The Last Death of Jack Harbin (21 page)

The third call is from Dr. Hadley in Bryan. I didn't know doctors worked on Saturday. “Mr. Craddock, I didn't have time Thursday and Friday to do the tests I promised I'd do, but your question about Bob Harbin's blood tests got under my skin, so I stayed late last night to run the tests. You were right. Harbin had a toxic level of digitalis in his system, and no reason on earth he should have been taking it. Looks like that's what you were after. If you have any more questions, call my office Monday.”

I phone Jenny and ask for a postponement of our wine date, since I'm planning to turn in early tonight.

After the pie I ate at the café, I'm not particularly hungry, so I make do with a couple of tamales and some coleslaw that I think is still edible. I'm just washing up the dishes when the phone rings.

Linda Eldridge's voice is trembling. “Samuel, I don't know what to do. Boone left early this morning and he hasn't come home.”

“It wasn't even six o'clock this morning. He was all ready to go when I woke up. He said he had a couple of things to do and he'd see me later. And that's the last I heard from him.”

We're sitting at the kitchen table in the Eldridge house. Linda's huge brown eyes are wild as a spooked horse. She's a pretty woman with a voluptuous figure. She gets her dusky complexion and black hair from her Mexican parents, who attend most of the football games. Linda said she called me because when she tried the police department, James Harley told her she was being foolish, that she should call him tomorrow morning if Boone hadn't shown up by then.

“Boone left at six? That's awfully early. Did he give you any idea what he was going to do?”

“I was still half asleep. I told him nothing was open at that time of the morning, but he said he had somebody he had to meet.”

“Is it possible he went fishing?” Boone is known to spend a lot of time fishing, but it would be unusual during football season.

Linda thinks. “He wasn't dressed for fishing. Usually he wears this vest thing that smells to high heaven. And old pants. But this morning he was dressed in regular clothes.”

“Has he ever done anything like this before?”

She's kneading her hands on the table. “I guess he has, but he usually tells me if he's going to be late. You know, Boone's job is different. It's not like he keeps regular hours. He teaches a few history classes, but being the coach he's got a lot of free time during the day because he works late after school with football practice.” Nerves are making her chatter.

“I expect he practices with the team on weekends, too.”

“He works with the boys all the time. Weekends are probably the worst, especially during football season. But if he's called a weekend practice, he'll always tell me in advance. And even if he forgot to tell me, he'd surely be home by now.”

“He didn't say when to expect him?”

“No. And I asked my daughter if she'd heard from him—I went out grocery shopping and hoped he might have called while I was gone, but she says no.”

“The boys won last night. Maybe he planned something special and didn't want anyone to know about it.”

At the mention of last night's game, she frowns and her eyes dart away from me.

“Was there something about last night's game that bothered Boone? I understand it was a close one. Maybe he called a secret practice?” I'm thinking about Dilly working with Collin. I don't know Boone well, but coaches can be funny. Maybe he didn't like the idea that one of his players was training the backup quarterback without him knowing about it, and decided if the boys wanted extra practice, he'd give it to them.

Sweat is beaded on Linda's upper lip, and she swipes at it. “You could be right, I guess. But here's the thing. Boone is usually excited after we win. I tease him that he's just as bad as his boys, getting so worked up. But last night, he was quiet. I asked him if everything was okay. I thought maybe his stomach was bothering him—he has trouble with his stomach. But he said he was just tired.”

“Have you talked to any of the boys?”

A hopeful smile lights up her pretty face. “I'm so stupid! No, I didn't. I should have called Waylon.”

I wait while she calls Waylon Foster, the assistant coach. But I can tell from her responses that Waylon doesn't know Boone's whereabouts. When she hangs up, she says, “Waylon told me to call Louis. If Boone is with any of the boys, Louis will know.”

