A Killing at Cotton Hill (23 page)

“Can I get you some ice tea or a cup of coffee?” I say.

She gives a throaty little laugh. “Maybe a little water,” she says.

My mouth is dry, so I get water for both of us and sit down across the table from her. She's tracing the lines of plaid on the tablecloth with her finger as if it's the most fascinating design she's ever been up close to.

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” The words both sound and feel false, but I have to start somewhere.

“I'm on my way back to Houston, and I came by to apologize,” she says. “I feel like I owe that much to you.”

“You don't owe me anything,” I say. The person she owes an apology to is her mamma, but Dora Lee is dead, so she's not going to get the benefit of it anyway.

“I didn't behave very well the other night. It wasn't fair to you, as nice as you've been to me.” Her hands are starting to jitter, and she rubs them along her arms.

Suddenly her strange manner comes clear to me. “You're high,” I say.

She curls her lip. “You think I could face that farm any other way?”

“I wouldn't know. I don't have the information I'd need to make a judgment on that.”

“No, I guess you don't.”

“So why don't you tell me?” A bead of sweat rolls down the side of my face, and I dash it away with the back of my hand. I have the windows open, trying to air out the stench, but the heat is so oppressive that I'm wishing I'd closed up the house and put the air-conditioning on.

“You really want to know?”

I nod.

Sweat is glistening at her cleavage, and she plucks the shirt away from her body to get some air. “Everybody in this town looks at me like I'm a monster for leaving here and never seeing my mother again. I tried to make myself come back once or twice. But I couldn't stand it.” She lifts her hair off her neck and lets it fall back. “If you all knew what I had to put up with out at that farm, you might be a little more forgiving.” She sips her water, and her eyes wander around the room. She winces as she looks at the blistered back kitchen wall, but doesn't say anything about it.

“Caroline, I know your daddy was a violent man.”

“You don't know the half of it.”

I don't think it takes a genius to figure out what more was going on, but from the pain I see in her eyes, she needs to tell somebody, and it might as well be me.

Her voice turns harsh. “You asked for it, and I'm going to tell you. My daddy started coming to my bed when I was eleven years old. The first few times he kept his hand over my mouth so I wouldn't scream. I thought I was going to suffocate. I learned to keep quiet. I was a child and I believed him when he said it was my fault for being such a sexpot. Those were his words. My own daddy.”

“Caroline, I'm so sorry.” It makes me sick to think what Teague was up to. You can't live in the world and be ignorant of such things, but you never think it will be someone you know; even someone as low-life as Teague Parjeter.

Caroline draws a shuddering breath, clutching her water glass so hard I'm afraid it will shatter. “He kept it up until I got the courage to leave. Everybody around here said I was wild, but it was the thing he was doing that made me wild.”

For a minute I have to look away from her wretched expression. I'm wishing like hell I'd never pushed her to tell me. But I did, so I force myself to face her again. She's watching me with her dark eyes.

The smell of smoke seems stronger in the air than it was, making it hard to breathe. “Wasn't there anybody you could go to? A teacher? The Baptist preacher?”

“Who's going to believe an eleven-year-old girl? You think the preacher would believe me?”

I remember the Baptist preacher from thirty years ago. He was an elderly man, or at least he seemed so at the time, and I can't picture any little girl trying to talk to him, especially about something as big as Caroline's troubles. I shake my head.

“For the longest time, I thought Teague was right, that it was my fault, and by the time I realized he was just a sick, nasty man, I felt too tainted to try to do anything about it. I had to get out of here.”

And then I recall something Jeanne said after Caroline left, that sometimes people did what they had to do. “Did Jeanne know anything about this?”

She stops her agitated moving for a minute and thinks hard on the question. “She must have guessed something. I told her I had to get out of here. She said I should tell her before I left and she'd see to it that I had some money. She gave me three thousand dollars and said not to worry about paying it back. That sometimes people just needed a boost, and she was glad she could help me.”

I feel the sense of disorientation I always feel when someone tells me something I didn't know about Jeanne, partly jealousy that they got a tiny piece of her I didn't get, partly grateful to have her even stronger in my mind.

“Why didn't you tell your mamma?” I say. “She could have put a stop to it.”

She shakes her head wearily. “If only it was that easy. I was afraid. About everything. I wanted to tell Mother. I hoped she would kill him. But then I was afraid she would, and then she'd go to jail. I wanted to run away, but I was scared he'd start on Julie. Julie was always more fragile than me, and I knew it would be the end of her.” She ends in an anguished moan. Tears are trickling from the corners of her eyes, leaving twin streaks of mascara. “What could I do? I was a kid.”

She stands up and goes into the front room and grabs up her purse. For a second I'm worried she's going to do something violent. I picture her bringing out a gun and shooting me, or herself. But she's after a tissue. She wipes at the smears of mascara around her eyes.

Back in the kitchen, she stands in front of me. “After I left, I began to wonder if Mother knew what was happening. How could she not know?”

“I just don't believe that. I wish to hell you had gone to her. She would have found a way to tell me.”

She sits back down, clinging to my words. “Do you really think she would have done something?”

“I do.”

We sit quietly for a few minutes. I'm trying to make sense of why Jeanne didn't tell me what she suspected. Was she afraid I'd kill Teague outright? I have mellowed some over the years, but maybe then I would have snapped.

“I need to clear up another thing,” Caroline says. “I lied to you about the man I married. He didn't take anything from me. I don't know why I told you that. He tried to fix things for us, tried to be gentle with me.” She puts her head in her hands, and her hair cascades around her face. “He pretended he didn't know I slept around behind his back every chance I got. But eventually he gave it up. I don't blame him.”

