Barbara Graham - Quilted 03 - Murder by Music (30 page)

“And you came to see if I done her in?” His head jerked from side to side, spraying teardrops in a wide arc. “I loved that little girl, but not like folks think. She was my friend and I was hers.”

Tony and Wade eased down onto the bench opposite him. “How'd you meet?”

Dan's eyes closed, and he clasped his hands together, resting them on the table. “I came back from 'Nam and wandered for a while, looking for direction, I guess.” He opened his eyes, surprisingly young in his old face. They glistened with still unshed tears. “I bought this land with money I borrowed from my folks in Oklahoma. Then I discovered dulcimers and learned everything I could about them. Years passed, and I found peace up here.”

Wade shifted, impatient, and Tony frowned him into stillness.

“One day I was sitting out on the house porch and I looked up, and there was Easter Lily standing down near the road. She wasn't bigger than a mite and was barely more than a kid. I could hear her crying and went over to check on her.” He wiped some of his own tears away with the heel of his hand. “She said she was pregnant and her daddy threw her out of the house.”

“Did she tell you who the father was?”

“Nope, and I didn't ask.” Dan rubbed the back of his neck. “I told her she could visit all she wanted, and I'd teach her to play the dulcimer, but I couldn't have no little girl living in my house, 'specially not one with child.”

“So she went home?” Tony guessed she must have left school until after the baby was born because he'd never seen a pregnant girl in school when he was a boy. Nowadays it was, unfortunately, not uncommon.

“She stayed up here all day every day and slept in her daddy's house.” A flash of anger hardened his expression even more. “The old tyrant didn't feed her, but I did. For a little girl, she sure could eat.”

“And she learned to play the dulcimer?”

He nodded. “When she was close to having the baby, I introduced her to a nice couple I knew who wanted to adopt, so I guess I was a matchmaker of sorts.”

“You weren't at Patrick's wedding.” Tony made a note to ask the groom's parents how they remember the events leading to Patrick's adoption.

“Nope. I had my visits with Easter Lily and her sister earlier.” He glanced at his house and cabin. “I ain't real social.”

Wade said, “Were you and Scarlet close too?”

“Not as much. She didn't care for music, but she'd come up sometimes with her sister since she was pregnant at the same time, and no, I don't know who fathered her baby either. I always sort of had the idea it was the same man though.” He narrowed his eyes as he rubbed his chin. “Scarlet's was stillborn.”

Tony had a feeling the man had something else to get off his chest, so he sat back, relaxing. Birds high in the trees made soft noises. A slight breeze carried the scent of wood smoke.

“I've got no proof.” Dan's voice rumbled into the quiet. “But I think the daddy's been paying those girls to keep their secret. And I'd guess it would amount to a pretty penny after all these years.”

Not surprising, Tony guessed, but disturbing on another level. One man, impregnating two girls, and then paying for silence. Theirs had not been a case of teenage love or lust, but rather one of an adult abusing children. But why kill them now? Did they threaten to talk? Did they ask for more money? After a more than a quarter of a century, why was it still a secret?

“Let's go.” Tony stood and shook hands with Dan.

Wade trotted at his side. “Who would be so destroyed by telling the secret that it's worth killing two people?”

“I don't know.” Tony stopped at the Blazer and stood with one hand on the door. “What do we have for a motive? Anger? Fear? Revenge?”

“Neither of the women even lived around here anymore.” Wade shoved a hand through his hair. “So has someone been waiting for them to return?”

“As freaky as it sounds, I think that's exactly what happened. What did the pair of them know, or who did the pair of them threaten in some way? Coincidence does happen, but I think both of these deaths were deliberate.”

“You mean the grease on their backs?”

“Among other things.” Tony searched his pockets for antacids. “The grease is either a direct clue or an attempt to cover up something.”

“You mean like point the blame on the Thomas brothers?”

“Sure. Why not? They are well known. Their tow truck or pickup is always on every road. They would be almost invisible to local eyes.”

