Burying the Honeysuckle Girls (26 page)

Chapter Forty-Three

October 2012

Tuscaloosa, Alabama

“They all knew,” I said. “Howell. Walter. And your husband. They all saw Vernon Alford shoot his daughter.”

She nodded.

“You saw it too,” I said.

“I did.”

“Good God, Dove!” I struggled to keep my voice level. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

She looked at the fire. It had smoldered down to embers, spilling over the hearth and filling the room with a thin haze of graying smoke. “Charles said mountain people didn’t like outsiders interfering with their business. He said they might kill us too if we didn’t stay out of it. We packed up our things and left Sybil Valley that night. We never spoke about Jinn, or what happened, again.”

“Okay. So then, if you wanted nothing to do with all that business, why did you come back to Alabama? Why did you move across the street from Pritchard? And where do Collie and Trix fit in to all this?”

She folded and refolded her hands. “I don’t expect you to understand. But there’s always been something about this place. Something that won’t let me go.” Her gaze flicked from me to the window, the one that looked out onto the hospital. “It’s difficult to explain.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What question do you want me to answer first?” she said.

I shifted on the sofa. “According to Jean, you were a wild child—this rebel who snuck around behind her husband’s back, barging your way into peoples’ houses, laying hands on total strangers. So why were you afraid to go to the police? You could’ve told the truth, Dove, gotten justice for Jinn. But you ran away.”

“I wanted to tell,” Dove said. She stared down at her hands. “Every day after that, for twenty-five years, I wanted to tell. I did, finally. Not the police. It was Collie. I found Collie.”

“When she was thirty,” I said.

“You know, after Jinn disappeared, Howell moved Walter and Collie down to Birmingham. She went to college for a while, studied art. Paid for it herself. She never went back to live with Howell, though. She always thought maybe he’d had something to do with her mother’s disappearance.” Dove put a hand on her chest. “When I told her the truth about what those men had done to her mother, she cried and cried.”

“But why didn’t you tell her earlier? Why wait until thirty?”

Dove shook her head. “All I can say is, I’ve always thought thirty was a special age for women. When they come into their own, get on solid ground.”

“But she wasn’t on solid ground. She was already involved in some activities that her family was unhappy about. Walter was KKK, and not about to let his little sister tarnish the Wooten family name. After she met with you, she went to see him. She told him everything—the giant, horrifying family secret that Vernon Alford shot and killed his daughter, then hid the body. I don’t know if she threatened to make the story public, if she threatened his life. But whatever happened, for Walter, it was the last straw. He had to shut her down. He put Collie in Pritchard, then later, he went back and killed her.
Murdered
her.”

“I know,” Dove said. “I think I saw him bury her.”

A shock wave traveled through me. I leapt up. “What are you talking about? How could you have seen that?”

Dove stood. She was trembling too, and she clasped her hands in front of her. “There are many of them buried there. Just across the street, at Pritchard. They used to do it in secret, at night . . . the ones they didn’t want anyone to know about. They ones they killed.”

“My God,” Jay said.

“After I met with Collie, I went back to Birmingham,” Dove said. “Just to make sure she was okay. But she was gone. I heard she’d been sent to Pritchard, so I came back here and I waited. One day, when the patients were out, I thought I saw her walking the grounds. She looked bad. Pale and sick. I was concerned for her, worried that I shouldn’t have told her. She wasn’t strong enough.”

I thought of the records I’d read. The horrible things they’d done to my grandmother.

“One night I couldn’t sleep. I made myself a cup of tea and walked out onto the porch. Just to look at the stars, to get some fresh air. At least that was what I told myself. Maybe I knew what was about to happen.” Her eyes shone, filmed over with memories. “I saw two men, digging a grave. Burying a body. I went to Pritchard a couple of days later. I gave them a false name, asked to see Collie Crane. They told me she’d died. I asked to see her grave but they couldn’t find it in her records. They said the information hadn’t been updated yet.”

I felt faint. Disoriented with horror and confusion. “Who were the men?”

“One was police, I believe. He looked to be in uniform. And I could see his squad car nearby. The other one . . .” She faltered.

“Dove.”

Her eyes met mine. “The other one was Walter Wooten.”

“You saw him?”

She was quiet.

“If you didn’t see him, how did you know it was him?”

“I
knew
. The way I’ve always known things. In here.” She clutched at her chest. “I was scared, but I stuck to the trees along the side of the field. I got closer just as they were throwing the dirt in. When he was done, the one man picked up a rifle with an engraved stock plate. A rifle I’d seen before.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t tell if anything she was saying was true. Somehow, magically, she’d known the figure burying a body was Walter? Then she’d gotten close enough—in the dark, no less—to see engraving on the side of a rifle?

And yet . . .

When Trix had gone up to Walter’s house, taken the gun and threatened to tell what he’d done, Walter had killed her. Would he have done that if she hadn’t been on to something?

I turned my attention back to Dove. “So, if you knew it was Walter, why didn’t you turn him in?”

She shook her head. “I told you, Althea. The other man was a police officer. And that wasn’t the first time I’d seen the police at Pritchard. They came other nights, too. They helped bury the bodies.”

“The police?”

“Yes. The police.” She gave me a rueful look. “Althea. This is Alabama. No matter what people want to believe, in this state, the past is still very much alive.”

“If that’s true, why would you do it?” I asked. “Why in the world would you get involved again and pull Trix into it?”

“I couldn’t forget the things I’d seen. I couldn’t sleep. It weighed on me.”

“So you had to unburden your conscience and, as a result, my mother ended up in the same hellhole as Collie?”

“Yes,” she said. “God forgive me, yes.” She shook her head. She was trembling, her eyes watering, but I didn’t feel sorry for anything I’d said. She’d nearly destroyed my family, robbed me of my mother and grandmother. I had no sympathy for her.

