Tumbleweeds (56 page)

Deke drew Randy aside as John stepped into the hall. “About your chat with the DA, Sheriff,” he said, lowering his voice, “I’d appreciate your keeping that part of John’s confession between you and him until it’s absolutely necessary to make it public.”

“Believe me, I will. I’m sick to my gut about it. John may have had a humdinger of a motive, but if he killed TD Hall may worms eat my ass. A double-wide could pass through his story. However, I want you to look at something Trey wrote just before he died and left on John’s desk.” He unlocked a drawer and removed a plastic evidence bag containing an open note. Deke read the brief message. “For the kids. I’m leaving, Tiger. I’ve reconsidered and have decided not to go through with it. I’m trusting you to keep your silence as you always have. Spare me that blight on my name. I’d appreciate your prayers. Love to the end, Trey.”

“Good God,” Deke said.

“That note bears out John’s statement, and with the evidence you collected and if his fingerprints are a match to those on the cord…” Randy looked in pain. “Even with two other suspects confessing to the crime…”

“John could be the one to hang,” Deke said.

“Pray he gets a good lawyer.”

Before leaving the building and to escape the cameras and microphones, Deke asked John to meet him farther up the road before John left for Harbison House and Deke for his appointment with Lawrence Statton.

When the black-suited figure got out of his Silverado, Deke couldn’t resist comparing the man to the teenager who used to climb out of his old pickup in his letter-jacket days when his future had stretched before him like a plush red carpet. But for that afternoon in November and Trey Don Hall gumming up the works, would he be wearing the black and white of a Jesuit priest today or a Super Bowl ring? No matter. Whichever course he would have chosen, John Caldwell would still be walking on that red carpet.

“John, I have to tell you something,” Deke said when they met between their vehicles. John’s dread and pain from what he was about to do once he arrived at Harbison House were as clear as his own
face in Paula’s gleaming pans. “I swore I wouldn’t, but I’m forced to for the sakes of Lou and Betty Harbison. When Trey learned he was dying, he wrote a letter that he instructed his lawyer to give them after his death. In it, he confessed to the accident and took full blame for Donny’s death. Your name was not mentioned. Lawrence Statton brought it to them, and Lou drove to Amarillo yesterday to show it to me as proof I was right to question Donny’s death.”

John looked surprised. “Trey wrote them a letter? Well, then, that explains why Betty and Lou seem to be happier lately, despite what’s happened. Donny’s picture used to be partially hidden. Now it’s on a shelf over the sink where Betty can look at it.”

Deke took a step closer to John and squinted at him with the hope he could bore through his obstinate skull to a more reasonable mind. “They won’t show you that letter because they are afraid you’ll think less of them for concealing the circumstances of Donny’s death from the Church. Let them have their peace as long as possible. It may be that—somehow, someway—they may never have to know of your part in it. Even if they were to guess Trey had an accomplice, they’ll never suspect it was you.”

“I don’t see how my confession can be avoided.”

“You’re a priest, John. Have a little faith.”

“I’m guilty, Sheriff.”

“And I’m a monkey’s uncle. Think over my advice. Hold off telling them as long as you can.”

An hour later, Lawrence Statton capped the fountain pen with which he had signed the final papers on behalf of Trey D. Hall’s estate giving Deke legal possession of Mabel Church’s house. He was a small man dressed in a navy-blue pin-striped suit, his silk tie precisely knotted within the pointed collar of his crisp white shirt. It was an unseasonably warm day, and they were sitting in a picnic area along Highway 40, batting away flies and finishing cups of coffee Deke had picked up at Whataburger, but the attorney looked as fresh
and dapper as if he had spent the last hour in the cooling room of a florist shop.

“Well, that’s it, Mr. Tyson,” he said. “I trust you and Mrs. Tyson will be very happy in the house.”

“We’d have been happier if Trey hadn’t met his death this way.”

