She made a beeline for me, shrugging away her companion’s restraining hand and ignoring Bates’s command to halt.

Kanesha looked so angry I thought she was going to strike me, and I jerked myself up from the arm of the sofa and braced myself for an attack.

Instead of hitting me, however, she halted mere inches from me and glared at me. “I’m going to need your help. My idiot boss thinks Mama killed Vera Cassity.”

FOURTEEN

“Deputy Berry.”

Bates’s voice rang out, and Kanesha turned to face him as he strode toward her. He did not look happy.

“I know you’re upset, but it’s not gonna do you any good if you piss off the sheriff.” Bates spoke in a low voice, but he was close enough that I heard every word.

Kanesha sighed. “I know, Bates, I know. Thanks for the reminder. But he’s telling me I can’t work this case. He’s crazy if he thinks my mama killed that woman.”

Bates realized that both Dr. Sharp and I were listening avidly to his conversation with his superior officer, and he motioned for her to follow him to the area near the door.

“This is nuts,” Dr. Sharp muttered as he shoved his hands in his pants pockets.

I nodded in sympathy, but since Bates kept glancing my way, I didn’t dare speak. The doctor nodded back in understanding.

Azalea as the chief suspect in a murder. How bizarre.

Then it hit me.

If the sheriff considered Azalea a suspect, that had to mean he thought he was dealing with a murder, not an accidental death.

I wondered what evidence of homicide the sheriff might have found. I also wondered how competent he was at investigating murder. Usually that duty fell to Kanesha, as chief deputy, or in special cases the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.

Considering the identity of the victim, I thought it highly possible the MBI could be brought in to handle this.

No matter what the sheriff thought, I couldn’t see Azalea as a murderer. I knew she hated Vera with a passion, although I didn’t know why. But Azalea was a woman of strong faith and ironclad principles. She wouldn’t kill a person simply because she hated her.

But I also recalled those words I’d heard not that long ago, from Azalea herself—she hoped the Lord would strike Vera down. Had Azalea considered herself an instrument of God and pushed Vera down the stairs?

Down the stairs.

There was something wrong with that picture. I frowned, forcing my tired brain to recall the scene in that dimly lit staircase.

The door was blocked from the outside, and it opened outward. Azalea was stuck inside because she couldn’t get the door open. She might have been able to get out if she went up to the next floor, however.

She couldn’t do that, I realized, because Vera’s body and her big hoops blocked the narrow stairwell effectively. Azalea would have had to climb over Vera’s body to go either up or down the stairs, and I couldn’t see her doing that.