Cover-Up Story (20 page)

There was no signal given that I could discern but, by the time we had reached the exit, the Cousins had packed up their instruments and were following along behind us. The hired cars were waiting at the kerb, and we all piled into them.

By the time we pulled up in front of the hotel, Bart was conscious enough to go through the lobby upright, supported by Sam and me. He still wasn't bright enough to navigate on his own, or take much notice of anything, though. I wondered if Lou-Ann were right and there might be some sort of damage. But I dismissed the thought – the devil looks after his own, and it was far more likely that Bart was shamming for some purpose of his own.

We all crowded into the lift, leaving no room for anyone else. I began to see the advantages of travelling in entourage. In a curious sort of way, it provided privacy. We reached Bart's suite without being approached by anyone.

Inside, the Cousins deployed themselves around the room, leaning on the furniture and swapping meaning grins.

‘Like them old musicians always say.' Cousin Zeke put down his guitar. ‘When a band is goin' good, and the music is loud an' sweet an' lifting you up – why, it's the next-best thing to a woman.'

‘Tell that to Bart,' Cousin Homer said. ‘That ain't what
he
thinks.'

‘Damn tootin',' Cousin Ezra joined in. ‘Bart thinks a woman is the next-best thing – to a little girl! '

They exploded with laughter. It was obviously one of their long-standing private in-jokes. Only Uncle No'ccount wasn't laughing. He was looking unusually tight-lipped and moody, but perhaps that was the effect of being without teeth.

Lou-Ann and Crystal had gone ahead into Bart's bedroom and turned down the covers. We followed and dumped Bart on the bed with no unnecessary gentleness. He groaned and seemed to pass out again. I wasn't sure whether to believe it or not.

Lou-Ann had no doubt. ‘Get the doctor,' she said wildly. ‘Get that doctor up here quick. Bart's real bad.'

Crystal stared down at him with something less than sisterly concern, and it was Sam who moved to the telephone and put in the call for the doctor.

‘He can't have a doctor see him like that.” Lou-Ann was fussing around Bart, tugging at his boots, unbuttoning his shirt. ‘He gotta be undressed, so's he can be examined proper.' She looked at us hesitantly, loath to admit how much Bart would hate being undressed by herself.

‘Yeah.' Sam moved again, reluctantly. ‘Yeah, maybe you'd better get his pyjamas – you know where they're kept.'

‘Oh, sure.' She moved away eagerly. At least she knew that much. ‘Bart, now, he wouldn't like being seen in nothing but his best.' She pulled open a drawer.

‘He got a real pretty pair he bought in Savannah last year.' She rummaged through the drawer – awkwardly, as she did everything. ‘It's dark red, with gold dragons embroidered on it. Now, that's the sorta thing it would be good for his image for the public to see him in. Maybe you could take some pictures –' She tossed things about in the drawer frantically.

‘I jest know they're here somewhere. I'm sure of it. I saw him put them there when he unpacked. Oh, here they are.' She started to pull them out of the drawer. I was watching her and saw her slowly freeze.

She stood there, the dark red pyjamas spilling like blood from her hands, and gave that funny little squawk of hers. Which wasn't really funny – especially this time.

We were all drawn across the room to her, and stood looking down into the drawer, as she was looking down. Mesmerized, as she was, by what we saw.

Suddenly, there was evidence.

‘THERE MUST BE some mistake,' Lou-Ann said desperately. ‘There's got to be.'

Maw Cooney's handbag lay at the bottom of the drawer. We had all seen it too often, been made too aware of it, to mistake it.

Not one of us said anything. It was as though voicing our identification would be too positive, too final.

‘But, what is it doing here?' Having admitted it to herself, Lou-Ann struggled with the next point. The police said somebody must've stolen it at the time of the accident. What is it doing in with Bart's things?'

It was a question no one wished to answer. The Cousins, drawn like vultures to the scene of catastrophe, came into the room, followed by Uncle No'ccount. Their grins fell away as they looked down into the drawer. For once, they seemed to recognize that some situations were beyond sniggering at.

‘Maybe it ain't really hers,' Cousin Homer suggested tentatively. ‘Maybe it jest
looks
the same.'