“I can certainly understand that,” the attorney said. “I would have been happier putting Trey away with at least a little more fanfare, but I’m thankful his good friend, John Caldwell, has agreed to officiate at his burial. Trey thought the world of him. He seems like such a good man.”

“He is a good man. When is Trey to be buried?”

“This afternoon.”

Deke drew up in surprise. “Trey’s to be buried this afternoon?”

“Yes. At six. Very private, very secret. I’m determined to keep the information from the media. The medical examiner’s office in Lubbock was kind enough not to inform the press that his body has been released. It was sent to Jamison’s Funeral Home last night. If I can just get Trey buried with the least possible fuss…” He whipped out an immaculate white handkerchief to clean his glasses and fixed Deke with a myopic gaze. “Do you suppose you might like to stay for the burial? Trey respected you. He didn’t many people. He was most happy that you bought his aunt’s house.”

“At six, you say?” Deke glanced at his watch. It was four o’clock. He had plenty of time to go to a florist and be back in time for the burial. “Sure I’ll come,” he said.

They shook hands and parted, Deke to order a funeral arrangement at Martha’s Flowers in Kersey. “Red carnations,” he said to the owner since he thought Trey would have liked the color red. “A big wreath of them.”

“We’re all out,” Martha said.

“All out? I thought red carnations were a staple in a florist shop.”

“Not when one customer comes in and buys all you have.”

“Oh, I see. How about white ones then?”

Deke was early at the grave site. Lawrence Statton had not arrived. Typical of June evenings before dusk in the Panhandle, the constant wind had begun to subside along with the heat. There would be a pretty sunset. That was good. Deke carried the wreath of white carnations to an open grave beside Mabel Church’s resting place.
Trey Don Hall
had been crudely written in cursive across the bar of a wooden cross that would serve as a marker until a tombstone could be erected in its place.

Deke took a seat on a stone bench. Across the cemetery the tempered wind rustled the floral tokens left to the dead in urns by loved ones or placed against tombstones. Most were artificial. A few were real, left to wilt and decompose in the sun. A distance away, he saw two graves side by side heaped with tributes of flowers still fresh.
Ah, there were his red carnations.

He stared at the mounds reflectively for a moment, then got up and slowly walked toward them. An old familiar sensation thrummed in his brain. Even before he reached the ornately carved stones, he was fairly certain whose names were inscribed on them, who had bought the dozens of red carnations, and why. The card tucked among the blossoms convinced him. “Now, my darlings, rest in peace.”

Deke let out a bereaved howl.
Fool! Fool! Fool!
How could he have been so blind not to have seen the obvious right in front of him?

Like a deranged man, he raced to his car, grabbed his cellular, and punched in Melissa’s number.
Let her be home. Let her be home.

She was. “Daddy?” she said in a voice that seemed perpetually filled with surprise when addressing her father these days.

“Melissa, I have something very important to ask you, and a lot depends on your answer. I want you to think back to the summer after your senior year in high school and tell me if my guess is correct.”

A long pause. “Daddy, Mother and I are worried about you.”

“Melissa!”

Deke stated his question.

“There were rumors to that effect among us kids,” his daughter answered, “but out of respect for her parents, we kept our speculations to ourselves. They were hurting enough, and everybody else seemed to have bought the story. Would Trey have had anything to do with her? Not on your life. He despised the girl.”

Oh, me
, Deke thought, recalling the only line from literature he remembered from his high school English class. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

T
he hearse was arriving, followed by Lawrence Statton’s car, and Deke saw John’s Silverado turning into the cemetery gate. He felt himself trembling when he went to meet the lawyer. “Mr. Statton, I’m terribly sorry, but some important business has come up that requires my immediate attention. I won’t be able to stay for the burial.”

Lawrence glanced around his shoulder at the white carnations. “Thank you for the wreath, at least. That was very kind of you.”

“I have your number. I will call you later with news you’ll want to hear.”

