Chiefs (47 page)

“Yessir.” Murray was subdued, but seemed proud of his performance.

“What’s that up there?” Tucker pointed up the mountain. Black smoke was boiling over the treetops. “Let’s take a look.”

Murray pointed the car up the mountain, and as they neared the crest of the pass they could see that the smoke was coming from the other side. “Looks like Foxy Funderburke’s place,” said Murray.

Tucker picked up the microphone and instructed Bartlett to call the fire department. “Step on it, Newton, we won’t wait for them.”

Murray gunned the car over the mountain, turning right into Foxy’s private roadway. Tucker had never seen the Funderburke place, although he had heard about it as a boy, and he was impressed when the house with its neat flower beds came into view. “Looks like the fire’s out back,” he said. “Follow the road around there.” They could hear dogs barking.

As they rounded the house they could see a blackened Foxy Funderburke beating at the flames with a burlap bag. A garden hose lay on the ground beside him, apparently abandoned in favor of the burlap. Foxy looked at them in surprise and relief.

“There’s some more bags in the garage, there, grab some, quick!”

The fire was spread over a quarter of an acre of ground behind the house, and a couple of pine trees were already on fire. The two policemen jumped from the car; Murray ran for the garage, but Tucker went to the trunk of the car and found a fire extinguisher. He skirted the burning area quickly and directed the bottle at the trees while Murray beat at the flames near the kennels. Tucker was thinking they should probably let the dogs out, when he heard the fire truck’s siren.

Twenty minutes later the fire was extinguished, but an oily pall of black smoke hung over the place. Foxy was grateful to the policemen and firemen, but seemed anxious for them to leave. Tucker immediately felt himself in the presence of a man with something to hide, a policeman’s instinct developed over long experience. He looked about the place at the house, the garage, the kennels. It all seemed so perfectly normal, except for the burnt ground. What could an old man like Funderburke have to be so nervous about? His mind flashed back to a day in his childhood, a Saturday afternoon spent with Billy Lee at the livery stable, an image of a much younger Foxy in a dimly lit stall, watched from a hayloft by two boys.

Still, that was irrelevant. Maybe he was interpreting Foxy’s concern with nearly losing his house as something completely different. As he and Murray drove down the mountain to the main highway, Tucker thought he might come back to the Funderburke place again, just for a chat. It just didn’t feel right.

“They’ll send him a bill,” Murray said.

“What?”

“He’s outside the city limits here. Outside Meriwether County, really. The Talbot County line is right at the city limits, at the top of the mountain. He’s not entitled to fire service. They’ll send him a bill.”

Chapter 10.

BILLY SPENT most of his time before Christmas in Delano, seeing to his law practice. There would be little for him to do in Atlanta until the state legislature convened after the new year. In mid-December he was working in his office in the bank building, when there was a gentle knock on the door. Hugh Holmes stuck his head in. “Busy?”

“Not too. Come on in. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

Holmes settled into a chair. “No thanks. I just wanted to touch base with you, find out what’s happening.”

“Well, in the month since Tucker Watts was appointed, I’ve had about thirty speaking invitations.” He thumped a stack of correspondence on his desk.

“Where from?”

“Just about everywhere but Georgia.”

“I’m not surprised. We’ve had a couple of strong nibbles on some new business for the town, too. An outfit from Pennsylvania that makes work clothes is thinking pretty seriously about us.” He paused. “The Tucker Watts thing is going to help you nail down the black vote, but it remains to be seen what the white vote is going to do.”

“To tell you the truth,” Billy said, “I don’t think it’s going to cost us much there. Mullins has already got the hard-core anti-integration vote sewed up.” State Senator Jackson Mullins would be his principal opponent in the Democratic primary the following September.

“That’s certainly true. It’s the middle ground that’s going to swing things. If Mullins can scare some of those bad enough, or if he can make you look bad enough, you’ll be in trouble.”

