Buried Memories (15 page)

“I agree with all that, so what’s your read on this?”

“I’ve heard talk in the bars that Betty Beets’s former husband deserted her.”

“We heard that too, but couldn’t trace him down.”

“What if the guy changed his mind, decides he wants her back, and shoots Jimmy Don when he’s out on the lake? Say he puts a couple bullets in him, doesn’t want him discovered like that, and drags him off somewhere?”

“That’s interesting, Craig, but it’s only speculation. How you gonna prove any of that?”

“You could start by calling Betty.”

“I’ll be glad to do that.” The sheriff promised Craig a full report, but a month lapsed before a deputy could pin Betty down. The sheriff called Hollander.

“We finally talked with Betty,” the sheriff told him. “She tells me she has never heard from her former husband. Wayne Barker was his name. She also said that none of her male friends would be jealous enough to kill Beets and she’s just as puzzled by this as anyone. Got any more theories?”

Betty spent time at both her trailer and the blue frame house. She frequently had her two boys with her. Robby worked on his car in front of the house, gunning his motor as he tested his engine. The loud roar blasted through the neighborhood.

The young men wore army fatigues, and didn’t speak to neighbors. The friendly lake community deemed that mysterious. In return, the neighbors kept their distance. All they could do was grit their teeth at the disturbing noises and a yard cluttered with automotive parts.

After the shock of his pending divorce, Jamie had stopped his routine weekend lake visits, which allowed Betty to virtually take over his father’s house. The next time he returned to the Glen Oaks house, he found his belongings in the backyard, and saw Betty had been there, for some of her things sat neatly packed in closets. He decided to put a stop to that and had the locks changed.

The Glen Oaks neighbors had banded together against Betty, and called Jamie to report on Betty’s activities regarding the house. A week after Jamie changed the locks, neighbors greeted him with news that Betty had people over looking at the house and it appeared she was trying to sell it.

Furious with Betty’s attempt to get rid of his father’s home, Jamie called around and learned the name of her Realtor, who divulged that Betty had listed the house for $42,000. Finally, Jamie had concrete evidence to take to an attorney.

Now, his attorney took Jamie seriously and filed a restraining order against Betty Beets. The order legally bound her from selling any property belonging to Jimmy Don. The house promptly came off the market.

In the following months, no truce loomed in the fight for Jimmy Don’s lake house. Betty stayed determined to hold on to the place and Jamie remained just as resolute to keep the property. Jamie was still bent on proving that Betty had been the culprit in his father’s disappearance, but by January 1984, he became disheartened because he couldn’t find any new information to link her to his father’s death.

In hopes of hearing tidbits about Betty to take to his lawyer, Jamie hired on as a bartender at a huge new country-western club. One patron told him that Betty’s fourth husband had also mysteriously disappeared. Thinking he had heard news no one else knew, Jamie reported the fact to his attorney the next morning.

Ironically, Betty came into the bar that night and Jamie confronted her. Pointing his finger in her face, he said, “I know damn well that you had something to do with my father’s death. You just wait. I don’t care how long it takes, but some day I’m gonna find out what really happened.”

Betty ignored him like a bottle of stale beer.

However, the next night when Jamie showed up for work, the owner was waiting for him. “You don’t work here anymore,” the man told him. “I won’t have the help talking to my friends like you talked to Betty Beets.”

Old Beets still kept his daily vigil. He continued driving his red truck down Oak Street, cutting his speed even lower when he came to the blue house. Then he’d go up a nearby hill near the woods and watch Betty on those days he was lucky enough to catch her there.

His anger boiled every time he saw her. As his health diminished, the neighbors urged him not to bother with the woman, for his concern about her made his life a living hell. But he continued, and only moved when police came by, obviously alerted by Betty.

Undaunted by Jamie’s restraining order not to sell any of Jimmy Don’s property, and almost one year to the date of Jimmy Don’s disappearance, Betty faked a power-of-attorney form and inscribed her name on it as having full power over all of Jimmy Don’s possessions. She put an ad in the
Cedar Creek Pilot.
With the fabricated document, she sold his boat for $3,250. She also signed over the boat’s title to the new owners, a nice couple from Garland, Texas, who were impressed by the little widow who had described how hard she worked to keep the Glastron in tip-top condition.

