Dark River Road (77 page)

He didn’t think for one minute that she hadn’t been sent here with the threat to ruin Doc. Quinton had to be behind it. He didn’t know how Quinton thought he could manage it since Doc owned the building and the land it sat on, but apparently he’d try to do something. Maybe he should warn Doc. Just in case.

Doc didn’t seem at all surprised. Or worried. He laughed.

“Sorry bastard. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d tried to get at me. There’s definite advantages in not owing anybody anything, Chantry. If I’d had a loan at the bank when you left Cane Creek the first time, it’d have been called in.”

He should have figured Quinton would do something like that. “Sorry, Doc. If it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t have any trouble.”

“Bullshit. Anyone who crosses Bert Quinton is in for hell. He doesn’t like being crossed. Never has. Time was, crossing him could get a man in a peck of trouble.” Doc chewed on a straw he’d pulled from his Styrofoam Sonic cup; the red plastic bobbed up and down. “Look, Chantry, he can get pretty damn mean. Dangerous kind of mean. You know he’s capable of a lot of things, but I wouldn’t put it past him if you had some kind of accident. If you know what I’m talking about.”

“Yeah. I know.”

Doc nodded. “Figured you did. There’s been a lot of rumors over the years. Hard to figure out what’s true and what’s just legend. Sometimes a man lets things get out that ain’t necessarily true because it’s bad enough to make folks steer clear of him. Without proof
 . . .
”

“So,” Chantry said, “I wonder if Ted Quinton had an
accident
.”

Doc’s straw went still. He’d been leaning back in his office chair with his feet up on his desk, relaxed after a long day. Now tension tightened his features.

“What do you know about Ted Quinton?”

“Not much. Did you know him?”

“Yeah. Long time ago. Damn. Near thirty years or more since he left town. Story goes, Ted got mad about Colin getting promoted at Quinton Cotton instead of him. Why’d you bring up Ted?”

“Because I wonder if he ever really left town.” Chantry let that lie for a moment, saw Doc’s brows furrow, and then said, “No one’s heard from him since he’s supposed to have left town.”

Doc sat up straight and spit out the straw. He rubbed a hand across his jaw, fixed Chantry with a worried look. “Yeah. I’ve always wondered about that myself. Seems to me, he’d have come back sometime. No one’s heard a word from him in all these years. The old man always preferred Colin to Ted. Think that was because of Ted’s mama.”

“
Ted’s
mama? Wasn’t his mama Miss Lucinda, too?”

Doc shook his head, blew out a short laugh that sounded angry. “No. Bert Quinton remarried a week after Ted’s mama died in childbirth. Colin was born the next year. Ted’s mama was a Stark. “

Chantry stared at him for a minute. Then the light went on. “Related to Billy Mac Stark?”

“That’s the one. Her daddy had a shotgun wedding when Jenilee got pregnant with Ted, had old man Quinton in front of the preacher at the end of a double barrel shotgun. Those Starks are mean as hell, but Jenilee was really sweet if a little simple. Too sweet for the likes of Bert Quinton. Jimmy Joe Stark was the last man to get the best of Bert, I’ll say that. I think Quinton knew Jimmy Joe would shoot him without a blink if he didn’t stand up to getting Jenilee pregnant. Bert didn’t waste any tears when she died, but he never had a minute to waste on Ted, either. Once Jenilee was dead, nobody talked about her, especially after Bert married Lucinda and Colin was born. Ted, he just got lost in the shuffle, I guess. It was like he was a distant relation living up in that house with Colin and Cara. You never heard that much about him. Ted was nice enough, quiet, lonely, and always in his younger brother’s shadow. I just figured he’d had enough and took off for a better life finally.” He got quiet, and then said softly, “But in the back of my mind, I always wondered why he left so sudden and no one ever heard from him again.”

Chantry looked at him, and knew they were both thinking the same thing.

“That any help?” Chantry jerked his thumb in the direction of the metal bucket.

“Some. I’ve got a tough hide, though. This is just for visitors.”

“So you were expecting me.”

“Yep. Heard you been asking inconvenient questions.”

“Are my lines tapped or something?” Chantry sat down on the top step right below Dempsey. “How do people hear these things?”

“Gets around. Mostly because old man Quinton has been madder’n a stomped-on cat about it. He makes noise when he wants to put folks on edge.”

“And the advantage of putting folks on edge would be
 . . .
?”

“Make ’em careful about what they say and who they talk to.” Dempsey sucked on his pipe. A thin curl of smoke drifted in the hot air. “Son, what’s the point of bringing all this up now? It’s been so long. Tansy’s liable to be the one hurt most by it.”

Chantry thought about that for a moment. Most people still didn’t know Ted was her biological father. Chris knew. Maybe he’d just found out that Ted was only Colin’s half-brother. Maybe that’s why he’d finally made up his mind about Tansy: that one extra chromosome kept her from being his first cousin. Or maybe he’d just decided none of it mattered, as long as his grandfather didn’t find out until too late that he knew.

“It’s going to get out one day,” he said finally. The words lay heavy in air scented by honeysuckle vines growing up around the house. “It’s inevitable. Chris will tell it, or even the old man if he can find a vicious enough way to do it without taking any blame.”

