A Killing at Cotton Hill Read online

  So I have some knowledge of art, and I know the minute I walk into the room that I should have paid more attention to Dora Lee’s talk of the boy’s dreams. What is it that makes people think great artists have to come from somewhere else?

  The walls are covered with his paintings, and they are stacked against the floorboards. The room is so crowded with tables containing all the paraphernalia that an artist works with—jars of brushes, tubes of oils, sketchbooks, tape, and piles of paint-smeared rags—that there is barely room for the single bed. As Greg sits down on the bed and gestures for me to take a straight-backed chair nearby, I notice that his hands are covered with pastel dust.

  My pulse has speeded up at the sight of all this artwork that has been going on right under my nose, and me not paying a bit of mind to it.

  “Sorry it’s a little messy in here,” he says. He darts a look at me and then away, to see how I’m responding to what I see there.

  “All right with you if I take a look?” I say.

  He shrugs. “I’m just learning.”

  Just learning. The way Kandinsky and de Kooning and Diebenkorn “just learned.” Taking raw talent, and from the look of it, working all hours to mine that talent. He paints with the colors of what he sees right here in his world; earth and dark loam and rust-colored iron deposits; the endless varieties of greens of grass and leaves; and the whole palette of sky colors we get around here from stark blue to stormy grays and greens to sunset blazes. All the things I love about this part of the country. What he does with those colors is a miracle. Most of the work is small scale, and I think he could benefit from spreading it out a little on a larger canvas. On a homemade easel he’s begun work on a pastel of storm grays with a faint undercurrent of rose.

  “You’re doing some good work,” I say, tearing my eyes away, my heart beating hard. Greg is looking at me with kind of barely tolerant amusement, as if he can’t imagine I’d know anything about what he’s up to. I think of the tacky little painting over Dora Lee’s bed done by Greg’s daddy, and wonder how such a gift came of that. I despair that Dora Lee hadn’t a clue that the boy was doing anything more than dabbling. “I’m sorry about your grandmother,” I say. “You have any idea what happened?”

  He hunches forward, elbows on his knees and shakes his head.

  “Were you the one who found her?”

  He looks up at me, suddenly wary, and I suspect that Rodell has already scared him into thinking he’s a suspect. “No sir, Mrs. Underwood from the next farm down came over this morning. I heard her screaming.” His voice wobbles suddenly.

  I wait while he composes himself. “Your grandmother was proud of you,” I say. “You know she was glad to have you here.”

  “I know.”

  I hesitate, wondering if I should tell him Dora Lee called me last night. Maybe that’s not the best idea. “You didn’t hear anything last night to make you think something was wrong?”

  “Of course I didn’t!” He gets up abruptly, and his fists clench. “You think I would have just stayed out here and let her get killed?”

  “Son, settle down. I just mean that sometimes we hear things and we don’t even know we’re hearing something important. Like a car driving up into the driveway, or somebody laughing, or the dog barking. By the way, where is Skeeter?”

  He shoves his hands into his pockets. “We had to put Skeeter down last week.”

  “What happened?” He wasn’t old, so I know it must be something else.

  “He got into something that made him sick and they couldn’t do anything for him at the vet’s.”

  “That’s a damn shame.” I’m trying to figure out how to give the boy a little comfort when there’s a loud knock on the door. Before he can get to it, the door is flung open. Rodell strides in flanked by the two highway patrolmen. “Boy, you need to come with us,” he says.

  Greg’s eyes widen and he steps back. “Why?”

  “We need to take you down to the station and ask you some questions.”

  The boy looks around at his safe nest. “Can’t you ask me here?”

  “No, we can’t. Now come on with us.”

  Greg backs up another step. The two patrolmen are poised to grab him, so I step up near him. “Look at me, son.”

  He looks, and I see a terrified calf.

  “It’s going to be okay. You don’t have anything to be afraid of.” I’m hoping I’m right, but I know that the reason Rodell barged in here to take this boy away was to get Dora Lee’s murder wrapped up quick. He’s not going to attend to the finer points of whether or not the boy is guilty. Greg is convenient, that’s the important thing.

