A Deadly Affair at Bobtail Ridge (18 page)

Not only are the boys not stirring in the barn, but Alvin Carter is lying on his sleeping bag snoring like he doesn't have a care in the world. The boys are piled up on the straw, Buster sprawled out like he's been pushed over and is lying where he fell, and Jimmy curled into a ball. “Rise and shine,” I say.

Alvin snorts and half rises, shaking his head. “Damn, Chief Craddock, you interrupted a pretty good dream.”

I laugh. “You can go back to sleep if you want to. It's these boys I'm after.”

He scrambles off the sleeping bag and stretches. “No, once I'm awake that's the end of it. Besides, I don't want to miss the action.”

The boys aren't so quick to rouse, and when they finally stand up, they're as surly as bears. Before I unlock the door to the stall they're in, I go over and close the barn door so they don't get a notion to run away.

I open the paper sack I've brought with me and bring out cups and the thermos of coffee and sweet rolls. “You can use the toilet in the tack room,” I say, “and then come back here and help yourself to breakfast.”

Both boys follow the instructions. As I figured, they aren't any more able to resist the lure of Loretta's sweet rolls than any of the rest of us.

When Buster has polished off two of the rolls, he says, “We're entitled to a phone call.”

“You're entitled to squat,” I say. “You're entitled to keep still and answer my questions.”

“I'm going to sue you,” Buster says.

“Go right ahead. But first, tell me what you boys were up to last night.”

“Not until I get my lawyer.”

“Okay, Jimmy, it looks like Buster isn't going to talk. Tell me, how much did the man who put you up to this say he was going to pay you?”

“He said . . . ow!” He flinches away as Buster punches him in the side.

“I tell you what. If you two come clean about who put you up to this, and what they wanted you to do, you can walk out of here and never hear another word about it. If you don't, I'll be taking you to the jail and let you sit around and think about it while I call your folks and tell them I found you breaking and entering.”

“We didn't break nothing,” Jimmy whines.

Buster glances at Jimmy but moves his attention right back to me. He's assessing the chances that he'll come out of this with the upper hand and realizing that whoever put him up to this is not going to bail him out or even acknowledge the boys.

“Son of a bitch,” he says. I don't take the words personally. He means the situation, not me.

“What is it you two were supposed to do here?” I say.

Jimmy would make a terrible criminal. He glances at Buster's pocket, so I know exactly where to look.

“Buster, empty out your pockets.”

“No way.”

“Here or at the station in front of your folks. Your choice.”

He swears again and pulls a plastic sandwich bag out of his jeans pocket. In it are a handful of big pills. He throws the bag on the floor.

“What the hell?” Alvin Carter says. “Pick that up and hand it over.”

“Doesn't matter.” I reach down and pick it up. “What are these?”

“I don't know,” Buster says.

“Then why do you have them?”

Jimmy has been shifting from one foot to the other. I can see he's had it with keeping things to himself. “Buster, tell him!”

“Damn! There goes five hundred bucks.”

“Somebody was going to pay you five hundred dollars to give pills to Jenny Sandstone's horses?”

Jimmy nods.

Alvin looks like he could punch these boys and never feel a thing.

“Come here.” I beckon to the two boys.

Mahogany and Blackie have been watching the proceedings as if they were thinking of going to law school. I take the boys over to the two horses. “Look at these horses.”

Buster grumbles deep in his throat.

“Why would you want to hurt them? They can't fight back. They don't know what you'd be doing to them.”

“It's just a horse,” Buster says with a sneer.

“A horse is worth a lot more than your sorry hide,” Alvin says.

“So who put you up to it?” I say.

“A guy I know. Jett Borland.”

“How do you know him?”

“I don't see how that's any of your business.”

“You're right. It's going to be the business of the Bobtail Police Department somewhere down the line when you and Jett Borland are cooking up methamphetamine together and you get caught.”

“Meth!” Jimmy looks at Buster like he's suddenly covered in cockroaches.

“I don't know what you're talking about. All I know is he asked me to do him a favor and said he'd give me $500. He said Jenny Sandstone sent his daddy to prison and he wanted to get back at her.”

“Did he also have you open the gate and let the horses out a couple weeks ago?”

“Maybe.”

“And bring a big old timber rattler in here?”

Buster's horror at those words has to be genuine. He turns pale. “Not me. Not a chance. Don't get me anywhere near a snake. No sir, not for any amount of money.”

Borland must have done that little trick himself.

“But you did let the horses out?”

“I didn't figure that would do any harm. Jett said it was supposed to be a warning.”

“I'm going to take you boys down to the station and put together a statement for you to sign.”

“Now wait a minute,” Buster says. He's sweating now. The idea of the snake spooked him, and now he's losing control of the situation. “If Borland finds out I ratted on him, he'll kill me.”

“You mean that seriously? You're really scared he'll kill you?”

He squirms. “I just know he's not going to like it and . . .”

“Don't worry. He's already in enough trouble as it is. I just need your signature as insurance. I'll try not to have to use your statement.”

I start to herd them out the door, and then I stop. “Let me ask you one more thing. Did you by any chance smash a window on Main Street the other night?”

“What the heck would we do that for?”

“You tell me.”

“If somebody says we did that, they're lying,” Buster says.

CHAPTER 24

“A key? What do you want a key to Mamma's house for?”

“Don't ask questions. I'm in a hurry. I'll tell you later.”

Jenny must get the drift of my mood, because she struggles to her feet, goes to her purse, and hands me a key. “I could go with you.”

“No, you can't. I'll be back later and I'll explain everything.”

Eddie Sandstone is waiting for me when I drive up to his mother's house.

“Come on in,” he says when I open the door, as if he were the one wielding the key.

“We don't have to stay long,” I say. “I have a couple of questions I want to ask you.”

