A Deadly Affair at Bobtail Ridge Read online

  I go to the grocery store and the hardware store to pick up things on Jenny’s list, but I’m still back before she is. She left the back door open, so I go in and put things away and then wander through the house, trying to see if there’s anything I can do to help.

  In the bedroom there are boxes in various stages of packing. Photo albums and loose photos are piled on the bed, and I look at a few of them. Jenny was a tall, gangly girl. There’s a photo of her fifth-grade class, and she and one other girl tower over the others, both wearing that same expression that says they wish they could disappear into the earth rather than having their picture taken with their pint-sized classmates.

  Time didn’t improve things much. A teenage school photo shows her face as too long, her nose too big, and her eyes hidden behind unflattering glasses. The scowl on her face doesn’t help. She always told me that she was a wallflower in high school because she was self-conscious about her height and her looks. It’s too bad she couldn’t see into the future: that her face would settle into good proportion as she got older, and that contact lenses and a little makeup would turn her into an attractive woman.

  One photo that catches my interest shows a family of four—Vera and a man I take to be her husband stand behind two kids, Jenny, who is scowling as usual, and a boy who looks to be a few years older, who has a devilish grin. Jenny’s around eight in the picture. The kids look alike, although the boy is better-looking. On the back someone has written four names: Vera, Howard, Edward, and Jenny. Edward must be Jenny’s brother. Why won’t she talk about her brother? Did he get in some kind of trouble? Did he disgrace the family in some way?

  I’m interested in the way Howard looks in the photo. Jenny said he walked out on the family, but you would never have guessed it from the way he beams into the camera. What made him decide to leave? Probably that old story of the kids getting old enough to talk back, and the dad starts to feel trapped, and then he meets someone younger who makes him feel like his old self, and he decides he should start over and get it right this time. Vera asked me to locate him. Although Jenny doesn’t seem enthusiastic, I can’t help thinking it would be a fine thing for her to at least know where Howard is. And then I remember the other thing Vera asked me—to find Howard’s first wife. Jenny said he wasn’t married before, but she might not have known. But the question is, why did Vera want me to find her?

  I flip through other photos and they’re versions of the same picture, as if it was a ritual to have their family picture taken every year to mark the passage of time. The last picture in the stack was taken when the kids were in their teens, both of the children towering over their parents. But what stops me in my tracks is that I recognize Eddie Sandstone. He was the man coming out of the hospital the day I last went to visit Vera.

  I hear Jenny drive up and make a hasty exit from the bedroom. I’ve put myself in an awkward position. Now I know that her brother was at the hospital, but if I tell Jenny I saw the photos, she’ll know I was snooping.

  Jenny has brought some barbecue brisket for lunch and we eat on the kitchen table. Neither of us has much appetite and we have a hard time keeping up a conversation.

  When I get home midafternoon, I turn on the computer. I’m curious to know if there’s an obvious reason for Jenny to be ashamed of her brother. In no time I’m staring at a string of entries for people named Eddie Sandstone. It’s amazing how many people have the same name—even an unusual name like Sandstone. I narrow it down to Texas and query the state files that I can access through the Texas Public Safety sites. Apparently Jenny’s brother has lived in Temple for many years—a couple of hours’ drive from here. Although he has a contractor’s license, he seems mostly to do sheetrock work. He’s been married for two years, with no children, and was married once before. Except for a few traffic tickets over the years, he has had one run-in with the law, an assault charge, which was dropped later. In other words, I find nothing to account for Jenny’s animosity toward her brother. But family feuds don’t have to have much of a reason.

  CHAPTER 9

  I wondered if Jenny’s brother was going to show up at the funeral, but I don’t see him in the considerable crowd. Jenny is down front surrounded by her mother’s friends. She contacted her aunt and found out she’d recently had back surgery and wasn’t able to travel, so there’s no family to mourn Vera except Jenny. I go down and say hello to her before I take a seat farther back.