“I saw what happened then,” she said quietly. “And it was terrible. So terrible.”

I blinked in disbelief. What did she mean, she
saw
? What was she saying?

She looked from Jay to me, like she’d read my mind. “I know where your mother is.”

In the deepening dusk, we crossed the road in front of Dove’s house. Stepped onto Pritchard’s soccer field.

Or what used to be the soccer field. It was a construction site now. The goals had been removed, the area excavated and marked with wooden stakes, pink plastic markers, and two-by- fours. The squat administrative building glowed behind the field, and the U-shaped residential hall behind that. In the distance, stalwart sentinel over the whole scene, stood Old Pritchard.

A cement mixer rumbled at the far end of the field. It was pouring gray sludge into the staked area. Watching just beyond the mixer were three men—a hospital security guard, a beefy man in a red fleece, and Gene Northcut. My mouth went dry.

I turned to Jay. “This is the memorial Wynn was talking about. He and Gene Northcut were going to put it right on top of the bodies. To hide them.”

“You really think your mother is here?” he said in disbelief. “And Collie and Jinn?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Dove?”

Dove lifted her hand, pointed a knobby finger at a spot just to the left of the mixer.

“There.” Her voice was steady.

She turned ninety degrees to the left. Pointed at another area of bare ground on the far side of the excavated site, beneath a cluster of dark pines that thrust toward the pink-swept sky. “There.”

She nodded at our feet. “And here.”

Before I even knew what I was doing, I was down on my knees, clawing at the earth like some kind of demented dog.

“Althea!” I heard, and then Jay hauled me up by the shoulders.

“They’re watching.” He brushed the hair out of my face, then turned and looked behind him. I followed his gaze. The three men beside the cement mixer were standing shoulder to shoulder, staring.

“I don’t care. They can’t do this.” I tore out of Jay’s grasp and stumbled across the field, waving my arms at them like a maniac. “Stop!” I shouted. “Stop!” The man operating the mixer stuck his head out the window and stared. “Stop pouring!” I screamed over the roar of the equipment. My eyes flicked to Mr. Northcut’s deer-antler cane. The handle of it looked as sharp as an ice pick. Then I caught sight of his face. His features had hardened.

“You can’t pour here,” I called out to the group again. “You have to stop.”

The three men conferred among themselves, then Red Fleece walked to the truck and spoke to the driver. The stream of cement stopped, and the truck idled. The four of us walked over to the men. I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the security guard’s hand drop to his gun holster.

I laser-focused on Northcut. I could see he was trying to place me, his brain clicking through the internal files. “You have to stop working here right away,” I said.

“Well, hey there,” he said. “I know you.” He looked at Red Fleece. “I know her.”

“You do?” Red Fleece crossed his arms over his chest, feigning boredom.

Northcut smiled. It was an unpleasant smile. An oily one. “You’re Wynn Bell’s sister.”

“That’s right.” I tucked my dirt-clotted hands behind me. “Althea.”

“Althea. Of course. This is my nephew, Bennett.”

I ignored the introduction.

“Now what were you saying?” Northcut asked.

“This area can’t be disturbed. There are—” I glanced at Dove. “This field is a cemetery.”

“No, it’s not,” Red Fleece said. Then he laughed.

“It is,” I said.

“You’re mistaken,” he said. “It absolutely is
not
.”

“I have proof that more than one body is buried in this field,” I said. The security guard unsnapped the strap on his walkie and went a couple of yards away from us. Beyond him, I saw the door to the administrative building open. Beth stuck her head out, scanned our little group, then walked briskly to the security guard.

“Proof?” Red Fleece turned to Northcut. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“Miss Bell—” Northcut said.

“It’s common knowledge where Pritchard’s cemeteries are located,” Red Fleece said over him. “At the rear of the old property and in the woods.”

Northcut’s smile stretched further, revealing a set of too-white teeth. “Bennett, a moment, if you don’t mind.” He addressed me. “This area of Pritchard has been promised to the Alabama Historical Association, Miss Bell. To build a memorial for the hospital. Your brother”—his nostrils flared—“God rest his soul—arranged it all. One of his last acts on this earth.”

Red Fleece clapped his hands together. “So you should all just head on home.”

I didn’t move. I could feel Dove and Jay behind me, the strength of their presence.

“Tell me something,” I asked Northcut. “Why are you out here at dusk, pouring cement over this field? Why not wait until morning to start the job?”

Red Fleece and Northcut stared at me. Neither said a word.

“Why are you in such a hurry?” I asked. “What are you hiding?”

Silence.

“What are you afraid people will find in this field if you don’t cover it with an entire layer of
concrete
?” I was breathless now, my voice high and loud. I pointed at the old man. “I know,” I said. “I know what’s going on.”

The security guard broke in. “I’ve called the sheriff. And the president of the hospital.”

“Good,” I said. “Perfect. I’ll wait until they get here.”

“You folks are going to need to clear off the property,” he said.

“We’re staying right here until they plow up this whole fucking field.”

They shook their heads and chuckled.

The mixer operator swung down from his seat and shambled toward us. “Where are you saying someone’s buried?” he asked me.

I looked at Dove. She pointed to just past him.

She spoke out clearly. “Several of them are buried there.”

The field fell silent. I heard a door bang open from somewhere—the administrative building, most likely.

“Several of them?” The mixer operator pushed up the brim of his hat and peered at Dove.

“I saw the men do it. Bury them, at night. I live over there, so I could see it all.”

Red Fleece, the security guard, and the mixer operator gaped at her. Only Northcut didn’t. He glanced furtively at the brick building behind him. The parking lot.