Jilted (21 page)

By Saturday morning Clyde and I were on every local channel. Besides the clip of Hoby's truck being pulled from the lake—a video they had aired every day for the past week—they now had footage of Clyde shoving Neil off my porch. Channel Eleven even ran exclusive coverage of me kissing Clyde just before the truck was pulled out of the lake … and fainting afterward.

I recalled Neil's suggestion that I move away from Trapp, and the idea now sounded blissful, even though it was clear he had hoped to make Clyde and me look guilty.

“Can't we just keep driving and not stop?” We were headed down Highway 84, and the hum of Clyde's sedan soothed my nerves.

He laughed lightly, but it didn't sound like he thought anything was funny. “Might look bad, huh?”

I nestled my chin in my hand, and my hair fell across one eye, causing me to feel half hidden, half exposed, half clothed, half naked. I peeked from behind the locks and stared at the windmills just coming into view. Today they were scarecrows stomping across the cotton fields, flailing their arms as we passed. Hundreds of pumpkins with thousands of arms spiraling endlessly day and night. Mocking me.

My gaze landed on a slow-moving windmill whose arms needed oiling like the Tin Man. He moved slowly, trying to keep up, but was inevitably headed toward an early death. And far ahead, on the edge of the cliff, one windmill stood completely motionless, its rotors set at the wrong angle to catch the wind. The frozen structure appeared deformed compared to the rest, and I looked away from it, forcing my eyes to the machines that were still alive, still moving, still toiling on and on.

After a few minutes, Clyde pulled over and killed the ignition, but he didn't break the spell. He didn't invade my time. He just sat with me. Without his saying so, I knew Clyde didn't want me to fall back into depression. He didn't want me to hole up in my house again, not for three days and not for three years. He had brought me out here to remind me of that, and his presence comforted me even though I felt like a fragile leaf blowing on a raging wind.

“When's the funeral?” he asked.

At first his question confused me because
they hadn't even identified the body
, but then the nightmare before this nightmare flashed across my mind, and I remembered Ansel was gone. “Tuesday.”

“I guess Dixie's closing the diner?”

I nodded, but the
mm-hmm
I tried to add got stuck in my lungs.

“You handling it all right?”

“I'm not handling it at all.” My mind, my thoughts, my heart were all neatly distracted from the pain of Ansel's death, held captive by a greater urgency. The fear of being accused, possibly even convicted, of something I didn't do.

I once heard about an infant picked up by a tornado and carried away, but when the storm blew over, that baby had been found in a bar ditch half a mile away, safely settled in a bed of knee-high johnsongrass. I felt like that baby. If everything happened just right, I might survive the chaos, but if one little thing went wrong, I might get slammed against a brick wall and die before the storm settled.

Without turning toward me, Clyde reached out, and I took his hand.

“Do you think they really suspect me of murder?” I asked softly, knowing the answer.

“Depends on what evidence they have. No telling what the Rangers will find once they get the lab results back from Austin.”

“It'll be Hoby.” I gazed blankly at the arms of the turbines turning, turning, turning. Life was like that. Never ending. Always pulling something away from me. Always coming back around to slap me across the face. I squinted at Clyde. “I didn't drive him to suicide like Neil said. He was coming back to talk to me. He was better, and we were going to work things out.”

“Don't you be thinking about anything Neil said. He's half crazed right now.”

I knew I shouldn't think back over the conversation, but there was no way not to. Neil had seemed so nervous and desperate and—I chuckled—
antsy
. But there wasn't anything to laugh about. Hoby might have been murdered, and Neil might have done it, but I looked the most guilty.

Everything seemed so absurd. “Do you think he set up the camera crew at my house?”

“I do, Lyn.”

Leaning my head against the headrest, I suddenly recalled something Neil had said that seemed strange. “Why would he refer to your shack as a
love nes
t
? He said we should hide there.”

When Clyde didn't answer, I turned to look at him, but his gaze was focused on the rearview mirror. “Here comes Hector.”

The highway patrol car pulled to a stop behind the sedan.

“Maybe he thinks we're stranded.” My words sounded unconvincing, even to me. “Right?”

Clyde rolled down his window. “Hey there, Sheriff.”

“Clyde.”

I leaned across the seat. “Hector, what's up?” I asked.

“I'd like to ask you a few questions. Sort of off the record.”

