Midnight Crossroad (Midnight, Texas #1) (19 page)

Our sister Aubrey Hamilton Lowry, beloved daughter of Destin and Lucyfay Hamilton, sister of Macon, widow of Chad Lowry, will be sadly missed by those who knew her. For many years Aubrey attended church here, and she graduated from Buffalo Plain High School. She was a waitress in Oklahoma while she was married to Chad, and upon his death she returned to Texas. After working in Davy, she met her death by human hands, for reasons not yet clear to us.

Praise be to God! All will be known on the Day of Judgment. For it is not for us to judge God’s actions. “They went to bury her, but they found nothing more of her than the skull and the feet and the palms of her hands.” (2 Kings 9:35)

Fiji put her hand over her mouth. Creek, who had just read the same passage, turned to Fiji. For once, the two women were in accord. They silently grimaced at each other to manifest their disgust. But at that moment the music swelled, and the mourners followed a silent hand gesture from the man standing at the front of the church and rose to their feet. The coffin came in on its gurney, guided by two funeral home attendants, with Aubrey’s family walking in behind it.

The couple at the head of the mourners must be the parents. To Fiji’s faint surprise, they were only in their forties. Under ordinary circumstances, she realized they’d be vital and attractive people. Aubrey had definitely inherited her looks and charm from her father, who had his arm around a small, frail woman dressed in navy blue.

The other family members she could only guess about: the brother, Macon, was probably the big guy whose eyes were red with weeping. There was a man who (going on looks) must be Mr. Hamilton’s brother, accompanied by his sturdy wife and their kids, who were in their early twenties. Cousins. There was one grandmother, tiny like Aubrey’s mom. Once they were all seated, the funeral began.

To the fidgety Fiji, the service seemed to take forever. There were prayers and Bible readings and anecdotes. To Fiji’s dismay, several people read poems or essays that described a very different woman from the one Fiji had known. Fiji noticed that even Creek looked uncomfortable as they listened to stories about how gentle Aubrey had been, how loving and thoughtful. And yet, if you listened with unkind ears (or as Fiji preferred to call it, “an open mind”), you could hear that all had not been well in Aubrey land. A careful listener like Fiji could hear that Aubrey had not communicated much with her parents or with her in-laws in the past couple of years, that she’d liked to party hard, that she’d been overly influenced by those around her.

There were more prayers, and the minister’s well-constructed homily that was so touching even Fiji grew more solemn. She glanced at her companion to see that Creek was crying. Fiji fumbled in her bag for a tissue to pass to the girl. Creek gave Fiji a grateful look and used it to blot her cheeks and her nose.

By the time Fiji thought she was growing roots in the pew, after yet another prayer, the service was over.

When Aubrey had left her parents’ church for the last time, Fiji said, “Do you want to go out to the cemetery?”

Creek, who had recovered her composure, nodded. “I guess so,” she said. “It just seems polite.”

Fiji joined the funeral procession, feeling like a fraud as the oncoming cars pulled off to the side of the road, and people standing on the sidewalks of Buffalo Plain took off their hats or stood at attention as the hearse drove by. About three miles out of town, the land began to rise again. They turned off the state highway to take a narrow road that jinked its way up a rolling hill. At the very top they entered the cemetery, the culmination of the road. The grounds were not fenced. There was a metal sign to the right of the entrance that read P
IONEER
R
EST
. The graveyard was an old one; Fiji saw headstones that dated back to the early eighteen hundreds.

There were live oaks shading some of the older graves, and little brown leaves fluttered in the wind that scoured the hilltop. It was quiet and peaceful, or at least it would be after all the mourners left.

“It’s like we’re an interruption,” Fiji said to Creek, who gave her a surprised look. Fiji wondered if she could come back on some other occasion, just to read the headstones.

She parked behind the other cars, all huddled to one side of the narrow paved path that made a lazy loop through the graves. In summer, attending an interment here would be a very hot, sweaty experience. In October, it was pleasant. The minute she got out of the car, Fiji’s hair began its escape from the barrette she’d used to trap it.

Creek looked at the open grave as they drew near to the prepared site. It was hardly visible under all the funeral home paraphernalia, but it was there and it was waiting. In an attempt to comfort the girl, Fiji said, “She’ll be here with frontiersmen and gunfighters and pioneer women.”

