A Killing at Cotton Hill Read online

  “Caroline didn’t seem all that interested. Anyway, the inheritance isn’t going to amount to much. Dora Lee owed a lot on the farm.”

  “That’s too bad. I guess I should find out what Caroline’s plans are.” He gestures toward the papers on the desk. “I wouldn’t want her to think I’m overstepping myself being here.”

  “I expect she’ll be glad of the help,” I say. “There’s one thing I ought to show you.” I find the letter from Clyde Underwood and hand it to him. “I know a little bit about land around here, and this is a low-ball offer. Whoever arranges to sell it can do better than that.”

  He looks over the letter, his bushy eyebrows almost meeting in the middle with the frown on his face. “I do appreciate your letting me know,” he says. “I’ll bear this in mind.”

  He’s got a friendly way about him, but I get the feeling he’s ready for me to be gone. But he needs to know one more thing. So I tell him about Greg being taken for questioning and me getting him out of jail.

  Jackson frowns. “You don’t think there’s anything to it? About the boy, I mean?”

  “No, I do not. I think you’ll find he’s a fine boy who loved his grandmother. Don’t let Rodell get away with anything. That’s Rodell Skinner, he’s the chief of police and a man inclined to take the easy way out. He may think prosecuting your cousin Greg is going to tidy up the business of who killed Dora Lee without him having to work too hard. Which means the real killer would get away.”

  He nods, but I’m not sure he gets it. With a jingle of coins, he starts easing toward the hallway.

  “If you have any questions, you let me know,” I tell him, “Now I’ll just pack my things and get out of your way.”

  “Take your time,” he says. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  I go into Dora Lee’s bedroom to put my things back in my duffle, and I notice that Jackson has already set his big suitcase in here, up against one wall. My mind is working overtime, knowing this may be my last chance to get a close-up look at Dora Lee’s things. I open the closet door. The idea of Caroline’s wedding announcement has been eating at me. When I was going through Dora Lee’s papers, I didn’t find any little sentimental mementos, like birthday cards or shower invitations or letters from old friends. I’m thinking Dora Lee might have kept her sentimental belongings separate from her business papers. A few months after Jeanne died I was just about knocked over when I found a couple of shoeboxes in the closet filled with every letter and every valentine anybody ever sent her.

  Dora Lee has several shoeboxes on the closet shelf above her clothes. My intended theft makes me so nervous that I fumble with the lids of the shoeboxes, scared Jackson is going to barge in to find out what’s taking me so long and find me rummaging around. After looking through the first few boxes and finding only shoes, I step into the bathroom and flush the toilet. If he thinks I was in the can that should give me a little more time.

  Sure enough, at one end of the shelf I find a couple of boxes full of cards. The boxes won’t fit in my bag, so I spill the contents into my duffle and put the empty boxes back on the shelf.

  When I get to the kitchen, I tell Jackson I’m just going to stop and say goodbye to Greg. “I’ll see you at the visitation tomorrow night,” I say. “And if there’s anything I can do to grease any wheels for you, just let me know.”

  I throw the duffle into my truck, relieved that the evidence of my theft is out of sight. Then I go see Greg, whose eyes are all lit up.

  “You’re looking pleased with yourself,” I say. “You glad to have your cousin Wayne to take over here?” I don’t like the little jealous feeling that’s snuck up on me.

  “Wayne says he’s going to help me find work. I’m thinking I might get a job in an art store in Houston. And maybe I can put by enough money to get some classes.”

  “That would be fine, all right,” I say. But I suspect that Jackson and his daddy have cooked up plans to stick Greg out at Leslie Parjeter’s farm.

  On my way home, I worry about how I’m going to figure out who killed Dora Lee now that I don’t have access to her affairs.

  As I walk in the front door, the phone is ringing and it’s my brother-in-law, DeWitt, returning my call.

  “When are you going to come over to God’s country and let me teach you how to play golf?” he says.

  I’ve always liked Jeanne’s brother, and I’m tickled that he has made such a fine retirement for himself. “You won’t get me to use those snake-killing sticks,” I say, “But I’d like to walk around the course with you.”

