A Killing at Cotton Hill (19 page)

Talk starts out well between us, with us going over details of the funeral and the reception. Loretta has all kinds of news to impart that I was not privy to. Things like who is in the family way; whose son has decided not to go off to college after all, making his mamma cry with happiness and his daddy mad at the lost opportunity; who is sick; who has gotten better. All the things that run through a small town and make you appreciate the ebb and flow of life, even if you don't know much about the people involved. Loretta keeps peering at me when she thinks I'm not looking, and I know she's thinking about what happened at the Two Dog last night.

I figure the best defense is a good offense. “I had me a problem last night.”

“What problem?” she says.

“Dora Lee's daughter went off to the Two Dog and had herself a little too much to drink and I thought I better go get her out of there.”

The dam breaks. “Well, I don't know why it had to fall to you to take care of somebody like that. She's a grown woman. I hear she was making up to Rodell, and he's a married man. I hear they were practically going at it on the dance floor. How come you had to get involved? It's not like you and Dora Lee . . .” She stops abruptly, having gone one step too far.

“Dora Lee was a good friend, and Caroline was staying at my house, so I felt some obligation.”

Loretta's cheeks are bright pink. “I don't understand that to begin with. She could just as well have stayed out at Dora Lee's farm.”

I'm wondering how I'm going to ease her off the subject, but I remember what Jenny said about the kind of woman Caroline is, and I figure that deep down Loretta has the same instinct for Caroline that Jenny does, and I won't get past it. So I just say, “With all those Parjeters out there at the farm, I thought she might need some privacy. And it worked out all right in the end. She was just a little stirred up by the funeral.”

I couldn't have asked for a better time for our food to be served. It puts us back on a good footing, and after a few bites, Loretta says, “How long do you figure Caroline is going to linger here?”

“She said something about having to get back to work. Loretta, I know she's a strange kind of woman, but I believe life hasn't been all that kind to her, and it won't hurt for people to let her alone.”

“If she'll leave us alone, we'll leave her alone.” Loretta dabs her lips with her napkin.

“I don't think she wants to be here, but she's got to do something about the property.”

Loretta suddenly gets a smirk on her face, and she reaches up and pats her hair.

“What are you so smug about?” I say.

“I just know something you might not know,” she says. “I stopped by Frances Underwood's place this morning to get some eggs, and she told me something interesting.”

It makes me embarrassed for Loretta that Frances Underwood is going to use her to spread the rumor that Dora Lee's property might amount to something. If I had Frances Underwood here right now, I'd have plenty to say to her.

“Well, tell me what she said.”

“She made me swear not to tell.”

“All right, then. I wouldn't want you to go back on your word.”

She takes a couple of bites of her dinner, and I say something about how nice the wine is and how nice it is to sometimes come to a place that has white tablecloths. I'm about to say how nice it is that everybody dresses up a little to come here, when she says, “Well, I don't suppose it would hurt if I told you. She just meant don't spread it to all and sundry.”

“Whatever you think is best.”

She peers at me to see if I'm being sarcastic, but decides I'm not. “Some big outfit from Houston is thinking about putting a race track out there.”

“A horse racetrack?” I ask, all innocence.

“No, a car racetrack. They think people who come to the lake will come to the car races, too.”

“I thought Underwood wanted to farm that land.”

“I asked her about that,” Loretta says. “She's a kind of woman I think knows more than she lets on. She says that's exactly what they were going to do, but then they heard about this racetrack some time back and decided it might be best to see what came of it, before they put in the time and effort to bring the land up to where it could grow crops.”

After that, we discuss what a big change it would be to have racing out there. She says there'd be people for it and people against it, and I agree. We wind up the evening on friendly terms.

In Jarrett Creek we're headed toward our part of town when I see flashing lights up ahead, like an ambulance. I wonder if it's for old Mrs. Summerville next door.

“What in the world?” Loretta says. “Look at the sky, there's smoke.” Anxiety clouds her voice.

I have a sudden feeling of dread. It's as hot a night as we've had, and I wonder if something has caught fire. We turn on to our street, and I yell out, “Oh, my God!” The fire trucks are sitting outside my house.

I hit the accelerator, and come to a screeching halt at Jenny Sandstone's house, because I can't get any closer. Jenny is out front with Elvin Crown, head of the volunteer fire department.

I leap out of the car and rush toward my house, as fast as I can go with my knee hitching up.

“Whoa, whoa!” Elvin says and he almost tackles me from behind. “You can't go up there just yet.”

“My paintings,” I gasp. My heart is pounding so hard, I feel faint. Jenny is at my side and takes hold of my arm. “It's okay. Your paintings got out of there.”

“Are you sure? How?”

“The volunteer boys and I got them out.”

I bend over for a minute with my hands on my knees to get my bearings and feel Jenny holding onto my arm. “I'll be all right,” I say.

“You had a bad scare,” Jenny says.

I straighten back up and now that my head is cleared I can see that the house looks intact, although the smell of smoke is strong in the air. Loretta has gone over to talk to neighbors who are in a huddle across the street, taking in the action. I'm surprised to find that Rodell is here, too, looking somber. I ask Elvin for the details.

“You have Jenny to thank,” Elvin says. “If she hadn't seen it, the whole house would have gone up.”

I look at Jenny full on and see that her hair has gotten loose and is wild around her head. There are smudges of soot on her face and on her Houston Astros T-shirt.

“You shouldn't have risked your life,” I say.

