The redbrick police barracks was at the corner of Habersham and Oglethorpe. James made it there in under ten minutes.
He was worried about his niece. On the phone, she’d said something about finding a body, out at Beaulieu, and about being arrested and charged for breaking and entering. Oh yes, and possibly homicide. She was hysterical and, he fervently hoped, overreacting. Although it wasn’t like Weezie to overreact.
He pushed the heavy plate-glass doors open. A sleepy-eyed black woman looked up from her perch behind the front counter. At one time, this had been a high varnished-mahogany desk, and the face behind the desk would have been one of the meaty-faced Finnegans, or maybe BoBo Kuniansky. But the Finnegans had gotten out of police work, and the last he’d heard, BoBo Kuniansky was selling real estate at Hilton Head Island. This woman was someone he’d never seen before. And she was separated from the world by an inch-thick shield of bullet-proof glass. James sighed. This was not the Savannah of his youth.
The black woman told him he needed to see Detective Bradley. Upstairs. The elevator took a long time. A heavyset man in a brown short-sleeved shirt seemed to be the only person in the detective’s office.
“Are you Detective Bradley?” James asked.
“I’m Jay Bradley. You Father Foley?”
“Just James, if you don’t mind.”
“I had you for freshman English. At Benedictine,” Bradley said. “Class of eighty. I guess you don’t remember.”
“It was a long time ago,” James said apologetically. “And I only taught the two years. Were you good at English?”
“Nah, I sucked,” Bradley said. “You wanta see Eloise?”
“I do,” James said quickly.
Bradley gestured toward the door opposite where he was standing. “She’s in there. Kinda shook up.”
“Weezie would never kill anyone,” James said, his voice sharp, authoritarian, like the former English teacher.
“Yeah,” Bradley said. “Whatever. In a little while, we’re gonna book her, and I’m gonna go home and get some sleep. I’m wiped out.”
“Book her?” James could not keep the alarm from his voice. “Weezie’s not a murderer. You can’t keep her overnight.”
Bradley shrugged. “We keep her until a judge says otherwise,” he said. “You’re a lawyer, right? You know all this stuff.”
Actually, he didn’t. But he knew somebody who knew criminal law backward and forward. Did he dare call Jonathan at this hour? Their friendship was still so new, so tentative. He winced. But this was Weezie. And blood was thicker than water.
His niece was huddled in a chair in the corner of what looked like a conference room. It was Savannah, midsummer, which meant every public building in town had the mean average temperature of a meat locker. This room was freezing, and she had her arms wrapped around her chest, her knees drawn up in a fetal position. Her face was red and blotchy from crying, and her arms were covered in red welts.
“Uncle James!” It was a whisper, really. She stood up, and he folded her into his arms, the way he’d done when she was six and had scraped her knee riding her bike.
“Weezer,” he said, rubbing her arms. They were like ice. “It’s all right, Weezer. I’m here. I’m here.”
He got her calmed down finally. Went to the break room, got her a cup of coffee and a package of Little Debbie snack cakes. The Little Debbies were actually for him. Terrible habit.
James draped his windbreaker around Weezie’s shoulders. She was pale and shivering. “Tell me what happened,” he said, once she’d warmed up a little.
“Caroline’s dead,” Weezie said. “They think I killed her.”
“I know,” he said.
She covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh my God!”
“What?” James leaned over, alarmed. “What?”
“BeBe,” Weezie said. “I just left her there. At Beaulieu. And Jethro. And the truck. They made me get in the police cruiser. BeBe was sound asleep. My God. She’ll think I was kidnapped.”
“No, she won’t,” James said, relieved that this particular crisis could be averted. “She called me right after you did. She saw the cops putting you in the cruiser, and one of your dealer buddies told her what had happened. Or, at least, what they thought had happened.”
“That I’d broken into Beaulieu, stolen a bunch of stuff, and shot Caroline,” Weezie said. “That’s what everybody thinks.”
“BeBe knows you didn’t do anything like that,” James said, patting Weezie’s hand. “She drove the truck home. Jethro’s with her. She just wanted to make sure I knew what had happened.”
The door opened all the way. Bradley poked his head in. Coughed officiously. “Time to go.”
“Go?” Weezie looked confused.
“Jail,” Bradley said. “That’s how it works when you get charged with murder.”