A Deadly Affair at Bobtail Ridge (32 page)

As Sandstone goes back to his grisly job, Lyndall and I ease out of the vacant hull of the house where we've been watching and walk toward him. His back is to us, but suddenly he either hears or senses us because he stops cold.

I've brought a powerful flashlight and I shine it on him. “Eddie, you might as well put the shovel down,” I say. “Your work is done here.”

He throws his arm up to cover his face. “What the hell are you doing?” he says. His bravado has always served him well.

“We could ask you that,” I say.

I shine the flashlight into the pit. It's a shallow grave, with the body of a man partly exposed. The body is better preserved than Estelle's because of the concrete that has protected it all this time. There's still a lot of dirt covering part of the body, but you can see that Howard Sandstone was wearing blue jeans and a short-sleeved shirt when he was buried. His hands have been crossed over his chest. I'm surprised Eddie took the time to do that. There must have been some regret about what he did.

Eddie has a grip on the shovel, and I see him calculating whether he can get in a good blow and manage to break away.

I ease my Colt out of my holster and hold it where he can see it in the light. “Put the shovel down.”

“I've got every right to be here,” he says, “There's no need to point a gun at me.”

“Eddie. The shovel.” I motion with my gun for him to get rid of the shovel. Sandstone tosses it aside, and Lyndall steps away to call for a squad car as backup. Sheriff Hedges told us he'd have officers on the alert waiting for the call.

“They'll be along in a minute,” Lyndall says to me when he comes back.

“Turn around now, Eddie. I need to put these cuffs on you,” I say.

“You can't arrest me. I didn't do anything.”

“Just being here at the scene, digging up a body looks suspicious enough to take you in. We'll sort it out at the station.”

Eddie's head drops forward onto his chest. “I don't believe this,” he mutters, but he turns around anyway, and I have the pleasure of clipping the cuffs on him. “You think you know what's going on, but you don't,” he says. “I can explain everything.”

“We've got a few minutes. Go ahead and spin your tale.” I train the flashlight back on the scene so he doesn't have a chance to forget that we are talking about his daddy lying there.

“I got to thinking about my daddy disappearing when we were working on these houses, and it occurred to me that somebody could have done him in and buried the body here, knowing that they were going to pour concrete the next day.”

“Uh-huh. And who do you think might have done such a thing?”

“Somebody like that Greevy guy. The one who made fun of my daddy leaving us.”

“Eddie, I'm pretty sure you're the one who buried your daddy here.”

“Not me. Oh no, not me. I didn't touch him. Whoever did this had a grudge against him. You know, maybe it wasn't Greevy. Daddy was flirting with some woman. Probably her husband got wind of it and . . .”

“Must have been hard on you all those years knowing your daddy was lying here,” I say. “And then to find out they were going to tear this place down. Scared you. You figured they'd find the body. So you got yourself hired on the demolition crew to keep an eye out for when they got close to the area where you'd buried him. My guess is there'll be evidence of what you did. You were probably in a hurry.”

Sirens are coming in the distance. Eddie's head jerks toward the sound. “Whatever happened, I didn't have anything to do with it. You can't prove a thing.”

The sirens wind down as two squad cars turn off the road into the subdivision. The revolving lights on the cars makes this scene of destruction look like something out of a war movie.

CHAPTER 39

Rodell's funeral is a fine affair. He would have been pleased. All his old drinking buddies show up in suits and ties and act like they are saying good-bye to Saint Rodell Skinner. There is a wake afterward at Bill White's place, but I don't have the heart to attend. There will be a lot of carousing and rehashing old drinking stories.

Instead, I take Loretta out to eat at a barbecue place between here and College Station. I tell her I'll take her someplace fancy another night, but I need to unwind after all that has gone on in the last few weeks. She's a good sport, and she goes along and acts like all she wants out of life is a good plate of barbecue. I ask how she's doing with her painting.

“I don't want to talk about it, Samuel. It embarrasses me. I know how important art is to you, and I don't really feel like what I'm doing is art. I just like the way watercolor goes onto the paper. I like how the brush feels in my hand and the way . . .” She laughs. “I said I wasn't going to talk about it, and here I go sounding like I know what I'm doing.”

“Is Ellen a good teacher?” I'm still feeling the sting of Ellen's anger over my confrontation with her ex-husband, and I wonder if and when she'll forgive me.

“I like her, but I don't have a teacher to compare her to. She's been a little skittish lately, what with the window being broken.” She puts her fork down and looks me in the eye. “Speaking of skittish, I want to ask you how Jenny is. I haven't seen her since all that stuff came out about her brother. I left some coffee cake and sweet rolls on her porch a couple of times, but I haven't heard from her.”

The day after we caught Eddie digging up his daddy's body, I sat down with Jenny and told her the circumstances of Estelle's and Howard's bodies being found. I kept it short, knowing that hearing it all would be a shock and details could be filled in later. “I'm sorry to have to tell you all this,” I said. “I know you didn't trust Eddie, but even so finding out he is suspected of killing his wife and your daddy is a lot to take in.”

She showed hardly any emotion. “I feel numb,” she said. “I only wish Mamma was still alive so she could know that Daddy didn't just walk out on us.”

After that, Jenny more or less disappeared for a while. She hasn't been answering her phone, so I've left messages telling her I'll be here when she's ready to talk. The only time I see her is when she's leaving for work.

“She's had a hard time,” I say to Loretta. “First her mamma dying and then finding out her brother might have killed his wife and maybe her daddy, too. Not to mention needing the time to heal from that accident.”