“Off the record?” I asked dumbly, as all feeling left my arms and legs.

“The Rangers are starting to wonder about some things. They'll probably bring you in for questioning Monday morning.” He looked up and down the highway. “But since I happened to bump into you, I can ask you a few questions of my own.”

“Do you want us to meet you somewhere?” Clyde asked.

“Lynda, would you mind riding with me?” Hector waited until I nodded. “And Clyde, can you meet us at my office?”

The demon I had managed to shove from my life now snickered in triumph. Hector was separating me from Clyde, and I could only imagine it was because he thought I was guilty. Guilty of murdering my husband. I took a deep breath, trying to fill my lungs, but the effort seemed too great.

A sudden pressure caused my gaze to fall to the seat, where Clyde still held my hand in his. My fingers were so tightly clamped around his thumb that my knuckles were white. He slid his other hand over mine and drew them to his lips. He didn't kiss my fingers, only brushed them against his cheek, but the action—so bold of him right in front of Hector—gave me the strength to press through one more trial.

I slipped my hand from his, and Hector met me at the back bumper. The sheriff shuffled his feet, wiped a fist across his lips, then squinted at me as though he had just bitten a lemon. “Lynda, I don't want to be saying this to you, but”—his gaze swept the sky—“you have the right to remain silent.”

I expected Hector to lock me in the back of his cruiser like a regular criminal, so when he ushered me to the front passenger seat, confusion filled my mind. Maybe I wasn't about to be arrested for murder.
Good Lord.
That sounded insane.

As we drove to the turnaround that would allow us to head back to Trapp, the windmills crept past the passenger window. I cut my gaze to the speedometer to verify the sheriff was driving as slowly as it seemed. Did he dread having to lock me up once we made it back to his office?

Clyde's sedan passed us, and our eyes met briefly before he went ahead of the cruiser.

“Lynda?” Hector took off his cowboy hat and set it on the seat between us. “I figure if I drive slow enough, you and I may have this thing settled before we get back to town.” He shrugged. “Not that I have anything against the Rangers. They're a regular bunch of guys.”

I uncrossed my arms and let them wilt into my lap. “You just read me my rights, Hector.”

“Had to. Otherwise your comments wouldn't be admissible in court.” He sighed. “For what it's worth, I'm sorry. I know this has got to be hard on you, dredging up memories of Hoby and all.”

“It was a long time ago.”

He nodded. “It's like this …” His voice rose to a confident volume, but when he faltered, I remembered that he had memories of Hoby, too. He swallowed. “The rest of the skeleton has been found
on my daddy's property
.” He shook his head. “What are the odds of—”

“Was it Hoby?”

Hector sighed. “They won't know for sure until the DNA tests are completed—probably sometime Monday—but even then, they're going to need a sample to match in order to determine if it's him.”

“If you mean something like a hair out of a hairbrush, it'll be impossible.”

His eyebrows quivered for a moment, and I imagined he almost smiled. “They can just match it to Ruthie since she's his daughter.”

It felt like ice water piercing my heart. The last time I saw Hoby, he had questioned me about whether or not Ruthie was his daughter. Nothing I could say would convince him, and now it was the only thing that could identify him all these years later. We crawled past a herd of Angus cattle, solid-black animals scattered among the mesquite trees, but in the midst of them, one red-and-white Hereford cow munched quietly on grass, oblivious to her differences. “So … this is Saturday. That's two more days of not knowing?”

Hector tilted his head and scratched the side of his neck with his thumb. “That's when they'll know something with a hundred percent certainty, but really, I think we can be safe to say it's him, Lynda.”

“Why?” A flash of indignation flared in my gut. “Your daddy's place is nowhere near where they found Hoby's truck, so it could be a horrible coincidence the two things happened at the same time. If the truck hadn't been found, you never would have considered the possibility of that skeleton belonging to Hoby.”

Hector slowly raised his palm to silence me, and I hushed. “Actually …” He peered across at me before returning his eyes to the road, and I figured that was another reason he wanted to talk to me while he was driving—so he wouldn't have to look me in the eye. “Even from the first two bones, they could tell it was a tall, athletic male in his late twenties … slightly bow-legged.”

At Hector's description, a memory picture surfaced in my mind. Hoby, dressed in boots and Wranglers, walking up the sidewalk to the church building. He held Ruthie's baby hand, and as he bent to smile down at her, his bowed legs looked even more curved.

