A Killing at Cotton Hill Read online

  “Big ideas,” Ida Ruth says. “What did he need to go to art school for anyway? He had lessons from one of his teachers. And Dora Lee told me she paid a pretty penny for it.”

  “I’m not arguing that he should go to art school. I’m just saying Greg knew she didn’t have money, so there’s no motive to kill her.”

  “Then who did kill her?”

  “We’ll have to see about that,” I say. “Did Dora Lee tell you she was scared somebody was spying on her?”

  “Spying on her? Who would do such of a thing?”

  “She didn’t tell you she’d seen somebody driving by that didn’t belong out here?”

  Her mouth is full of tuna casserole, so she nods her head until she swallows. “Oh, you mean that kind of spying. She did mention that to me. You think it was somebody biding their time before they killed her?”

  “It seems strange, that’s all,” I say. “One more thing. You know anything about a trip she took to Houston a couple of weeks ago?

  “Houston? Yes, I believe she said she had to go get a few things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Samuel, I’m not Mrs. Nosy. I didn’t ask her. We all have to run over there time to time, isn’t that right, Loretta?”

  “You can’t buy a thing around here. Even in Bobtail, there’s only a couple of dress stores and their prices are sky high, unless you want to go to the Walmart.”

  “Can you imagine Dora Lee dressing herself from the Walmart?” The women exchange raised eyebrows. “She may not have had much, but she knew how to find good clothes on sale.”

  “Did Dora Lee say anything about her daughter Caroline moving to Houston?”

  Ida Ruth’s mouth drops open and little spots of red come up in her cheeks. “Caroline was moving to Houston? Dora Lee never said a word about it. Why would she keep something like that from me?”

  Loretta heaps another helping of casserole onto Ida’s plate. “Now Ida Ruth, I didn’t know Dora Lee the way you did, but wouldn’t you think that if Caroline moved back Dora Lee might want to see how it worked out between them before she started in talking about it?”

  “That’s probably exactly right,” Ida Ruth says. “How’d you know Caroline was coming back?” she says to me.

  I tell her about the letter I found. “Caroline should be contacted and told what happened. But I can’t find how to reach her. Do you know if Caroline has kept up with anybody in town? Maybe somebody she went to school with?”

  Ida Ruth takes a bite and chews slowly while she thinks. “Well, there’s Maddie Hicks. You remember her; she was the Dobbs’s girl. Since her husband cleared out, she makes a living doing people’s hair in her house. She’s pretty good at it, too. Even if Maddie hasn’t kept up with Caroline, she might know who has. Let me get you that phone number.” She pulls out a little address book that is the twin of Dora Lee’s and gives me the number.

  Before Ida Ruth leaves, she and Loretta insist that I pass judgment on the clothes they’ve picked out for Dora Lee to wear. I go out and get Greg to put in his two cents’ worth, and it turns out I’m glad I did. When he sees the handsome blue outfit they’ve arranged on the bed, he reaches his hand out and touches it, gently, for just the barest moment. But it’s enough. A boy who has killed his grandmother is not going to want to touch the clothes she’s being laid to rest in. Ida Ruth has to turn away and blow her nose.

  I call Maddie Hicks and she says she can see me at one thirty, but that she has a lady coming at two o’clock for a permanent, so not to be late. I set Greg to watering Dora Lee’s garden and take off.

  Maddie’s house is a doublewide set up on blocks. She’s losing a war with weeds in the yard. Out front a hand-painted sign says, Maddie’s Beauty Shop. No fancy name, and my guess is the beauty school she went to is called Learn-As-You-Go.

  When she finally comes to the door, Maddie is carrying a cigarette and a lighter. “Let’s sit outside in the back,” she says. “I can’t even smoke in my own house. My daughter lives here with me with her two kids, and she won’t have me smoking. I don’t know where she gets those ideas.” She’s a heavy-stacked woman with a bad complexion and her hair done in a fluffy style better suited for somebody twenty years younger.