Creek looked at her blankly, but after a moment she said, “All part of history. I see that.”

Fiji had a moment’s impulse to sing “The Circle of Life,” but she suppressed it sternly. Her resentment of the dead woman was getting the better of her sense of appropriate behavior.
If I came as Bobo’s representative, I’m sure not acting like it,
she scolded herself. She forced her face into strictly expressionless lines as they joined the small crowd around the tent erected over the open grave.

The earnest minister began to pray. Again.

Aubrey’s mother, Lucyfay, who looked as though a strong breeze would blow her away, did not make a single sound during the long prayer. Destin Hamilton sat with one arm around his wife, one fist clenched on his thigh. He was visibly tense, about to explode with some strong emotion. Fiji couldn’t pick what the emotion would be: grief, rage, impatience? It was painful to witness.

As the prayer went on and on, Fiji—and all the mourners—shifted and began to look around, because a sound was getting louder and closer. At first it reminded Fiji of a fleet of distant lawn tractors. Gradually, it became apparent that there was a procession drawing nearer: Motorcycles, all with the same flag attached, rumbled into the cemetery in single file. The minister gave up his attempt to be heard, and the mourners turned as one to watch the machines reach the place on the road closest to Aubrey’s grave and then, one by one, park in a neat line facing in. Fiji counted thirty of them.

The riders dismounted and came to the grave site. Though it was impossible to read their faces, since all of them were wearing dark glasses and kerchiefs or helmets, Fiji thought their body language read self-conscious as they assembled in a group. After the noise of the motors, the appalled silence weighed heavily on the newcomers.

Two of them were carrying a folded flag. They handed it off to the leader in a clumsy bit of ceremony. The leader walked over to stand in front of the Hamiltons. He extended the flag to them. He was a tall man—broad, too—and wearing a black motorcycle jacket and jeans. He’d removed his helmet.

Fiji could see, from the ripple running through the mourners, that they knew him.

“Who is that?” she asked of the woman closest to her.

The woman, who was wearing a cross around her neck and a modest wedding band, said in an equally low voice, “That’s Price Eggleston.”

Fiji was not terribly surprised. Eggleston did not look stupid, but by interrupting a funeral he had to know he would offend an awful lot of people. She wondered what he hoped to achieve. She found out when most of the young people pulled cell phones from purses and pockets and began to record what was happening. They were taking photos or movies. Eggleston adopted a terribly solemn face. He held out the flag to the Hamiltons, who stared at it, appalled. They made no move to accept the triangular bundle.

“On behalf of the Men of Liberty, I present you with this flag of our nation in remembrance of our fallen sister,” he said, his voice pitched to carry. “We will get vengeance for our fallen one. The man who killed her will not go unpunished.”

There was no doubt in Fiji’s mind that he meant Bobo. Before she could decide what to do, Macon Hamilton was on his feet and swinging at Eggleston. That was so exactly what Fiji wanted to do that her own fist clenched in sympathy. Unfortunately, Price Eggleston was quick on his feet for a big man, and he leaped back.

While Macon stumbled, Price Eggleston completed his mission by turning to the coffin and placing the flag on top of it. He then beat a quick retreat. The minister, trying to restore some decorum to the scene, said very loudly, “We now commend the body of our sister to the earth,” and signaled the funeral home employee to lower the casket. As it began to descend into the grave, Lucyfay Hamilton finally snapped. She launched herself out of her folding chair as if she intended to descend, too. Or maybe her goal was to remove the flag from Aubrey’s coffin. Only a quick movement by her husband kept her aboveground.

Everyone froze in place as they watched the casket. Eggleston took advantage of the situation to walk briskly back to his MOL posse and mount his motorcycle. All the MOL people followed and got ready to leave, and the motorcycles started back up with a huge buzz. The noise galvanized the mourners, some of whom began yelling at the funeral crashers. Macon Hamilton picked up a funeral home chair and threw it at one of the motorcyclists in the exiting procession. He missed the driver but hit the passenger, who tumbled off onto the grass. The passenger’s helmet came off. Fiji recognized Lisa Gray. Bobo had been spot-on about Lisa and her veracity.