“I won’t allow my curiosity to delay you, but I’ll look forward to hearing from you later. We could all use some good news.”

Deke opened John’s truck door almost before the Silverado rolled to a stop. “Did you tell them?”

“Tonight,” John said, looking startled. “I decided to wait until tonight.”

“Thank God.” Deke blew out a noisy breath. “Well, don’t say a word to them until you hear from me. I mean it, Father. You’ve got to trust me. Where can I reach you?”

“I’ll be at Cathy’s with Will until after dinner. We want to be together as a family before…”

“Stay put there. I’ll need to speak with all of you.”

“Deke, what’s going on?”

“Can’t say now. I’ll tell you then. Don’t move a muscle until you hear from me.”

Ten minutes later, Deke pulled into the driveway of the house belonging to the murderer of Trey Don Hall. Behind one of the doors of the three-car garage, he was certain he’d find his wife’s last white Lexus, the car the farmer saw from the seat of his tractor speeding away from the murder scene. The killer had gone expecting to shoot Trey at Harbison House and perhaps turn the gun on himself, but he had passed the object of his vengeance on the road. Recognizing the face behind the wheel, Trey would have pulled over immediately.

Deke felt a moment’s pity for Trey in those final seconds of his life, the hurt and puzzlement he must have felt to see the gun raised against him by the idol of his youth. He withdrew a Colt Python from the glove compartment and slipped it inside his belt behind his back.

The door was a few minutes opening to the sound of the bell. Deke was surprised at the change in the man standing in the doorway. He was cleanly shaven and dressed in fine casual attire. He smelled of a recent shower and expensive cologne. “Hello, Coach,” Deke said.

“Deke!” Ron Turner bellowed pleasantly. “How nice to see you again. You’re just in time. Come in! Come in!”

“In time for what?” Deke said, stepping inside.

“I’ve just finished typing a letter, and you’re the very man to deliver it. Come on back. Want some coffee?”

“A cup would be great, Coach, but isn’t coffee somewhat of a departure for you?”

Ron threw him a smile over his shoulder. “Yeah, but sometimes a change is necessary.”

There had been other changes since Friday, Deke noticed as he
glanced around the kitchen and breakfast room. They looked freshly cleaned and put to rights, and sack after sack of beer and liquor bottles were stacked neatly beside the back door.

“Those are going out to the rubbish for pickup tomorrow,” Ron said, following Deke’s glance. “Help yourself to coffee. I just need to slip my letter into an envelope. I won’t be a minute.”

He was back shortly, licking the flap of the envelope. “You mind delivering it for me?”

Deke studied him. Ron stared back, cool as mint except for a barely perceptible film of sweat on his upper lip. “Who’s the letter to?” Deke asked quietly.

“Randy Wallace.”

“Ah,” Deke said, taking the letter. “It was about your daughter, wasn’t it?”

“It was about Trey’s
betrayal
!”

Ron’s face suffused with emotion so violent, Deke thought a pinprick would have started a hemorrhage.
He’s mad
, he thought. Alcohol and grief and blind belief in his own interpretation of events had destroyed his brain. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I trusted Trey with Tara. I trusted him not to take advantage of her… weakness—out of respect to me, if not to her—and the son of a bitch got her pregnant.”

“Pregnant? Oh, Ron…”

“I didn’t find out until Tara was a month along that she and Trey had met secretly after he dumped Cathy for a couple of weeks after graduation,” Ron said.

“And she told you he was the father.”

“Yes!” Ron’s eyes snapped.

“And it was an abortion she died from, not a ruptured appendix.”

“A
botched
abortion. We had her only a month afterwards before the infection got her. We told the ruptured appendix story to protect my wife from town gossip. Not that it made much difference.” Ron’s
mouth twisted. “The loss of our daughter was too much for her. Flora had congestive heart failure, but she died from heartbreak. As far as I’m concerned, Trey killed them both.”