An Unmarked Grave (24 page)

More than once I've had all my neat little theories blow up
in my face like a string of Fourth of July firecrackers. When
that happened, it was usually because I had unconsciously been guiding the direction of the investigation, placing neat
little theories into precise little slots where they didn't belong.
And if they refused to fit, I pounded them in. With results not
surprising.

Flipping on the bedside light, I rolled out of bed and
padded over to the desk. Behind me, Jack groaned and rolled
over. I heard the covers snap over his head.

Pulling out my note cards, I started from the beginning.

Each time I ran across a card with information I thought
might be a backbreaker, I put it aside.

The first one was Sheriff Perry's denial of knowing Justin;
the second was Buck Ford's claim that he saw the pickup
in the creek; the next was Barton's assertion that he had seen
two men digging in the cemetery that night twenty years ago.

I asked myself the same question I'd asked a dozen times.
Why didn't the old man report it to the sheriff? And for the
twelfth time, I came up with the same answer. The sheriff
was one of the two.

Then I turned to the cards recording Houston's land sale
to Marvin Lewis, who subsequently sold part of the property to Ford and Perry. I wasn't an abstract-of-title man but
I could see nothing suspicious in the transaction.

I glanced at the photocopies of the document on file in the
Montague County Courthouse. The contract was legal. Were
it not, it could not have been filed.

Every crime possesses three factors: motive, opportunity,
and means.

If indeed Barton had seen Buck Ford and the sheriff at the
cemetery twenty or so years earlier, their current motives
were obvious. They believed that Justin was planning on exhuming the coffin. They knew what he would find when he opened the casket. They had no choice but to shut him up
permanently.

As far as Marvin Lewis went, I could see no motive. He
believed the same as Justin about the UFO, which supported
my theory that whomever Nora Talley had met twenty years
ago had passed on.

Opportunity? Ford and Perry were in town. Lewis was
visiting his family in Gainesville. Another reason to eliminate Lewis.

I decided to send Nora Talley an image of Marvin Lewis.
I figured it was a waste of time, but, remembering Marty's
assertion not to leave out anything about anybody, I knew I
had to cover all my bases. Once she failed to recognize him,
I could dismiss him from my list of suspects and start digging for a third member of the triad that murdered Justin.

Jack groaned sleepily as I opened the door early the next
morning. "What's going on?"

"I'm running down to the newspaper. I'll meet you in the
restaurant in thirty minutes or so. Order me coffee and a
small stack of pancakes"

Within minutes at the news office, I found what I was
looking for and headed back. A red Blazer had taken my
parking spot, so I was forced to park around the corner of
the motel from our room.

In the restaurant, Jack was wading through a platter of
pancakes, eggs, sausage, and hash browns. That man loved
to eat.

When I finished a few minutes later, he was still shoveling
it in, so I left him behind while I went upstairs to e-mail the
image of Marvin Lewis to Nora Talley. "A waste of time," I muttered as I clicked the insert, attach, and send commands. But I had to try.

Thirty minutes later, when I opened the door and stepped
out onto the second-floor gallery, I spotted a white Honda
turning onto the access road. I hurried to the rail and leaned
over as far as I could. The driver was male, but his features
were too vague. Taggart? I wondered.

The parking lot was wet with melted snow when we pulled
out. "What's up today?"

"Henrietta"

"Who's she?"

Driving slowly onto the access road, I laughed and headed
for the underpass that would take us to the FM Road 1287
leading to Elysian Hills. I noticed the brakes were a little
spongy but thought nothing of it.

"This one's no she. It's a town. About forty miles west of
here. Just this side of Wichita Falls"

"What's there?"

"Jim Bob Houston's ex-wife. I figured I'd see what kind
of information I can get from her."

Once we hit the winding farm-to-market road, I kicked
the Silverado up to fifty-five. The sun was bright, and the
road was drying quickly. I adjusted the rearview mirror to
keep the sun from my eyes.

"Must be a busy day out at Ford's," I remarked as the
sixth cattle truck whizzed past, heading for the interstate.
We topped the crest of a hill and in the distance spotted a
school bus heading in the same direction as we. Beyond the
bus were two more cattle rigs heading toward us.

Jack looked around at me. "That Ford guy, he's got some
operation, huh?"

"Yeah. Some operation," I replied, watching the approaching rigs growing larger.

They passed the school bus just as it slowed and flashed
yellow lights and then red lights.

Without warning, one rig swerved into my lane, then
jerked back abruptly. I swung to the right and hit my brakes.

The pedal slammed to the floor. I pumped frantically, but
the brakes were gone, and I found myself trying to hold on
to a two-thousand-pound pickup slamming through mud and
bear grass at fifty miles an hour toward a stopped school bus.

My only choice was to cut to the right and smash through
a three-strand barbed-wire fence, coming to rest in the middle of a pasture, hub deep in mud.

The two rigs pulled off the road, and while one driver
hurried to the bus, the other waded through the mud to us,
apologizing profusely. "The sun got in my eyes, stranger.
Man, I'm sorry. I'll call for road service and tell my boss,
Buck Ford"

"Okay. Call Newt Gibons in Elysian Hills."

He looked at me, puzzled. "You ain't from around here"

"No, but I know Newt"

He shrugged. "You got it."

The driver at the bus waved that all was fine. Moments
later, a young boy came racing up the lane and climbed
aboard. The bus pulled away.