‘You think I don't know my own Maw's bag?' Galvanized by the idea, Lou-Ann snatched up the bag and opened it.

‘Looky here.' She began pulling out the contents, tossing them on the dressing-table top. ‘That's
her
wallet,
her
notebook,
her
set of publicity pictures of me,
her
–' Lou-Ann broke off, staring in puzzlement at the little bottle of pills she found in her hand.

‘That's funny,' she said, ‘
these
ain't hers.' She dropped them on the dressing-table.

‘They sure ain't!' Cousin Zeke moved forward and picked up the bottle. ‘They's mine! They's what Bart took away from me on the boat. He told me he threw them overboard.'

Not all of them caught the implications at the same time. I saw Crystal move closer to Uncle No'ccount and receive his sheltering arm – they had had more experience of Bart's malice than the others. They were under no illusions as to his capabilities.

‘
Your
sleeping pills.' Sam came to it reluctantly, but inescapably, almost with relief. It meant goodbye to the big plans the Agency had had for Bart – this meant he was too much dynamite even for them to handle. But it also meant Lou-Ann had been telling the truth when she swore she hadn't attempted suicide.

‘For sure, they're mine. Jest you look at the label on that bottle – Dr H. D. Cadwallader, of Macon, Georgia. You remember.' He turned to the other Cousins for confirmation. ‘We was playing a split week there when I was took so bad. He gave me some of those, and they helped so much I got him to do me a prescription for this tour. Ain't that so?'

They nodded agreement. Whatever else was murky, that much was clear. They remembered that split week in Macon, they remembered Dr H. D. Cadwallader – and the pills were definitely Zeke's.

‘HYE! ' The blurred, enraged voice from the bed startled us. ‘You damn trash – what you doin' with my things?' Bart stumbled out of bed and towards us. ‘You leave my things alone – you hear me?'

‘They ain't your things, Bart.' Lou-Ann faced him calmly, but her voice quavered. ‘They're Maw's.'

‘And mine,' Zeke said, then retreated before Bart's furious glare.

‘Give me that! ' Bart snatched at the handbag. Lou-Ann did not retreat. She held the bag tightly. ‘It's Maw's, Bart. She always had it with her. It's the one the police couldn't find after she'd been hit by that car.'

Bart may have been groggy, but his sense of self preservation was still operating. Intimidation hadn't worked, so he switched on his most charming smile. ‘You're upset, honey,' he said tenderly. ‘Jest give me that now, and we'll talk about it later.'

Perhaps that smile had done something to Lou-Ann once, but the magic wasn't working any more. ‘We can talk about it now,' she said.

The smile slowly faded from his face, but he kept a pleasant expression, the smile ready to make a comeback if there were any chance of it doing any good. He shook his head groggily and put a hand up to rub it; but, if that was a bid for sympathy, it failed, too. Lou-Ann regarded him impassively.

‘The police told us it must've been stolen,' she said. ‘So how come you've got it, Bart?'

We were all watching him, but it was Lou-Ann he must face and try to answer. He wasn't doing so well.

‘Honey.' He rubbed his forehead again, touched the back of his head gingerly, and winced. ‘Honey, I feel so awful. You got the doctor comin' for me?'

‘He'll come.' There was a quality in her tone that said someone else might come for Bart, too. In fact, there was a new quality about her entirely – a steely coldness, coupled with a rigid control. She was changing before our eyes, and what we could see was only part of what was happening deep inside her. Perhaps she was growing up.

‘It was like this,' Bart tried again. ‘After the police told us what happened – and everything – I went down to sorta have a look around where it happened. And I found this flung off in the bushes, like, and –'

It wasn't good enough, and he knew it. But he went on trying.

‘So naturally I brought it back, and I was afeared it might upset you, if you saw it, so I didn't –'

‘Why didn't you give it to the police?' Lou-Ann asked.

‘Why, I couldn't do that, honey.' He sounded surprised. ‘I mean, there mighta been something in it we wouldn't want for them to see.'

That, at least, had a ring of truth. The first truth in the whole farrago. Maw Cooney had been ruling his life by blackmail. When he killed her, he had to take her handbag away to obtain any evidence she might have been carrying. Whether there had been anything or not, we would never know.

