Buried Memories (13 page)

As they neared the back door, he saw a large blue mound leaning against the wall. He swallowed hard. His heart almost burst, it was so filled with anxiety. Now that his mother had actually killed someone, she could be in serious trouble. Had she changed that much since he lived with her as a boy? He remembered her as kind and loving then.

“Don’t just stand there gawking, Robby, we’ve got to get this out to the wishing well.”

“The well?”

“Sure. Why’d you think I had Jimmy Don build it? Now grab that end and I’ll take his feet.”

They bumped the body down the same back steps and managed to carry it to the front of the trailer.

“Shit,” Robby said. “He’s still limber. Makes him heavier to lift.”

“Hush up,” Betty whispered. “Do you want someone to hear us?”

Now, at almost midnight, the neighborhood appeared calm. With no wind, the lake too remained relatively quiet, but a dog barked incessantly a few lots away.

“Hold on a sec,” Betty said as she ventured near the street in front of her property. “Okay, doesn’t look like anyone’s around. All the houses are pretty dark.” She returned to the sleeping bag and picked up her end.

“Let’s pull him over here on the grass. It’ll make a lot less noise than the gravel driveway. Good thing we’re dragging him,” Betty said. “This thing’s about to break my back.”

They stopped in front of the well and Betty wiped her forehead on her sleeve.

Robby glanced at the well for a second, and couldn’t help but remember working on it with Jimmy Don. The man had been so diligent, so caring to build it the best he knew how.

“Ready?” Betty asked, and snapped Robby from his thoughts. “It’s not going to be a picnic getting him over the side of this thing,” she said.

Robby knew the task would basically be his, although his petite mother had surprised him numerous times with her strength.

Robby searched the exterior of the sleeping bag with his hands; he found Jimmy Don’s upper torso in the roughness of the canvas and took hold. At five foot nine and 195 pounds, the young man strained as he picked up the body and threw it into the well.

At almost two in the morning, Jody Thompson drove Shirley to her mother’s house. She asked him to stay in the car while she ran in and talked with her mother.

All during their hour drive from Dallas, Shirley had seemed agitated. She talked about how upset her mother had been on the telephone. At times, Shirley dabbed at the corners of her eyes and continued ruminating about her mother.

All married people have arguments, Jody mused. He didn’t see this as any big deal. But hearing Shirley say that Jimmy Don had left for Dallas surprised him. He had known him for a year and had spent many leisurely hours drinking beer with him and cruising the lake in his boat. He’d been a heck of a nice guy, so his running off like this didn’t fit the picture.

Then Jody squinted through the darkness at Jimmy Don’s truck. If he had gone to Dallas, how’d he get there? And if he was still home, why wouldn’t he come out and talk with Jody? Nothing made sense.

Fifteen minutes later, Shirley and Betty came out arm in arm, laughing and talking. Shirley showed none of the edginess that had clouded their trip down.

On the way back, Shirley never mentioned anything her mother had told her. She talked of other things, happier times, and plans for the future. Jody found such a complete reversal of her personality as strange. Women. Go figure.

The morning sun streamed into Robby’s bedroom, awakening him. He hadn’t slept well. The image of that blue mound kept creeping back every time he closed his eyes. He’d listened for hours to the whirl of the washer and dryer before he finally fell asleep.

Now, he peered at the beginning of another hot August day. He saw his mother busy planting flowers in the wishing well. A large bag of peat moss and several containers of red begonias rested beside her. Other containers of white begonias sat on the ground waiting their turn to be planted. He figured she had hidden the peat moss in the shed. How else could it so magically appear this early in the morning?

He pulled himself out of bed, put on clean blue jeans and a T-shirt, then went outside.

Betty didn’t stop working as he approached.

“You doing okay?” she asked.

Robby shrugged.

“I need an alibi,” Betty said. “Got to make sure Jimmy Don’s disappearance looks like a drowning.

“How?”

“I can do it with your help.”

Those words made him cringe, yet he felt obligated to protect his mother. If she had some idea to cover up what she’d done, he’d go along with it. Maybe then this entire nightmare would disappear.

“What do you want?”