  One of the patrolmen snickers, but I hold the boy’s eyes with mine. I’m promising him, and I see the promise take hold.

  Loretta is in a state of indignation, and for the first five minutes of our drive back to Jarrett Creek she keeps her mouth firmly closed. That’s fine with me, because I’m trying to sort out the steps I need to take to get the boy released. But the silence can’t last, and pretty soon words start to tumble out, like what did I think I was doing sneaking around back there, just how well did I know Dora Lee? “I always thought it was crazy for her to live out on that farm by herself. And now look what’s happened!”

  “She wasn’t by herself,” I say. “She had her grandson there.”

  “A lot of good it did her! And it looks like he’s probably the one who killed her anyway. Like Ida Ruth said, he’s probably looking for her inheritance.”

  “You told me Ida Ruth said they had an argument. Did she say what it was about?”

  “The boy wanted to get a job, and Dora Lee told him there was plenty to do around her place.”

  Dora Lee had told me Greg was thinking he might have to move to Houston if he couldn’t find a job around here, but that was several weeks ago. “Well, it seems to me that if he was willing to work, he’s not somebody who’d kill his grandmother for money. Besides, the two of them got along well with each other.”

  “And how do you know so much about it, anyway?”

  One problem with being a widower is that old women have us outnumbered. Right after Jeanne died I was scandalized and soon terrified at how quickly women started sniffing around. I’m no Gregory Peck. I’m not saying I’ve let myself go completely. I work outdoors taking care of the cows, so I’ve kept trim and I’ve got all my hair. But the hair is streaked with silver, my blue eyes are surrounded by wrinkles and my jowls have sagged down, so I look like a hound.

  But I guess to ladies of a certain age, just having a member of the opposite sex to lean on is good enough. Most of them gave up after a while, realizing I wasn’t in the market for a new wife. But Loretta is one of those persistent ones. Truth is, I don’t mind her most of the time. She and I can sit down on an afternoon and play a game of gin rummy and sip a glass of something and have a good old time. What I don’t like is when she starts thinking she has a hold on me.

  “I’ve known Dora Lee as long as you have, Loretta. Longer. We lived on the same street when we were babies. You didn’t come to Jarrett Creek until third grade.”

  “Second grade.”

  “After Teague died, Dora Lee came to depend on me. I didn’t mind helping her out time to time.”

  There’s a lot I’m not saying, because it’s information Dora Lee would have been ashamed to have bandied about as gossip. Fact was, Teague was mean as a rabid dog. He used to knock Dora Lee around, and when she was scared, she’d call me. I don’t think it was herself she was so scared for, but her daughters. Jeanne never said a word when I’d get in my pickup in the dead of night and head out there to make Teague behave. Dora Lee knew that Jeanne could have kept me home and she appreciated that Jeanne let it alone. When Jeanne got sick, no one helped out more than Dora Lee. By then Teague had been dead several years.

  “So you got to know the boy, too?” Loretta says.

  “No, not really. He pretty much made himself scarce.”

  “Standoffish, probabl
y, the way young boys will get.” Loretta has two boys, long grown and out of the house, so she knows something about them.

  But after seeing all Greg’s paintings in his cabin, I’m thinking something else made him keep to himself. He was obsessed with his art.

  We’re almost at my place, and I can’t put up with Loretta anymore right now. I’ve got too much on my mind, so I stop in front of her trim little house. It’s just down the way from mine. She gives me a look that’s all pinch-mouthed and narrow-eyed. I don’t have time to appease her. I’m worried about that boy. Well, not the boy so much as his art, if you can separate the two things. I climb out and go around to open the door for her, and she has no choice but to get out of the truck.

  “I’ll see you later,” I say to her rigid back, as she marches up the sidewalk to her house.

  At home I make myself a cup of coffee and sit down with the telephone. I don’t have to call my nephew, but I’ll take any excuse to talk to him. I’m in luck and he’s not in court today, so his secretary comes back on and says he’ll call me back in a few minutes.

