The Last Death of Jack Harbin (9 page)

Lurleen seems not to have heard him. I move past her and take the boy by the hand. “Let's go see what we can do about this,” I say.

He trots along inside with me. The interior of the trailer is as messy as three kids can make it. At the table sits a boy on the cusp of adolescence, long and skinny. He's pecking away at a computer, and scowls at me, being at the age where scowling is the only possible response. “Who are you?” he says.

I tell him. “Your mamma could use your help getting your brother and sister off to school.”

“This is Saturday. We don't have school,” the little one says, and busts out laughing.

“Don't be a goof,” his big brother says.

I ask the little one his name. “Carlton. I'm six. And he's Will. He's twelve.” The older boy glares at his brother as if he's just divulged a closely guarded secret.

“How old is Glory?”

“She's eight. Mamma says she's mean as a snake.”

It's hard to keep my mouth from twitching in a smile, which provokes an answering grin in the older boy. “Carlton, you're never going to be much of a poker player,” he says.

“Well, Carlton, I know you'd like it to be Saturday, but it's not. It's Wednesday. So let's see if we can't get Glory to give up the bathroom.”

“What happened to your leg?” he says, pointing at my cane.

“Carlton, that is none of your nosy business,” his brother says.

I tell him I don't mind being asked, and I tell Carlton about the cow knocking me down and stepping on it. He's pleased with the story and looks at me with admiration.

“Carlton, why aren't you dressed?” a prissy little voice says. I turn and see a pint-sized version of Lurleen, but bossy, with her hands on her hips and a smirk on her face.

“You wouldn't let me in the bathroom,” the little one says with a hitch in his voice.

“Well now she's out, so scoot,” I say.

“But . . .” He's ready to declare war.

“Go, go, go. This is your chance,” I say.

“Who are you, and where's my mamma?” Glory says.

“You two,” I say, including Will in my glance, “Your mamma has had some bad news, and maybe needs you to cut her a little slack.”

Will stands up. He's taller than I would have thought. “What kind of bad news?”

“She'll tell you about it in her own good time.”

On the way home I stop by Loretta's. I've just reached her steps when another flash of lightning hits, and the rain turns on like a faucet. Loretta flings open the door. “I saw you drive up. Get on in here before you drown.”

She gives me a towel to dry off as best I can.

“Come on into the kitchen. What brings you out here so early?”

The news about Jack shakes her up. She's got a son who's not much older. “I swear I never heard of such a terrible thing. What is this world coming to?”

I don't have an answer for her on that one.

“You had any breakfast?” Her solution for most things is to ply people with food.

“Just coffee.”

She cracks a couple of eggs into a pan, warms up some coffee cake in her little toaster oven and opens a jar of peach jam. When she sets the plate down in front of me, she sits down to watch me eat and asks about the particulars of Jack's death. I tell her as much as I think she can stomach.

“We could all be murdered in our beds.” She echoes what every woman of a certain age in Jarrett Creek will say. It's more a comment about the uncertainty of life than about really being afraid she'll be murdered.

“I suspect this isn't a random killing,” I say.

“You mean somebody had it in for Jack? What kind of threat could he be, all lame like he is, not to mention with his eyesight gone?”

“You've asked the right question. Either he was a threat or somebody was after revenge.”

“Or his money. I understand he had a good bit put away. That brother of his . . .” Her voice trails away. Loretta doesn't think people are evil—just misguided.

“Let's not go off speculating. That's the job of the police.”

“If Rodell has it in him to investigate properly,” she mutters darkly.

I finish up my breakfast and carry my plate to the sink.

“Leave that,” she says.

I obey, knowing how particular she is about the way chores get done in her kitchen. I pour myself another cup of coffee and sit back down.

“I guess it's up to Curtis and Marybeth to see to the house,” she says.

“I was just waiting for a decent hour this morning to call Curtis, and then I'll drive over to College Station and break the news to Marybeth.”

“Yes. You can't leave it to Rodell. Or his deputies.” She purses her lips.

When the rain lets up, I head back to Jack's place. It's harder to locate Curtis than I expected. The phone number on the list in the Harbin kitchen has been disconnected. Information tells me his number is now unlisted. If I were still with the police department, I could demand the number, but the bored little operator isn't interested that Curtis's brother has died. I dig around in a kitchen drawer that holds pieces of paper with various scribbles on them, and finally come across one with a number for “The True Marcus Ministry.”

A man answer brusquely, “Marcus Ministry.”

“I'm looking for Curtis Harbin.”

“He's in Dallas.”

