Stillborn Armadillos (John Lee Quarrels Book 1) (22 page)

"Man, you're like one of those pit bull dogs. When you get hold of something you just got to shake it to death, don't you?"

"I guess so."

"So what about those old bones? Have you learned something new?"

"I was talking to Mister Donald yesterday..."

"The janitor from the school?"

"Yeah."

"He's still alive? I would've thought he died years ago."

"No, he's probably going to outlive all of us," John Lee said. "He still goes down there on Copperhead Creek and fishes off the bridge almost every evening."

"Well I'll be damned. I guess there's somethin' to be said for a life of hard work."

"I guess so."

"Hey, do you remember when he caught us smokin' in the bathroom when we were freshmen?"

"I've tried real hard to forget that," John Lee said.

Troy laughed and slapped his desk at the memory. "We had what, most of a pack of Camels I filched from my grandpa's desk? And Mister Donald told us we had two choices. We could smoke 'em up right then and there, or else he'd take us to the principal. Mr. Stanislaw, god, he was a prick, wasn't he? Neither one of us wanted to get our asses paddled with that big old paddle he used with the holes drilled in it. And we knew once he'd done that he'd still tell our parents and there'd be hell to pay when we got home, too. So Mister Donald stood right there and made us smoke those cigarettes one after another. Time we were done we were both puking our guts out!"

"You know, I haven't smoked a cigarette since then," John Lee said.

"Me, neither," Troy said, laughing out loud. "For the first year after that every time I saw Grandpa light up a cigarette I had to swallow hard to keep from losing my cookies right there!"

"Lessons learned."

"That old man was a better educator than some teachers we had. Do you remember Mr. Driscoll? Taught science. We called him Dry Driscoll 'cause his voice was a monotone and never changed, and he lectured on and on until most of us were fallin' asleep."

"Yeah. Those were the days."

"So what did Mister Donald have to say about those old bones you found?"

"He said back in the days of the turpentine camps, those workers weren't much more than slaves, Troy. I guess they were kinda' like coal miners working for the company store. All they did was work themselves to death and get deeper and deeper into debt."

"Well I don't know about all that, John Lee. That's one man's opinion, maybe."

"No, I've been doing some studying on it, and that's pretty much the way it was back then."

Troy frowned, obviously uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was going.

"What's your point, John Lee?"

"I read about these guys, they called them woods riders, they were sort of like the guards, and every camp had a captain who was in charge. I guess it could be pretty damn brutal, Troy."

"Don't believe everything you read. Who knows what kind of agenda whoever wrote that had?"

"No, it really happened. Mister Donald told me about how every once in a while somebody would escape from one of the camps and come by where he lived, and a posse would be right on their heels. I guess they weren't none too nice about trying to get the black folks around there to tell them what they knew if they were on somebody's trail. He said he saw some pretty terrible things back then."  

"Whatever. That was a long time ago, we can't change the past."

"No, I guess we can't."

"Look, John Lee, I hate to cut this short, but I've got to get back to work. We had a whole load of plywood that was supposed to ship out this morning and something got screwed up in the production schedule. I need to get down there and make sure they get things back on track."

"Oh, sorry. I'll let you go, then."

Troy stood up and ushered him out of his office, saying, "Give me a call the next time you want to come by, I'll make sure to clear some time in my schedule for you, okay?"

"I'll do that," John Lee promised, but Troy was already ignoring him.

"Charlotte, come in my office We need to talk."

***

"I don't know why you're surprised by that," Maddy said. "The Somertons always did look down on the rest of us. You can't tell me this is the first time you got the cold shoulder from any of that bunch. I know better."

"It just strikes me as funny," John Lee said. "The last couple of times I was there Troy was talking about how we needed to get out and go fishing, and stop by anytime, and all that. Today he kept trying to steer the subject away from those turpentine camps, then blew me off and couldn't wait to get rid of me. He even made it a point to tell me to call the next time I came by so he could make time to see me."

"Maybe he didn't like talking about his family's dirty laundry. The Somertons are about the closest things we've got to robber barons in this county. They prefer to sit out there in that big fancy compound of theirs and forget about all the little people who blead sweat and tears to pay for all that."

He had not told her about walking in on Troy and Jolene, but did say he hoped Charlotte Thompson wouldn't be in trouble for him opening Troy's door unannounced.

"That woman," Bob Patterson said, with a look on his face like he had just stepped in something nasty. "I had to pull her out of Gator's Pub the other night when she got in an argument with Melinda Bridges. I don't know what started it, probably both of them wanting the same guy. At any rate, Charlotte threw her drink in Melinda's face and the two of them went at it. I got her outside and told her she needed to take a sobriety test before I'd let her in her car. She called me every filthy name in the book. I was sure she was at least twice over the legal limit, but she wasn't anywhere close to it. So it wasn't the booze making her be such a bitch, it's just who she is."