  We go around back where the weeds have been beaten down in spots. Next to a rusted-out barbecue cooker a couple of lawn chairs are set up under a big old pecan tree. We sit down and Maddie lights up. It doesn’t take me more than a couple minutes to find out that she likes to talk. That suits me fine—if she knows anything I need to hear.

  She rattles on about how afraid everybody in town is that whoever killed Dora Lee is coming to get them next. She says she and her daughter are thinking about putting in a deadbolt lock.

  As soon as I can get a word in, I ask if she has kept up with Caroline Parjeter.

  “Caroline was a wild thing when she was a girl. Me and her had some good old times. We used to go out to the roadhouse—remember that place out near Cotton Hill?—and we’d dance our butts off. That’s where I met my husband, which doesn’t speak highly for it. I guess that old place is fallen down now, though I heard somebody is thinking about restoring it. I don’t know who they think would come, though. Kids these days want to go to San Antonio or Austin. They tear up the road between here and there. I don’t see how they can have any better times than we used to have right here.”

  “When was the last time you heard from Caroline?”

  “Let me think,” she says. “You know how it is, you think it’s only been a couple months since you talked to somebody and come to find out it’s been five years.”

  She talks on like that and I wonder how she can think and talk at the same time, but all of a sudden she says, “I guess it was a couple of years ago now, when she got married.”

  “She never!” I say.

  “Yes, she did. Married some old boy from Beaumont.”

  “Did her mamma know?”

  Maddie sighs. “Mr. Craddock,” she says, “I didn’t like the way she treated her mamma, and I told her so more than once. But she told me she had her reasons, and I figured she had her own life to live and it wasn’t much of my business.”

  “So she didn’t tell Dora Lee she got married.”

  Maddie squints from smoke as she exhales. “I don’t know the answer to that. But I’ll tell you the honest truth, I thought there was something funny about her getting married so late. It wasn’t like she wanted kids or anything. I asked her why was she getting married and she said she’d found a man who could take care of her.”

  “And that’s the last you heard?”

  “It is.”

  “Did she write you or call you?”

  “She sent me an announcement. I thought about calling her, but I didn’t know what I’d say to her. You know some people you can talk to after ten years and it’s like you just saw them last week and you have plenty to say. It wasn’t like that with Caroline. We just have different lives, I guess.”

  “Would you happen to have the announcement? I need to get in touch with her and let her know her mamma died.”

  “I’ll see if I can find it.” She looks at her watch. “I don’t know if I can lay hands on it before my two o’clock comes, but I’ll go see.”

  While she’s gone, I think about how maybe not having kids wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened to Jeanne and me. If we’d had a daughter who left us like Caroline did, it would have been terrible. I wouldn’t have wanted to see Jeanne sad like Dora Lee was.

  Maddie hollers from around front of the trailer. I get up, unkink my knee and walk to the front steps.

  She’s holding an envelope out to me. “This is your lucky day,” she says. “It’s not often I can put my hands on anything I’m looking for.”

  “Just in time, too,” I say. A car has stopped in front and a lady I have a nodding acquaintance with is easing herself out. I go over and hold the door and we exchange a few words.

  “I’ll get this back to you,
” I say, waving the envelope at Maddie.

  In my truck I take a look at the announcement. It’s on standard white stock, nothing fancy, saying she’s married a man named Martin Wells.

  I stop by my place to use my phone to try to find Caroline under her new name. It’s not easy, because there are lots of Wells in the Houston area. I’m grateful she didn’t marry a Smith. Most of the people I talk to answer right off that they don’t know any Dora Lee Parjeter. But after a while, I reach a woman named Caroline Wells who pauses when I ask if she’s related to Dora Lee. Finally she says, “Yes.”

  Not, yes she’s my mamma, or yes, is something wrong . . . just “yes.”

  I tell her who I am. “I’ve had the devil of a time trying to find you. I thought you should know your Mamma was found dead Thursday.”

  “Oh? Was it her heart?” She doesn’t sound particularly moved by the news that her mother is dead. She has a different kind of accent, like someone who has been gone from Texas a long time.

  “No, ma’am. I’m sorry to tell you she was murdered.”