  He laughs his big, hearty laugh and asks how I’m getting on. I tell him I’m doing fine and then I get down to business. I tell him about Dora Lee’s death, and about finding Clyde Underwood’s letter offering to buy the farm. “There’s something funny about that,” I say. “The man’s already got a big spread that’s just sitting there. So what would he want with another chunk of land that as far as I can tell doesn’t recommend itself?”

  “Have you walked the land?” He means have I gone over the property to see if there’s any evidence that there might be oil or gas under the ground.

  “No, I haven’t, but I’ve never seen or heard of any land around there being good for much.”

  “Could be it’s got natural gas. You know, back when we were in the business, getting gas out of the land was more trouble and expense than it was worth. But with oil prices what they are, that’s changed. And I know they found a fair-sized gas field not that far west of Jarrett County a few years ago.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that, but I haven’t heard that it extends this far.”

  “You want me to drive over there and walk the land with you?”

  He sounds hopeful, so I tell him that’s exactly what I was hoping he’d say.

  “What about tomorrow?” he says.

  “You don’t play golf on Sunday?”

  “Hell, no! Never on Sunday. Around here, with the weekend people coming from Austin, it’s too crowded on the course.” So we agree he’ll come tomorrow.

  I ask him to bring his wife, Lucille, but he says she’s not going anywhere these days. I tell him I’m sorry to hear that, and to tell her hello for me. There’s nothing wrong with Lucille physically, but she has spells when she gets anxious and can’t leave the house. DeWitt has made his accommodation with that through the years.

  I’ve been kicking around that business with the art teacher, Mr. Eubanks, wondering how I can find out a little more about him. Not having any kids of my own, I never knew the workings of the school system in Jarrett County, so I don’t know who to call to find out any more about it. But it strikes me that Jenny Sandstone is from Bobtail, and maybe she can dig up something. It’s a Saturday night, so she might be out, but I give her a try.

  She does answer her phone, and I tell her what I want to know.

  “That’s a matter for my mother,” Jenny says. “She taught high school social studies in Bobtail for thirty years. She’s retired now, but if she doesn’t know anything about this Eubanks fellow, she’ll know who to call to find out.”

  While I wait for her to call back, I get busy. This is the first chance I’ve had to go through the paraphernalia I took from the shoeboxes at Dora Lee’s. I get the duffle out and spill everything onto the dining room table.

  By the time I’m done, I’m good and depressed. There’s nothing like going through a woman’s sentimental holdings to give you the blues. Dora Lee’s life has been whittled down to a thin line, from being a little girl, to courting and being married, to having kids, then the one grandchild, and then beginning that final slide to becoming obsolete.

  As is my way, I’ve sorted things into stacks. In a pile to itself are the wedding announcements for her daughter Julie and the one for Caroline. The one for Julie is accompanied by newspaper clippings about the wedding, shower announcements, and the like. The one for Caroline stands alone. But I’m glad Caroline at least sent her one.

  There are bright spots in the
mementos that have nothing to do with her family. I had forgotten that the quilt Dora Lee kept on her bed won a prize. She was puffed up about that for a month.

  There are clippings about the accident that killed Dora Lee’s daughter Julie and her husband, and one about Greg’s graduation from high school in Bobtail. It would have been easier on Dora Lee if Greg had transferred to Jarrett Creek High School. Then the school bus would have picked him up. But Dora Lee wanted him to continue to go to the same school he was in when his folks died. The Bobtail school bus wouldn’t go out to Cotton Hill to pick him up, so she drove him back and forth to Bobtail every single day for two years.

  The valentines and birthday cards are in a stack to themselves, homemade cards made by the girls when they were little, going up until the cards are store bought and have awkward teenage sentiments scribbled above their names. I wonder if Caroline will want to see them and wonder if they mean anything to her. I notice there are no cards from Teague and that makes me think about how I used to make such a fuss for Jeanne over Valentine’s Day and her birthday. I guess Teague was as stingy with affection as his brother Leslie is with money. Or maybe Dora Lee couldn’t stand to keep things from Teague. The way he treated her would have outweighed any sentimental card he might have given her.

