Keeping Secrets (54 page)

“Where are we—how far from the street? Oh, this confounded town. You can get lost going around the block.”

“You just have to understand how it's laid out,” he said calmly. “We're on Santa Rosa, not too far from the—uh—red-light district.”

“Oh!” I laughed.

Within a few more minutes we were on Pecan, looking for 602. When I saw it I yelped and started to jump out of the truck. Keith's arm was on mine. “Where do you think you're going?”

“This fellow I know has promised to lend me his car. I'll be all right.”

“You're crazy. Wherever you need to go, I'll take you.”

“Oh, Keith, you can't.”

“Yes I can.”

“All right. But let's switch to that car. Tetzel may recognize this truck by now, but he won't know the car. Park in an alley or something.”

“Tetzel—your boss? What's going on? Did he try to—”

“Oh Keith, you don't know anything. Come on.”

When we got into Edwin's old Ford, the thing almost wouldn't start at all, and when it did, it sputtered and jerked, almost leaped forward, then died. I was nearly frantic. “Can't you drive? I can do better than that myself,” I said, then quickly added, “I'm sorry. What's the matter?”

“This automobile hasn't been taken care of,” he said. “It needs—”

“I don't care what it needs. Will it get us to Mill Springs?”

His eyes widened. “Mill Springs? Camille, that's in East Texas. Are you serious?”

“We have to go there—it's the only chance I've got to prove I didn't kill Cabot, and I can't go to the police about anything else until I can prove that.” Since he looked totally perplexed, I added, “I'll explain later.”

“Mill Springs,” he repeated, already thinking ahead. “I think it's this side of Lufkin—must be around two hundred and fifty miles northeast. It'll take us all night, maybe longer in this heap. How much money do you have? We'll need gas before we get there.”

“I don't even have my handbag.”

He dug into his pocket. “I've got a couple of bucks. All right.”

We never saw Tetzel again—I don't know how long he drove around San Antonio trying to track us down—we drove all night and into the morning, over roads that weren't fit for cows, part of the time across fields because we got lost. We had a total of eight flat tires along the way. Thankfully Edwin did at least have provisions for such emergencies. The car chugged and generally grumbled all the way there, and when we arrived at the edge of the little town, we had been on the road sixteen hours. Smoke was coming out of the radiator like dust in the wake of wild horses.

I'd had to tell Keith about the BNA and about the strange trio of the Cabots and Nathan Hope, and exactly what we would be looking for when we arrived in Mill Springs, not to mention the sparse amount of information that I had to go on. At the mention of Electra's name, Keith at once said, “Dad connected her with the man they found in the river as soon as I told him about it this morning. I never met her but I saw her a few times in the store. Boy, she was one fine-looking woman.”

There was something that had nagged at me since the evening I last spoke with Nathan, and I remarked on it to Keith, having shoved it to the back of my mind earlier because of all the other events going on at the same time.

“I just don't believe in coincidences … maybe because I've been spying too long. But it strikes me a little odd that Cabot just happened to be on that hill overlooking the house when Nathan killed those people.”

“Why? It's plausible.”

“I know … but somehow I just can't quite believe it.”

“From everything you've told me Cabot was a smart, crafty opportunist. He wouldn't have missed the chance to get someone like Nathan in bondage.”

“That's true … bondage is a good word. A century ago he would have made an excellent lord of the manor. No threats of prohibition or taxes or other tiresome little laws to get in his way. I suppose you're probably right about the coincidence.”

“I'll tell you what bothers me more.… What happened to Mrs. Cabot?”

30

Mill Springs was a town that had withered and died in the shadow of nearby Lufkin, which had grown and flourished by comparison and absorbed most of Mill Springs' industry and residents along with it. That was the gist of the dissertation—far more lengthy than necessary—given us by the old man who ran the gas station on the main, and perhaps only, real street through the town. He didn't recognize either of the two names I connected with the town—Hope or Arnesty—having lived there only for the past five years. He and Keith discussed the various problems of Edwin's automobile, now shuddering in place as though it were exhausted and short of breath. All four tires were flat and had to be pumped up.