  “Murdered! Who would do something like that? Do they know who did it?” Although she sounds shocked, we could be talking about something that happened to a stranger.

  “Not yet.”

  There’s a long pause. “I’m sorry, who did you say I’m speaking to?”

  I tell her again. “I was a friend of your mamma’s.”

  Her voice warms up. “I remember you. I remember your wife, Jeanne. She’s one of the nicest people I ever met. How is she?”

  “She’s no longer with us. She passed away last year from cancer.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible. She was good to me when I needed a friend.” If Caroline had wanted to get on my good side she couldn’t have picked a better way than through Jeanne.

  She asks when and where Dora Lee’s funeral will be. I tell her, and suggest that it might be nice if she comes Sunday night for visitation.

  “Is there a motel around there?”

  “We have a new Holiday Inn Express on the east side on the way to Bryan. But you could stay out at Dora Lee’s house.” And then I realize that I have no idea if Caroline even knows her sister is dead and that Greg lives out there. “You know your nephew lives out there?”

  “Mother told me,” she says. So Caroline did have some contact with Dora Lee, although I know she didn’t come back home for her sister’s funeral.

  I ask her if she wants me to make her a reservation at the hotel, but she says she’ll tend to it.

  I’m itching to know if Dora Lee went to Houston to see Caroline, so I slip in the question. “How long has it been since you’ve seen your mamma?”

  There’s a long silence. “Not since I left home.”

  “She didn’t come to Houston to see you?”

  “I had been planning on getting together with her, but I hadn’t been able to arrange it.” With her tone of voice, I don’t need any air-conditioning to cool things down.

  “Well, you let me know if you can be here Sunday, and I’ll see to it there’s a meal on the table.”

  “I’ll have to think about it,” she says.

  Her coming to sit at the funeral home with her mamma’s body is the least she can do, but she has already done the least she can do, which is abandon her mamma. Even I didn’t do that, and I had every reason in the world to. Mamma treated my daddy and us two boys like we were snakes who had slithered into her house when she wasn’t looking. It took me until I was grown before I put together my daddy’s drinking with my mamma’s meanness. And even longer before I realized she must have had something mentally wrong with her to act the way she did. Still, when she was dying, I stayed by her every minute I could, with Jeanne right next to me.

  For the millionth time I wonder, how did I get so lucky to meet and marry Jeanne? And for her not to mind that I wanted to bring her to live in this small town. I went to college at Texas A&M. I chose it because it was the closest college to Jarrett Creek, and I could come home weekends and help my daddy with the cattle. Then in my last year I met Jeanne. We were married for forty years. I don’t believe a couple was ever more suited to one another.

  Thinking of Jeanne puts me in mind of another call I could make. I’ve been mulling over why Clyde Underwood would take a notion to buy Dora Lee’s property. In these parts, if a property suddenly seems to be valuable, the first thing you think of is oil and gas. My brother-in-law, DeWitt Simms, is retired, but he still has a lot of connections. The truth is, I have connections, too, but I’d like to talk to DeWitt. He’s living out in the hill country in a place called Horseshoe Bay. His answering machine says he’s out “probably on the golf course,” so I leave a message for him to call me, giving him Dora Lee’s phone number as well as my own.

  Before I leave for Dora Lee’s I go back down to the pasture to check up on the cows. They gather around me like I’m an old friend, which I guess I have been since Jeanne died. I walk by the tank and decide I’m still not ready to give up and let Jenny run her horses here.

  As I get into my truck I admit to myself that after only a couple of nights at Dora Lee’s I’m ready to come back home. But I’ll stay out at the farm a little longer, until I can sit down with Greg and figure out what’s to be done with Dora Lee’s place and how he’s going to make his way. But then I realize maybe it’s Caroline I’ll have to deal with. Dora Lee’s place will be her property now as well as Greg’s. From the way she dealt with her mamma, I have a feeling she won’t be on friendly terms with her nephew.

  But the biggest reason for me to stay out there is to continue to dig around in what Dora Lee has left behind, to find any clues as to who killed her.