Robby Branson fell in love with Jennifer Cook. He’d known her from high school, and every time he visited the local Dairy Queen where she worked, he’d stay and talk with her until the manager ran him off. Robby spent his days earning minimum wage working as an apprentice carpenter for a construction company.

Jennifer lived by herself in a small, sparsely furnished efficiency apartment, but Robby liked how peaceful and serene it was compared to his living conditions with his mother and her wide assortment of friends.

After dating Jennifer for two months, twenty-year-old Robby moved in with his girlfriend. They had lived together for six happy months, before Betty decided the relationship might be serious and invited them for dinner.

Betty had promised roast beef and all the trimmings, an offer too delicious for two people on a limited budget to pass up.

Once Robby walked into Betty’s house after driving past the well, he couldn’t forget his dreaded recollections. Old memories flooded back—his mother fighting with her husbands and boyfriends, and all the other twisted turmoil he had witnessed. But above all, he still suffered from the guilt of having helped with a murder.

In the weeks following the killing, Betty frequently tried to talk with him about Jimmy Don, but he refused. When he told her how badly he felt, she tried to assuage his guilt by saying, “Don’t worry about it. You’re no worse than Shirley.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Robby had asked.

“Shirley helped me bury Wayne.”

Until that moment Robby hadn’t suspected that his mother had also killed Wayne Barker. His stomach heaved at the thought.

Now he watched Jennifer glance at the vase of flowers sitting in the middle of Betty’s table.

“Your flowers are beautiful, Mrs. Beets,” she said.

“Why don’t you show Jennifer the flowers outside?” Betty suggested. “The lazy Susans are still blooming. Pretty good for October.”

Robby marched his girlfriend outside and she immediately went to the wishing well.

“Not there,” Robby said. “Those aren’t the flowers my mom meant.”

Jennifer shot Robby an “I’ll go where I want” look and continued toward the well.

He grabbed her arm and jerked her away. “I said not there.”

She shook her arm free from his grasp. “What’s gotten into you? All of a sudden you’re acting like an ass.”

Robby ushered her away from the well and walked her to the backyard.

“What’s in that?” she asked, pointing to the shed.

Robby kicked at a tuft of grass. His red face glowed with frustration.

“Let’s go inside,” he said. “Dinner’s probably ready by now.”

Seeing the well and shed washed Robby with depression, a rare mood for him. Now he regretted having to sit with his mother, who was the core of his nightmares.

“How’s your job going, Robby?” Betty asked.

“Okay.”

“Did you get that raise you expected?”

“No.”

“Robby tells me you work at Dairy Queen,” Betty said to Jennifer.”

“Uh-huh.”

Conversation subsided and the rest of the meal continued in silence. Right after they helped with the dishes, Robby and Jennifer left.

“That
was a fun evening,” Jennifer said sarcastically as they drove home.

Robby remained quiet.

It wasn’t until Robby and Jennifer climbed into bed that night that he realized his girlfriend needed an explanation. One that would entail telling her something he never intended to breathe to another living soul.

“If you knew all I’ve been through in my life, you’d understand,” he whispered.

“You haven’t been through any more than the rest of us,” she retorted, and turned her back to him.

“Oh no? Why didn’t I want you by that well tonight?”

“You were being a control freak.”

“Hell I was. Try this. You don’t know my stepfather is buried in that well.”

“Liar. How’d you expect me to believe that?”

“Not only is he buried there, Mom shot him, and I helped bury him.”

Jennifer turned over and raised up on her elbows. “Get a grip, Robby. You’re dreaming.”

“Remember that shed out back?”

“What about it?” Her voice now cautious and apprehensive.

“That’s over the grave of another of my mother’s husbands.”

“Stop. You’re freaking me out. Will you just shut up!”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Robby, if what you’re saying’s true, you’re an accomplice to murder!”

