Chapter 14 #2
“You got that right. Look, I hate to speak ill of the dead,” he began, but something in his eyes gave away his true feelings, and he let loose, “but Billy—he was no good. I mean it. Big-time trouble. A real pain in the backside. And I’m not the only one who got into legal trouble with him.
Billy, he wasn’t right. Nope, not right at all. ”
“What do you mean, ‘not right.’”
“Didn’t seem to have any decency. Didn’t know the difference between right and wrong, if you ask me.
” Scowling, he glanced up at the sky to squint at the early-afternoon sun, as if gauging how many hours of daylight remained.
“I wish Daria was here. She’d tell you. The way she found him ogling her.
Indecent, that’s what it was.” Childers rubbed the stubble on his jaw, and his eyes narrowed.
“Oh. Wait. Here she is now. She can tell you herself.” Gravel crunched behind them, and Nikki turned to see a big, black SUV pull up to a space in front of the garage.
The dogs streamed out of their houses to start their racket again.
Another word from Childers and they stopped, but stared expectantly at the slim, tanned brunette who stepped from behind the wheel.
Wearing tight jeans, a plaid shirt, and sunglasses, she opened the lift gate of the Suburban, which was piled high with grocery sacks and bags of dog food.
She walked up to them, and Nikki noticed her necklace and the small gold cross that dangled from a matching gold chain. “What’s going on?” she asked.
Childers made quick introductions and added, “… she’s here about Billy Huber.”
“That old lech.” Daria Childers gave an involuntary shudder. “He was always prowlin’ around, lookin’, ya know. And things around here went missing.”
Nikki questioned, “You think he stole them?”
“Wouldn’t put it past him,” Daria said.
“Did you ever catch him?”
“Heck, no,” Childers said. “He was too slippery for that. And it was before we had a security system set up. I mean I’ve lived here all my life and never needed one. But after Daria caught him watching her, we changed all that.”
Nikki registered the camera mounted high over the kennels.
“He was a pervert,” Daria said. “A real weirdo.”
“How so?” Nikki asked.
“One time I was out working in the garden, over there, just this side of the orchard.” Daria pointed to a tilled area on the far side of the house, where a neat row of shoots was just appearing.
“It was hotter’n than all get-out that afternoon, and I was just in my bra and shorts.
I looked up from hoeing and caught him standing on our side of the fence, watching me.
He had a rake in his hands like maybe he was gonna try and get some peaches off our tree—steal them, y’know—but then I caught his eye, and he just smiled that weird smile of his, and he ran his hands up and down the handle of the rake, real slow, then rimmed his tongue around his lips.
Ugh.” She held Nikki’s gaze. “If you ask me, he was a psycho.”
“What did you do?”
“Told him to get off our property or I’d call the sheriff.”
“Did he leave?”
“No. He just laughed at me and kept running his damned fingers up and down the shaft of the rake. I got the meaning, all right.”
Otis nodded, his eyes narrowing, added, “I came home from work about then for dinner, saw what was going on, and told him to get off our land and keep his eyes to himself and his dick in his pants and not to come back.”
“Did he leave then?”
“Oh, yeah, he took off then. Probably because I was carrying my granddad’s double-barrel Winchester with me.
He couldn’t get away fast enough. Scrambled over the fence and never came back that I know of.
” Otis rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean, nothin’ I can prove, but like I said, we did put up a couple of cameras, but we found them disabled not long after. ”
“You didn’t fix them?”
“Nah.” Otis shook his head. “By that time, things had cooled off with Huber, and between the dogs and the cameras being mounted and visible, I figured that would keep people away. We got into a lawsuit over the fence line when Huber built one on my property, but the court forced him to move it, and from that time on, we didn’t have much to do with each other. ”
Nikki asked, “And neither of you heard or saw anything the night he died?”
“I was out of town,” Daria said. “I work for a lumber company, and that week we had a corporate retreat in Atlanta.”
“And you?” she asked Otis.
“I was here, but as I told the cops, I didn’t hear or see nothin’ out of the ordinary. I wish I could tell you more, but I can’t, and I know it’s not the Christian thing to say, but I’m glad Huber’s gone,” Otis said. He added, “Whoever took him out did the world a favor.”
If Nikki expected Daria to take the edge off her husband’s words, she was disabused of that idea because Otis Childers’s wife seemed to be in complete agreement.
“He was a real freak,” she said, “that’s all I know.”
“Did either of you know Mavis Greenlee?”
“Oh, yes!” Daria brightened for a second, then sighed as if suddenly remembering what had happened to Mavis. “A shame about her. She was a good woman. Very involved with the church.”
“You’re a member?”
“All my life.” She glanced at her husband, then nudged him with her elbow. “But Otis here, he doesn’t attend.”
“Daria,” he warned, “you know I’m a believer.” His voice was stern, and he explained to Nikki, “Not that it’s any of your business, but God and I, we have our own private arrangement.”
“That’s so arrogant.” Little lines formed around the corners of Daria’s mouth, and Nikki guessed this wasn’t the first time she and her husband had been involved in this argument. “And arrogance is a sin. Proverbs 16:19 says—”
“Don’t you go quoting Scripture and verse to me, woman,” he muttered, his voice low, almost a growl.
But Daria didn’t back down. She didn’t quote from the passage again, but she lowered her sunglasses and arched one eyebrow as if to remind her husband that he was going too far.
“I think we’re done here,” she said shoving her shades back onto the bridge of her straight nose.
“I’m very upset about Mavis, and I’m over all this talk about that miserable piece of …
that horrid man. As I said, he was a real whack job.
Dangerous.” Motioning to the SUV with its lift gate gaping open, she added, “Otis, you can unload the car.” To Nikki she added, through tight lips, “Have a blessed day,” before turning on her heel and, with her back ramrod stiff, stalking quickly past the dozing cat and into the house.
“Daria’s right,” Otis said, though he still seemed to be seething. At his wife? Or Nikki? She wasn’t sure. He cast a furious look at the house, scowled, then turned his gaze back to Nikki. “We are done here.”