The Underground Lady (13 page)

"Make a list of the local trappers. Maybe one of them can offer up something that could be of help."

"I'll do that tonight, get phone numbers, addresses. How long before you hear from the sheriff on the note and letter?"
"Depends on how backed up they are at the crime lab. However, the man said he'd put a rush on it."

"His daughter works there, you know."

"No, I was unaware of that. Maybe she'll do it quickly for dear old dad, especially since he's running for reelection next month."

Hebrone got up and threw two sticks of wood on the fire. "If this is murder, we need to find a motive. What was that paternity thing you mentioned? The banker from Decatur?"

"The first thing out of his mouth during our brief conversation was that he did not father the daughter. It was a surprise to me. Sunny denied it had anything to do with why she was looking into her mother's disappearance. She said there was proof that Ed Pfeiffer was her father, and that her only motivation was the anonymous letter."

"We know the Welch woman was the mother?"

It was a question that I hadn't thought about. "I guess Rose can tell us for sure. She was friends with Hadley Welch."

Shack sat his glass on the coffee table, motioned that he did not want another drink. "Why don't you two re-interview all of the men, give Hebrone an opportunity to evaluate them. He has good instincts for judging people. I'll keep an eye on the girls while you're doing that. Whoever it is will know you're continuing to nose around and may make a move to carry out one of the threats. We will be ready."

"Not a bad idea, Shack."

"I'll be off then. Whoever this is won't make a move until they know you're still looking into the disappearance, but we need to be careful."

"One of us will stay at Rose's house tonight."

"That will be an interesting coin-toss," he said, with a telling grin. "See you both tomorrow."

After Shack left, Hebrone said, “He's an intelligent man."

"He can also be deadly."

"Yeah, I'm familiar with that type personality. Pour us some more wine, and let's decide who gets to flirt with the young woman from St. Louis."

When I phoned Rose, she scoffed at the idea that they needed protection, saying that she could damn well look after herself and her houseguest. Besides, she reminded me, the outcome of our last practice session with the slide guns was that she out shot me. It was true, I dislike automatic pistols, have never become proficient with them, cannot learn to trust them – they will sometimes jam. My magnum never does, and nobody can outshoot me with that weapon.

Rose finally relented when I said Hebrone would come to stay the night. She thought it a good idea for him and Sunny to get to know each other.

"So how come I get to stay with them? I don't remember volunteering for the job, though after seeing the young woman, I can't say as I much mind."

"There's something about Sunny Pfeiffer that bothers me. I can't put my finger on it, but some of her actions make me think that there is more than one reason for her to be in Mississippi looking for her mother after twenty-five years. Maybe I'm wrong. I'd be interested in your impression of her."

"Okay. Let me have one of those Glocks you keep in that hidden gun case, and an extra clip."

Retrieving the pistol, I asked Hebrone to find out from Rose if she's sure Hadley Welch is Sunny's mother. He agreed, and I dropped him off at Rose's farm and drove back to the cottage. The Big Dipper was framed over the driveway. In the hollow to the north, a large animal ran through the brush. Deer bed there at night.

Inside, I closed the screen to the fireplace, gave B.W. some food, and readied for bed. It had been a long day, and the wine made me sleepy. Lying in bed, I let my mind drift, thought about Rose, Shack, and Hebrone. Earl and Annie Sanders came to mind, with Earl telling Annie about his attraction to Hadley Welch. What would be the purpose of this world if there were no reason for the existence of virtue? My neurons summoned up a visual of my ex-girlfriend bending over naked to feed B.W. one spring morning. This thought happened a split second before tears formed over her leaving for Seattle with the banker. I suspected she'd become infatuated with another man, but I found this inconceivable because men love to think of themselves as the only stud in the pasture despite the presence of other bulls. Then I remembered the trees and green fields of my childhood and chimney smoke on the damp morning air. The memory of my father's hard, rough hands, the sandpaper scratch of his beard the day he embraced me for the last time as he went off to meet his fate in a P-38 Lightning fighter plane under a blue Pacific sky in a long ago war against an evil empire.

I slipped into a deep sleep that crept across me like smoke.

***

Full consciousness did not come easily, but I floated toward sound and light, and as it seemed I would break free to full reality, I would slip once more into a murky insensibility. I would drift helpless like a cloud until the light and sound called me forth again. But what brought me toward total awareness was smell, the familiar aroma of fresh coffee and frying bacon. The clock beside the bed read seven a.m.

Pulling on a pair of pants, I went into the living room. Hebrone was building a fire and Sunny Pfeiffer stood in front of the stove putting strips of bacon onto paper towels to drain. B.W. sat on the counter beside her eyeing the bacon strips.

Hebrone stood, glanced at me, nodded toward Sunny, and shook his head. "It's about time you got up. Rose said that this country living was making you lazy."

"Where is Rose? I'm surprised she isn't here giving orders."

Sunny turned from the stove. "Good morning. I insisted Hebrone bring me here so that we could get an early start. I hope you don't mind?"

"Would it make any difference?"

"Oh, you are one of those people who are grumpy before they've had their coffee. Here, let me pour you a cup. Where do you keep that honey jar?"

"Just exactly what is it we need to get an early start doing?"

"Hebrone said last night we were going to re-interview the men my mother was dating at the time of her disappearance so he could make his own impressions of them."

"Oh, he did, did he?" Looking at him, I said, “When did you start speaking more than three words at a time?"

He gave me one of those stares that said I might be nearing a line that I really didn't want to cross. "You said she was going to be working with us."

The phone rang, interrupting our conversation before it escalated into something ugly.

"Jay Leicester." It was John Quincy Adams, the sheriff. "You are kidding. Okay, we'll be at your office at ten a.m."