I walked past the dirt-encrusted gas-pump dome, down the street to a cafe, never pausing to consider how I must have looked without hat or handbag, Keith's suit coat wrapped around my shoulders to keep me from freezing.

The waitress in the cafe, pouring coffee for an old man seated at the counter, did not miss an inch of my appearance, head to toe, however. The smell of bacon and eggs turned my stomach over with hunger, but there was no need in admitting this when I had no money to buy breakfast or even a cup of coffee.

I asked if she'd ever heard either of the names. She thought for a moment as she popped her chewing gum and forked the bacon over. Then she said, “I'd nearly forgot. Arnesty was the name of that feller who owned part of the mills for a time. That the one you're talking about?”

“Yes,” I answered eagerly. “Did he live in a house with a little hill behind it?”

She laughed. “Honey, there's lots of little hills around here. But if I remember right, he and his wife disappeared about thirteen years ago. Just took off. I don't know what they'd been doing, but there was an investigation by the marshal from Nacogdoches.

“He never found nothin' though, and finally they dropped the case. Course I was just a youngster then, and I don't remember much about it except what my folks said.”

“Do you know if the house is still there?”

“No, but it probably is. Ain't no reason why it shouldn't be.”

Then the man at the end of the counter, thus far occupied with his bacon and eggs and coffee, rose from the stool, flipped a coin onto the counter, and wiped his mouth. “That's the place up there on the ten-mile road.” He pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. Then he added, “Gotta big old dead tree in front, with ivy growing all through it.”

“Yes, yes,” I told him excitedly. Nathan had mentioned that tree. “Does anyone live there now?”

“I don't think so. Nobody's lived there all these years. Kinda gave people the creeps, after what happened.”

“Could you direct me to the ten-mile road?” I asked.

He walked to the window and pointed with his finger. “Go on up here to the end of this road about half a mile. There's a fork. Follow the left tong. Go about three, four miles down that road and it begins to curve off to the left. When you get to the cemetery, turn to your right and go about another mile and a half. You'll see the ten-mile road there. There ain't no sign or anything, but there's a rock pile, or was last time I was up that way. Used to be a chicken ranch on further up where I bought my eggs. Turn to your right on the ten-mile road and go on till you come to the house. It's the only one around.”

I wondered how he was able to sit quietly while the waitress unloaded her thimbleful of information, when he could have led me right to it. “Wait a minute. That's too much to remember. May I borrow a pencil and some paper?”

While the waitress was fiddling about for a piece of paper, I found out the reason for the old man's reticence. “You related to Sam Arnesty?” he asked.

“No.”

“Well he was a mean rascal. I worked under him as foreman up in the planing mill till he disappeared. If you want my opinion, the marshal dropped the case because everybody in town despised him.”

He lifted his arm again toward the bright morning sky. “This used to be a darned good town. As long as the mill was operating, everybody done just fine. Wasn't a night passed you didn't see that smoky blue haze rising above the main plant. Only twice in my life the mill closed down for a while because of bad drought, and the haze disappeared. Those were bad times. Yessir.

“But when Sam Arnesty came along he started to bleed the mill of money—that didn't come out till later, of course—some Oregon outfit come down here and bought it out and moved the equipment away. The buildings were left there to rot, till finally they caught fire and burned down. Probably some old hobo spent the night there and built a fire, they was always doin' that, and burned the place to the ground.

“It all started with Sam, though. When he disappeared, no one wanted too much investigating done, and they let the marshal know it.”

“I see … well I wasn't related to him,” I reassured him. The waitress was handing me a tablet. By the time I had the directions down, Keith was pulling up out front. “Oh, we'll have to have a shovel,” I told him.

“Yes, but if we buy one we'll have the whole town watching us, and besides that, we're nearly broke.”

“Maybe there's one around the place that we could use, or maybe we could steal one along the way.”

“Steal?”

“All right, borrow.”