Dempsey rocked back in the old chair so that it squeaked against cypress planks. “Yeah. S’pose you’re right about that. Just hard to do it after all these years, ’specially as how I don’t have proof about where her daddy is. Just where he isn’t.”

Chantry looked at him. Anguish settled in the older man’s face, in creases around his eyes and mouth. He looked tired. Heartsick.

“You’ll always be her daddy, Dempsey. The only one she’s ever known or loved. It doesn’t matter who planted the seed. It just matters who nourished the plant. You told me that a long time ago. It’s still true.”

Chair runners squeaked again, and in the distance a dog barked. The smell of rain was in the air, too, and the feeling of late summer, like everything was getting in a last hurrah before winter. Fields across the road lay fallow this year, dirt furrows sprouting a few weeds but nothing else. He thought of how Julia had named Tansy after a bitter weed, when Dempsey wanted to name her after his mother instead.

“Tell me about Ted,” Chantry said, and Dempsey cleared his throat.

“I used to see him up at the house a lot. Tall, lanky boy. Unhappy. Sent off to a military school most of the year, not even allowed home for holidays. Julia used to say it was criminal the way old man Quinton did him. Treated him like a poor relation instead of his own son. Ted graduated and came home for the summer. Lot of arguments ’bout that with the old man. Quinton wanted him to join the service, go off anywhere away from here. Just get out. If it wasn’t for old man Stark, I swear I think Quinton woulda put Ted up for adoption after Jenilee died. Don’t know what Stark had on the old man, but he musta had something good. Jimmy Joe Stark never had to worry about spending money. I don’t think he cared much about it, though. Stayed out there in that old trailer, raised dogs and went huntin’ all the time, or fishin’ out on the river. Rough as they come. Mean as a junkyard dog, too. When Jenilee got pregnant, he took his shotgun and dragged Bert Quinton out to a preacher, made him stand up to what he’d done. Bert’s daddy, the first Colin, he told him he’d made his bed, he’d have to lie in it. Then Bert Quinton’s daddy died the next year and he took over everything. He’d married Lucinda by then, had Colin. Then Cara. Ted got shoved aside.”

Dempsey paused, tamped more tobacco in his pipe, relit it. The lighter shut with a snap and he rocked a little bit, thinking. Chantry waited.

“Lucinda was nice to Ted. She came from Hinds County, right outside Jackson. Good family. Money. Class. She’d got engaged to Bert in college, then he up and got Jenilee pregnant. I don’t know how ole Bert talked Miss Lucinda into marryin’ him so soon after his wife died, but she did. Never blamed Ted for his mama, either, maybe felt sorry for him because she’d died and his daddy didn’t like him. Ted used to bring her flowers he picked when he was a kid, do little things for her. I think when she got the cancer and died, he took it just as hard as her own kids. I’d see him up at the house, moving light as a ghost, like some tragic character in a movie. Guess that’s what Julia saw in him. She always tried to help the underdog. It was just her way. And Ted Quinton needed to be helped.”

There was no anger in Dempsey’s matter-of-fact telling, just a kind of sadness that permeated his words. Chantry could almost see the handsome, tragic Ted drifting through that big house, never a part of it, an outsider trapped by birth and disdain. He empathized.

“So Julia and Ted
 . . .
?”

Dempsey nodded. “I’d see ’em sometimes, sneaking off together, trying not to be noticed. Knew she loved him, could see that he loved her. I never did understand why he’d go off and leave her like he did. He didn’t seem the kind.”

“I don’t think he went willingly.” Chantry locked his hands together, frowned. “I think Quinton killed him.”

It went quiet. Dempsey stopped rocking. His fingers tightened around the bowl of the pipe as he took it from his mouth. “His own son?”

Chantry told him what Laura Quinton had said. Told him what Chris had told him a long time ago, and how he’d gone pale when Chantry asked about Ted.

“I’m willing to bet Ted’s still at the bottom of the river,” he finished. It got quiet again. Crickets chirped a frantic song. Katydids hummed loudly, and shadows poked long fingers into corners and along the tree line edging the fields.

“That’s a wicked old man,” Dempsey said finally. “The devil’s own.”

That was true enough.

It had stormed that day,
a pounding rain that turned fields and gravel roads to mud that clung to car tires in big red globs of clay. Chantry parked outside the carriage house and thought about turning the hose on his car. He’d had to go on some calls with Doc, see to a couple of sick calves out on the highway. Cows never got sick anywhere convenient. Most of the time, it took a four-wheel drive to get to the back pasture to tend them.

The only good thing was knowing that the deputy who’d followed him had gotten his cruiser stuck in the mud. Chantry hadn’t even slowed down as he passed him, just waved. Probably pissed him off pretty good, but he didn’t appreciate being followed all the time. That had to be Quinton’s doing, of course. Every time he looked up, he saw a damn cop somewhere close by. Just waiting. Watching.

Not that a cop couldn’t come in handy, it was just damned inconvenient to have them knowing his every move. He’d used his cell phone to call up the two employees at the animal shelter that Lu Emma Lamar thought was selling pit bulls, not wanting to lead the police to their door and scare them away. Johnson had hung up on him, but Frank Coley blurted out that he’d had enough and was leaving town anyway.

“Them guys out there are crazy. I ain’t stickin’ around to catch the shit for this. And that old man is mean clear through.”