  The service is ready to start when I hear a bit of buzz at the back of the room, and I turn to see the man I recognize as Eddie Sandstone walk in, alone. He makes his way down the aisle, and I wonder if he plans to sit next to Jenny. He slows, though, and tucks in a few rows back. But the stir caused by his arrival has alerted Jenny. She cranes her head to look and then snaps back, fast. You don’t have to be a genius at reading body language to notice her shoulders stiffen. Whatever happened between the two siblings, the death of their mother has not patched up anything.

  At the reception, there’s no sign of Eddie. I was hoping to have a few words with him to find out if he ever heard anything from his daddy. If he and Jenny were on the outs, I wonder how he knew his mamma was in the hospital and that she died.

  I go through the receiving line that consists of Jenny and a couple of Vera’s closest friends, and I overhear some of Vera’s students describing to Jenny what they learned from Vera. One says, “She was my favorite teacher. She was a wonderful lady.” Jenny is dignified and gracious, but I can see that having to interact with all these people is a strain.

  Although Jarrett Creek and Bobtail are only fifteen miles apart, there isn’t much comingling, so I don’t know many of the people attending. But suddenly I spy someone I do know, a young woman who works in the flower shop in Jarrett Creek. She’s very pregnant, with that glow some women get when they are nearly ready to deliver. She’s standing alone, so I walk up to her. “Rowena, you grew up in Jarrett Creek. How did you know Vera?”

  She beams at me. “My husband was one of her students. Here he comes with my punch.” A tall, lanky man in his forties, several years older than Rowena, comes over with two cups of punch. He barely registers my presence and says to his wife, “I wish you’d go sit down. It’s not good for you to be standing so much.”

  “Oh, now stop it, Doyle,” she giggles. “If standing around means I get this baby out earlier, then I’ll stand up while I sleep tonight. But here, let me introduce you to Chief Craddock.”

  Doyle Hancock tells me he grew up in Bobtail and never wanted to live anywhere else. “Rowena works part-time at the flower shop in Jarrett Creek so she can learn the trade. She’s bound and determined to learn how to arrange flowers.”

  “I want to learn everything I can from Justine so I can open my own florist shop one day here in Bobtail.”

  “That’s not going to be for a while,” her husband says, “not until our kids are in school.”

  They prattle on, sparring in that easy way some couples have. I wait until I have an opening. “Doyle, Rowena says you were one of Vera Sandstone’s students.”

  “That’s right, and lucky to be. She was fair, but she didn’t let anybody off easy—I teach English over at Bobtail JC, and she’s the person who got me there.”

  “Let me ask you something. Did you know her kids? You’d be about Jenny and Edward’s age.”

  He grins. “Yeah, I was in the same grade with Jenny.”

  “And how about Eddie? Did you know him?”

  “He was two grades above me. Can’t say we ran in the same circles though. He was a jock and I was more the studious type.”

  “He was popular?”

  “One hundred percent. He was one of those guys that seemed to be good at everything. He didn’t have time for a kid like me.” He smirks. “If you want to know something about him, ask Careen Hudson.”

  “Doyle!” Rowena puts her hands on her hips. “That’s just pure old gossip.”

  “Who’s Careen Hudson?” I ask.

  “Go ahea
d and tell it,” Rowena says, laughing.

  He shrugs. “She was a teacher that all the boys had a crush on. There was always talk that she was making out with one or another of them. And she got fired when she was found with one of them.”

  “Doyle, you don’t know if this Eddie had anything to do with her. You’re just stirring up trouble.”

  “She stirred up her own trouble.” He chuckles. “Anyway, like I said, Eddie was a jock. Played football. He got a football scholarship to SMU.”

  I whistle. “I don’t know anybody from around here ever played for SMU.”

  “Well, that’s the thing. He didn’t. Something went wrong. I never did hear what it was, but they withdrew the scholarship.”

