A Deadly Affair at Bobtail Ridge (30 page)

Back in Jarrett Creek I stop by Ellen Forester's gallery. There's no class going on, and I find her in her little office. She's startled to see me, but I'm beginning to think she's always startled when a man shows up.

“I need to warn you that I've done something that might blow back on you.”

“I already know,” she says. “Seth called me as soon as you left his office.”

“I imagine he wasn't too happy.”

She stands up. “Neither am I. I know you're trying to protect me, but with Seth it's better if you leave things alone. He's a man who craves attention. If you ignore him, he's likely to get bored and stop making trouble.”

“I can't have somebody coming in to my town and causing that kind of trouble.”

“Your town?” Her voice is cold. “I feel like I'm in an old western. The town doesn't belong to you. You're interfering where you shouldn't be.”

I feel like I've been slapped. She's right, I suppose. The town is different from the way it was the first time I was chief of police. More people live here that weren't born here. My sentimental tip of the hat to Rodell Skinner seems to have had me overstep myself. “I didn't intend to cause you trouble,” I say.

She crosses her arms and glares at me. “Let me handle Seth in the future, if you don't mind.”

“That's not the way it's going to work. Like I told Seth, I can't have him coming around here causing a ruckus and harassing you. In case you haven't noticed, I'm chief of police here. It's not interfering when I'm keeping the peace.”

Her cheeks flare. “It is when you're acting like a couple of teenagers. I don't belong to anybody and I won't have two men fighting over me.” All of sudden she stops, looking panicky. “I shouldn't have said that.”

But she did say it, and now it's in front of both us and I don't know why I didn't notice before that I was showing more interest than I even knew I had in her. “Sorry if I overstepped,” I say. I turn on my heels and I'm out of there like a scalded dog.

It has been a couple of days since I checked in on Jenny, and it's time I brought her up to date on everything that's gone on. After I've changed into my jeans, drunk a cup of coffee, and gone down to the pasture to check on my cows, I give her a call. She doesn't sound wildly happy to hear from me, but she says she's doing better and that I should come over.

She's morose, but at least she's not drunk. We sit in her living room, and she doesn't offer me a glass of wine, which is fine with me.

First I fill her in on the Borlands. “Scott's back in jail and I think he's going to be there for a long time to come. We've got an assault charge on him, which revokes his parole and adds a few years. As for Jett, they're putting together evidence that he was involved in a meth operation.”

She nods but doesn't seem particularly impressed. “Have you gotten anywhere on finding out who hit my car?”

“Highway patrol says they don't think they're going to be able to track down whoever did it, but I'm not ready to give up on it. I have an idea, and if I'm right, it won't be long before we'll know.”

She shrugs. Suddenly I'd like to shake some sense into her. She's behaving like a child, pouting and refusing to be communicative. “Look,” I say, “I know you've had a rough time, but . . .”

“Eddie called me.” Her voice is like poison. “He said you talked to him and that you don't believe me about what happened with those boys.”

“He told you that?”

“You're damn right he did. I thought I talked to you in confidence. It never occurred to me that you'd go blabbing to him about what I said.”

“That's not exactly how it happened.” How can I tell her that Eddie's part in her rape is the least of the things I believe he's guilty of ? And that as of now I have no way to prove what I believe he's done. I don't want to tell her that I went to Mike Tolleson and that he confirmed her story. I can't help thinking that if she knows I spoke with Tolleson, she'll feel even more violated. “Do this for me,” I say, rising. “Reserve judgment for now.”

“Judgment on what? On whether you can be trusted? Whether with my mamma dead there's no one I can trust? Did you tell anybody else what happened to me in high school? Are you blabbing it all over town? Did you tell Will?” She's almost crying.

“Of course I didn't tell Will or anybody else. It hurts me that you think I would do that.”

She doesn't say anything, but she looks desolate.

“Are you going back to work soon?”

“I have to. If I don't, I'll lose my mind.”

“I hope you do. It will be good for you. And meanwhile, stay away from Eddie. And be careful.”

“Careful?”

“There are things I'm not talking to you about. But until they're resolved I want you to be alert.”

Her features soften a little. “Maybe you should tell me everything.”

“I'm not going to do that. Not right away. But I want you to know I have your best interests at heart, whether you think so right now or not.”

She searches my face, and for a moment I see the old Jenny. “I'll take your word for it.”

CHAPTER 37

With a little pressure, Eddie gave me the names of the two people who can corroborate his story that he was in Austin when his wife disappeared. I'll need to make a trip to Austin to interview them. I'm reluctant to make the drive, not even sure if it's worth it. After all, even if they say he was with them, it doesn't mean he didn't kill Estelle before he left. But I know I have to follow through. If we're ever able to charge Eddie with killing his wife, we're going to need every scrap of evidence we can find to make the charge stick.

Eddie said he used to go hunting with the two men, and the reason he went to Austin was to discuss their next hunting trip. The first one I reach laughs and says he doesn't remember anything about it. But the other one, a serious-sounding man named Hank Parker, says he does remember. He says he'll meet with me in a couple of hours and gives me the name of a café where we can have lunch while we talk.