“Who am I speaking with?”

“This is Brother Kittredge. And who might you be?” He has a belligerent tone that aggravates me, but I need to stay cool since I need him to cooperate.

I tell him my name. “I'm wondering if there's any way I can reach him.”

“He's at a gun show.”

I wait for more, since this doesn't tell me how I can get in touch with Curtis, but silence prevails. “Well, there's a problem. His brother has died, and I need to get in touch with him right away.”

“Uh-huh.” He pauses. “You're talking about his blood brother, not a church brother.”

“That's right. Do you know where Curtis is staying?”

“Hold on a minute.”

After a long while he comes back and tells me if I'll leave my number, they'll contact Curtis and have him get back to me.

I stand at the sliding glass door and watch the rain slash down. I'm thinking it could take a while for Curtis to call back, and I should have left my home number, so I could have waited at my own house. But it isn't ten minutes before Curtis calls.

“What's going on? Did I hear this right? Is Jack dead?”

“I'm sorry, Curtis. Somebody killed him.”

“What do you mean killed him?” He sounds more annoyed than upset.

“He was stabbed to death in his bed.” I normally wouldn't be so blunt, but Curtis and his church brother have rubbed me the wrong way.

“Do they know who did it?”

“Whoever it was didn't leave a calling card.”

He sighs. “I guess I'll have to come back down there.”

“There's no hurry,” I say. “They'll have to get a medical examiner from Houston to do an autopsy, and it may be a few days before they will release Jack's body.”

“No, there can't be an autopsy. My church doesn't believe in desecrating a body.”

“That's between you and the police.” I don't see that it matters much. It's pretty clear what killed Jack. But Curtis won't have any say in the matter, regardless.

“I'll be there as soon as I can. Has anybody called Mother?”

“I'm going over there to tell her in person.”

“I don't envy you that. Jack was her favorite. She'll probably go nuts.”

After this unsettling conversation, I'm at loose ends. Where the hell is Rodell? Is he going to investigate Jack's murder, or just hope whoever did it strolls into the station and confesses?

I don't have long to wonder because just then Rodell stomps into the kitchen looking like hell. His eyes are bloodshot and that's just for starters. Despite his long affair with the bottle, he's usually pretty particular about the way he dresses, but today he looks like he slept in his clothes—in a barn. And there's dried blood on the side of his face.

I step up closer and peer at the blood. He's got a nasty cut. “Rodell, what the hell happened to you? Looks like you might need stitches.”

“When did you get your medical license? And what are you doing at a crime scene?” A wave of stale alcohol fumes pours out of him. His ire brings on a coughing fit so hard he doubles over.

“Get over here and sit down.” I lead him over to a kitchen chair and he sprawls into it, almost falling off.

He moans and buries his face in his hands. “I'm a sick man,” he says hoarsely.

“You're a drunk man.” But in Rodell's case, both are true. A few months back Doc Taggart told Rodell if he didn't stop drinking he was going to do major damage to his liver. And for a while Rodell slowed down considerably. But he's an alcoholic. Slowing down isn't good enough, and stopping doesn't seem to be an option. “Where's James Harley?” I ask.

“I don't know.” Rodell moans again. Suddenly he lurches up and staggers over to the sink and starts retching. The sight and sound of it calls up memories of my father, who had a long and unsatisfactory relationship with alcohol. That's probably why I don't have much patience with Rodell.

I get Rodell to sit back down and then call down to the station, but there's no answer. Some police department. I call James Harley's place and get an earful from his wife about the nerve I have disturbing a man who has just come off duty. But she tells me that Bill Odum is the deputy on duty today. Eventually I reach him down at the café and tell him to come get Rodell, that he's not fit for duty.

I'm about ready to leave to go tell Marybeth about Jack's death when I stop in my tracks at the front door. A plan has popped into my head. Since Taylor visited me last week, I've been thinking about her worries over her sister. Suddenly I see an opportunity has opened up to help Taylor find out what's going on at True Marcus Ministries.

I call Taylor's mamma for Taylor's phone number. I don't tell her mamma about Jack, because if I get her started, I'll never get off the phone. She'll hear the information through the grapevine soon enough.

Taylor isn't home, but she answers her cell phone. I hear people talking in the background. She says she's at a spa outside of Dallas.

When I tell her about Jack, she starts to cry and says she'll call me back in a few minutes. When she gets back to me, I tell her as much as I think she needs to hear, and she cries off and on.

“Listen, this may not be the best time, but I've been thinking about your sister.” I tell her my plan.