“Hide in plain sight?”

“Exactly.”

“So the grease on the backs is either a clue or a red herring?”

“Yes, but our killer, who is either cunning or doesn't want to dirty his clothes, has left something behind.”

“What?” Wade stared into Tony's eyes. “Did you find something?”

“The lab will. I'm sure of it. There will be some exchange of hair, skin, blood. The difficult part will be identifying it and its donor.”

Tony drove up the mountain taking Quentin home. His time in the jail was up, and he said he had no one to call for a ride home. The road was dry and clear, which made the trip at least possible. In bad weather, the road was treacherous at best. Quentin was the sole owner of this section of the mountain. Property rich, but too cash poor to improve it.

Tony made the last turn and stopped next to Quentin's shiny black pickup painted with decorative flames on the front. At the top of the drive, Quentin's mobile home sat to the right. If anything, it was more worn out and miserable than the last time Tony had come up here, but the removal of a crumbling, rusted-out shed improved the appearance of the place. Overall, the property looked better. Tony thought Quentin had also installed a new portable outhouse. The bright blue shed sat slightly downhill of the trailer.

Another new addition caught his attention. To the left sat a camping trailer, quite a bit smaller than a mobile home. The brown and white striped trailer had cinder blocks stacked around the tires, keeping it from shifting position. It hadn't been there the last time Tony made his way up the mountain. “Are you moving, Quentin?”

“No.”

“Do you have a tenant?” At Quentin's blank expression, he tried again. “A renter?”

Quentin said he did at the same time Tony saw Roscoe.

At the far side of the new trailer, a patch of vegetation had been mowed down, forming a lawn of sorts. Cinder blocks formed steps to the door. Someone had put together a porch cover using two-by-fours and a blue tarp. Dora, the vending machine, nestled in the shelter. Smoke billowed from a round black barbeque grill, and Tony smelled cooking meat. Roscoe stood next to the grill, ineffectively waving away the smoke with a long fork.

“What's for dinner?” Tony made his way through the weeds.

“Uh . . .” Roscoe's expression dropped from welcoming to furtive. “Uh, nothing.”

Watching Roscoe stab the cooking meat made Tony doubt the man's veracity. He studied the surface of the grill. He'd bet the meat of the day was squirrel. “I prefer mine fried.”

“It was already dead, just layin' by the side of the road.” Roscoe grinned, his relief palpable. “Don't tell the game warden. He says I can go to prison for this.”

Tony was flabbergasted. Hairy Rags was evidently out of his mind. Maybe a fine. Maybe a warning, but prison for a squirrel dinner? Road kill squirrel at that. “Since I'm here, I thought I'd stop by and talk to you and Baby.”

“Nossir. Baby's moved on.” Roscoe's eyes crossed from his effort to tell a convincing lie.

“She was in your truck the other night.” Tony took a relaxed pose against a tree. “She looked quite festive in all her hunter orange.”

“Well, yeah, but . . .”

“Where'd she go?”

Roscoe caved in. Tony knew he would. The man just couldn't lie worth spit. He always refereed a fair game, and he wasn't good with secrets and half-truths.

“Why's he after my Baby?” Roscoe wailed like a toddler and fat tears ran down his face. “She's working on her winter sleep home back there.”

Baby ran out of the woods toward them, loping on all fours. Ignoring Tony, the young bear stood on her hind legs and licked Roscoe's face; her long pink tongue bore a striking resemblance to a big dog's. With her hunter orange vest and glossy black fur, it was clear she was healthy and well cared for.

“Where's her bear family?”

Roscoe's skinny shoulders rose and fell. He pressed his hands over the bear's ears as if to shield her from unpleasant news. “Her mama was kilt by some of those wackos up past the Old Nest. I seed it myself 'n hid Baby from them. They was going after her too, 'n they're who old Sourpuss ought to be a-chasin'.”

“Can you show me on a map?”

