Rockinghorse (7 page)

Lucas looked at him, the events of the day leaping into his brain, cloudy, but still real. “What do you mean,
pure
human?”

Kyle sighed. “There was . . . well, hell, I don't know how to say this. It was blood. But the lab boys—lab people—I guess I'd better get used to saying it, say there was . . . things in the blood they just couldn't quite identify. I didn't say that right.”

“
Things?
”

“Well, sir, that blood was old, the lab folks said. They said it was like somebody uncovered a bottle of blood that was kept uncontaminated for years and then mixed it up with old animal blood”

“You're serious!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Trooper, I hit somebody out there in those woods. Or some
thing
. Whatever. I heard it scream in pain.”

“Well, I tell you this, Mr. Bowers. I surely hope whatever in the hell it was you hit is long gone from around here. 'Cause I'd sure hate to meet that son of a bitch face to face.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, sir, one smart-aleck down at the lab said the only type of creatures who might have had blood like was found on your stick have been extinct for about a million years.”

That night, lying in bed beside Tracy, Lucas told her what the state trooper had said. She was silent for several moments. Finally she sighed heavily.

“Is somebody playing some macabre joke on us, Lucas? ”

“Macabre is right. But what do you mean? What would be the point of it?”

“Put that lawyer's mind to work, Lucas. Who stands to gain if we leave here without selling this house?”

“I've thought of that, Trace. I even brought a copy of the original will down here with me. I've gone over it very carefully. It's like I said before. With Ira declared dead, all her monies went toward the upkeep of this . . . elephant.”

The house seemed to sigh.

“Did you hear that?” Tracy asked.

“I sure heard something. Anyway, if my parents had lived to sell the house—but I don't think they would have had any better luck than we've had—the monies would have been equally divided between the three of us: Mom, Dad, and me. There is no one else that stands to gain a thing by driving us out of here.”

“Except for Lige.”

“Honey, I don't think that man has enough sense to pull off something of this scope. Not without a lot of help. His embezzlement efforts were textbook crude; no better than the average child could do. All that saved him—until we arrived—was that no one down in Atlanta questioned his receipts. And he really isn't in as much trouble as I want him to believe. The estate paid him X amount of dollars, with no direction as to where the monies were to go. Surprisingly sloppy. And, something else. He really hasn't squirreled away all that much money. Just about a thousand dollars a year; he says he's been here twenty-five years, and he's banked about twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn't drink or gamble it away. He told me face to face he put money back for his retirement.”

She turned in the bed to face her husband. “I don't trust him, Lucas.”

“Oh, I don't either.” He told her about Jim's warnings about Lucas's window peeping. “I tried to pin him down about his past the other day and I never heard so many side-stepping replies and outright lies since I worked in the PD's office. I finally gave up. I guess I'm going to have to drive down and see this Mr. Garrett in Atlanta. Maybe he can fill in some blanks.”

“Have fun.”

* * *

“I'm sorry, Mr. Bowers,” the receptionist told him. “But Mister Garrett, Sr., was declared legally dead three years ago.”

Lucas stood for a moment, staring at the young woman. He was speechless—For a lawyer, a disconcerting moment. He finally found his voice. “What do you mean, miss—legally dead?”

“Perhaps I can help you, sir,” the voice came from his right.

Lucas turned around. The woman was perhaps thirty—give or take two years. Even dressed as severely as she was, she was very attractive. Brown hair pulled back. Behind hornrimmed glasses, lovely dark eyes. Shapely. Sensible shoes.

“I certainly hope so, Miss? . . .”

“Mrs. Garrett-Cameron,” she corrected.

“Of course. My name is Lucas Bowers. I am spending the summer at the Bowers plantation outside Palma, Georgia. My family is with me. I came down to see Mr. Garrett and try to clear up some legal matters concerning the estate.”

An odd light flickered momentarily in the woman's eyes, then was gone as quickly as it had come. For some reason he could not fathom, Lucas found the strange light more a warning signal than surprise. She said, “My grandfather handled the estate matters for years, Mr. Bowers. Then my father handled it. Since his . . . death,” she stumbled over the word, “I have handled the routine matters. Very few difficulties have been encountered with the estate. What is it you would like to discuss?”

“Do we discuss it standing in the outer office?” Lucas asked.