  Another stack is for pictures, mostly school pictures of the girls, but also some of Dora Lee and Teague when they were young. I’d forgotten that Teague was quite the ladies’ man. He was good-looking in an oily kind of way.

  Most of the Christmas cards are from family. But a few, yellowed with age, are from people I never heard of, and sound like they were written by youngsters. For a couple of years when Dora Lee was a teenager, her daddy took his family off to Austin to live while he worked on a construction job there. As soon as the job ended, they high-tailed it back here. But for a few years Dora Lee must have kept up with girls she met in school in Austin.

  There’s one clipping that I don’t know what to make of. It’s an obituary of an artist named William Kern who I never heard of; he died a few years ago. He lived around Fredericksburg. I wonder if Dora Lee knew him. I conjure up an old romance from when she lived in Austin that made her doubly happy when she found out her grandson was inclined to art.

  Dora Lee kept all the school pictures of the girls. Caroline had a way of looking at the camera as if challenging the photographer to see her sexy side. By contrast, Julie was a wholesome girl, not as pretty, but with a cheerful smile. I put rubber bands around the stacks and stuff them back into the duffle. I’ll give it to Caroline to dispense with as she pleases.

  It’s an hour later, and getting on for dusk, when Jenny gets back to me. “Sorry it took so long. Mother tends to be long-winded. I expect that’s why I’m not partial to small talk.”

  “She able to tell you anything?”

  “Alex Eubanks is a peacock. Apparently he’s won a couple of awards in some art shows, and if he offers to give somebody lessons, he thinks he’s doing them a big favor. He got riled up when Dora Lee wouldn’t pay for lessons anymore.” In other words, no new information, but at least it confirms what I know about him.

  After I hang up, I walk around the house feeling restless. I’m stirred up with the idea of investigating Dora Lee’s murder, but I feel off my game, not sure I can trust my instincts. It won’t be any good if I chase off after everybody who looked cross-eyed at Dora Lee. But I also need to be careful to not dismiss a suspect too easily. I’m going to have to look into this Eubanks fellow.

  When I phone Wayne Jackson early next morning he says it’s fine with him if DeWitt and I walk the property. In fact, he says he’s grateful to me, in case there’s more to the land than meets the eye.

  DeWitt arrives around nine o’clock and I’m glad to see him. He reminds me of Jeanne. She was a thin little whip of a woman and DeWitt has that same body type, although he’s a good deal taller. He has her same bright bird eyes that seem to dart around and see everything. And when they light on you, they’re full of mischief and warmth. “Well, you haven’t let everything go to hell too much,” he says, surveying my living room.

  “Jeanne trained me well.”

  He laughs. “Those pictures make me think of Jeanne. I never saw anybody who loved art the way she and our mamma did. Never took with me, but she and mamma wore a path to the museum.”

  We drink a cup of coffee. I answer a phone call from Loretta, who saw DeWitt’s Lincoln parked in front of my place and has to know who’s visiting me. I tell her what it is we’re up to and tease her by asking if she wants to go out and walk with us for a couple of hours. She acts all ruffled, and asks me how I can even think such a thing, but then she catches on and laughs.

  On the way out to Dora Lee’s, I fill DeWitt in on the situation.

  “I made a couple phone calls yesterday,” DeWitt says. “Nobody knows of any project going on out here, but they’ll check it out and get back to me.”

  Even his voice reminds me of Jeanne, and I smile to myself as he talks.

  As soon as we pull in, I see that the garden is drooping. You have to water every morning in this heat. When I check in with Jackson, I mention the garden. He says he doesn’t know anything about gardens, but I don’t know how that can be true since he was raised on a farm. From what little I know about Leslie Parjeter, I suspect he worked his stepson to within an inch of his life, and when Jackson managed to get off the farm, he vowed to never have another thing to do with farm work.

  Jackson disappears inside, and DeWitt and I get started off to examine the land. It’s hot as blazes, but in our time we’ve done this in all kinds of weather. We’re both as eager to be back on the job as if we were still in our prime. Our job is made a good bit easier because her land has no trees to speak of. If you’re trying to assess land through stands of post oak, you’ve got your work cut out. But this is pastureland, spreading out in undulating hillocks.

