He Was Her Man (23 page)

“I thought you were in a god-awful hurry to get out there and find Olive,” said Bobby.

“I am, and we’re going to, but this is only going to take a minute, and then we’ll be on our way.” Cynthia sat up straight on her bar stool. “Here it is. My grandma had this cold-nose black-and-tan gyp named Rosie. Now, in case you don’t know what a cold-nose hound is, I’ll tell you. It’s a hound who can pick up on a cold trail that’s hours or even days old—which is what it sounds like we need this very day, since you, Bobby Adair, have been wasting all this time letting Olive’s trail get cold when you ought to have been out there looking for her instead of in here drinking beer, which is not worming you back into my good graces.”

“Yes, it is,” said Bobby. “Because you’re talking to me after two years of not.” He squeezed her upper arm, and she shrugged him off.

“Anyway, Grandma used to like to brag about her Rosie, which lots of folks thought was unseemly, especially because she was a woman. Until one rainy Sunday down at the store, this farmer’s saying as how he was feeding his cows in his upper pasture, up near the woods, and he saw an old gray wolf chasing a jack rabbit.”

“Wolf’s not good near your cows,” said Tate, who himself had never lived outside the city limits of Hot Springs.

“So the farmers all said, Dove, that was my grandma’s name, Dove, she was one-half Cherokee, this Rosie of yours you’re always saying is such a good cold-nose hound, why don’t you take her up to Farmer Jones’s upper pasture and see if she can find that wolf. Dove said she thought that was a good idea, she’d do that very thing.

“So all these old boys loaded themselves in their pickups, just sniggering and poking each other to beat the band, ’cause they figure they’ve called Dove’s bluff.

“They’re all standing around watching while Rosie circles the area where the wolf was last seen. Then after a couple of zigs and zags and circles and going this way and that, Rosie lets out a long bawl, puts her nose to the ground, and takes off down a draw and into a bottom.

“The old sons, they’re following Rosie by horseback and pickupback, laughing all the time, making fun. And there’s Dove, walking by her lonesome just as proud and silent as her full-Cherokee grandmothers through those swampy woods.

“Late that evening, sure enough, Rosie overtook that wolf. But he wasn’t a big old gray wolf. He was just a whimpering little old wolf pup.

“So, what you got to say for your Rosie, now? The old sons laughed and pointed and sniggered.

“And Grandma Dove, she looked straight at ’em with those big brown eyes of hers, and she said, Rosie has backtracked so far and so fast that she caught that old wolf back when it was still a pup.” With that, Cynthia stood and drew herself to her full five feet. “And that’s the truth, boys, if it ever was.”

They all chuckled, and then Bobby slipped off his stool, too, and threw his arm around Cynthia’s waist. “I concede anything and everything to the power of this wonderful young woman whom I love more than life itself.”

“Hear, hear!” Tate and Early raised their glasses high.

“And now,” said Bobby, pulling off his blond wig and throwing it on the bar, “anybody who wants to join me is welcome, I’ve got to saddle up and go find my grandma and my Sunliner that disappeared along with her.”

Sunliner? Early couldn’t believe his ears. Did Bobby who’d come to his rescue, who’d saved him from killing that fat policeman, did he say
Sunliner
?

24

“DID YOU SEE anybody in the house you took the Sunliner from?” Sam was asking Lateesha as they made their way in Sam’s BMW down the narrow gravel road into Greenwood Cemetery. They were looking for Fontaine.

“Nope,” said Lateesha. “I didn’t see a soul. There was another car in the carport, though. A silver Mercedes. A big one, about, oh, I’d say seven years old.”

Lateesha held up as many fingers, each of which bore a ring and was polished a different color. In fact, Lateesha was a kind of Rainbow Coalition all by herself. Her hair, done in a hundred little braids, was intertwined in a scarf of fuchsia and gold. Her blouse was peacock blue, and her micro-mini was the same fabric as her do-rag. The thin shapely legs that stretched for years from beneath her tiny skirt were covered in bright orange tights. Her high-top tennis shoes were purple.

She lit up the cemetery as they passed slabs of black granite, praying angels, ancient oak trees, until finally they came to a green cement-block house surrounded by rhododendrons.