“Not only that,” Hector continued, “but the thigh bone had been broken at some point and healed.” He paused as though he were admitting a great sin. “I had the Rangers checking on Hoby right from the start.”

He didn't look at me again, and I was glad of it. He knew as well as I did that Hoby broke his leg the spring of his freshman year of high school, riding on the back of Eldon Simpson's dirt bike. He sat out of track that year and spent all summer building up strength so he could play football in the fall.

“Dental records?”

“They're working on that.” He shivered, then shook it off, seemingly embarrassed. “I've seen the skull, and …” He swallowed, then turned his head as far away from me as he could while still being able to see the road.

It didn't matter if he finished his sentence, because I knew what he was trying to tell me. The skull had a gap between its front teeth, and that detail combined with all the other forensic markers positively identified the corpse, at least to Hector and me and anyone else who knew Hoby.

The indignation in my gut dwindled to indifference. “I don't understand how the body got that far away from the truck, though. That's what? Ten miles? No animal would … you know.”

Hector didn't answer me right away. “When did you last see him, Lynda?”

We passed the city-limit sign, and as Hector slowed the car, his cowboy hat shifted toward my thigh. I fingered the edge of the gray felt. “The day he left town. I don't remember the date. It was a weekday, I think, because he was headed to the garage.”

“Around Thanksgiving?”

“I guess so. Why?”

“And you never saw him again after that, right?”

“No …” I squinted at him. “But I heard from him once.”

“He called you?”

“Sent me a letter.”

“Do you still have it?”

“Why do you want to know?” I snapped. “What are you not telling me?”

His shoulders drooped. “I'm sorry, Lynda. I don't know what I'm asking. I'm just fishing for some nugget of information that will clear you.”

I turned in the seat and glared at him.
“Clear m
e
?”

He flashed his palm in front of my face again, then stated firmly, “Work with me, Lynda. I'm trying to help you.”

So I really was being accused of killing my husband. I slumped against the seat. There were a few years, way back, when I felt like killing Hoby, but that rage had long since been replaced by bitterness, and finally apathy when he had left and never returned to me and his daughter. “I have the letter.”

He stopped at the flashing red light in the middle of town, waited for traffic to pass, then continued down Main Street. “What does it say?”

“Hoby said he was sorry, and that he'd had time to think about it, and he wanted to talk things over.”

Hector's face wadded like a crumpled piece of aluminum foil, but still he didn't seem to have the nugget he was looking for. “That all?”

“He said he would be home soon, and that he'd make it up to me.”

“Did he mention Neil Blaylock?”

I huffed. “Of course he did. How could he not?”

Hector's eyes widened in exasperation. “Well, what did he say about him?”

“He called him a few creative names and said he had a thing or two he wanted to say to him.”

“Is that all?”

“Basically, but the letter is a full two pages.”

“Do you have the envelope with the postmark?”

I shrugged. “I'm a bit of a hoarder.”

“Thank God for that.”

He turned onto my street, and I realized he wanted the letter immediately.

“So is that the nugget you needed?” I asked.

“That's the nugget we both needed.”

He pulled to a stop at the curb, but before I went in the house for the letter, I turned to look at him straight on, now that he couldn't avoid me. “There's something more, isn't there?”

He slid the car into park and reached for his hat. “What do you mean?”

“I've known you since kindergarten, Hector. I was there when Mrs. Sanchez asked you if any of the other boys were naughty when she was out of the room, and you said
I don't think so, ma'am
.”

Hector shifted. “I don't see where you're headed.”

“You had the same look on your face back then. You didn't mention to her that three of your friends stuck gum under their desks. There was more to it, just like there's more that you're not telling me right now.”

“Aw, Lynda, come on, now. Can't we just get the letter and be done here?”

I crossed my arms.

“You are so—” The sigh that crossed his lips sounded hollow and exhausted, and I almost felt sorry for pushing him. But not quite. “All right. I didn't want to be the one to tell you. Then again I didn't want to be the one to handle this case at all.”

I bit my lip. “Thank you for that, Hector. I do appreciate it.”

He squinted at two joggers, waiting till they had passed. “When they found the rest of the skeleton?” His gaze cut to me, then away again. “There was a bullet in the skull.”