Keith rolled his eyes. About halfway there we came across a farmhouse and barn that looked unoccupied. “Stay here, I'll check the barn,” I said. “Honk the horn if you see anyone.”

I was out of the car and halfway across the front yard before he could react. When I came back, shovel in hand, he was laughing in amazement. “Did you learn to work that quickly before or after you joined the BNA?”

“I haven't joined the BNA. I was impressed into service. Oh Lord, I just thought of Mother. I wonder if she's tried to reach me since the telegram was released to the papers. And your parents. They must be sick with worry.”

“I called them from the gas station and reversed the charges. They thought we'd eloped.”

“Oh, that's funny,” I said, and we both dissolved into laughter.

Then Keith said, “I told them we had.”

My mouth fell open.

“Well, what else could I tell them? You swore me to secrecy.”

We drove up in front of the dead tree around eleven-thirty. Just as Nathan had told me long ago, the tenacious ivy crept up its trunk and pushed out along its branches. Seeing it gave me a spooky feeling … something living taking sustenance off something dead. I felt the hair rise on my neck. In fact the whole place was a little eerie, though surely it would not have been except for the things I knew about it. The house itself was merely a shell of a structure that was probably fairly decent at one time. The wood had rotted and turned silvery brown from a long period of neglect. The features of the house that gave it lingering respectability were the finials on the pitched roof and the gingerbread trim around the front porch, now broken in places. I thought of Nathan's mother, in there sewing dresses for the ladies of the town.…

We left the car and walked up. From our first step on the porch stairs, the boards creaked beneath our feet. The front door squealed on its hinges. Inside there was no furniture left—who had taken it, I wondered?—the place had long since become a roosting place for wild birds and, from the smell of it, a place of shelter now and then for barnyard animals who'd wandered by. There was one large gaping hole in the roof where the sun shone down in the center of the kitchen like a heavenly ray of light. Keith suggested lightning might once have struck the roof. I thought of the two people, seated at the table one pleasant evening when, from the distance, came a shot.…

I turned around and looked at the wall across from the window. It was hard to tell whether there was stain from blood there, or simply shadows caused by the glancing sun.

Only after we had walked through and wound up in back, facing the small hill, did I realize what a tremendous job we had in front of us. It was one thing to dig up a grave underneath a house, and quite another to locate it after thirteen years. The house seemed all at once three or four times bigger. Keith looked underneath. “The ground's pretty uneven. I don't see how Nathan got a grave dug without breaking his back, but I'll tell you one thing. We won't have to worry about going down too deep.

“Now, let's see. He would have had to go under the house at a place where Cabot could keep his eye on him and if we can assume Cabot stayed on the hill, then Nathan would have to have gone under from this side, so the graves are probably in this vicinity.…”

I started to ask if he didn't think he ought to go on and become an engineer and forget flying, the way he busied himself calculating. He felt around the ground a bit and finally stood up, rubbed his hands together, and announced, “They must not have had any rain around here in sixty years. The earth is packed down like cement.”

“We'll take turns,” I said. “I can go first. I got you into this mess.”

He was rolling up his sleeves. “I'll give it a try. If I wear out, you can dig for a while.”

I did some snooping and found a rusty spade in the barn, then followed him under the house. There was around four feet of headroom. “Consarne it, we don't have any light. See if your friend left a lantern or anything in the car.”

We were in luck. As I carried the lantern back I thought to myself, Edwin may not have taken care of the car, but he apparently did remain prepared for quick trips, just as he indicated over the phone.

Back on my knees again, I realized for the first time I was sore from all the running since the morning before.… It seemed such a long time ago that I'd headed down King William, certain I was going to discover the dead body of Nathan Hope. We dug around to no avail until about two o'clock, then came up for air. We were both so tired we could hardly stand up. “Look, why don't we give up and rest a little,” said Keith. “My back's so tired I can hardly bend over anymore, and I know you must be exhausted. We don't need to hurry. No one's going to be looking for us, I don't imagine.” I thought of the young Nathan, exhausted from digging, frightened and perplexed by the figure on the horse, watching.…