  When I get out to Dora Lee’s, there’s a hulking, black Acura SUV pulled up next to the house with a license plate number that’s not from around here. The license plate holder has a Houston dealer’s name. For a minute, I wonder if Caroline has decided to come right away. But then I realize there’s no way she could have made it here so fast.

  I go around back to the kitchen door. It’s late afternoon and the sun hasn’t let up, and as I walk into the kitchen I take off my hat and mop my brow. I surprise a man who is standing with the refrigerator door open. Closing in on fifty, with extra girth and an extra chin, he’s dressed for town in a shirt and tie and wing tip shoes. He’s got a good head of hair with some gray in it, and thick eyebrows.

  “Sorry to barge in on you, I’m Samuel Craddock.” I put out my hand and he takes it up with a nice firm grip.

  “No, I’m the one to apologize for making myself at home. I’m Wayne Jackson, Dora Lee’s nephew.”

  “Would you be Leslie’s boy?” I wonder why he has a different name from Leslie’s.

  “That’s right. Daddy called to tell me what happened to Dora Lee. I live in Houston, not that far away, and he asked me to come and see what needed to be done to take care of things, maybe help out Dora Lee’s grandson. He said you shouldn’t have to be putting yourself out.”

  I tell him it was no trouble, and realize he’s saying in a polite way that I should clear out. I think of that stack of Dora Lee’s papers and wish I had taken a closer look at them this morning when I wasn’t so tired, in case I missed something. But I really have no rights here. It’s fitting that someone from the family should take care of Dora Lee’s business. I feel like the Wizard of Oz with the curtain pulled back.

  “I was just going to get myself a cold drink,” he says. “You want anything?”

  I show him the iced tea Loretta left and he fills a couple of glasses.

  “Did you meet Dora Lee’s grandson, Greg?” I say.

  “I did. He was in here getting himself some lunch when I came in. Seems like a good kid. Reminds me of my oldest boy.”

  “Dora Lee thought the world of him. Come on back and let me show you what I’ve been up to,” I say. “Might save you some time.”

  We leave our tea on the counter and go back to the room where I’ve gotten everything organized. I sho
w him the stacks I’ve made of her papers, and give him the list of people I’ve called. “The only close family Dora Lee has left is her sister in Virginia and she can’t make it out for the funeral,” I say.

  “That’s like my sister Lou,” he says. “She and her husband are back in North Carolina, and they’re not going to make the trip.”

  “How come you have a different name from your daddy?” I say.

  He puts his hands in his pockets and jingles some coins. “My real daddy died when I was a few months old. Some kind of farm accident. I didn’t know him at all, of course. My mamma married Leslie when I was two and he raised me like I was his own.”

  I wonder why Leslie didn’t give the boy his last name, but you can only take curiosity so far. “Your mamma still living?” I ask.

  He gives me a tight smile. “Yes. She’s over in Sugarland.”

  I can see I’ve stepped into shaky territory, so I move on and tell Wayne I haven’t been able to find a will in Dora Lee’s papers. “If she didn’t have a will, I expect what she has goes to her daughter, Caroline, and the boy.”

  “Caroline,” he says and gives a bark of laughter. “She was a wild little thing. I only saw her a few times when we were kids. My daddy and her daddy didn’t get along well. Didn’t she move out to California and nobody ever heard anything from her?”

  “Yes, she was in California for a long time. I had the devil of time locating her to tell her about Dora Lee. Turns out she’s living in Houston now.”

  “Is that right? I’ll have to look her up.” He’s jingling those coins again.

  “I talked to her this afternoon, just before I came out here. I have her telephone number if you want to call her.” I pull out my notes and write down the number for him. I also write down my name and number.

  “Is she coming to the funeral?”

  “She didn’t say one way or another. She hasn’t seen her mamma in a long time.”

  “Seems like she’d want to come out here. She’ll inherit the farm and if it was me, I’d want to look things over.” His face is starting to get red, like he’s flustered. I think about what Dora Lee told me about Leslie Parjeter being so stingy, and I wonder if Leslie has sent his son here to see if he can scrounge a little something out of the estate for himself.