A very faint smile touched the woman's mouth, changing it, making her appear much younger. “Forgive me, Mr. Bowers. Of course not. Please come in.” She waved toward a closed door.

Lucas accepted her offer of coffee, then sat facing her across a desk. “Mrs. Garrett-Cameron, I don't want to take up any more of your time than is absolutely necessary.”

She waved that off. “This firm has handled the Bowers estate for years. Take as much time as you like.”

“Before I start, I'm very curious about something.”

Again she smiled, and again it softened her features. “That isn't surprising, Mr. Bowers. You're an attorney, aren't you?”

He returned the smile. “Yes. All right. The receptionist said Mr. Garrett had been declared legally dead about three years ago.”

“Almost to the day, Mr. Bowers. In reply to your unspoken questions: He had gone up to Edmund County to make his yearly inspection of the estate. He simply vanished. Neither he nor the car he was driving was ever found. No signs of foul play—no signs of
anything
. He was never seen again. I was still in law school when it happened. As sometimes occurs, there was a quiet power struggle within the firm after his . . . disappearance, kidnapping,
whatever
it was. My father stepped in and took over. I joined the firm a year later. Two years ago, I took over after my father's death.”

“I see. I'm sorry about your father.”

“He died in Edmund County.”

Lucas lifted his eyes to meet hers. “That might make me awfully suspicious, Mrs. Garrett-Cameron.”

“I assure you, it did just that. I went to Palma, personally. Or, rather, I went into Rome where the body was taken. I . . . could not immediately identify it positively. It had been burned very badly.”

“Dental records?”

“The head was missing.”

Lucas could only sit and look at the woman.

“My father was finally identified by a broken bone in his left foot. From an old accident.”

“Mrs. Garrett-Cameron? . . .”

“Anne, please.”

“Lucas. Anne, something very odd occurred to me last week. I . . . ”

She continued speaking as if Lucas had not uttered a word. “The team of doctors who finally helped me to identify my father said his head had been cut off with a very sharp instrument. A very heavy machete or a large-bladed axe. This was discovered in Atlanta. I don't know the procedure, but the doctors found that a very small tattoo had been freshly placed on my father's right arm. Up high.”

For a moment, Lucas sagged back in his chair. He could not understand, would not even attempt to fathom what in the world was going on. He stood up, removed his jacket, and pulled up his short sleeve, exposing the fresh tattoo of the rocking horse. “Like this one, Anne?”

* * *

“I thought the woman was going to faint,” Lucas wrapped up the events of his Atlanta trip to Tracy. “She was really, genuinely shaken. No way that could have been an act.”

“I will admit,” Tracy said, “I thought the law firm might have been in collusion somehow.”

“The thought had crossed my mind, too,” Lucas admitted.

“And she said she would be up for a weekend next month?”

“Yes. She and her husband—I don't know what he does for a living. I told them we had plenty of room.”

“My old man,” Tracy said with a smile. “Still the master of understatement.”

“Anything happen while I was gone?” Anything. . . out of the ordinary?”

“No one approached me with a tattoo machine,” Tracy replied.

I'm not getting through to her, Lucas thought. She isn't—deliberately or otherwise—connecting the tattoos. To her, so far, this is all some kind of macabre joke. And, truthfully, I didn't take it all that seriously until speaking with Anne. But now . . .

“We got a lot accomplished this morning,” Tracy said. “I think I'll lie down for a nap.”

“All right,” Lucas said absently. Maybe the way to handle this is to start snooping, he thought. Try to find out if any other people have been murdered, or kidnapped, or assaulted—people who are somehow associated with this house. And I'll have to talk with Trooper Cartier, see if he's found any group of people who use a rocking horse for a club sign or whatever.

“You want something to eat before I lie down?” Tracy asked.

“No. I had a sandwich in Atlanta. Thanks, though. You go on and grab a nap. I'll watch the kids.”

He found them on the south veranda, sitting and watching the deserted gravel road in front of the grounds. He sat down beside them.

“Getting bored, gang?”

“Naw,” Johnny said.

“It's just kind of a lazy day,” Jackie said.

And that triggered the memory of an old song his Grandfather Taylor used to sing. Way back when Lucas was just a boy. Something about how he might have gone fishin', but got to thinkin' it over.

He could not recall the rest of the song. But the idea seemed to be a pretty good one.

