A Deadly Affair at Bobtail Ridge (27 page)

I find the address Graciela gave me easily enough. Although the lot is overgrown with weeds, the slab of the original house is still there. The house next door looks relatively new, and I wonder if the fire that destroyed this house took that one with it. I expect whoever lives in the newish house doesn't know anything about Eddie and his young wife. On the other side, though, the house is old. Its weathered porch has a rocking chair and about thirty potted plants on it. A tiny old woman sits in the rocking chair watching my every move. If it weren't for her stroking the cat on her lap, you'd think she was a mummy.

I walk over and stand at the bottom of the porch, hat in hand. “I wonder if I could talk to you for a minute?”

“What's that? You're going to have to come up here close. I can't hear worth a damn.”

I walk onto the porch, and the cat flies off the woman's lap like it has seen a monster. “Sorry,” I say, nodding in the direction the cat disappeared to.

“Doesn't like strangers,” she says. She has a deep country accent.

“How long have you lived here?” I say, raising my voice and speaking clearly.

“You don't have to shout,” she says. “I've been here forty years.”

“Do you remember the woman who lived next door?”

“Mrs. Kolajecko?”

“She rented out part of the house to a young couple?”

“Mm-hmm. She sure did.”

“Did you know Eddie Sandstone who lived there?”

Her eyes narrow. “Married a wetback.”

“He married a young woman by the name of Estelle Cruz. Did you meet them?”

“I knew them to look at, that's all. Anna Kolajecko told me that girl up and left him. I said serves him right for marrying out of his race. It's not right them that go outside their own people. Causes everybody trouble. I would have put my foot down if one of my sons had brought home something like that.”

This is a heavy trail for me to ride. “Did Mrs. Kolajecko ever mention the couple fighting?”

She sucks her lower lip into her mouth. “Can't say that she did.”

“Do you remember if there was a big fuss over the wife leaving?”

“Why would he make a fuss? You ask me, she came to her senses before he did. I wouldn't have known she was gone if Anna hadn't told me.”

“Anybody ever figure out the reason for the house burning down?”

“Faulty wiring is what I heard. That's no surprise—these houses is old. After it burned, my son came in and checked on my wiring and he said it was fine.”

“Anybody die in the fire?”

“No, Anna was gone at the time. I think she lost her cat in the fire, though.”

I thank her for her time and head back to the lot where the house stood. It's a deep lot. At the back it borders on a fence that's sagging badly. I walk to the fence and look around, considering the possibilities.

I used to work as a landman for an oil company and got to be familiar with the ways of terrain. I know what I'm looking for. I stand at the back and let my eyes scan the weeds that have grown up kneehigh. Besides the concrete slab that the house sat on, there are weathered boards lying in a pile and a lot of random trash—torn newspapers, paper cups, and soda and beer cans. I don't see what I'm looking for, so I walk up to the slab and scan the area from there to the back fence.

From that vantage point, it's easy to spot exactly what I suspected I might find. If anybody had taken more interest in Estelle Cruz being gone, they would have looked to see if she was buried in the backyard, and they would have found her. Or at least I suspect it's her body buried back near the fence. The size of the plot is about right. What people don't know is that if someone is buried in bare ground without a coffin, the grass will never grow properly where the body was buried. It's like the land insists on displaying the evidence that a physical being has been abandoned there.

With the house burning down shortly after Estelle supposedly left, and Eddie moving out, it makes sense that attention never came in this direction. I could be jumping to conclusions. It could be that someone buried a big dog or some other animal back here, but one thing's for certain—there's a body of some kind here.

It's late afternoon, and I'll leave until tomorrow the task of persuading the sheriff that a forensics team needs to start digging.

CHAPTER 33

It will soon be summer, and we've seen the last of the early morning cool air. My cows are listless this morning, as if they know they're in for a long, hot spell and they are gathering their strength for it. In the pasture next door, I hear one of the horses whinny, and I go to the gate to see what's up. Mahogany is galloping around the pasture with Blackie watching. When they spot me, they both trot over to me, sticking their noses over the fence for me to pat. I don't know that I'll ever love horses, but since the incident with the snake, I've come to have more respect for them.

Back at the house, Loretta is waiting for me, sitting on the front porch in one of the two rocking chairs. I can tell by her face that the news isn't good.

“Rodell?”

She nods. “Passed away early this morning without regaining consciousness.”

I sit down in the other rocker and lean over with my arms on my knees. “Well . . .” There's a lot to say and nothing to say, and I'm caught between them.

“I'll get us some coffee,” she says and goes into my house, easing the screen door closed behind her. When she comes back, she's got mugs of coffee with her. “I left sweet rolls on the counter. I didn't figure you'd want anything to eat right now.”

“We all knew this was coming,” I say.

“Still, you're never really prepared,” she says.

We sit and rock for a few minutes without talking. Soon Loretta gets up and puts her hand on my shoulder. “I better get on. I've got a lot to do today.”