“She doesn't take kindly to people fussing over her, does she?”

“Give her time. I know she appreciates what people do for her; she's wrung out, that's all.” I don't tell her that Jenny has kept me at arm's length, too.

When I get home that evening, I find a note stuck on my door that reads, “Samuel, I'm unhappy with the way our last conversation went. If you're free, I'd like you to come to dinner one night so we can talk about it. Ellen.” I almost call her then and there but decide it'll keep a day or so.

Eddie Sandstone is cocky and seems to be confident that no evidence will be found to merit charging him with murder. The fact that he was caught digging up his daddy's body is enough to keep him in jail for the time being, but nothing incriminating him has been found at either of the gravesites so far. We need more evidence to pin one of the murders on him.

I go back to Temple and talk to his ex-wife and his estranged wife. I sensed that Marlene was afraid of him, but no matter how I push, I can't get her to admit to it, much less to tell me why.

I've come to the point where I feel like it's a personal crusade to get Eddie off the street, and Lyndall and Hedges aren't far behind me in that feeling. But we're at a dead end.

I suggest to Sheriff Hedges that we make a more thorough sweep to find the shop that repaired Eddie's car after Jenny's accident. “If we can at least get him on attempted murder, he'll spend time in prison.” Hedges says he'll put more men on it.

What I keep coming back to is a question: if Eddie did try to kill Jenny, why? Why right after Vera died? He could have attacked her anytime, so why wait? Is there something Eddie was afraid that Jenny would find when she was going through Vera's things that might implicate him in Howard's death? Maybe Jenny knows something and doesn't even realize what it is.

I call Jenny at work and tell her I don't want to intrude, but that I really need to talk to her.

“I'm sorry I've been standoffish,” she says. “I needed some time to process everything. Mourning Mamma. Trying to figure out how to go on with my life.”

“I understand. You don't have to apologize.”

“I was going to call you,” she says. “Eddie plans to sell Mamma's house. I'd like you to go with me to see it one last time.”

When I arrive at Vera's, Jenny is standing by her car waiting for me. She looks good, although she's lost a little too much weight. I was afraid we'd have an awkward moment, but she reaches out and takes my hand and squeezes it. “I really appreciate your coming over. You've done so much. I promise you, I'm going to get over all this. It'll just take some time.”

She's quiet as we walk through the empty rooms of the house. Then we go out on the back deck and sit on the steps.

“I had a reason for calling,” I say. “You know we haven't been able to make a case against Eddie for either of those deaths. I know he's guilty, but we just don't have enough.”

She nods. “He was always able to weasel out of things.”

“I also believe it was Eddie who ran you off the road that night. But I don't know why.”

She looks at me and shrugs. “General principles, most likely. He always hated me.”

“But why then? Why right after Vera died?”

She smiles and the Jenny I knew before peeks out at me. “You've got a theory, I can tell.”

“Not so much. But a question. You need to think hard about this. What could he have been afraid that you might find in Vera's things? Something to implicate him in Howard's death—or even Estelle's death.”

She shakes her head. “I never found anything that would fit that.”

“You didn't go through all of her belongings, though. Some of them were in boxes in the garage.”

“I don't know if I'm up for going through all those boxes just yet.”

“It wouldn't have to be all of them. Did Vera keep a journal? You said you found stories she wrote. Maybe she . . .”

I stop because Jenny grabs my arm, her eyes wide. “Those stories. They were in folders and there was a folder marked “Eddie.” I quit before I got to it. I almost threw it away. I wasn't sure I wanted to read it.”

“We're going to have to go retrieve that box from storage,” I say. “I'll do it, if you can tell me anything that might identify it.”

“No.” She gets up abruptly. “I'm going, too. And we're going now.”

“Wait, slow down,” I say. “Don't get your hopes up. It's a real long shot.”

“I know it is, but I have to find out.”

We have to drive all the way back to Jarrett Creek to retrieve the key to the storage area. It's late afternoon when we get back, but the manager of the storage area says they're open until 10 p.m. and we don't have to rush.

Once we get the door of the unit open, Jenny stands for several seconds. “Gathering my courage,” she says, but her voice is resolute.

Nate Holloway has stacked everything in neat rows, and Vera marked most of the boxes, so we can eliminate a good number of them. I open the ones that look promising, and Jenny paws through them. Two hours pass, and we've gone through all the ones that looked like they would hold what we're looking for. Jenny is sitting on the floor, her face flushed. “Dammit, where is that box?” Suddenly a look of horror comes across her face. “Could Eddie have taken it?”

I think about it. Eddie tried hard to get the key to Vera's place, but he wasn't successful. I wouldn't give him Jenny's key, and Nate Holloway didn't have one. “He would have had to break in,” I say, “and there's no evidence that he did that. He only got the keys after the house was cleaned out.” We stare at each other, and then I say, “Wait, you had some boxes at your house. I saw them.”

Jenny smacks her forehead. “I'm an idiot! I brought several to my place and put them in the spare bedroom closet. That's got to be where it is.”

I try to persuade her to stop and meet me somewhere on the way to her house for a bite to eat, but she's adamant. “I have to get home and look through those boxes. I have to know.”

While she goes inside her house to start checking through the boxes, I go to my house and grab a plastic container full of chicken and dumplings out of my refrigerator. I take it to her place and put it on the stove to heat up and go back to the spare bedroom.

Jenny is sitting on the bed, tears leaking out of her eyes. She hands me a couple of pages that have been folded. “It's all there,” she says. “She left it in an envelope for me.”