She's quiet for several seconds. “You're right. This would be a good time. I can arrange to get away. I'll call you back.”

“I'm on my way to give Marybeth the news about Jack.”

“I'm sure she'll get some good drama out of it,” she says bitterly. “That woman is a piece of work. Always was.”

“Now Taylor, not everybody has as much strength as you.”

I arrive at Marybeth's apartment at five o'clock, thinking Marybeth probably gets off work sometime after four. I'm surprised when she comes to the door in her bathrobe. She blinks nervously. Her movements are jerky, as if she's perpetually startled.

“Samuel, what a nice surprise. I'm afraid I'm not dressed for company.” She clutches the robe closed. “I wasn't feeling good, so I took the day off.”

“I'm sorry to disturb you.”

“It's okay. I can't seem to get myself back on track since Bob died.”

And I'm about to throw her even farther off the track. “I need to talk to you Marybeth.”

Even though I try to put a warning in my voice, she doesn't catch it. She swings the door wide. “Come on in. I'll just go put some clothes on.” She flits away before I can stop her.

I've been in her apartment before. It's the tiniest place I've ever seen, one small room that's a combined living room, kitchen and dining area, and an even smaller, closet-size bedroom. There's one window that looks out onto the parking lot. It's in a building where a lot of students live, close to the Texas A&M University campus. Marybeth works there as a secretary in the research park.

I get over to Bryan–College Station often, usually to consult somebody at the vet school about one of my cows. So I take Marybeth to lunch or dinner every couple of months. It's barely an hour's drive.

My wife, Jeanne, and Marybeth were not particularly good friends, but Jeanne felt bad about whatever demons drove Marybeth to leave her husband and son. Jeanne thought people should make the effort to be kind to her.

While Marybeth gets dressed, I wander around her front room, longing for a cup of coffee. But I remember that she doesn't drink it, so I'm out of luck. She has lived here for many years, but she could easily move out tomorrow without any fuss. She's not an accumulator. The furniture is strictly utilitarian: a glass-top table with two iron chairs near the kitchen, a boxy sofa, and two matching armchairs facing the world's smallest TV. I wonder what drives Marybeth to take up as little room as possible in the world.

She has a small bookcase that holds stacks of old
People
magazines and a few romance novels. A vase with some pale plastic flowers sits on top of the bookcase. She has a few pictures on the walls; the kind you can purchase at Walmart—unfocused pictures of Paris and some generic landscapes.

Finally she emerges from her bedroom, wearing a dress that hangs shapeless on her tiny frame. Her hair, a quiet brown streaked with gray, is pushed back with a hair band. “What can I get you?” she says, skittering to the kitchen area. “I'm just going to have a cup of tea.”

“Marybeth, come on over here and sit down.”

“Just a cup of tea. I'll just . . .” She looks over at me, and my solemn face. “Okay, I'll get it later.”

I sit down on one of the armchairs and she perches on the arm of the sofa, like a sparrow. Her smile twitches on and off. I wonder, not for the first time, if she takes some kind of medication.

I tell her about Jack, and for a few minutes I'm not sure she's taking it in. She nods vigorously, chewing on the side of her mouth like a school child struggling with a perplexing math problem. People react in different ways to news of a death, but Marybeth doesn't seem to understand my words. Her eyes flit from me to the TV and back. Finally she jumps up and paces around the room, hugging herself. “Thank you for coming all this way to tell me.” She stops in the kitchen long enough to set the kettle on to boil, then starts moving again. “Does Curtis know?”

“I reached him in Dallas. He said he'll be at the house sometime tomorrow.”

“Curtis hates Jackie,” she says, in an off-hand way, as if talking to herself. She takes shuddering breaths.

“I doubt that.”

“Oh, he does. He hates me, too. He's not a very nice man.” Suddenly she stops in front of me. She has peculiar look on her face. Defiant? That's a first. “And you know what? I never liked Curtis. That's a horrible thing for a mother to say, but from the minute he came out, I didn't like him.”

I'm jolted by a flash of anger at Marybeth. I think about how my brother, Horace, could never do anything right in our mamma's eyes. She had no patience for boys or men in general. But she singled out Horace for her wrath. Horace and my daddy took to the bottle to soothe the hurts she inflicted. Being the younger son, I was cushioned a bit.

Maybe Marybeth did the right thing by leaving Bob and Jack. Maybe my brother and I and our daddy might have been better off if my mother had realized that she wasn't suited to the job and left.

“Listen, you don't need to open those old wounds.”