"At any rate, if you expect the Somertons to ever acknowledge anything bad about the family line, you're in for a big disappointment," Maddy told him. "Maybe money can't buy happiness, but in some cases it can make you oblivious to the rest of the world."

Chapter 43

John Lee spent the next morning on a computer at the sheriff's office, searching for any missing persons cases from Somerton County dating back fifty years, but there was nothing. Frustrated, he finally gave up and decided to walk across the street to the Subway sandwich shop for lunch.

The place was crowded with workers from the downtown stores and offices on their lunch breaks but he managed to find a small table in the rear corner. He was halfway through his Italian beef sandwich when a young man approached his table. John Lee couldn't think of his name but he remembered seeing him around the courthouse from time to time.

"Are you Deputy Quarrels? John Lee Quarrels?"

"That's me. I'm sorry, I know your face but I don't think I know your name."

"Perry McIntyre." He handed John Lee a stack of papers and said, "You've been served."

"Huh?"

"Have a good day, Deputy."

***

"Yeah, you're not the only one," D.W. told him in his office five minutes later. "She's suin' you, and me, and Patterson here, and the sheriff's office itself for emotional stress, assault and battery, false arrest, and unlawful imprisonment."

"See? That right there's what I was talkin' about! You let that woman off easy and she turned around and she's suing us for everythin' under the sun. There's your thanks, John Lee. You go to bat for her with the judge and she sticks it in your ass in return."

"I guess no good deed goes unpunished, Fig."

"Stop calling me that! My name is Flag."

"Yeah, and just like a flag, your lips flap all the time in the breeze. I did what I thought was right."

"Ain't nobody pay'in you to think, boy."

"Drop it. What are we going to do about this?"

"I've got a call in to the county supervisors," D.W. said., "This is gonna be a PR nightmare, I can tell you that right now."

"That's what you're worried about, D.W.? How it's goin' to look? Jesus Christ man, why don't you start bein' a real sheriff instead of kowtowing to whatever some damn reporter thinks? I'll tell you right now, if I was sittin' behind that desk..."

"Well you ain't, so shut the hell up! If you don't have anythin' useful to say, get outta' here."

The phone on D.W.'s desk buzzed and he picked up the receiver. "Yeah? Okay, put him on."

He punched the button for the speakerphone and the voice of Melvin Depew, the county attorney, came on the line.

"Sheriff, how are you this afternoon?"

"I was doin' fine until all this nonsense started, Mel."

"Don't sweat it," the attorney said. "This isn't anything more than a nuisance suit. People pull this crap all the time, you know that. At least once a month somebody one of your deputies arrested is threatening to sue us for something."

"Just ticks me off that we gave this woman a break," D.W. said. "She should'a done hard time."

"Well, hindsight is always 20/20. Here's what I want you to do. Have all your deputies file a full report on the incident with this Lorraine Matthews. Along with your dispatcher and anybody else who was there who witnessed it. I talked to Janet Opperman, the prosecutor who was in court with her, and she gave me a rundown on how the woman acted at her first arraignment hearing. I've got a call in to Judge Taylor, too, but he hasn't gotten back to me yet. But it's clear this woman's got some mental issues to go along with a piss poor attitude."

"What about where it says here that she wants Deputies Quarrels and Patterson relieved of duty until the outcome of the trial?"

"What she wants and what she gets are two very different things," Depew said. "You guys just continue on, business as usual. One thing I would say is, if you get any calls involving her, or her husband or her kid, you have somebody else handle them. I don't want those deputies interacting in any way with anybody from that family."

"Mel, John Lee Quarrels here."

"How you doing, John Lee Quarrels?"

"I'm like D.W., I was doing better before all this started, I'll tell you that. Listen, D.W. told those boys they could do some community service instead of us pressing charges against them for that stunt they pulled with the firecrackers. I've got them over at the newspaper office going through stacks of old papers, looking for anything that might relate to those skeletons we found out there on Turpentine Highway. Is that going to be a problem?"

"I think it's best if you have no contact with Herbie Matthews. I'll have somebody from this office call his parents and tell them to go pick him up."

"Okay."

"Again, John Lee, D.W., don't get yourself all worked up over this. These things happen. I've already talked to several of the county supervisors, we're all on the same page here."

"I guess we shouldn't worry too much," Bob Patterson said when the call ended. "But I gotta tell you, now I wish I'd given her a longer blast of that pepper spray!"

***

"Seriously, Mama Nell? Do we have to do this? The man's been dead for almost forty years."

"Don't you sass me John Lee! Jesus has been dead for almost 2,000 years, but I don't see anybody trying to do away with Easter."