A call to the quarterback yields the same results. And with that, I'm ready to get uneasy, too. I'm thinking about the attack on Boone. Nothing ever came of it, and everybody pretty much forgot about it after the boys won the next couple of games. “Do you think I could get a cup of coffee?”

She puts her hand to her mouth. “I'm so sorry, I should have asked if you'd like something.”

When I've got coffee settled in front of me, and Linda has sat back down, I say, “I'd like to talk to you about the night Boone was attacked. Were you here when he got home?”

She shivers. “You think his being gone has something to do with that?”

“No way of knowing just yet, but it could.”

“Yes, I was home that night. It scared me to death.”

“Tell me exactly what happened.”

“Well, Boone got a phone call and told me he had to go meet somebody.”

“What time was that?”

“It was late, about ten o'clock. We were getting ready for bed. I asked him why it couldn't wait until morning.”

“He didn't say who it was?”

She shakes her head. “I thought maybe it was one of the boys' parents. That happens, you know. Usually it's about grades, or if a parent thinks his son isn't getting enough playing time. But they don't usually call so late.”

“How long was he gone?”

“Forty-five minutes, an hour.”

“What did he tell you when he got home all banged up?”

“He looked terrible and I asked him where he'd been, but he said it didn't matter. We argued, because I said if one of the boys' dads attacked him, he had to tell the school. He said he'd taken care of it, and that was the end of it. I had to drive him to the clinic in Bobtail so they could take X-rays of his arm and clean him up, and we dropped the subject.”

Is it a coincidence that both the beating and Boone's disappearance happened after Louis was benched at the end of a ballgame? Even though this game turned out all right, maybe somebody didn't like Louis being taken out of the lineup. “Was Boone ever threatened by any of the parents?”

Linda's mouth twists and her voice is bitter. “Only all the time. I know I'm the coach's wife, and I shouldn't say anything. I like football, but people take it way too seriously, if you ask me. But the threats aren't about harming him physically. It's usually that they're going to see to it that Boone loses his job, or they're going to yank their boy off the team, or they're going to boycott. That kind of stuff.”

“Was Boone ever worried about any of it?”

“Not that he told me. He tried to be polite, but once or twice he blew up.”

“Anything recent?”

Linda hesitates. “After the loss to Bobtail, Louis's mom just about blew a gasket. Boone was pretty upset about that.”

“His mom?”

“Yeah. Louis's dad is a hard man, but he's mostly hard on Louis. Louis's mom is after Boone all the time.”

It sounds like I need to talk to Louis's family. It's also possible that the team wanted to teach the coach a lesson for taking Louis out of two games, so they cooked up some kind of prank. I get a mental image of Boone trudging back home after being left out in the country somewhere.

“Did he say whether Louis's mom was upset last night?”

“We didn't really talk about it. I was home before him. I always am. He comes back on the bus with the boys after an away game. And like I said, he was quiet when he got home.”

She pauses, her eyes locked onto mine. “Usually when he comes in, he's hungry. I made chili for him, but he said he didn't want anything. Then he went into his office—he calls it an office, it's just our guest room with a desk there. And he shut the door.”

“And that's not a regular thing?”

“He never does that. He hates paperwork, and only does it when he has to—and even then he usually leaves the door open. Last night he didn't come out of the office for a long time, and when I knocked on the door he told me to go on to bed, that he'd be a while.”

“What time did he come to bed?”

“I don't know. I woke up, but I didn't look at the clock.”

“Do you mind if I take a look in his office? I might spot something that would give us a clue to where he went.”

“Please, please . . .” She gets up. “I'll show you.”

We walk down the hallway. I say, “You know, it's still possible he's just running late. Does he usually call you when he's going to be late?”

“No, he's not very good about that. He loses track of time when he's at practice.”

What strikes me first about the desk where Boone does his paperwork is how neat it is. I expected a coach to be messy. I tell Linda that, and she smiles. “He's fussy that way. Always likes everything neat. He says it's because high school boys are so messy that at home he needs things to be in their place.” She's standing in the doorway with her arms crossed. I get the impression that she isn't there to keep an eye on me so much as so to have company.