Just as they pulled up, Fontaine stooped through the doorway. “Good Lord,” said Sam. He was the tallest person she’d ever seen close up.

“I told you he was a giant,” said Lateesha. “He could pop your arm off and eat it for breakfast. That’s why I’m glad June wrote us this note.” She was clutching it in her hand. “Though he was really nice when I met him before.”

Sam stepped out and introduced herself to Fontaine, and they exchanged pleasantries, he in a voice that made the earth rumble beneath their feet. Sam said, “I understand you’re the chief caretaker here.”

“That’s right,” said Fontaine. “Been looking after the grounds, the folks, digging holes, oh, fourteen, fifteen years. There’s some nice people buried here. All white people, of course. But some nice white people.”

Sam stared down at her shoes, not knowing what else to do. White Southerners of a liberal bent spend a lot of time inspecting their footwear.

“Some famous ones, too,” said Fontaine. “Like Owney Madden, you know who he was?”

Sam nodded. “The bootlegger who was exiled here from New York.”

“That’s right!” Fontaine was pleased that she knew so much about his most famous charge. “Now tell me, what can I do for y’all?”

“You can do this, Fontaine,” said Lateesha, stepping up with June’s note and handing it to him.

Fontaine read it slowly, then started over and read it two more times, and then he said, “Well, I’d be happy to oblige you ladies, but I’m afraid I can’t hand that car over to you like my wife says here I ought to.”

“Why not?” said Lateesha. She stepped even closer to Fontaine, about to get in his face—that is if she’d been tall enough. Sam reached out to grab the back of her skirt.

“Well…” Fontaine pulled at his khaki work cap. “I’d love to, but, you see, that car’s already gone.”

“We brought you the car at two
A.M.,
and here it is”—Lateesha checked her watch—“thirteen hours later, and you’re saying it’s gone. You told Early you were going to paint it. Now I for one don’t think you painted it and dried it and got it on the road, which was not your job in the first place, but Early’s, not that it was his car to begin with, in that amount of time, and I hate to call you a liar, Fontaine—”

“And she’s certainly not doing that,” said Sam, stepping right in front of Lateesha. “But you see, we’re awfully concerned about the car because it belongs to Olive Adair, who seems to have disappeared.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Fontaine. “I hear you.”

Oh, great. Now he was going to yes ma’am her from here to next Sunday, agreeing with everything she said while not telling her a damned thing.

“And, you see, if we could put our hands on the car, then that might be helpful in finding Olive,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And also might be helpful in
somebody
getting their twenty thousand dollars,” said Lateesha.

Sam could see that she might have to shake Lateesha to rid her of the notion that she was owed something for the car that she had nabbed.

Fontaine stared at Lateesha, then turned back to Sam. “Yes, ma’am. I can see what the problem is, but I just don’t see as how I can help you.”

“You could tell us where the car
is
,
for starters,” said Sam.

“Like I said, it’s gone.”

Okay. She was just going to have to go find Early Trulove and get him to talk to Fontaine, and if
that
didn’t do any good, then she’d ask Jack Graham to talk with Early, since Jack certainly owed her something. But, by God, she’d gotten this close to that Sunliner, she was going to find it and find Olive, if it killed her.

“Come on, Lateesha.” She grabbed the young girl’s hand.

“I sure wish I could be more help,” said Fontaine.

“Oh, you do not!” said Sam out the window of her BMW. She was just about to back up, when Early Trulove and his red Cadillac came cruising into her rearview mirror. There were two other people with him; now all of them were stepping out, Jesus, was that Bobby Adair in makeup and full drag?

“Yes, it’s me,” said Bobby, shaking her hand. “Please, forgive the way I look. It’s a disguise.”

Sam nodded, wondering what the hell
he’d
been up to.

“Good to see you again, Sam. I was telling Cynthia and Early, may I present Cynthia Blackshears, Cynthia, Samantha Adams—whom I mentioned to you before—and Early Trulove, about your helping me look for Mamaw.”

Sam eyed Early, and he eyed her. Did he remember her from the piano bar?

“Miss Adams,” said Early. “Good to see you again.”