His grandmother was wearing a black dress with a veil and had insisted that John Lee and Paw Paw wear suits to dinner. A large velvet portrait of Elvis sat on a side table with candles burning on both sides of it.

"If your  Mama Nell wants to honor Elvis's death every year, that's what we're going to do," his grandfather said.

"I don't think it's too much to ask for the man who gave the world so much," Mama Nell said as she scooped salad out of a bowl with two wooden spoons and put them on his plate.

"Are we talking about Jesus or Elvis now?"

She rapped him across the knuckles with one of the spoons.

"Oww!"

"Show some respect, boy. This means a lot to your Mama Nell."

John Lee rubbed his knuckles but nodded. "Yes, sir. Sorry, Mama Nell."

"I can still remember it like it was yesterday," Mama Nell said. "I was at the Piggly Wiggly gettin' hot dogs 'cause we was goin' to have a cookout, and when I get up to the checkout counter Mary Lou Douglas was just cryin' her eyes out. Lord, I thought maybe she just got word that her daddy had passed on or somethin' like that. But it was worse. A whole lot worse! She told me that Mr. Elvis Presley had died. I'll tell you, I didn't believe her. I just stood there with my mouth hangin' open in shock. I don't remember driving home. I just remember bein' back here and sittin' down in front of the TV and watchin' the news bulletins about it. It wasn't like today when you got all those different news channels on all day and all night long, so I had to keep flippin' through the channels. I felt like a part of me had died with him."

John Lee had never understood his grandmother's obsession with the singer, but it had always been a part of his life, a force as strong as the tides or the hurricanes and tornadoes that sometimes battered their way through the county. In Mama Nell's eyes, Elvis Presley
was
a force of nature more than a mortal man. He guessed as obsessions went, it was relatively harmless. Sure, she had spent a fortune on her collection of Elvis memorabilia, everything from a life size Elvis mannequin that stood in the bedroom she shared with Paw Paw (he quickly pushed that image out of his mind, he didn't even like Magic watching him when he was in bed with a woman), to Elvis dolls, posters, and everything else. But his grandparents didn't seem to be lacking the money to live comfortably in their retirement, so what the hell? He darn sure didn't need or want to inherit anything from them. Especially all of the Elvis stuff!

So as they did every year on August 16th, they had their annual Elvis Presley Memorial Dinner. The menu never varied - fried chicken, cornbread, mashed potatoes, homemade country gravy, sauerkraut, and biscuits. Mama Nell had learned one time that those were some of the King's favorite foods, and it seemed to her only fitting and proper that that's what they dined on on the anniversary of his death.

Later, as
Blue Suede Shoes
played in the background, Paw Paw asked him about the investigation into the origin of the skeletons. John Lee told him more of what he had learned about the turpentine camps, and the Somerton family's involvement in that dark period in local history.

"What are you hoping to get out of this, John Lee? Whoever killed those men has probably been dead forever."

"I know, Paw Paw. You're not the first to tell me that. But I just want to know, and D.W. wants to say we closed the case."

His grandfather shook his head with a mirthless smile. "The only thing D.W. Swindle cares about is keeping the voters happy and getting reelected."

"I won't disagree with that," John Lee said. "But what's the alternative? Fig Newton?"

"Oh, hell no! That man is a walking example of everything ugly. Did I tell you he stopped me on my bicycle the other day?"

"On your bike? No. What happened?"

"I was riding down the road and he came up close behind me and gave me a blast on his siren. I never heard him and it just about scared the crap out of me! I stopped and he got out and come swaggering up to me wearing those mirrored sunglasses of his like one of the guards from that old movie
Cool Hand Luke
and chewed me out for obstructing traffic. Said he could confiscate my bike and lock me up."

"Was there any traffic?"

"No! Only vehicle I'd seen in twenty minutes was Gus Sanders in the mail truck."

"I've got a feeling this was more about me than it was about you, Paw Paw. Fig and I have been butting heads lately. I'm sorry if you're getting dragged into the middle of it."

"Don't worry about it, that blowhard doesn't worry me any. I was just mentioning it."

"I'll have a talk with him."

"No, don't do that," Paw Paw said shaking his head. "It'd probably only make matters worse."

John Lee didn't press the issue, but he made up his mind that he was going to let Flag know that he had stepped over the line when he took their personal issues outside of the courthouse and to his family.

Before he could say anymore, Mama Nell came in with a large cake adorned with 42 candles, representing Elvis Presley's age when he died. He resisted the urge to ask her if it was a death cake instead of a birthday cake, because his knuckles were still smarting from getting smacked earlier. So he just closed his eyes while Mama Nell offered a prayer up to Elvis, and ate his cake without comment.