‘After you checked, then why didn't you give it to the police? You knew they were looking for it.'

‘Aw, honey, I couldn't do a thing like that to you. It would've jest started them coming back around again, asking lots more questions, stirring it all up again. You don't realize jest how upset you was. I couldn't have you bothered no more.'

‘I know how upset I was, Bart,' Lou-Ann said quietly. ‘I was mighty upset. But I wasn't near so crazy with it as you tried to make out to everybody. Now, why was that, I wonder?'

‘Honey, I swear to you, you
was
that upset. Why, I was truly afeared –' But he had gone too far into another danger zone. He saw that, and stopped abruptly.

‘No, Bart,' Lou-Ann said sadly. ‘I wasn't
that
upset. Maw wouldn't have wanted for me to be. And I know how many pills I took that night, too. I only took one. And I hid the bottle so's you couldn't find it and throw them away, like you done Zeke's.' She paused, and corrected herself. ‘Like we thought you done Zeke's.'

‘Honey.' He was shaking his head, still protesting, but the verdict was going against him. The watching faces had closed against him.

‘Zeke –' Lou-Ann gestured to the bottle – ‘you said you had enough pills for the tour. You know jest how many you had left?'

‘Sure do, Lou-Ann. I had exactly thirty-six.'

‘Thirty-six,' Lou-Ann said thoughtfully. ‘Suppose you count them right now, and see how many you got there.'

‘Sure, Lou-Ann.' She was calm, but Zeke's hand was trembling slightly as he spilled the pills across the dressing table and pawed through them, counting aloud . . .

‘... twenty-eight ... twenty-nine ... thirty ...thirty-one ... thirty-two ...' He ran his hand frantically over the dressing-table, searching for some that might have rolled out of sight. There were none, of course. He turned to face her slowly.

‘I make it thirty-two, Lou-Ann,' he announced. ‘But I
know
there was thirty-six last time I had that bottle.'

‘I expect there were, Zeke,' Lou-Ann said wearily. She looked at Bart and shrugged.

Incredibly, I had to swallow hard against a rising bubble of laughter in my throat. She was lost, sad, forlorn. But she was also brilliantly, exquisitely funny.

‘What're you tryin' to say?' Bart reverted to bluster. He glared from one to the other. ‘What kinda stupid put-up job is this?'

His day was over. Nobody cringed. But there was nothing funny now.

‘I jest took one pill that night,' Lou-Ann said. ‘So you must've given me the other four in that cocoa. Did you think that five would be enough? I expect it didn't matter, did it?' She sighed. ‘You still had plenty in that bottle – and nobody would've been so surprised next time it happened.' She didn't look at him. She never looked at him again.

‘Okay, Bart.' Sam snapped into life. ‘Pack your things and get out of here. I don't care where you go – just go. You are finished, boy. Don't ever come near us or the Agency again.'

‘You can't believe
her,
' Bart protested. ‘She's jealous, that's all. She's so crazy mad, she reckons if she can't have me, then –'

‘Do you think you could convince the police of that?' I asked.

‘You, boy!' He turned on me, lowering his head like a bull about to charge. ‘You've had it in for me from the beginning. And I ain't so hot on you, neither.' He was maddened with fury and terror. Somehow, he had decided that I was responsible for everything that had gone wrong for him since he had landed in this country.

‘You and me, boy –' he all but pawed the ground – ‘are gonna have it out right
now.
He rushed at me in a demented charge.

He'd never heard of the Marquess of Queensberry. Or, if he had, he thought such stupid Rules only applied to the sissified English, and not to red-blooded jest plain folks.

His charge slammed me against the farther wall. He kidney-punched me with one hand and gouged for my eyes with the other.

I said goodbye to the Marquess myself and brought my knee up. We were too close for it to do much damage, but he released me briefly and I tried to get away. I had no illusions about my chances in a prolonged stand-up fight with Bart.

‘You wanna fight dirty, boy – okay!' He leaped at me again. I heard the window-pane crack as my head slammed against it.

I was fighting as hard as I could, but I might as well have been swimming under water in slow motion. Vaguely, I wondered why no one was trying to help me. Would it have violated their Code of the Hills? Or, from where they stood, could it look as though I was holding my own?