“Oh, so you’ve met,” said Bobby, then pushed on. “Now, Early tells me that his friend Fontaine—” He turned and looked up at the man who towered over him. They shook hands. “That Fontaine has been taking care of my grandma Olive’s car, actually, it’s
my
Sunliner that Mamaw was keeping for me while I was away.”

“Early.” Fontaine shifted his huge body from one foot to the other. “I need to talk with you a minute. If y’all could excuse us, please.”

The two men stepped off, back up toward the little green building with the attached shed, and Sam wondered what kind of double-dealing they were up to, when she saw Early suddenly step back at something Fontaine had said. No! Early said, raising one hand to the heavens. My God! Dear God! And then he sat down atop the nearest tombstone and dropped his head in his hands. Whatever Fontaine had said, the man was obviously stunned—unless he was one hell of an actor. Sam had seen an awful lot of good actors in her time.

“What?” said Lateesha, closing in on Early.

“What?”
said Bobby.

“Folks,” said Fontaine, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you all to leave.”

“No way!” said Lateesha.

“Forget it!” said Bobby. “This has something to do with Mamaw, you’ll have to kill me first!”

In the end, after a lot of screaming and harsh words, it was Lateesha and Cynthia who were sent on their way and Sam and Bobby and Early who stood and watched as Fontaine drove the backhoe over to a plot way in the back of the cemetery and dug up the Sunliner, which he’d buried whole, thinking, understandably, that what he’d found in the trunk was Early’s doings.

Fontaine, who was a whiz with the backhoe, dug a long slow grade for the Sunliner, and then he hooked a couple of big chains to a tractor and pulled the car up the grade. When they opened the trunk, Bobby went crazy. He attacked the Sunliner with his fists and his feet and finally with his head—as if that old car that he’d so loved had been responsible for Olive’s death. Finally Fontaine and Early wrestled him to the ground, and Fontaine picked him up and threw him in the red Caddy, Early saying, Bobby, we’ve got to call the cops, and you don’t want to be in the neighborhood.

Sam was left alone to say a prayer for Olive, whom she’d only seen that once, late the previous afternoon—which now seemed, and in many ways was, some other lifetime.

25

THE CEMETERY WAS quiet except for the twittering of birds. Sam sat, keeping Olive company, a little distance away from the Sunliner, under an ancient oak tree. The tree shaded the grave of a child who’d died in 1908 at the age of six. Alice Ann Barnstable, she’d be over 90, if she’d lived. And if she had, Alice Ann would have seen the advent of rural electrification, indoor plumbing, automobiles, faxes, jet planes, satellite communication, mankind’s stepping on the very face of the man in the moon—and yet, not much people stuff had changed. Folks still went to bed hungry. Fathers got drunk and beat their womenfolk. Men killed one another, out of rage or greed, or because they were sick s.o.b.s.

“Tell me his name, Olive,” Sam said aloud, her voice floating among the graves.

She had no doubt the killer was a man. Women hardly ever strangled their victims, and when they did, it was not with their bare hands.

The bruises on Olive’s neck were brutal, with clear impressions of fingernails. And Sam would bet anything, if she pulled back Olive’s eyelids she’d see tiny red dots, minute blood clots actually, in the lids’ lining, which were presumptive evidence of strangulation.

Sam had witnessed more than her share of crime scenes in the years on the beat. You saw enough of them, you became an expert on things that you’d rather you never even heard of.

She picked up a pebble and pitched it across three graves. Jesus, man was a miserable creature.

Dogs were a hell of a lot better. Cats. Name any of God’s other creatures, they killed for food, not for whatever rotten excuse the miserable bastard who’d done this to Olive had given himself.

Olive, funny fat Olive, was never going to get to go to Morocco with Loydell. And Sam was going to have to find Loydell and tell her that. Hell.

Well, better her than the cops, and at least Loydell had AA, she could find some strength in that. Not that Sam herself had been to any meetings lately. Wasn’t she going to do that, call up and find a meeting the first thing when she hit town? Well, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t been busy. She looked at her watch. From the time she’d met Olive yesterday, till now, was just about 24 hours.

Then she heard gravel spinning, and she stood. Over a little green rise flew a chrome angel. It was perched on the hood of that brown Rolls. Behind the angel, she saw the big silver head of Jack Graham. He was wearing a Band-Aid on his nose.