  I sit back and take pleasure in the anticipation. Tom is my brother Horace’s only child, and a better man you couldn’t hope to find. I sometimes think Tom was dropped into the wrong family. He’s always busy with something, interested in what goes on in the world, wanting to make his way—more like me than my brother, truth be told. Horace came out of the womb surly and stayed that way. Wanted things thrown in his lap, never worked for something he couldn’t find a way to get for free. He and his wife lived in a trailer on the outskirts of town and he was pushed out of shape that I had made something of my life. He’s long dead, and although I feel guilty saying so, the world didn’t lose much when they put him in the ground.

  By the time Tom was about ten, he’d figured out that he had more fun here with Jeanne and me than at home. It suited Jeanne and me; disappointed as we were that we couldn’t have children of our own. I guess it suited his folks, too, for him to hang around most afternoons after school. And when he wanted to go off to college and law school, I took it as a natural thing that I’d help him pay for it. I’ve gotten it back every which way. Tom and his wife and two girls live in Austin, but they come and see me as often as they can.

  “Uncle Samuel, is everything okay?”

  “Believe it or not, I’ve got a legal question for you.”

  I tell him what happened. “I want to do something for Dora Lee’s grandson. That shiftless Rodell will take the easiest suspect he can find, and I’m afraid it’s Greg.”

  “First off,” Tom says, “get this boy a lawyer. Is there anybody around there you feel good about hiring?” That’s code for: Is there a competent lawyer in this one-horse town?

  “There’s one person. If I can get her to help me out.”

  “Why wouldn’t she?”

  “No need to go into it. If she won’t do it, I’ll have to take second-best.”

  “You let me know if you need anything. I’ll do what I can from here.” His voice is warm and I know he means it.

  “Tell Vicki and the girls hi, and you all don’t be strangers.”

  When I get off the phone, I wipe my eyes. Since Jeanne died, sometimes I feel like I don’t have good sense. What I really would like is for Tom to say he’ll drop everything, move down here with his family, and set up practice. I don’t mean I really want that; I just mean if the world was a perfect place, he’d live down the street.

  I take some time to stand and contemplate my favorite painting, a Wolf Kahn. I’ve got pieces that are worth more, but nothing else that calms me and somehow makes me think Jeanne is close by. After a minute, I know I’m just procrastinating, so I go back to the phone. I’m stepping off into slippery territory when I call Jenny Sandstone. It’s a test of how far I’m willing to go to help this boy.

  Jenny is a small-town lawyer, so she doesn’t have a secretary, just an answering machine. I tell the machine that I need Jenny to call me and I leave my number.

  My stomach tells me it’s lunchtime, so I heat up some leftover beef stew. I’m just scraping the bottom of the bowl when the phone rings.

  “You ready to give up?” Jenny’s voice booms at me.

  I don’t take the bait. “I need to come in and talk to you when you’ve got time.”

  “I’ve got to go over to Bryan this afternoon, but I can spare a half hour if you can get over here now.”

  I put the stew dish out on the back porch for Zelda, my cat, to clean up, and head over to town.

  Five minutes later I draw up in front of Jenny’s office. It’s on the main street, in a snappy new two-story office building that went up just before the economy hit the skids. Inside, you could think you’re in a city. It’s all carpet and cream-colored walls and sleek furniture.

  Jenny’s office is on the second floor, a nice big space for a big woman. Jenny’s close to six feet tall, almost my height, with a lot of meat packed onto her. She’s dressed in a bright blue suit that doesn’t get on well with her red hair and white complexion. “I hope you have good news for me,” she says.

  “I might have. I don’t know. That’s not what I’m here about.” I’ve been thinking about it on the way over, and maybe I’m ready to give her what she wants. About two years ago she bought the place next door to mine. Like mine, the house fronts onto town property, but juts back several acres. Her property isn’t quite as big as mine, but it doesn’t need to be. I run my cattle on mine, and she only keeps a couple of horses. It came pretty clear that she thought I’d be willing to let her horses have access to my tank—the one I had dredged and lined and stocked with fish for my own use and to water my cows.

