his head. “Miss Mavis, this is serious police business, concerning a homicide that occurred on property owned by your family. Now, would you like to answer my questions here, or would you prefer that I handcuff you and put you in the back of my cruiser, in front of all your neighbors, and take you out to Tybee for questioning at the police station?”
Mavis took a step backward. “You can’t do that. Can you?”
He tapped the handcuffs snapped to his belt. “Would you like to find out?”
“Fine,” the old woman snapped. “Yes. I found that billfold. Might have been a year or so after that girl went missing.”
“And you didn’t think to report it to the authorities?”
“No.”
“And why was that?”
“I found it in the boat shed when I was looking for a crab trap. Holland and them always did leave things in a mess after they’d been out there. My grandfather would have had a conniption if he’d seen the condition they left that house in. How’d I know how it got there? I had no idea what it meant. I took it in the house to look at it, and right then, here comes Big Holl and that useless woman he married. Dorcas. Wasn’t even their weekend to be out there. Didn’t want them to see what I’d found, so I stuck it in that old razor slot in the bathroom wall. And I didn’t think no more about it.”
Makarowicz stared at her in disbelief. “You didn’t think any more about it after her body was discovered? You didn’t wonder how that body got there and who put it there, or how someone would know about that long-disused septic tank?”