“Go get the boat,” she said, nodding over to Jimmy Don’s craft that bobbed in the narrow slip behind their property. “Take it by water to Highway 85. You know, the one that runs between Gun Barrel and Seven Points. Then get yourself over to the bridge by Big Chief’s Landing and I’ll pick you up there.”

“How’s it gonna look like Jimmy Don drowned?”

“I put his fishing license in the boat. That way whoever finds it will know it’s Jimmy Don’s. Then I tossed in his glasses and scattered some of his heart pills in the bottom. You know, like he had another heart attack. I want you to take the prop off the motor so it’ll look like he had motor trouble. He always kept his toolbox in the boat, so you can find something in that to use.”

Robby stood looking at her, having trouble believing how carefully she had planned everything.

“Get going. I’m going to report him missing. That boat’s got to be in the water before I do.”

Robby nodded and went into the house for the boat’s ignition key. When he came out, he headed directly for the boat. The sooner he got this over, the better.

When Robby approached the bridge by Big Chief’s Landing, he cut the engine and let the boat bob in the waves as he searched the toolbox for a wrench. With a flick of the wrench he loosened the nut and stuffed it into his pocket, then removed the prop.

Using an oar, he maneuvered the boat to the base of the bridge, and grabbed for a large granite rock at the water’s edge. He scrambled onto the accumulation of dark rocks, some almost boulder sized, and was thankful his new tennis shoes grabbed the slippery stones. He leaned over and shoved the boat off with an oar, then tossed the oar back into the craft.

Once on the bridge, he only waited a few minutes before seeing Jimmy Don’s Chevy Silverado pickup with his mother at the wheel. He climbed in beside her. As he thought over his actions of the last several hours, actions his mother had forced on him, he visualized his world spiraling down into a dark void. The one person who should teach him morality had asked him to assist in a murder. Everything became crazier by the moment. He had to get away. He couldn’t go back to the slaughterhouse that now sat on a cemetery.

Robby turned to his mother and said, “I need to leave for a few days. I’m going to see Dad.”

Betty pivoted toward him. Her eyes squinted, and she said evenly, “Don’t you ever in your life breathe a word of this to anyone. Got that? Especially not to your father!”

ELEVEN

The next morning, Saturday, August 6, 1983, the doorbell rang at 8:30. It surprised Betty to see two men standing there. She had only called the sheriff thirty minutes earlier to register her missing person report.

One man wore a white cowboy hat, black western-cut jeans, and boots. The gold star pinned to his chest immediately identified him as a sheriff’s deputy. The other man was casually dressed in blue jeans and a sports shirt.

The deputy introduced himself as Johnny Marr, and the man with him as Hugh DeWoody, the fire chief of Payne Springs.

“Ma’am, we both know Jimmy Don,” DeWoody said, and sure hope we find him safely.”

Betty nodded, wondering why a fire department chief would be involved.

“Come in,” she said, stepping aside.

“We need to get a statement from you,” Marr said as Betty motioned them over to the gray upholstered sofa; she took the nearby matching chair.

Marr had carried in a clipboard with forms and now balanced it on his knee. He pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and filled in the top of the form. “Okay,” he said as if beginning a task he didn’t relish. “Tell me the last time you saw your husband.”

“Around nine-thirty last night,” Betty said softly. “He went out fishing. Should have been back by midnight. But I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since.”

“He does this night fishing often?” Marr asked.

“About once a month. He loves to fish every day when the weather’s good. If he’s not up in Dallas at the fire station, he’s out there in his boat.”

“He went alone?”

“He did last night, but first he was supposed to go over to our friends, the Swansons. They live just around the cove here. Kyle Swanson promised to help him with his motor. Jimmy Don’s been having a little trouble lately.”

“You’ve talked to the Swansons?” Marr asked.

“Sure. Called them first thing. They never saw him. He never did get there,” she said, looking away from him.

Marr frowned as he wrote. He asked for more biographical details about Jimmy Don and requested a recent photograph. He promised to let the Parks and Wildlife Service know.

“We’ll get this information out as soon as we can. Everybody will be on the lookout. Now don’t you worry. He probably spent the night in a cove somewhere. There’s boat races goin’ on today. If he’s had trouble, it’ll be pretty tough getting across the lake with a lame boat.”