He's a paunchy man with a couple of extra chins. He attacks his sandwich with gusto.

“Have you talked to Eddie recently?” I say. I'm suspicious that maybe Eddie called him and urged him to “remember” their meeting around the time Estelle disappeared.

“No, I haven't. Well, I mean until he called me and told me he'd given you my name.”

“Did he remind you that he'd been here to discuss a hunting trip that weekend?”

“He did, but I would have remembered anyway.” He looks uneasy.

“Why do you say that?” I say.

“I don't want to talk out of turn and get Eddie in trouble. But I have to be honest with you. There were things about that visit that always bothered me.”

“Like what?”

“First of all, it was unusual for Eddie to come all this way to talk about a hunting trip. We always arranged the trips over the phone. Not that that's a big deal, but I thought it was odd.”

“Did he say why he came instead of calling?”

“No sir, but I got the sense that he was feeling a little trapped. He'd just gotten married, and he said his wife wasn't happy with him leaving her to go hunting. . . .” His voice trails away.

“Seems strange that if she didn't want him to go on the trip, he'd rub it in by leaving her to arrange it.”

“That's what I thought, too,” he says eagerly, seizing on my suggestion as a way of explaining himself. “Eddie seemed to want to be sure she knew who was boss. It wasn't the first time I'd seen Sandstone act that way. We used to call him The Big Bull. We all went to high school together.”

Big Bull, as in bully, I think to myself.

“You said there were other reasons why you remembered the incident?”

“That's when his wife left. Funny thing was, he didn't tell me himself. He called to say he wasn't going to go through with the trip and never mentioned that his wife was gone. I found out later from John, the other guy we go hunting with. I thought it was odd, that's all. Excuse me a minute.” He's done with his sandwich and goes back to the counter and comes back with a piece of lemon pie and coffee.

It looks good, so I go get myself the same thing. When we're started on the pie, I say, “When was the last time you saw Eddie?”

“That was the last time I saw him—when he was here to plan the trip. For some reason, after that we let things drift. John and I still go every year, but Eddie kind of dropped out.”

“I know this is a stretch to remember,” I say, “but when Eddie was with you for that planning session, did you get the sense that anything was troubling him?”

He's quiet for a while, working on the pie. Finally he lays his fork down. “I wish I had something concrete to tell you, but all I can say is, when I think about that weekend, my mind shies away from it. I've always had an itchy feeling that things weren't right—but I can't tell you why.”

Alice Blackman is one of those women who turn ethereal looking as they age. She wears her straight white hair long and has on a loose gray dress that makes her hazel eyes look smoky. Her smile is soft and her voice a husky contralto. “I'm happy to talk to you about Howard. He was such a good friend.”

Her living room is old-fashioned, but I find it comfortable and easy to be in, with its pale, stuffed chairs and highly polished mahogany furniture. She tells me that her husband died a few years ago, and that although her house feels too big, she hasn't had the will to move.

“You and Howard were in the choir together, I understand.”

“Howard had a lovely tenor voice. He stood right behind me and I loved hearing him sing.”

“I don't mean to make you uncomfortable, but there are people who thought you and Howard had a bit of a flirtation going on.”

She chuckles. “I knew those rumors were going around, and I won't deny I had moments—hearing his lovely voice behind me—that I wished that we could be spirited away somewhere back in time and meet before we were both joined with our beloved spouses.” Her smile lights up her gray eyes. “I don't know if Howard ever felt that way because we never talked about it. Howard was a gentleman through and through. He would never have cheated on his Vera. Just as I never once cheated on my husband.”

“How do you suppose the rumors got started?”

She arranges the folds of her dress, as if she is arranging her ideas about how to proceed. “Howard and I had a kind of sympathy between us. Do you know what I mean by that? A deep understanding. We sometimes talked with one another about things that troubled us. And I suppose people thought we were flirting when we'd sit off by ourselves. But it wasn't that way. We simply understood each other.”

“What troubled Howard?”

She looks startled. “Oh. The usual things. He worried about his daughter. She struggled with feeling awkward, as many young girls do at that age. It didn't help that her brother was so handsome and had such confidence.”

“Did he worry about his son as well?”

“Not usually.” She clasps her hands in front of her. “But something happened not long before Howard went away. He told me he was very angry with his son. He didn't say why and I didn't want to pry. Teenaged boys are always at odds with their fathers. My husband and I raised two boys, and as regular as a clock, they discovered around age fifteen or sixteen that their father was dull and stupid and that they were brilliant and knew everything there was to know about the world.” She laughs gently. “But of course they got over it. I told Howard that Eddie would get over it, too.”

“He disappeared soon after he told you how angry he was with his son?”

She sighs. “I always wondered if maybe he went for a drive to think about things and maybe he had an accident and was never found. It may be that one day his car will be found in a lake, submerged with his body in it. It could be something as simple as that.”