“At least I can offer you a cup of coffee,” he says.

I can't argue with that. We end up sitting in the kitchen over dainty cups of coffee. Eddie complains that his mother didn't have “real mugs, just these skimpy little teacups.”

“What is it you want to know?” he says.

“For starters, I wouldn't mind knowing what happened between you and Jenny to make her so dead-set against you.”

He tips his coffee cup back and forth, watching the coffee slosh. “I could say that's between Jenny and me, but she seems to like you, and quite frankly it would be awfully nice if somebody could work out things between us.”

“I can't promise anything, but I would like to help Jenny if I can.”

He nods and thinks for a minute before he looks up at me. “It's simple, but not a pretty picture. Jenny was always jealous of me—plain, flat-out jealous. I had the good fortune to be a guy who got along with people in high school. Was pretty good at football and baseball, was in a lot of clubs, and made good grades. Poor Jenny couldn't seem to buy a break. She was smart, but she was a mess. What do they call it? A wallflower. Didn't know how to dress or fix herself up. Hardly had any friends. All she ever did was study. I tried to ease the way for her, introducing her to friends and whatnot, but it never took hold. She resented the hell out of me.”

“So you're saying she still holds a grudge because you were popular in high school and she wasn't?” I don't try to hide my skepticism.

He shrugs and opens his hands as if to offer me to make my own assessment. “That's the only explanation I have.”

“And she agrees with you that that's the problem?”

“She won't talk to me. Our mamma said it was best if I let Jenny come to me. I guess she never realized how stubborn Jenny is.”

Something tells me there's a lot more to the story, but I'm not sure how to get to it. “Why did you move to Temple?”

He shrugs. “Job opportunities were better there. I make a good living in Temple.”

“Somebody told me you were supposed to get a football scholarship to SMU. What happened with that?” I know the basic answer, but I want to hear his version.

His smile tightens. “That was a sad situation. I take full responsibility for my actions, but I still think SMU made a big mistake not looking at all the facts.”

“What did they overlook?”

He leans forward, forearms on his knees, cradling the cup of coffee in his hands. “Nobody ever asked me why I hit Otis Greevy. If they'd known the whole story, they might have excused me for hitting him.”

“And what would that story be?”

He puts his cup down and shakes his head. “We don't need to go over old territory. It's long since past.”

“I'd like to hear it.”

He sighs. “Greevy said something nasty about my daddy.”

“What did he say?”

“I don't know if Jenny ever told you, but our daddy walked out on us in the summer the year I graduated from high school, and everybody in town knew it. Greevy was working as a carpenter on the same crew as Daddy and me.” His lip curls. “Greevy was a smart-ass. One day he made a joke he thought was funny. Said he guessed my daddy got himself hooked up with another woman. I didn't like him talking that way. My daddy wasn't like that, and besides, it didn't reflect well on my mamma, so I hit him.” He holds his hands up in surrender. “I admit I hit him harder than I should have. He had every right to call the police. Like I said, I take full responsibility. But you see what I mean about SMU not getting the full story? If they'd looked into it, they would have understood. In the end, Greevy dropped the charges, so even he knew that I had every reason for hitting him.”

The way he spins it, he sounds justified, if not innocent—but he neglected to mention that he hit Greevy with a shovel, not his fists.

“What do you think happened to your daddy? Why did he leave?”

He toys with his empty coffee cup. “I wish I knew. Not a day goes by I don't wonder where he ended up.”

“Right after your mamma had her stroke, she asked me if I might be able to find him. Have you had any contact with him over the years?”

“No sir. Believe me, if I had, my mamma would have been the first to know.”

“You have any idea where he might have gone? Did he ever mention wanting to travel somewhere? Did he have dreams of the big city? Or some other country?”

He chuckles and shakes his head. “You know how kids are. They don't pay much attention to their parents as people.” He gets up abruptly and takes his coffee cup to the sink and washes it out.

“Was he ever in the service?”

“Not that I know of. Maybe there's some information in Mamma's stuff. If Jenny will let you go through it.”

“Where was he from originally?”

“He grew up on a farm forty miles east of here. Middle of nowhere.”

I know that territory and can't imagine what they would have farmed there. It's as poor as land can get. “One more thing. You ever hear that your daddy was married before?”

He's as startled as Jenny was. “No way. What gave you that idea?”

“Something your mamma said when she asked me to look for him.”

He walks over to the window overlooking the backyard and peers out. “You actually think you might be able to find my daddy?” he says, without turning to look at me.

“You never know. There are all kinds of ways to look for people through the Internet that didn't exist until the last ten years or so. It doesn't sound to me like anybody ever made a big effort to find him, and I can be persistent when I go after something.”

He turns back around, glaring at me. “If you're wondering why Mamma didn't look for him, it's because she thought he'd be back. By the time we realized he was gone for good, I don't think she knew how to look. She didn't have a lot of time to spend on it. She had to make a living, and she wanted to help me with college expenses, and Jenny was still at home. . . .”

“Did you consider going to SMU and going out for football without the scholarship?”

“That was way too expensive. I went to Bobtail Junior College. Didn't graduate, though. It was a waste of my time. My daddy didn't have a college education, and he did all right, so I figured I could, too.”

I take my cup to the sink. “I'll be calling if you if I think of anything else you might remember about your daddy leaving.”

“Feel free.”

“I have one more question for you. What kind of car do you usually drive?”

“It's a black town car. I like something with a little room in it. I also have a pickup that I use for work.”

“The car that forced Jenny off the road the other night was a big, black car. You have anything to do with that?”

“What do you mean? You think that was me?” He takes a couple of steps toward me, and I'd swear he was threatening me. “You ought to be out looking for some drunk driver instead of picking on me. Why would I do anything to hurt my sister?”