After she leaves, I get up, feeling a little older than I did before I heard the news. Rodell was several years younger than me, but I've known him most of my life. Didn't like him much until recently. But still.

At work I spend a while returning phone calls. Mostly I talk to people about Rodell. Like me, everybody seems more shaken up than they ought to be. That's the trouble with a town fixture: it seems permanent, for good or bad.

But there's also a call from Wallace Lyndall telling me that on the advice of Jett they found out where to look for Scott Borland. “We picked him up about an hour ago. Figured you might want to have a word with him at some point. No hurry. He's not going anywhere.”

“You sound amused. What's going on?”

He chuckles. “I know it's crazy, but I kind of like Borland. He's creative. Most criminals are too stupid to think up interesting stories, but Borland always comes up with some doozies. Wait until you hear what he has to say about the meth lab that blew up.”

“Did anybody press him on whether he had anything to do with Jenny Sandstone's automobile accident?”

“I forgot about that. We've got evidence that will get his parole revoked and tack on plenty of time besides, so I didn't think it was urgent. You can ask him when you talk to him.”

“I was going to call you this morning anyway. I've got another matter I need to bring up with you.”

We agree to meet at the jail to talk to Scott Borland in an hour. After we get done with that, I'll present Lyndall with my evidence that Estelle Cruz Sandstone may be buried in the backyard of the house she lived in when she disappeared.

Scott Borland comes into the little interrogation room where Wallace Lyndall and I are waiting. He's looking pleased with himself. He's got bandages on both hands and some burn marks on his face and neck from the fire at the meth lab. Because of the bandages on his hands, he's got leg chains on instead of handcuffs. He's also got a restraint on his upper arms chained loosely behind so that his reach is limited.

“I can't seem to get any rest around here,” Borland says as he flops into his chair. “Everybody is so damn chatty.”

“There's an easy way to fix that,” I say.

“What's that?”

“Tell us what we want to know without fooling around. Then you can get all the rest you need.”

“If I'm going to have to talk to you, can I get a coke?”

Lyndall grumbles, but he gets up and goes to the door and asks the deputy in the hallway if he'll get his majesty a coke.

“Maybe you can answer a few questions while we're waiting,” I say.

“I don't know if there's anything I can tell that would be of interest to you,” Borland says.

“Why don't you tell the story of what you were doing in that meth lab?” Lyndall says. “That's kind of an entertaining story.”

“You might be entertained,” Borland says, looking pained, “but I'm the one who got hurt snooping around.” He holds up his bandaged hands.

Borland's tale is that he and Jett were innocently walking around in the back of the vacant lot behind Borland's place, and they happened to notice smoke coming from a little shed way back there and thought they'd better investigate. Who was to guess that some unknown person had sneaked in there and set up some kind of laboratory?

“I know now,” Borland says, “that I should have run out of there and called the police right away. But how was I to know somebody was out there doing something illegal?”

Lyndall laughs and slaps his leg. “That story gets better every time I hear it.”

Borland gets a puppy-eyed look. “I don't know why you think I'm not telling the truth. I ain't done nothing wrong.”

“We'll see.”

The deputy sticks his head in and has brought not only a Dr. Pepper, but some chips as well.

Borland says, “I didn't want Dr. Pepper. That's a girl's drink. I wanted a Coca-Cola.”

“Cool it,” Lyndall says, an edge to his voice. “Take it or leave, but that's all you're getting.”

“If you don't mind,” I say, “I'd like to get you back in your cell for your beauty rest as fast as we can. So how about if you answer my questions.”

“If I can, I certainly will.”

“How did you know where Jenny Sandstone lives?”

The question startles him. He was most likely expecting to dance around the subject of the meth lab some more. “What makes you think I know where she lives?”

“Because I saw you sitting outside her house in your car.”

“Oh, yeah, you said that before. What car are you thinking of ?”

“A white Chevy. Looks like the same car that was parked in your front yard the first time I went there.”

“Somebody must have borrowed it without me knowing it,” he says.

“I see. Well I'd like to revisit some questions I asked you before to see if I can get a different set of answers. Did you cut the lock on Jenny Sandstone's gate and let her horses out?”

“I most certainly did not.”

I've promised not to bring the two boys Jett paid to dope the horses into it unless I have to. But if it's necessary, their testimony will be bad for Jett Borland and will likely lead to Scott Borland. The vet who had the pills tested said they were pyrimethamine, and that a big dose could give a horse convulsions and even kill it. But for now, I'll keep the boys out of it.

“Did you or your son pay anybody to let the horses out onto the street?”

“Why would we pay good money for something like that?”

“I can't answer that. Did you?”

“Anybody says we did is lying.”

I'll take that as a verification of the boys' story. “How about putting a timber rattler into the horse's stall? You ready to own up to that?”

“I didn't do that,” he says, grinning, “But I sure wish I'd thought of it. Sounds like a fine idea. And even if I did do it, you'd never find out where I got that snake.”

“Well, one thing is for damn sure. We know you had something to do with attacking Truly Bennett with a pipe.”