It's like she didn't hear me. “Jack made me feel the opposite. The second he was born, I said, ‘He's mine.' That's why I had to leave after he was hurt in that war. My heart just plain cracked in two every time I looked at him.” She paces back to the window. “It was selfish, I know that. But better than me there crying all day, every day. And I knew Bob could handle it. He was like a mule. You put him in a harness and he just plodded along getting the job done. Me? I'm . . .” She stands wringing her hands. “Oh Samuel, how could someone have hurt my sweet boy?”

I feel trapped in her tiny place. “Let's go get something to eat.” I walk over and turn off the kettle.

“Eat?” As if it's a foreign concept. “Yes, that would be okay.”

We go to a cafe and I order a hamburger. Sitting there with Marybeth is a hard slog, with her picking at a salad and starting sentences she doesn't finish. But what little food she gets inside her brings some color back to her face, and she sits a little quieter.

“Marybeth, somebody needs to go over to the house and figure out what to do with Jack's and Bob's things, find out if there's a will, and make funeral arrangements.”

She puts her fork down and shrinks back in her seat. “Curtis will do all that.”

“Isn't there anything you'd like to have from the house? Photos? Anything?”

She chews her lip. “There might be pictures of Jackie, from before. I might like those.”

“If you want, I can take you over there. The house probably belongs to you now.”

She puts a hand to her mouth and starts to shake. “I think I have to go back to my apartment.”

When we get to her apartment, she goes into the bathroom and I hear pills rattle from a plastic container and water running. When she comes out, she sinks onto the sofa and stares at the wall. Eventually she rouses herself. “I want to ask you something. Do you think Curtis could have killed Jack?”

That's exactly what I think, but I don't need to go into it with her. “Marybeth, what would make you say such a thing?”

She moves forward to the edge of the sofa. “Curtis was always out for what he could get. He never had any interest in other people.”

“I don't know what he'd get out of it. Seems like you're the one who would inherit the house and anything Jack left.”

Marybeth shakes her head. “I signed over the house to Bob when I left. I told him I didn't want anything. If he left a will, I expect he left everything to the boys. Which means with Jack dead, Curtis will get it all.”

“Do you know if Bob left a will?

She shakes her head. “After the funeral, I got out of there.”

“Did you talk to Jack?”

Her lips are trembling, and there's such longing on her face that I can't look at her. “I didn't know what to say to him. What do you say when you've abandoned your son? If I'd been a good person, I'd have told him that I'd come back home and take over where Bob left off.”

“Marybeth, I'm sure he didn't expect that of you. He knows you've struggled.” Would things have been better if she had stayed in Jarrett Creek? I expect Bob would have ended up with two people to take care of.

“Still, I should have told him I'd try.”

I wish like anything that Jeanne were with me. She'd know what to say. All I can think of is practical details. “You and Bob never got a divorce, am I right?”

“I never thought about it, and I guess Bob didn't either.”

I'm wondering if Bob left a will. Not that it is any of my business, but things get talked about in a small town, and Loretta surely would have told me if she'd heard.

“I know a lawyer you can talk to about legal matters.”

“Oh, legal matters.” She waves a hand. “I'm not going to fight with Curtis.”

“Still, it would be good for you to talk to my friend Jenny Sandstone. Besides being a good lawyer, she has a lot of sense. There may be things you have to do legally, even if you want to turn everything over to Curtis. Jenny can help you with that.” I write down Jenny's phone number and lay it on the coffee table. Then I stand up.

“Marybeth, do you have a friend who could come over here and spend some time with you?”

She shakes her head. “I don't want anybody around right now.” She looks up at me. “Oh, Samuel, you don't need to worry about me. I don't have the courage to kill myself. If I did, I would have done it a long time ago.”

I pat her shoulder. “Listen, don't dwell on Curtis. I'll grant you, he's a different kind of person, but there's no reason to think he killed Jack. You should leave all that to the authorities.” Even as I say it, I'm damned sure if it were my son who had been murdered I wouldn't leave it to Rodell to investigate.

“If Curtis killed Jack, they'll never figure it out anyway. He's smooth.” She pushes herself off the sofa gingerly, like she's afraid she'll break if she moves too fast. “I guess you're right. Maybe I should go over and take a look at the house. Even though everybody will think I'm a vulture.”

“Marybeth, it doesn't matter what anybody thinks. It's nobody's business but yours.”

Marybeth says she'll drive over tomorrow. “You think Curtis is going to be there?”

“I don't know.” I'm hoping he'll show up in Jarrett Creek tomorrow, but for my own reasons.