“We were hoping you’d stop by,” she said with more excitement than was probably appropriate. “I’ve made some sweet tea. Come on in and make yourselves at home. Harold moves to the sunroom after lunch to avoid the sun.”
She ushered us through the front hall and into a kitchen that smelled like lemon and butter and looked like it hadn’t been updated since the nineties. There was rooster wallpaper border along the soffit. A collection of ceramic salt and pepper shakers sat on a shelf above the stove that spanned at least three decades of vacation souvenirs, and more roosters along the tops of the cabinet and hidden among appliances on the countertops. It was a lot of roosters.
“Harold,” she called toward the back of the house. “Sheriff’s here. Put on your shoes and come be useful.”
Harold appeared in the doorway, and even at seventy-one he still carried himself with the straight-backed economy of movement that the army put into a man and never fully took out. He was lean and weathered, with a face like a walnut—deeply lined and harder than it looked. What was left of his hair was cropped close and silver, and his eyes were the pale, steady blue of a man who’d spent twenty-five years making assessments that other people’s lives depended on. He wore khaki shorts and a faded VFW T-shirt, and his binoculars hung around his neck as though they were part of the dress code.
“I was wondering when you’d get around to me,” he said to Jack. “Took you long enough, son.”
“Mr. Pruitt,” Jack said.
Ruthann set glasses of sweet tea in front of us without asking and then inspected the butterfly bandage on my cheek with a critical eye.
“You need to change out that bandage,” she said, looking at my cheek.
“I’ll take care of it once we get back,” I told her.
“Uh-huh.” She was already rummaging in a drawer near the stove. “I’ve got a fresh bandage and Neosporin right here.”
I sighed. There would be no getting around this, so I sat quietly and let her play nurse.
“Mr. Pruitt, we’re canvassing the neighborhood about some activity at the funeral home this morning,” Jack said. “From your porch on the corner, you’ve got a good angle of the driveway. Did you see a van pull into the property around ten thirty, quarter to eleven?”
“I saw it before it pulled in,” Harold said. He lowered himself into a kitchen chair with deliberate precision. “I was on the porch with my crossword and binoculars, watching a pair of goldfinches on the power line, when a navy blue van came down Catherine of Aragon and did a couple turns around the block. Caught my attention right away. Then they turned into the driveway. Ford Transit, 2019 or thereabouts based on the body style.
“The plates caught my eye first,” Harold continued. “I zoomed in on the Virginia tags, but was something over the numbers. Looked like tape.”
He reached into the pocket of his shorts and pulled out a small spiral notebook, the kind you could buy for a dollar at any convenience store. He flipped it open to a page with neat, angular handwriting that looked like it had been trained on army field reports.
“I took the liberty of making notes. My memory isn’t what it used to be. Let’s see. The van pulled up the driveway at 10:47 a.m.”
Jack leaned forward. “What did you see?”
“The tall one got out first. He was the one closest to me, so I got a decent look. Maybe six-foot, slim build, clean shaven. Light skinned but not white, if you know what I mean. Maybe Italian or Middle Eastern. Mid-thirties, maybe younger. Strong jaw, straight nose, dark hair under the ball cap.”
Harold’s eyes were steady and precise, delivering the information the way he’d been trained to deliver a field report. “He had a tattoo on the side of his neck, below the ear. Looked pretty intricate.”
“What about when the door opened? Could you see inside the van?”
“Some. The angle was right for it and I still had the binoculars up.” Harold turned a page in his notebook. “There was a work shirt folded on the console, dark blue, like a uniform or a mechanic’s shirt. It had yellow lettering over the pocket.” He looked down at his notebook and read directly from it. “Tidewater Logistics.”
“That’s great info,” Jack said. “What about the second guy?”
“Couldn’t see him as well, but he was short and stocky. Had a stocking cap pulled over his head, and he had a scar along his jaw that was a real doozy. Then he and the guy in the passenger seat went to the back of the van,” Harold said. “They opened the rear doors, and they pulled something out and carried it around the side of the building toward the front.”
“Did you see what they were carrying?” Jack asked.
“I assumed it was a delivery. You’re a funeral home.” Harold looked at me without apology. “People carry things in and out of your building all day long. But I couldn’t see what they were carrying from the porch. The van doors blocked my visual. It looked heavy though. Nothing about it seemed unusual except the covered plates. But I saw on the news it was a body. I should’ve checked it out.”
“You had no way of knowing,” I assured him.
“Mmhm.” Harold didn’t look like he entirely believed that, but he let it go.
The kitchen was quiet for a moment. Ruthann set a plate of lemon squares on the table and put her hand on Harold’s shoulder, and I watched something pass between them that didn’t need words—the understanding of two people who’d spent a lifetime together and could communicate whole conversations in the pressure of a palm.
“Those men will come back,” Harold said. He took a lemon square from the plate and bit into it. “Men who plan routes and cover plates and move that clean don’t do one job and disappear. They’re on somebody’s payroll, and they’ll do whatever that somebody tells them to do next.”
“We’re expecting them to,” Jack said.