Billy knew Holmes well enough to know that he had something specific in mind. He waited for the banker to go on.

“Skeeter Willis is a big Mullins man, you know,” Holmes said.

“I know.”

“I’ve had some indications that Skeeter and Mullins may be cooking up something.”

“Something to do with Tucker?”

Holmes nodded. “You know about the run-in at the police station between Tucker and Skeeter.”

“Tucker called me about it right away. I told him to let me know immediately if Skeeter gave him any problems.”

“That’s good, but I have an idea that when Skeeter moves, he’s going for the home run. Remember the thing with Marshall Parker back in ‘46? When somebody put the moonshine in his place?”

“I sure do. Skeeter and Sonny were in that together, I reckon.”

“Not much doubt about it. I think Skeeter might go that way again; what is it they call it at the picture show?”

“Framing.”

“That’s it. Skeeter’ll try to frame him if he can.”

“I’ll have a talk with Tucker, tell him to be especially careful.”

“He’d better be. Skeeter’s already had somebody in the state police running background checks on him, his childhood in Columbus. I got a call.” Holmes shifted in his seat. “Did you know that Tucker is Nellie Cole’s nephew?”

Billy sat up. “Are you serious?”

“Tucker’s mother was Jesse’s sister. They think that after Jesse shot your daddy, when he and the boy, Willie, ran, that Willie might have gone to them. It seems logical. He was killed by that truck over in Alabama, and Columbus is on the way.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. He never mentioned a thing about it to me. I told him about Daddy on the way down here, when he came to meet with the city council.”

“Course that’s nothing against him. Even if Tucker’s family hid Willie, they’re all dead now, and Tucker was only a couple of years older than Willie. That was nearly thirty-five years ago.”

“I don’t see how Skeeter can make anything of that, do you?”

“No, especially since Skeeter never even bothered to go down there looking for Willie.”

“I guess nobody ever really looked for him. He was just an innocent bystander to the whole incident.”

“Not entirely innocent. Technically, anyway, Willie had escaped from jail. Will Henry wouldn’t have gone out there if he hadn’t been looking for Willie.”

“You know, it’s just as well Willie’s gone. We played together a lot as children, when Daddy was still farming. I didn’t see much of him after we moved to town. I hate to think what could have happened to him if they’d caught him and laid some of that on him.”

“Skeeter sure isn’t the sort to have gone light on him, if he’d of caught him. Are you going to mention this to Tucker?”

Billy was quiet for a moment. “I don’t think so. I’ll just tell him to be extra careful with Skeeter. There’s no point in embarrassing him. He wasn’t under any real obligation to bring up a connection with something that happened so long ago. I can’t say that I blame him.”

Holmes got up. “Well, we’ll leave it at that, then. I better go get some work done.”

Billy sat for a while, thinking about Willie Cole. He hadn’t thought about Willie for a long time.

Willie Cole sat a mile across town in his mother’s living room.

“Did they ask specifically about Willie Cole or Tucker Watts?” he asked.

“Both,” Nellie said. “But they seemed to mostly want to know whether you might have hid out at Tuck’s and Sarah’s in Columbus. It was like they wanted to blame you for hiding … yourself. I told them I never heard another word from Willie after he ran, not ‘til I heard he got killed over in Alabama.”

“Well, now, listen; don’t you worry about this. There’s a birth certificate for Tucker Watts in the records down at the Muscogee County Courthouse, and I’ve got a thirty-year military record to back up that identity. No photographs and no fingerprints exist for Willie Cole. I’m four inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier than the last time anybody saw him.

They don’t care anything about Willie Cole. Whoever’s doing this just doesn’t want Tucker Watts around. They might be trying to make Billy Lee look bad. I’ll talk to him about it.”

“Have you told Elizabeth yet?” The two women had met twice, the last time two weeks before.