  I excuse myself to go talk to a couple I saw at the hospital when I went to comfort Jenny the day Vera died. Martha and Lloyd Glenn tell me they’ve lived down the street from Vera for almost forty years. “I taught school with Vera for a few years, but I wasn’t cut out for it the way she was. I retired a long time ago.” Martha Glenn has ice blue eyes, a very pointed nose, and a severe look, so I expect there were students who were pretty relieved to escape having those eyes track them.

  “You know her kids, too?”

  “Oh, yes, our daughter Rhonda was Jenny’s classmate, although they never were close. She came to the funeral today, though. She always liked Vera. Everybody did. Rhonda’s over there.” She points to a group of people Jenny’s age. “She’s the one with gray pantsuit. Her husband is next to her. He’s a dentist.”

  “Did Rhonda know Jenny’s brother, Eddie?”

  “Of course she did. She had a crush on Eddie. But then, every girl did. Such a good-looking boy. And smart. The apple of Vera’s eye.” She’s beaming, but then something catches at her thoughts and she glances at her husband. Their eyes meet and something unsettled passes between them. Her husband’s lips are set in a line of disapproval. “Anyway . . .” She looks around for an escape.

  “Did you know Howard Sandstone?”

  “Yes, we did. We played bridge together when the kids were young. He was a nice man.”

  For the first time, her husband speaks up. “Shame he ran out on the family. Never would have expected it.”

  “Lloyd, we’d better be off,” Martha says.

  “Did Jenny and her brother get along?”

  Again, that odd look between the Glenns. “You know how brothers and sisters are,” Martha Glenn says briskly. “Now if you’ll excuse us.”

  They bolt, leaving me to muse that no, I don’t necessarily know how brothers and sisters are—especially Jenny and her brother Eddie. But I do know that there was something going on in that family.

  As I’m walking out I spot Wilson Landreau, the man Jenny was arguing with the day I first came to see Vera. “Just the man I want to see,” he says. “Can you give me a call, so we can get together and talk?” He hands me his card.

  “Of course.” I’m surprised, not so much at the request, but at the furtive way he glances around as if he doesn’t want anyone to know we’re talking.

  CHAPTER 10

  Until I see Loretta standing at my front door, I don’t realize how much I’ve missed her. She bustles into my house full of chatter about her trip to Washington with the world’s most perfect grandsons.

  “We went to all the monuments and the Vietnam Memorial—I found Oliver Barkeley’s name on it and got a picture of it for his sister. We spent a whole day at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. That is one big place! The boys loved seeing all the airplanes and space capsules.” And then she brightens. “One thing I know you would have liked. You know my son’s wife has some different ideas and she wanted to go to the Hirshborn Museum one day. I think that’s the name.”

  “Hirshhorn?”

  “That’s the one, with all the modern art. I told her I’d go with her because none of the males would go and I could tell her feelings were hurt. But I liked it more than I thought I would. I guess I’m used to seeing some of the pictures here in your house . . .” She looks around vaguely. “And I brought you a book that shows a lot of the pictures because you said you’d never been there.”

  She talks a little more, but she winds down faster than usual. “You know how I love those boys, but they wear me out. It’s going to take me a few days to get rested up.”

  “I don’t mind saying I’m glad to see you.”

  We beam at each other until her cheeks get pink and then she says, “Tell me what’s happened while I’ve been gone.”

  It takes me a few minutes to assemble my thoughts. I rustle up some coffee and she apologizes for not having any baked goods to bring. “I was too tired to get up and bake this morning. Time was, I’d never have been too tired for that. I don’t like getting too old to keep up with things.”

  “Loretta, don’t be silly. Anybody would need a day off after all that activity.”

  I tell her that Jenny lost her mother and that Ellen Forester’s window got broken, but I don’t go into the incidents with Jenny’s horses. She’d worry that those events are too close to her house. And I’m not about to go into Vera Sandstone’s request that I find her lost husband or about Jenny’s feud with her brother.