Newt Gibons shook his head and pursed his lips. "I ain't
got no chain long enough to haul you out of here" He looked
around, scratching his head and eyeballing the set of tracks
in the mud. "You did a bang-up job, I'll say that," he drawled.

At that moment, the steady pounding of a powerful engine interrupted us. A man on a red tractor was rolling up the
lane. He rounded the corner of the pasture, eyed the damage I'd done to the fence, then drove over to us.

Newt held up a hand. "Howdy, Finas."

Then I recognized the old gentleman as one of those with
whom I'd spoken at Mabel's my first day in town. I nodded. "Sorry about the fence, Mr. Irvin. Of course, I'll pay for it."

Newt looked at me. "You boys know each other?"

"Sure do. Mr. Irvin there told me where I could find
Justin Chester when I first came to town"

The old man shook his head. "Hated to hear about that
boy. He might have been a couple points off the compass,
but he was a decent man"

I gave him our Austin address so he could bill Blevins
Security for the fence, after which he hauled us out with his
tractor.

Newt raised the front end. The impact had forced mud and
grass into every crevice in the undercarriage of the pickup.

I shook my head. "I can't see a thing except mud"

Newt grunted and gestured to the wrecker. "Hop in. We'll
clean it off back at the shop. Then we can get a handle on
what happened"

We climbed into his wrecker and headed back to Elysian
Hills.

In a wry drawl, he asked, "What happened back there?"

"No idea. I hit the brakes, and they hit the floor."

"Scared the bejezzus out of me," Jack muttered. "I didn't
think we were ever going to stop"

Flexing his thin fingers on the steering wheel, Newt
grunted. "I figured you would be gone out of here by now."

I ignored the implied question. "You said you knew Jim
Bob Houston, didn't you?"

A frown knit his forehead. "Sure. Good man"

"It's hard to believe someone would just up and leave
town without saying anything to anyone"

Gibons arched an eyebrow. His tone was thoughtful when
he replied. "Never could understand that. Jim Bob grew
up here. He was our mayor when he was younger. I'd have
given hundred to one odds against that old boy's pulling up
stakes and leaving." He paused, then continued. "There was
some talk around that Jim Bob had got hisself mixed up with
the wrong kind of people, but nothing came of it. Then we
heard he was up in Chicago, so the talk must've just been
that, talk"

Jack glanced at me. I raised an eyebrow.

"He have any enemies or anything?"

Newt frowned.

Quickly I added, "He had almost four thousand acres, a
good cattle and oil business" I shook my head and lapsed
into my homespun drawl. "Why leave? It just don't make
sense, you know?"

Newt didn't reply. He kept his eyes fixed forward several
seconds before replying. "Mighta been his old lady had
something to do with it"

Playing the innocent, I replied. "His wife?"

"Yep. They say she played around on him, then up and
left. He shook his head. "I don't believe it."

"Oh? Why not?"

He looked around, his blue eyes staring like beacons at
me. "Sara wasn't that kind of woman. At least, I didn't think so. Still, one day she just up and flew the coop" He touched
his brakes as he pulled across the highway to his shop. "But
today, you can't tell about nobody"

I looked over the rolling countryside. "So, Elysian Hills
used to be a sizeable town, huh?"

He chuckled. "Way back. Most of the young folks leave
now" He nodded in the direction of the cemetery. "Older
folks are going pretty fast now. Won't be long there won't be
no more than a handful of us left" He pointed to the redbrick
house on the hill above the UFO museum. "I reckon old
Marv's the oldest one around now. In the last ten years he's
lost all his old cronies."

His old cronies! I wondered if any of them could have been
the one who rented the apartment in Chicago. It shouldn't be
too difficult to run down their names and photos.

Fifteen minutes later, Newt Gibons came over to us by
the propane heater, drying his hands on a towel. "Well, I
reckon I owe you city boys an apology."

I frowned. "An apology?"

"Yep. I reckoned you two was just lollygagging along
and ran off the road, but, believe it or not, I was wrong"

I glanced at Jack. "Yeah? How's that?"

A wry grin played over his lips. "It appears some folks
around here must not take kindly to you"

"Huh?" I frowned. "What do you mean by that?"

He held up a short tube. "After I hosed the mud off, I
saw that someone had cut your brake line"

ack jumped to his feet. "What? But-But-"

I scarcely heard Jack stuttering and stammering. All I
could think of was that white Honda leaving the parking lot
just before we climbed into the Silverado. "Taggart," I muttered under my breath.

Newt nodded. "Did a good job too, whoever he is," he
muttered wryly. "Cut 'em so they'd break the first time you
stomped down hard on the brakes. It'll take a few hours. I
can't get to them until after dinner. Probably be ready around
three"

"Looks like we'll have to use your car, Jack"

He shrugged. "Fine with me, but how do we get back to
Reuben?"

Newt spoke up. "Let me give Buck Ford a call. He's got
trucks pulling out regular-like. One of those old boys can
give you a lift. I'll park your truck out front when it's ready"

Fifteen minutes later, a bright green Kenworth ground to a halt in front and blasted the horn. We hurried out. Moments
later, we were rocketing along the narrow highway bound for
Reuben, a hundred conflicting thoughts bouncing around inside my skull.

I couldn't figure what was going on. If Taggart was the one
who'd cut the brake lines, that meant that in all likelihood
Vanessa Chester was behind it. But why? There was nothing
here for her to gain. Justin's estate had already been divided
among the three surviving siblings.