“It wasn't like that,” she says. “It had barely started when I got to it. By pure luck I was down watering my horses and I saw some light through the trees. I thought it was coming from the back of your house, but then I realized it was flickering, and it didn't look right. So I cut up through your back yard and I saw right away you had a fire at your place.”

I tense up again with the thought of what could have happened. “And you got the art out of there.”

“I didn't see your truck out front, so I ran back to my house and called the fire department. I knew you had all those paintings in there, so I went in and started bringing them out. These volunteer boys got here in nothing flat. They chased me out, put some water on the fire in the back and got the rest of the art out.”

Elvin is standing there nodding as she talks. “If she hadn't called us when she did, the whole place would have gone up,” he repeats. “As it is, the walls at the back are blistered and you've got some water damage and some smoke inside.”

“I'm afraid I broke down your front door,” Jenny says.

Loretta has come back and is hovering nearby. “Oh, my Lord,” she moans.

I guess the relief of knowing everything is all right makes me giddy because I start laughing right out loud.

“What's so funny?” Elvin says.

I finally wind down and wipe my eyes. “I don't lock my door. Jenny, you could have just walked in.”

The look on her face gets me laughing again until everybody catches on, and we're all snickering like fools.

“I don't know how I can thank you enough. Those paintings mean everything to me.”

And I don't mean only their monetary value. They represent a tie to Jeanne and a world that we made together. I may not be able to thank Jenny properly, but I know one thing: Jenny won't ever have to go down there to water those horses again.

I awake in a strange bed, disoriented for a minute and feeling anxious, my heart doing a little overtime jittering. Several times in the night I half-woke, and don't feel that I've really been all the way asleep. The smell of coffee brings one or two synapses back into play and I swing my legs off the bed. My whole body feels sore, as if I've run too far, the aftermath of an adrenaline rush from last night. I take a deep breath and remind myself that my paintings are safe and that according to Elvin the house is intact. What I want to know is how the fire got started. Figuring that out is just one of the things I need to get busy with.

The bedroom I'm in has the same quiet but comfortable feel as the rest of Jenny Sandstone's house. Last night she took charge of me, brushing past my protest that I could just as well stay in my house. “It's going to smell of smoke. Tomorrow you can air it out, but tonight you don't need to sleep with that smell.” I went into the house long enough to get my shaving apparatus and a change of clothes.

Jenny's spare bedroom has its own bathroom, so I feel like I'm in my own cocoon. I go in and take a shower, which takes some of the edge off my itchy mood.

“I figured you'd be up early,” Jenny says. She's already dressed for the day, moving around briskly and making me feel ancient.

“Never was one for lying in bed.”

She sets a cup of coffee on the counter in front of me. “This is as far as my breakfast hospitality goes. I've got a meeting in Bobtail this morning, so I'm on my way. Make yourself at home. I don't know what kind of breakfast you eat, but you might find an egg or two and some cereal.”

Then she's gone in a whirl of briefcase and purse and perfume.

In spite of my abundant dinner last night, I'm hollow this morning, so I scramble Jenny's last two eggs and toast the last two pieces of bread, and make a mental note to restock her larder. While I eat, I look through the pictures Jenny retrieved from my place. She has them stacked neatly in her living room in a corner near the bookcase. Seen altogether this way, I realize how many I have. My hands shake as I touch the first one, unable to hold back thoughts of what could have been if Jenny hadn't been down there watering her horses.

I get the Wolf Kahn out and hold it in my hands for several minutes. There's not a one of these pictures that I don't know exactly where Jeanne and I were when we bought it. I notice the glass is sooty, so I pull out my handkerchief and wipe it off. I'm going to have to call an expert in to see if any of them have been damaged, or need to be professionally cleaned.

The phone ringing breaks my reverie. Thinking it may be presumptuous to answer Jenny's phone, I almost leave it, but then think it might be her calling about something. It's Loretta, checking in to make sure I survived the night. She offered for me to stay at her place, but her notions of propriety are strong, and I could tell her heart wasn't in it. Jenny seemed to sense the same thing, and she insisted I'd want to be where I could check out my paintings first thing in the morning.

I tell Loretta I slept fine and she says I can count on her to help with anything I need.

I could spend the whole day looking at those paintings and celebrating the fact that they are intact, but I need to go over to take a look at my place and figure out what to do about the damage. And I've got something else to do first.

Leaving Jenny's, I walk around back of my house and down to the pasture where the tank is. The cows come crowding around, as if they know something unusual happened last night. “Ladies and gentlemen, get ready to welcome some strangers.”

I walk over to the fence between Jenny's place and mine, to the gate that hasn't been opened since she moved in. The gate has settled and is hard to open, but finally it gives enough so I can slide the handle sideways. The gate swings open and I pull it all the way back to the fence.

Jenny's three horses are standing together near the fence, watching me as if they've never seen a man before. I walk toward them gingerly, but they hold their ground. If they had spooked, I would have, too. “You're welcome to come through any time,” I say. But then I realize that my cows are going to come in here and eat up all Jenny's grass, so I go back and close the gate. Jenny and I will work out the details later. But at least the gate has been opened once and it will get easier.

Coming back up to my house from the pasture, I'm greeted by a sad sight. The back of the house is blackened and peeling. Again, I wonder how the fire started, and I don't like the way my thoughts tend.

Nothing at the back of the house would make a fire spark spontaneously. If it had started in the kitchen, it would have taken a while for it to blister the back walls the way it has. I have a bad feeling that this wasn't an accident. Somebody set it, starting it around back so it would have a good chance to consume the place before anyone would notice it. The plan just failed to take Jenny into account.