“Tell you what,” Lucas said. “How about the three of us just loafing the rest of the day? Let's go fishing down at the creek.”

“Yeah!” they both cried.

“You two get the poles out of the shed. I'll get the tackle and stuff we bought at Jim's and then we'll all dig some worms.”

“Yekk!” Jackie said.

“Maybe we'd better leave her at home,” Johnny suggested.

Lucas laughed and stood up. “I'll go tell Mother where we're going.”

“Ask her to come with us,” Jackie suggested.

“The last time I went fishing,” Tracy said, “I got finned, I fell out of the damn boat, and stuck a hook all the way through my thumb. Do you know how my father removed the hook?”

Lucas knew. His grandfather had done the same thing. “You push the hook through until the barb is clear, then you clip the barb off and pull the shank out.”

“It hurts me even now. Don't let the kids go swimming, though. That creek might be full of snakes.” She put her head back on the pillow and closed her eyes.

“If you're sure you don't want to come along with us . . .”

“I'm sure. But why don't you take that pistol you bought from Jim along for insurance?”

He stared at her. And he had hidden it so
well
—he had thought.

She opened one eye and looked at him. “I was looking for a screwdriver the other day and found the gun. It had to come from Jim. And Lucas—I'm taking all this very seriously.”

“I thought you were treating it all as some sort of joke.”

“To keep my sanity, baby. That's all.” She rolled over and opened the nightstand on her side of the bed. She pulled out a long, very sharp butcher knife. She winked at him. “Don't worry about Big Mamma, baby.”

He laughed at her expression. “All right. But what changed your mind about guns?”

“Nothing. I still hate them. But if having one makes you feel better, considering what has happened down here, I'll try to see your side of matters.”

He leaned over and kissed her. “Thanks. I wish we had done this several years ago.”

She giggled and put her arms around his neck. “I don't.”

“Oh?”

“They might have tattooed a baby buggy on your arm back then.” She rolled over, laughing.

Smiling and muttering about many things, women and wives in general, Lucas walked out into the early-afternoon Georgia sunshine.

* * *

“What kind of pistol is that, Dad?” Johnny asked.

“.45-caliber, son.”

“That's the kind Mike Hammer carries, right, Dad?”

“The real Mike Hammer, yes.”

“Is it hard to shoot a gun, Dad?” Jackie asked, quickly adding, “Not that I want to.”

* * *

His grandfather's words returned to him, spinning out of a twenty-five-year void, reaching his mind as if they had been spoken only yesterday. “If you can point your finger, Lucas, you can shoot a pistol. Just keep this in mind: When the sights center on the target, pull the trigger. Don't stand there trying to perfect your breathing and all that. That'll get you mauled by an animal, snake bit, or killed by a man. Or a woman,” he had added very drily. “Whether you're coming up with the pistol, or coming down with it, when the sights center on the target, do it. You have a natural flair for guns, boy. I hope to God you never have to use them against a man, but if you do, know how.”

“Did you ever have to kill a man, Granddad?” Lucas had asked.

The tall old man had been silent for a few steps as they walked across the cornfield. “Yes, boy. Back in the big war. Over in France.”

“Did it make you sick at your stomach and all that kind of stuff?”

“No, it didn't, Lucas. We had a few in our company that puked up their socks a time or two. But they soon got over that—or got killed. War is a bad thing, son. But sometimes it's a necessary thing, too. Killing a person is a bad thing, too. But sometimes that's a necessary thing.” Again he had been silent for a few steps. “We're going to have us a brand new man in the White House next year, Lucas. Ike is stepping down. Don't blame him a bit. Wouldn't want the job myself. Nixon or Kennedy will be our president. I think it's going to be J.F.K. He's what some folks have taken to calling a liberal.”

“What's that mean?”

“Don't rightly know, Lucas. Read about it in the newspaper, though. Think it means change and reform. And you're just the right age to be caught up in all of it, boy.”

“Should I look forward to that, Granddad?”

“I don't know, Lucas. I can't answer that one.” He was silent for a few more steps, and the boy had thought his grandfather had something that was weighing very heavy on his mind. Turned out the boy was right. “Kennedy is a good man in his heart, Lucas—even if he is a Catholic. He is going to do what he thinks is right. I can't say the same for some of them around him, but J.F.K. truly believes in what he's saying and doing.”