  I need to put in some time at headquarters. I’ve been asking too much of the two deputies—not that they complain. On the way to work, I stop by and pick up Rodell Skinner, who was the chief of police until his health broke down from too much drinking. To everyone’s surprise, including mine, he has stayed on the wagon, and although he’s never going to be healthy again, he has enough energy to come down and help out a couple of days a week. I’ve put him to work going through old files and cleaning out unnecessary paper. After all, it was his slipshod methods that led to boxes of unfinished reports, files containing notes that don’t pertain to the case at hand, and misfiled items. He seems to think it’s a fine way to spend his time, and when I’m there with him he keeps up a running commentary on old cases.

  “Look here,” he says, after he’s been at it for fifteen minutes. “This is from one time when Carl White cornered a polecat in his fishing shack and called us to come out and catch it.” He snorts. “I told that fool James Harley that he had to take care of it. Never figured he’d actually do it. Sure enough, the skunk reared up on James Harley and he couldn’t come to work for a week. I think Carl had to burn down the shack.” He laughs so hard he has tears running down his cheeks.

  I can’t help laughing with him, although my mind is half on the petty little things that have happened this week—plus the not so petty one of Truly Bennett being attacked. I rear back in my seat. “Rodell, let me run a few things by you.”

  “What have you got?” He wipes his eyes and sets the file aside.

  I tell him what’s been going on at Jenny’s place.

  He grunts. “Sounds like somebody has it in for her.” He thinks for a second. “Isn’t she in the DA’s office?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I thought so. All this mischief might be caused by somebody she prosecuted and sent to prison. Maybe he’s out now.”

  He’s absolutely right. I had been so busy concentrating on the warning from Jenny’s mamma that it hadn’t occurred to me to think a little farther afield for the possible source of the trouble. “That could be. I’ll look into it.”

  Rodell looks pleased with himself. I hadn’t noticed when I picked him up this morning, but his skin has a yellow tint to it—not a good sign in somebody whose liver is pretty much shot.

  “And you know Ellen Forester’s store was vandalized?” I say.

  “I heard somebody smashed the plate glass window. You think it’s that husband of hers?”

  “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

  I call Alvin Carter down at his daddy’s marine store. He says he’ll be glad to keep an eye on Jenny’s horses, and can use the extra money. I don’t want him to go in blind to the situation, so I tell him what happened to Truly. I tell me to keep a sharp eye out, a
nd if there looks to be any trouble to call me.

  With everything quiet, I leave Rodell “in charge” and head over to see how Truly Bennett is getting along. He lives in a little house on the other side of the tracks—the traditional area where blacks have always lived, although the houses have been spruced up over the years. Truly’s wood house is painted a surprising bright green with yellow trim. It’s at odds with Truly’s sober nature to have such a brightly colored house.

  He invites me in, and as always seems a little embarrassed to have me there, although I see no reason for him to be. I think the problem is that Truly was married for a few years and the furniture in the house was chosen by his wife, and it’s a little fussy for his personality. She left him a dozen years ago, lighting out for Houston where she said she thought life would be more exciting. Truly said he didn’t blame her, that he likes a quiet life. But I don’t think they ever really divorced, and I wonder if he holds onto the furniture hoping that one day she’ll come back.

  I ask him how the shoulder is getting on and he tells me he’ll be back in commission in no time, which I take with a grain of salt. “I’ll get back to those horses as soon as I can. I don’t like the idea that something might happen to them.”

  “You have to give that shoulder time to heal. Buzz Carter’s boy needs some work, and he’s good with horses, so I thought Jenny might hire him to help out.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” he says, and I see relief in his expression. “The shoulder’s going to be fine, but I don’t know how much good it would do me if whoever attacked me came back.” He pauses, and I can see that he’s got something more to say. “What I’ll do, though, is keep the boy company. If you don’t think he’d mind.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Monday morning I call Jenny’s friend Wilson Landreau, and we agree to meet at a coffee shop near the courthouse in Bobtail after work. I’m going behind Jenny’s back by talking to him, but he said he had something important to tell me regarding Jenny. He’s already there when I arrive. He looks as frazzled as every public defender I’ve ever known. They’re always shorthanded, never lacking indigents to defend.