Roscoe nodded and clipped a leash on Baby's collar. “She loves squirrel and ain't learned about fire,” he said as he led the docile bear to Tony's Blazer.

Tony pulled out a stack of maps and waited as Roscoe studied each one in turn. Just when Tony was ready to abandon the project, Roscoe jabbed a map.

“They was here.” He grinned. “Betcha thought I didn't remember.”

Tony hadn't doubted the man's memory as much as his map skills. Roscoe's fingernail rested exactly where Tony suspected it would be. On the county line. Tony smiled. Part of the problem was locked up in his jail. Surely there would be less activity up there at the Nest, at least for awhile.

Tony was sound asleep. After days of trying to keep up with the chaos in the county, he was worn out. He wasn't wild about sleeping alone, but he got to use a lot more of the bed without his overburdened wife. A whisper roused him slightly. The sound of little boys giggling was followed by the vibrations of the two of them climbing onto the mattress. Tony slipped back into his dreams. It was dark as homemade sin when a sound awakened him. His eyelids lifted. Two sets of glow-in-the-dark lime green teeth grinned at him.

Startled, he sat bolt upright.

The little boys laughed and jumped about, making their plastic teeth wiggle and bounce around like fireflies in the room. “Gotcha.”

After the past few days, Tony was feeling more than a bit loopy, and his sons' antics struck him as the funniest thing he'd seen in a year. He laughed so loud and hard, he almost didn't hear his cell phone ring on the nightstand.

“What is going on upstairs?” Theo asked, checking up on them.

Tony tried to describe the glowing teeth and his reaction to them, but it failed to really paint the picture. Most likely because he kept laughing like a fool.

“I'm jealous,” said Theo and disconnected.

The paper jammed down Elf's throat remained with the coroner. A photocopy of it lay on Tony's desk. It was newly composed music. The paper was designed for the purpose with treble and bass staffs. Hand drawn notes on the lines were barely visible under the string of words written in pencil. “My heart. The little heart.”

He felt the sizzle of discovery. He assumed Elf was working on this music, these very words, when her killer arrived. Was she expecting anyone? Whom did she trust, or at least whom did she not fear? He assumed “the heart” was either her lover's or her baby's.

If she was ill and knew it, was she saying farewell to her son? Was she telling him the identity of the fathers of her and Scarlet's babies?

He was still disturbed by the demolition of Elf's house. What about its contents? The furniture? The piles of papers and records and family pictures—where were they? He called Gus.

“Hey, baby brother.”

Tony wondered how to get rid of caller ID. “Hail, Caesar.” He thought being Marc Antony was better than being Caesar Augustus. The one thing all the Abernathy siblings agreed on was how much trouble their mother's penchant for old Rome caused.

“Okay, we're even.” Gus laughed, a great rolling laugh. “Is life better today?”

“No.” Tony did feel better just hearing something fun. “It's an ugly business no matter how you look at it.”

“Can I help?”

“Maybe. Tell me everything you know about the house you demolished for Elf, like what happened to the furniture and papers.”

For awhile, Gus made some humming noise. Then he said, “There was a moving truck, not a big cross country rig, just a truck from some place in Knoxville. I can see the logo in my head. I just don't remember the name off hand. Anyway, they were pulling away when I arrived to see what Elf had in mind.”

“And?” Tony wanted to squeeze the information out of his brother.

“Hey, don't get your underwear in a wad. I'm trying to remember the details for you.” Gus started humming again. “Okay, the first time I went into the house, there was no furniture, no rugs and nothing hanging on the walls. There was a stack of boxes back in the music room. I assumed they were her gold records and such, but I didn't look into any of them.”

“How big was the stack?” Tony had no idea if the information was important or not.

“Oh, maybe ten boxes, the size even you could carry if filled with books.”

“Was that it?” Tony ignored the jibe.

“Yep.” Gus sounded confused now. “There wasn't another stick of furniture, paper or musical instruments. There wasn't even a can of beans in the kitchen.”