The girl scrambled up and climbed back on behind the motorcyclist, whom Fiji figured was her husband, Cole. Without further incident (aside from a lot of screaming) the entire motorcycle contingent roared away. Fiji saw one of the flags fluttering behind a rider detach and gust onto a nearby monument, and she scuttled over to rescue it. She straightened the cloth out to have a good look. The flag depicted a mailed fist clutching a rectangular banner in the middle. On one side of the banner was printed “Liberty” and on the other side was an arrow.

Fiji looked around and didn’t see Creek anywhere. With a pang of guilt and worry she turned in a circle to survey the cemetery. People were milling all around, and the solemnity of the occasion was simply lost. Try as she would, Fiji could not find the girl.

She hurried over to her car, clicking it open as she walked. When the locks made their little chirp and went up, Creek popped to her feet on the passenger side. Fiji sagged with relief. “Get in, and let’s get out of here,” she called, and Creek scrambled in and buckled her seat belt. Fiji was equally hasty in her preparation, and before other mourners had gotten ready to leave, Fiji pulled her car out of the lineup and began going around the loop that would lead out of the cemetery and back to the road. She drove very slowly and carefully. Most of the people who’d come to say good-bye to Aubrey Hamilton Lowry were now bent over their phones, texting. The funeral was already viral.

When they were halfway down the hill, Fiji passed Creek the flag.

Creek said, “Stronghold. The mailed fist.”

“That was what the guys said, right? The guys who attacked Bobo and Manfred? That they were citizens of Stronghold?”

“Yeah.”

“So they’re saying Aubrey was one of them? They’re trying to make her into a little martyr?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

Creek was looking tragic, Fiji realized. “Hey,” Fiji said. “What’s up, Creek?”
Surely,
Fiji thought, with more than a touch of exasperation,
surely this can’t still be about her deep grief for Aubrey
.

Creek inhaled deeply. “Dad told me not to go to the funeral. But he never wants me to go
anywhere
, so I just blew him off. Why would people take pictures at a funeral? Well, normally they wouldn’t . . . but when assholes show up on motorcycles and disrupt everything . . .”

“You couldn’t know that would happen. No one expected that.” Fiji felt greatly at a loss. Most of her concentration was focused on driving through Buffalo Plain to turn onto the highway to Marthasville, but what thinking room she had to spare was occupied in (a) hoping they wouldn’t catch up to the motorcycle group, (b) worrying about Creek, and (c) her curiosity about Creek’s weird reaction when things went wrong at the service. “You’re not supposed to be photographed?” she asked.

But Creek wasn’t going to volunteer any more information. “Thank you,” she told Fiji, a bit stiffly. “I appreciate your getting us out of there as soon as possible.” The unspoken words “but not soon enough” hung in the air between them. After a minute, Fiji glanced over to see Creek’s mouth clenched in a defiant line.

She’s proud of being strong,
Fiji thought, adding that to her growing fund of knowledge about Creek. “I didn’t want to stick around, either,” she said. She made an effort to smile, but she kept her eyes straight ahead. “Once I knew that was Price Eggleston.”

“You know him?” Creek said. “You’ve met him? Who is he?”

“I know what he’s been doing.” She explained to Creek about Eggleston’s militia, about his visit to the pawnshop and his sending the girl Lisa in to plant the camera.

“So he’s a rich bad guy?”

Creek’s been watching too many movies and not enough real life.
“Well, he’s better off than most people, I understand. I think it’s his dad who has the real big money. But anyone who has to have a bunch of guns to achieve his ends, someone who doesn’t mind beating up innocent people to get them, someone who’s . . .”
Who’s willing to hurt Bobo. Who’s willing to send a young woman in to seduce a man to get his way. Who’s willing to kill that young woman when she doesn’t do what he wants.
“Yeah. He’s a bad guy.”

“So you think Eggleston’s the guy who sent Aubrey to get close to Bobo, so she could do a Delilah and find out where the guns are?”

“That’s my assumption.”

“What do you think went wrong with that?”

Fiji hesitated for a moment. “I think Aubrey did really fall in love with Bobo. I think she refused to tell Price Eggleston what he wanted to know . . . the location of the guns. That is, she told him Bobo didn’t have any, which he doesn’t. Price didn’t believe her, and he killed her. Maybe by accident. I don’t know.”