“Robie, there aren’t bodies buried at the Willows, are there? I mean, the Barksdales sell the place and nobody ever sees them again?”
“You kill people and bury them and hope the new owners don’t notice the freshly turned earth? How likely is that?”
“I don’t know how likely it is. I’ve never been to Mississippi.”
“That can’t be it,” he said.
“So what’s your explanation?” she asked irritably.
“I don’t have one.”
“Then don’t just discount mine out of hand. But if something about the Barksdales is connected to what’s going on now, how does that work exactly?”
“We come back to what we talked about before. What if Clancy was blackmailing one of the Barksdales?”
“That would be a motive for his murder.”
Robie sighed. “But all these years later?”
“Maybe the blackmailing didn’t start until recently?”
“That presumes Clancy knew where the Barksdales moved to.”
“Maybe he did.”
“This is getting way too complicated, Jessica.”
“Maybe that’s because we’re making it too complicated. But if Emmitt Barksdale is hanging around here, then he might know all about it.”
“Right, but we don’t know where he is.”
“You said he was sneaking around the Willows. But the woman at the courthouse said she saw him coming out. So it’s not like he’s in complete hiding. He might surface again.”
Robie said nothing for a few moments, and then his brow cleared as an idea obviously hit him. He pulled out the photo of Wendell and the children.
“Wendell was in his midsixties when he died.”
“Okay.”
“And Henry Barksdale was roughly the same age. Same generation as my dad.”
“Wait a minute, are you saying…?”
Robie held up the photo. “What if Henry Barksdale was the one taking the picture?”
Chapter
66
REEL STARED OVER at him, her brows elevated. “That’s a leap of logic, isn’t it?”
“Not so much.”
“So do you mean Sherman Clancy cut a deal with Barksdale? Give me enough stuff I can blackmail Nelson Wendell with, and I’ll let you alone?”
“Well, Wendell probably had a lot more money.”
“But Barksdale would be a fool to trust Clancy.”
“Maybe he didn’t have much choice. And Pete said his dad let Wendell use his shack. He thought at first for women. Maybe they never intended for Clancy to know what they were really doing. But he found out.”
“Now that makes more sense.”
“And I always wondered about the connection between Nelson Wendell and Clancy. They didn’t move in the same circles. Hell, Wendell didn’t even live in Cantrell. But Wendell and Barksdale, now they moved in the same circles. So maybe Barksdale arranged all of this after he found out he and Wendell shared a thing for kids. That could be how Wendell and Clancy hooked up. Through Barksdale.”
“Or maybe Clancy was never supposed to know Wendell was even involved.”
“Right. That’s more likely. But Clancy was enterprising, saw his chance and took it.”
“But you found out that Barksdale didn’t leave Cantrell until a couple years after you did.”
“Maybe that’s when Clancy started to put the squeeze on him. He had pictures. It would be the blue-blood Barksdale’s ruin. Hell, maybe he sold the house in order to pay off Clancy.”
“This is something we need to find out for sure.”
Robie pulled out his phone. “Well, we know a place that’s good at gathering information.”
Blue Man answered his phone on the second ring.
Robie patiently explained the situation and asked for what he needed.
Robie could hear the man jotting down no-doubt-meticulous notes. When he was finished Blue Man said, “Interesting theory.”
“I hope you can confirm it as more than a theory.”
“I’ll get right on it.”
“And thanks for sending Jessica down here. I wouldn’t be talking to you if she hadn’t been around to save my butt.”
“I like to plan for all contingencies. And Robie?”
“Yes?”
“I can understand why you’re doing this, even if I don’t agree with it.”
“Thank you for that,” replied a surprised Robie.
“My relationship with my father was something less than ideal, too.”
He clicked off.
Robie looked at Reel as he put his phone away. “He’s on the case, but we can’t rely just on that. We need to work the angles we can, too.”
“Starting with?”
“Sherman Clancy’s first wife. She was in court when my father was arraigned.”
“Do you know where she lives?” Reel asked.
“No, but I’m sure we can find out.”
“Even if she knows something do you really expect her to admit it to us?”
“Like you said before, it’s all in how you ask, Jess.”
* * *
Cassandra Clancy had never remarried. She lived about twenty miles from Cantrell.
As Robie and Reel drove up the cobblestone drive and pulled to a stop in front of the large, well-appointed two-story home with a BMW sedan parked out front, Reel said, “Looks like she got her pound of flesh from her husband in the divorce.”
“Hopefully, she managed her cash better than her ex did.”
They got out and went up to the door.
Robie knocked, and they heard footsteps heading their way.