  I’ll be honest; I didn’t like the presumption. But the bigger problem is that I can’t stand horses. A stupider animal never lived. Give me a good, solid cow any day. So I told her no, that I wanted the fence kept closed between her place and mine, and she’s been on me ever since. Now she has something I want—her expertise. Theoretically, I should just be able to hire it with money. But small towns don’t deal in theory.

  “Let’s sit down and see what’s what,” she says, and her smile would melt butter. I sit down and set my hat on the edge of her desk. The way she looks at it makes me see it through her eyes. It’s got a good bit of wear on it, including a few stains I never paid much attention to. I move it to the seat next to me.

  I tell her about Dora Lee and the boy, and I can see she’s interested right away.

  “This is a potential criminal case you’re handing me,” she says. “I don’t get to try my hand at those too often.”

  “I’m hoping it won’t come to that.”

  “What are you hoping will happen?”

  “As I see it, we can be poised if the boy is actually arrested, to get a judge to set bail on him, then I can get him out and Rodell won’t have him close to hand. Then maybe I can talk Rodell into doing some actual investigating, so he can find out who really killed Dora Lee.”

  “You’re dreaming. Rodell wouldn’t know how to investigate his way out of an outhouse with two doors.”

  “Somebody’s going to have to figure out who killed Dora Lee, or that boy is in big trouble.”

  “Somebody.” She smirks.

  “I don’t know what you have to grin about. You’re supposed to be a hotshot lawyer, and it sounds like you don’t care a thing about Dora Lee or her grandson.”

  “Whoa. Just whoa now.” A pink flush is rising up her neck. “Who says I’m a hotshot lawyer?”

  I groan. “I don’t want to get into it with you, Jenny. If you don’t want the case, say so. I’ll see if Bubba Clark can do it. Or I can try to find somebody in Bobtail.”

  Jenny gets up and folds her arms across her ample chest. “Get off your high horse, Samuel. I didn’t say I wouldn’t take the case. I just want you to be realistic. Unless you find somebody to track down who killed poor Dora Lee, there’s no sense in spending a dime on her grandson’s case.” She walks over to a small refrig
erator and opens it. “You want a Coke?”

  I tell her no, and she takes out a Coke and snaps the cap.

  “How am I going to find somebody to figure out what happened? You know anybody?”

  “You.”

  I rear back in my seat, and realize now what the smirk was about. “That is not going to happen, and you know it.”

  “I don’t know it.” She sits back down, lacing her hands on the desk in front of her. “The way I hear it, you’re the only decent lawman this town ever had.”

  “The way you hear it is right, with the emphasis on the ‘had.’ It might have escaped your notice, but I’m a good bit over the hill.”

  She contemplates me for a long minute. “I’m trying to decide how much flattery you can take.”

  “Lay it on,” I say.

  “You don’t look like you’re that old, you don’t act old, you’re sharp, and my bet is you’re bored to death playing with those damn cows all day. You told me yourself you were snooping around in Dora Lee’s house this morning before the blood was dry. And,” she points a finger at me, “you say you want to help this boy. I say there’s no one else to do it. I’ll go so far as to say that if you don’t put your oar in, I won’t get in the boat.” She looks at her watch and jumps to her feet. “I’ve got to get out of here. Call me at home and tell me what you decide to do.” She snatches up a briefcase the size of a suitcase and a shoulder bag and heads for the door.

  At the door she turns around. “Lock up behind you, don’t snoop around, and don’t think I’m giving up on getting your permission to use your tank.”

  She’s gone, leaving me feeling like I’ve been on the tail end of a tornado. Jeanne, I think to myself, What in the world should I do?

  Instead of Jeanne’s face popping into my head, it’s Loretta’s, with her pursed lips and her scolding voice. “What were you doing snooping around in Dora Lee’s house? You think you can figure out what happened? You’re acting like an old fool, living in the past.”