She walks to the refrigerator and pours herself another glass of water. When she turns back, she looks at me for a long time before she speaks. “I thought I'd feel better if I told someone, but I don't. I'm damaged property, no matter what.”

“You know it wasn't your fault. You have to find a way to put it behind you.”

She moves to my side and puts her hand on the back of my neck and begins to rub it. For a few seconds I let myself go with it, sinking into the sensation of her fingers working my muscles. I imagine how it would feel to put my arm around her waist. She's right next to me. But Jenny's voice pops into my head with the one word, “shenanigans.” I put my hand around Caroline's wrist and move it away. And at that moment I wonder if everything she told me was a lie.

She turns away from me so I can't see her face, and says, “I guess I'd better get on home.”

I'm wavering on the question of belief in her story, and then I think, what would be the purpose of such a lie? To justify staying away so long? To explain her seductive behavior? I stand up. “Why don't you let me fix you something to eat before you leave?”

“I can't eat anything.”

But I make her a sandwich anyway, and while I work, she goes to one of the charred cabinets and touches it. “What a mess,” she says. “It smells terrible in here. How can you stand it?”

I tell her I'm staying with a friend.

“You could stay out at the farm. Wayne's gone back to Houston. I'm sure Greg would be glad of the company.”

“Maybe I'll do that.”

“How long is it going to take before the damage is repaired?”

I set the sandwich down on the table, and she looks at it for a few seconds. There are dark circles under her eyes. Finally she sits down and picks up a half sandwich. I sit down across from her.

“It might take some time. What I didn't tell you and Wayne this morning is that one of my paintings is missing.”

“Really. Was it very valuable?”

I nod. “The thing is, that whoever stole it has got a problem on their hands. Nobody can sell that painting.”

She almost has the sandwich to her mouth, but stops. “Why not?”

“It's too well-known. No legitimate dealer will touch it. You can't just take it in somewhere and plop it down. They'll call the police right away.”

She gives a bitter snort, as close to laughter as she's capable of right now. “Somebody is going to be awfully disappointed.” She sets down the half-eaten sandwich.

“Oh, they'll be more than disappointed. The insurance company will be sending out investigators, and they're not going to want to pay the insurance money until they've done everything they can to find whoever took it.”

“Well, I hope they do,” she says. I'm watching her reaction, and she looks thoughtful, but not worried. Either she's a damn good actress or she had nothing to do with the fire and theft. She gets up and takes her plate to the sink.

“Before you left, did you have a chance to talk to Greg about the property?”

“Yes. I can see he loves that place, but even if I didn't want to sell, I don't see how he can keep it without any money coming in.”

“I'll tell you the same thing I told him. Don't rush into anything. Have you thought about a lawyer to handle the probate?”

She walks into the other room and gets her purse. “Wayne said he'd take care of it for me.”

“That's nice of him.” He must think there will be some advantage to him in keeping control of the situation. “I'm going to recommend somebody to you anyway. She's here in town, and that might be an advantage, since the papers will have to be filed in this county.”

I write down Jenny's information and Caroline puts it in her purse. I tell her she can stay the night and get a fresh start tomorrow, but she says if she's not back at work in the morning, she'll likely lose her job. “I can't afford that.” Still she stands there, as if uncertain how to leave.

“Where is it you work?” I say.

“South Houston Savings Bank,” she says. “I'm in the computer department.”

Being cooped up all day staring at a computer sounds about as boring and depressing a job as I can imagine. “You like it?”

“It pays bills,” she says, shrugging. “In this economy, I'm glad to have a job at all.”

“You miss California?”

She cocks her head. “I do and I don't. I think coming back to Texas was a mistake in more ways than one. Out in California it seemed easier to keep my mind on my everyday life and not dwell so much on what happened in the past. But maybe it would have been better if I had confronted it earlier.”

Suddenly I remember the box of mementos I took from Dora Lee's closet. “Hold on,” I say. “I've got something to give you.”

I bring the duffle in and set it on the table. “I don't know what you want to do with these, but I think you should be the one to decide.”

She puts her hand in and brings out a couple of cards and the clipping about the artist and lets them fall to the table as if they've burned her. “I don't think I want this stuff.”

“I'll keep them for you in case you ever change your mind.”

She looks at the article. “You could just throw this away.”

“You know anything about the artist?”

“My grandmother bought a painting from him when they were living in Austin. I guess he was down and out and sold it to her cheap. My mother said grandma said he would be famous one day.”

“What picture is that?”

“It was an old landscape,” she says. “I noticed it wasn't in the house. Wayne said he thought she sold it quite a while back.”

I walk her to the door, and wait while she backs up to the street. She has to wait there because Rodell is passing by. I wonder what he's up to at this time of day.

I'm strapped for time to finish off what I intended to do today, but at least I can strike one person off my list. I was going to ask Maddie Hicks if she knew why Caroline left and never came back. No need to trouble her about that now.

As I pull up in front of the Underwood place, I wonder how long Clyde Underwood has known about the racetrack being planned for here in Cotton Hill. Something tells me Frances and Clyde didn't plan on making their home here for long. The place is neglected. The front door has weathered badly, and the siding along the south end of the house is chipped. It gives me a pang to see that a little flower garden delineated by a row of stones has been allowed to go to seed, the plants dead and overrun with weeds. And I don't see a sign of chickens, nor do I hear the background of hen chatter.