“No. You’re still Aunt Nellie, and I think it’s best if we keep it that way.” Tucker hadn’t told Elizabeth, simply because he had no idea whatever how she might react. Her unpredictability had always both charmed and puzzled him.

He left the house and headed for the bank building.

Tucker looked steadily across the desk at Billy. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this at the beginning,” he said. “It just didn’t seem important.”

“It wasn’t important at the time. The important thing now is that you be very careful. I’ll do what I can to keep Skeeter off your back.”

“I can handle the sheriff.”

“Don’t be so sure about that, Tucker,” Billy said. “Skeeter has a lot of clout in this county, and he’s not a stupid man. He tried to nail Marshall Parker on a trumped-up charge once; he and Sonny Butts, I think, planted some white lightning in Marshall’s place. If he wants to nail you badly enough he’ll probably find a way. Unless he knows we’re expecting it. I’ll see that he knows.”

Billy fumbled for a moment with a paperweight. “Did you know Willie Cole?”

“Our families visited a few times when we were kids.”

“Did you see him after he left Delano? This is just between you and me.”

“He came to our house one day while I was at school. Daddy sent him over to Alabama, down in the country someplace, to work on a farm with a sharecropping family. I never saw him. A couple of years later we heard he was dead. I had just joined the army down at Benning. I never even knew he had been to the house until then.”

“I’m sorry things went so badly for Willie. We played together as children. Mama tried to help his folks when his daddy lost his job. Daddy did his best to help Willie when he got into trouble. It didn’t turn out well for anybody, I guess.”

Tucker was silent.

Chapter 11.

TUCKER went from Billy’s office back to the police station, where he was startled to find Buddy Bartlett sitting on the floor, sorting files. He had not had a moment to go through the scrambled paperwork to look for Will Henry Lee’s records, and he didn’t want anyone to come across them before he did.

“What the hell are you doing, Sergeant?” He had promoted Bartlett and put him on permanent day shift at the station. The young man had a talent for organization, and things were running more smoothly now, with a responsible man always in the station. Tucker felt he could get out and around more.

“Oh, hi, Chief. I was having kind of a quiet day, and I thought I might get started on these records.”

“You got the time for that sort of thing?”

“Well, like I said, it’s been a quiet day. Anyway, they’re not as mixed up as they could be. They’re in chunks, sometimes three or four months together.” He pointed to a bundle tied with string, set on the floor beside him. “This bunch here looks like several years’ worth. All of it is Chief Lee’s stuff—Billy Lee’s daddy—from back in the twenties.”

“You been through it?”

“Naw, it’s all together. I’ll just file it like it is, I reckon. We’re not going to need anything that far back. You reckon we need it at all, Chief? Looks like we could have some sort of cut-off date— ten years, or something. Sure would give us a lot more filing space if we could store this old stuff over at city hall, or even throw it away.”

Tucker picked up the bundle. “Not a bad idea. I’ll have a look through this stuff and see if there’s anything of any historical interest. He was the first chief, wasn’t he?”

“That’s right. My daddy remembers him real well. Says he was a good man.”

“You carry on, then. Try to get two or three years of the most recent stuff—the time right before the fire—try to get that in some kind of shape, and I’ll see about finding us some storage space at city hall for the rest.”

Tucker went into his office and laid the bundle on his desk. He struggled out of his coat and hung it up. He sat down at the desk and untied the string on the files. His hands were trembling. He found what he was looking for almost immediately. On a plain sheet of paper with yellowed edges was written, “Arrested Willie Cole, age 15, on a charge brought by E. Routon, grocer, that Cole had stolen a ham and one sack of beans. Cole pled guilty in city court and was sentenced to 10 days, city jail. Assigned to city manager for street work.” It was dated and signed.

That was it, the entire criminal career of one Willie Cole, now, through the grace of his uncle Tuck, deceased. Tucker was surprised that he had thought this piece of paper could ever have harmed him. He started to destroy it, then changed his mind, folded it carefully and buttoned it into his shirt pocket.