  What we do when we walk the land is look for traces of shale and smell for gas. Pure natural gas doesn’t have an odor, but often gas deposits have sour portions that smell of rotten eggs. And you sometimes don’t see the shale, but it usually noses out at the surface somewhere on a property. Between looking and smelling, you can generally spot the signs. But even if we don’t see or smell signs of gas, we’ll take some soil samples here and there and have them tested.

  DeWitt and I spread out to within hollering distance of each other and walk parallel. The property is about twenty acres and takes us the best part of two hours. Down at the back there is a boggy area, which surprises me. It has a scraggly stand of trees around it, and if you were selling mosquitoes by the pound, you’d have a bumper crop. By the time we start back, both drenched in sweat and thirsty, we have to admit we’ve seen and smelled nothing that would warrant further investigation. DeWitt says he’ll run the soil samples over to Austin tomorrow, but neither of us thinks anything will come of it.

  When we get back to the house, a rusted out old hulk of a Ford Fairlane is sitting in the driveway. It would be a classic if it was fixed up. A pinch-faced old man is just climbing out of it. DeWitt and I walk over to greet him.

  “I bet you’re Leslie Parjeter,” I say.

  The old man admits that he is. He reaches into the back seat and takes out a faded cardboard suitcase that has to be as old as he is.

  “Help you carry something?” I say.

  He looks me up and down with suspicion. “I’ll hang onto my case,” he says.

  Inside, Jackson spares us a drink of water, but doesn’t offer anything more in spite of the fact that he’s eager to know what we found out. I think about all those casseroles lined up in the refrigerator. Not that I want any of them, but it rankles me that he doesn’t offer.

  I tell Jackson we didn’t see anything on our survey of the land that would make us jump up and holler.

  “Well, I thank you for taking the time,” he says. We’re standing in the kitchen. He hasn’t offered us a seat.

  Leslie Parjeter has been li
stening with great interest to our exchange. “You all was looking for oil on Dora Lee’s land?”

  “Natural gas, more likely,” DeWitt says. “But we didn’t find any sign of it.”

  “Be a fine thing if Dora Lee was sitting on property that was worth something,” Parjeter says.

  “Daddy, I don’t know why you care anything about that. You don’t have any stake in it.”

  “You don’t know that for a fact. Has anybody found a will?”

  Jackson and I both say no at the same time. I’m hit by a gut reaction to the idea of Jackson pawing through Dora Lee’s papers. “I wouldn’t worry,” I say to Parjeter, “You’ll have your loan paid back.”

  “So you know all about that, do you?” he says, his shrewd eyes taking me in.

  “I know Dora Lee would want her debts paid,” I say.

  Parjeter’s eyes swivel to his son. “Unlike some.”

  Jackson’s jaw clenches, and I feel like all the air has been sucked out of the room.

  I don’t like being witness to a grown man being treated like a truant schoolboy, so I ask Jackson if he got around to calling his cousin Caroline.

  Jackson’s smile looks like he’s been sucking a lemon. “I’ve had some business to tend to, and haven’t had time.”

  “You better tend to business,” Parjeter says.

  DeWitt and I make a quick exit after that, and head over to the Ranchero, a pretty good Mexican café in town. We talk old times, and he tells me a couple of stories I’ve never heard, or have forgotten, about Jeanne when she was a youngster. It seems like five o’clock rolls around too fast. DeWitt wants to get home before dark.

  “Lucille gets nervous when the light goes,” he says.

  Ernest Landau has put out a flier around town saying that visitation at the funeral home for Dora Lee is from six to nine tonight. I get there about seven and see that a good many people have already stopped by and signed the book. I’m not surprised that Ida Ruth has set herself up to greet visitors. But I am surprised to see that Greg is with her in the front room. Ida Ruth has her arm through his, that way signaling to all who want to know that she is convinced that this boy had nothing to do with his grandma’s death. I hope I haven’t set both of us up for a fall.