Hebrone came and sat beside me at the kitchen counter. "Crime lab?"

"That was the sheriff. They got prints off the note and letter. Two different men, both local. He'll have their sheets ready for us in his office at ten a.m."

Sunny picked up B.W., sat down beside Hebrone. "What does this mean?"

"It means we know who sent you the letter, and we know who hung the coyote over my door."

"Who are they?"

"The sheriff will have all that information for us at his office later on this morning. He said both men lived in the area, so we need to get Shack to go with us. He'll probably know them."

Sunny fed B.W. a piece of the bacon. "How can they know who these people are so quick?"

"Once they 'raise' a print, and there are several ways that can be done, they scan them into a computer which is networked to a national database. If they have a criminal record, been in the military, or have been fingerprinted for any reason, their prints will be there and it only takes seconds for a match to be made. Big Brother is watching."

Shack answered his phone on the first ring, and said he'd meet us at the sheriff's office. I took a quick shower, thinking that things were starting to happen.

***

Shack was waiting when we arrived in Decatur at the sheriff's office. We all four walked inside together.

The receptionist, a pleasant, middle-aged woman with silver hair, smiled at me, pointed back to Sheriff Adam's office. "He's expecting you."

Sitting across from her, against a wall, were two females, both with hands cuffed behind their backs. One was an extremely young girl with wild black hair and a shape like an ironing board. Her dress might have been cut from old gunnysacks. Her eyes were like black gobs of axle grease. The other one was small with a shaved head and red-rimmed eyes sunken in dark circles of insomnia and suffering. Her gaze was vacant and desolate, an absolute emptiness born of pain and exhaustion and bitterness of one who knows the depths of the darkest nightmare ever imagined. She was eighteen or nineteen years old, but looked like a decrepit old woman. There were splotches of blood on her clothes. If human souls have weight – some vague but perceptible mass – then she was carrying an immense burden. A deputy walked in and said, "Let's go, girls." They both rose in unison and left with the deputy.

"Sheriff John Quincy Adams, meet Sunny Pfeiffer, Hebrone Opshinsky, and Jack, "Shack," Runnels."

"Shack Runnels, cattle rancher from up in Neshoba County, I knew your dad, fine man. Please, everybody sit. Anyone want coffee?"

Nobody did.

The office was Spartan. The furniture was well made from oak, but seemed hundreds of years old. There was a blowup of a black and white photograph behind his desk showing a dozen police officers armed with high-powered rifles and shotguns leading a black man out of a cornfield. The man had a scared look on his face, and was trying to cover with his hands what appeared to be several wounds that were oozing blood. I had seen the photo before. It depicted the capture of a bank robber who had killed an elderly teller during the heist. The killer was said to have had eleven gunshot wounds, but walked out of the woods of his own accord.

"What's with the two sad cases out front?" I asked, watching Sunny stare at the photograph.

"Crystal meth. Destroys more humans than cancer. It's a scourge on our society. The lure of rural areas to cook it is growing by leaps and bounds as the cities crack down on the drug trafficking. I feel like we're at war."

"I hope you have a good battle plan."

"We're working on it. Hebrone Opshinsky, now that name rings a bell. I'm a friend of William Wadell, Police Chief down in Biloxi. Seems the two of you have had some differences."

Hebrone said nothing.

"So, Miss Pfeiffer, you are looking into what happened to your mother twenty-five years ago. I'm afraid that is a cold case. We don't even have any paperwork on it. When Jay asked me to run the letter you received and the note with the threats through our crime lab, I was happy to do it. My daughter works there and expedited it for me."

Sunny crossed her legs, smiled. "Thank you, Sheriff Adams. I appreciate your help."

"What did you find out, John?"

He slid two file folders across the desk. Tapping one with an index finger, he said, “This is Avis Shaw, he sent the letter to Miss Pfeiffer. He's an old man, now, and has lived here all of his life, no criminal record to amount to much. This one," he pointed to the other folder, “is Ralph Henderson. His prints were on the note nailed to your door. If you want to file criminal trespass charges, maybe add animal cruelty, we can pick him up."

Shack suddenly stood up. Everything about him hardened into stone, his shoulders squared, fists clinched, turning forearms into iron. "I'll be a son-of-a-bitch. Jay, I've got to go. I'll be in touch later this afternoon. Good to see you again, sheriff." He walked out of the office.

"Let's don't file any charges. Tell your daughter thanks for expediting the prints."

"I don't know what you are planning, and I don't want to know, but if you do anything illegal, I won't have any choice. I wish you'd let my office handle it."

"At the moment, it's an investigation into an old airplane crash. If we find any evidence of murder, we'll let you know."

"Good. Mr. Opshinsky, a moment of your time, in private."

"Now listen, John, Hebrone is here at my request, and I won't have…"

"Shut up, Leicester, I don't need you fighting my battles."

Sunny and I waited in the car.

"Just how bad a guy is Hebrone?" She asked, with a look of amazement.

"He was a soldier doing what he was trained to do, what his government asked him to do. There were some rough times after he was discharged, but he's gotten through them, and there's not a better friend on the planet."

Fifteen minutes later, Hebrone walked out of the sheriff's office with a somber expression on his face, and got in the truck.

"Well?"

"Sheriff Adams was 'in-country.' We have a lot in common."

"I did not know that."

"There is a lot you don't know, Leicester." He had that deadly smile.

"Let's ride on into Meridian. I know a bar with a live band that serves up some good barbecue. After lunch we can drive up Highway 19 and take a look at the retired airline pilot's house. It's on a lake, and has a dock and boathouse. I want to take a look inside of it."