It's strange going through another man's desk drawers. There's no point of reference to tell you if something is off, or if whatever looks unusual to you really is off, or if this is the way he always does things. Or if what looks normal to you is evidence of a problem.

Boone has a master calendar on the wall next to the desk, and he has made liberal use of it. Games are noted in pen, while extra practices, meetings, and appointments are in pencil. All the notations are clear. No baffling initials, no cryptic phrases to arouse suspicion. He had a doctor's appointment two weeks ago, right after he was attacked. There's a dentist's appointment coming up next month. Monday he's supposed to take his car in for service.

In one drawer I find a collection of newspaper cuttings describing the football games, large ones from the Jarrett Creek weekly newspaper, smaller ones from the San Antonio paper. On top of the cuttings is a memo sent out to all state coaches, reminding them to submit the names of players they deem worthy of all-star status.

On one corner of the desk there's a stack of papers. I look them over and see that they are history tests that Boone needs to grade. A small town coach always has to put in time teaching a couple of classes, and Boone teaches Texas history. Unlike some coaches, he's actually got a reputation for being a pretty good history teacher. Next to the tests is a tray containing bills. “You mind?” I ask Linda.

“Nothing to hide.”

The bills are the regular expenses—water, electricity, gas, house payment, car insurance, and TV and Internet service. There's a second mortgage payment that appears to be a month overdue. And there's a small bill for payments for another house. “What is this?”

“Fishing shack.” Her grimace is indulgent. “Nothing but a one-room cabin. The land is worth more than the house. It's over by the lake. Boone keeps a little motorboat there that he can hitch up to the car. He uses it to fish out on the lake. This time of year Boone never goes to the shack, but during the summer before school starts he likes to take his buddies out there. Sometimes we have barbecues.”

“Could be he went out there with somebody and they had a little too much to drink . . .”

She shakes her head. “I drove out there right after dark, ready to give him hell. But it was closed up tight.”

I look through the bills again. Something tugged my attention the first time, and I'm trying to remember what it was. I stop at the TV and Internet bill. “Where does Boone keep his computer?”

Linda straightens up and walks over to the desk. “It's usually right here. Maybe he took it into the den, or maybe one of the kids has it. They share another computer and sometimes one of them will take Boone's if they both want to use it at the same time.”

We look in the den, then the living room, but don't find the computer. I sit on the sofa to wait while Linda goes off to ask her kids if they are using it. She comes back into the living room shaking her head. “They don't have it.” Her daughter has followed her back down the hall. A young teenager, she's dressed in pajamas with a pattern of Scottie dogs. She's got her mother's eyes, but is taller and is all arms and legs.

“Mommy, what's going on?”

Linda puts her arm around her daughter's waist. “Nothing, sweetie. Mr. Craddock just had a question and I thought maybe Daddy would have the information on his computer.”

“Where is Daddy?”

“He's going to be home late. Go on back to bed now.”

The girl looks from her mother to me, and back. “You asked me earlier if I'd heard from Daddy. Why did you ask me if you knew he was going to be home late?”

Smart girl. Linda sighs. “Okay, Allie, I don't know where your papa is, but I'm sure he's fine.”

“But how do you know?” Panic edges into the girl's voice. “Maybe those men who beat him up last time hurt him again.”

“No, baby, I'm sure he's fine. He's just gotten busy—you know how busy he is—and he's just not home yet.”

“Allie.” I get up and walk over to the two of them. “You said ‘those men who beat him up.' Do you know anything about them?”

The girl flushes and darts a glance at her mother. Linda frowns at her daughter. “Allie, do you know something you haven't told me?”

Allie glares at me. “I don't know anything.”

Linda grabs her daughter's arm. “If you know who attacked your daddy, you have to tell!”