Jennifer couldn’t sleep. She lay awake waiting for the alarm to ring. The next morning, she eagerly called her grandmother, a woman she could always confide in. Her own mother lived in California and they seldom talked, so she had grown close to her grandmother in Dallas.

Jennifer waited impatiently for her grandmother to answer. When she picked up, Jennifer said, “You won’t believe what Robby told me last night.”

“I bet you’re gonna tell me,” her grandmother said, chuckling.

“He said there are two bodies buried out by his mother’s trailer. They used to be her husbands, and his mother killed both of them!”

THIRTEEN

Ray Bone ran into Betty Beets one night at the Cedar Club. He would be one of the roughest characters she had ever met. His documented entrance into the world of crime was October 9, 1970, when police charged him with felony theft and gave him two years probation. Undeterred, on June 23, 1977, he murdered a man and received twenty years in the state penitentiary.

Now out on parole after serving less than eight years of that sentence, Ray, a muscular, good-looking blond, proved a departure from Betty’s dark-haired lovers. His unusual hazel eyes appeared almost yellow, a strange yellow like that of stained glass, illuminating through to the evil inside. Around the bars, common knowledge held that Ray Bone was meaner than hell.

Bobby didn’t like Ray from the first night his mother brought him home. Now, a few weeks later, all three were sitting outside in metal yard chairs that Betty had given several coats of white enamel. A huge white pelican lumbered onto their property, having strayed from one of the lake’s islands that served as a natural bird refuge. They watched the bird, laughing as he walked because the big pouch under his bill jiggled. After a few minutes, Ray picked up rocks from a nearby planter and began pelting the pelican. The frightened bird turned quickly and stumbled back toward the safety of the lake.

Bobby resented Ray’s cruelty and later told his mother, “I don’t know why you had to tie up with him. We don’t need a jerk like that around here.”

Betty ignored the hostility between the two, because for her, having a man was as important as having a roof over her head.

Jimmy Don’s former neighbor, J. R. Burton, hated Betty, but at the same time was fascinated with her. Although he called her the battle-ax, he couldn’t help but watch from his front window whenever she visited the house across the street.

One early fall day in 1984, he looked out his window and saw Betty drive up, but today he was more concerned about the blanket of fog beginning to drape over everything. The lake phenomenon occurred when the warm lake water met the chilly fall air, causing fog to billow up and move with ghostly fingers over houses, streets, and trees. Through the wet mist, he caught another glimpse of Betty, and squinted, watching her bend down by the large outdoor mounted air-conditioning unit. She appeared to be doing something with the bolts that secured the unit to its concrete base. Then she threw her tools into a box, and to his amazement, she single-handedly picked up the unit and loaded it onto her truck.

The next day, the weather had cleared when Betty returned. Burton watched her walk quickly to the house, carrying a large box from her truck. She stayed inside for almost fifteen minutes. Coming out empty handed, she promptly returned to her truck and drove away. After reaching the top of the hill, she pulled over by a clump of trees and parked.

Burton stood there, puzzled by the scene. Then in minutes, black smoke filtered up from the rear of the house. It took him a moment to realize what was happening, and when he did, he called the fire department, then hollered to his wife to summon the Leonards.

All four neighbors rushed across the street with a sense of déjà vu. The fire took off with the speed of an explosion. When Jimmy Don had rebuilt the house from the last fire, he had used a polyurethane insulation that now boiled like a cauldron and sent flames and black smoke high in the afternoon sky.

The sirens of approaching fire engines came as a relief until J. R. looked up the hill and noticed Betty still there, watching. He couldn’t help but think that the woman was plum out of her mind.

After the officers extinguished the fire, J. R. turned to one of the firemen. “I never saw a blaze take off so fast.”

“You’d burn fast too if you had diesel oil poured all over you. Come back here,” the fireman said.

The four, now joined by other neighbors, followed him to the rear of the house where the back wall had been eaten away by flames. Near the patio door they found an oil can sitting in a rocking chair. Spent matches lay strewn on the charred patio concrete.