“This just isn’t like him,” Betty said, shaking her head. “He’s real responsible. Always lets me know where he is.”

“That sounds like Jimmy Don. I’ll give you a call as soon as we know something,” Marr added as he passed the form to Betty to sign.

Betty wondered how long it would be before someone called about finding Jimmy Don’s boat.

Bobby had decided to accompany Robby to their father’s house in Corsicana. She felt a sense of relief knowing neither boy knew how Wayne Barker had disappeared; now Robby had better keep his mouth shut about Jimmy Don.

Apprehensively, she glanced around her empty trailer and out to the wishing well. She shivered. Now she lived between two graves.

When the phone rang at nine that evening, Betty jumped. It had to be the call she’d expected all day, but somehow she didn’t feel ready for it. Instead, she decided to take a shower and wash her hair. She’d have to put on some kind of performance when they told her about the boat, and looking her best would bolster her confidence.

An hour later, after she backcombed and fluffed her blond hair into her favorite bouffant style, she applied makeup and felt prepared. When the phone rang again at ten, she took a deep breath and reached for the receiver.

After separating from Jimmy Don, Suzy had remarried and moved a mile away from the blue frame house. Her new home, coincidentally, sat across the street from his parents in Timber Oaks, another oak-endowed lake community. Early in the morning before Jimmy Don had been reported missing, and before Suzy or his parents knew about it, she bicycled through her neighborhood and stopped at his parents’ house. As was Suzy’s custom, she knocked on the door and walked in. Mrs. Beets was hanging up the phone when Suzy came through the door.

“That was Betty,” Mrs. Beets said. “She called to say if we see Jimmy Don, to let him know she went to Dallas to buy Bobby some school clothes.”

“That’s weird,” Mr. Beets said. “You’d think she’d have told him that herself when they got up this morning.”

Suzy agreed.

Later that day when Suzy learned the dreadful details of Jimmy Don’s abandoned boat, and after she collected herself from the heaving sobs she could not prevent, she found the story strange.

She went back to the senior Beets’s home. She cried with Jimmy Don’s devastated parents and told them how sorry she was. Then she said, “You know that story about his boat doesn’t make sense. For one thing, whenever we went boating, he always emptied his pockets. There’s a little Plexiglas ledge above the glove compartment on the passenger side where he kept his CB radio. He’d dig out his loose change and put it there with his waterproof watch. I didn’t hear anything about those items being in his boat.”

Late that day, the mood around the lake changed from cautious optimism that Jimmy Don Beets could be alive, to wondering how long before a boat captain or a dredging hook discovered his body.

The hundreds of people who turned out to search for Betty’s husband excited Betty. She enjoyed being the center of the frenzied attention and the tender sympathy. She visited the search site both morning and afternoon to show her interest, but she also had visitors in her home as well.

On that Sunday morning with the search in full sway, one of the first to arrive at Betty’s house was fire department chaplain Denny Burris. Experienced in dealing with grief-stricken survivors, the six-foot-two, soft-spoken chaplain came with the intention of comforting Betty.

He was accustomed to relatives wailing over their loved ones while others remained in shock over the tragedy, so he walked a fine line between the reality of what happened and the survivors’ inability to accept their loss. However, nothing prepared him for Betty Beets.

After his initial introduction and offering of condolences, he expected her to be anxious and concerned, but she wasn’t. She and four friends were sitting in her living room, having an everyday talk about the weather.

His visit the following day proved more interesting. Almost immediately she asked, “If they don’t find Jimmy Don, what kind of benefits will I be eligible for?”

Her question caught him off guard. He would have anticipated, “Do you think the Lord will spare my husband?” But no, this woman wanted to know about life insurance.

He had just come from visiting James and Aleen Beets, Jimmy Don’s parents, who were overcome with grief. His mother had to leave the room, for her constant crying made it difficult to speak. On the other hand, his father appeared madder than hell. He ranted and raved about someone being responsible for his son’s death, and without naming names, he swore he’d get the culprit. Burris considered the man’s reactions as expressions of grief. The chaplain ran into all types of emotional displays.