An Unmarked Grave (14 page)

"That's what I figured"

"So? What's the big deal?"

"So, the big deal is that when Buck Ford-he's a localfound Justin, the dead man was still buckled in. There was
no injury to his face, only to the back of his head. And a tiny
mark on the forehead," I added.

Jack had been around me long enough to ask the next
question. "What about the autopsy?"

Shaking my head, I replied, "There wasn't one. The justice
of the peace here filled out the death certificate. He didn't see
a need for an autopsy. When the family got the body, they had
it cremated"

He leaned his shoulder against the door and stared at me.
He pursed his lips. "So are you thinking what I think you're
thinking?"

I chuckled. "I'm just a suspicious person, Jack. When
I first started in this business, my boss told me to mistrust
everyone. What he meant was, don't accept what you're told.
Instead, find out for yourself"

Jack shrugged. "Makes sense" He stiffened. "Hey, look
at that, would you?"

He was pointing to the UFO museum.

"That's where Justin Chester lived, in a room in the back.
We're going to see the owner now."

A frown knit his brow. "I wasn't paying a whole lot of
attention, but seems like I heard that old man back at the
store mention something about UFOs"

I nodded to the redbrick house on the crest of the hill.
"That's what we're going to find out"

Marvin Lewis was a wizened little man knocking on his
ninety-first birthday. He had a full head of white hair, and his
blue eyes twinkled as if they possessed a joke of their own.

When I introduced myself, the twinkle went out of his
eyes. He studied me suspiciously. "Was it you out here
prowling around last night?"

"What?" I stared at him, temporarily confused. "I'm
sorry, Mr. Lewis, but I don't know what you're talking about.
I've never been up here before except when I came with
Justin Chester to pick up his belongings"

He studied me closely, then grinned. He threw open the
door and invited us in. "Yeah. I remember you. I heard you
was about. Justin, he told me about you. Come on in, come
on in. It's cold out. Let's go back to the kitchen, where it's
warm"

The house was old. It smelled musty. Its walls held the
pictures and mementos of several generations. A body could
have spent days studying the history tacked and pasted on
the faded wallpaper.

As in all old homes, the kitchen was strictly utilitarian.
All four burners in the stove blazed, and, mixed with the rich
aroma of coffee, filled the room with satisfying warmth.
A thick coat of smoke and grease stained the cabinets and
walls. In the middle of the kitchen sat a chrome and yellow
Formica dinette set.

He gestured to the table while he headed for the cabinet
and the automatic coffeemaker. "How about some coffee?
Take the chill off."

"Sounds good," I replied for the two of us. "You had
some prowlers last night, you say?"

Speaking over his shoulder, he replied. "Yep. Around two or three this morning. By the time I got out there, they was
gone."

I explained why we were there. "The family wanted me
to come up and gather Justin's belongings."

After filling three cups, Lewis opened a cabinet and
pulled down a bottle of Jim Beam Black label bourbon and
splashed a dollop into one cup. He held the bottle out to us.
"I like to flavor my coffee."

Jack spoke up. "I like a lot of flavor."

Marvin laughed and "flavored" our coffee liberally.

As he served the steaming liquid, he said, "Terrible thing
about Justin. I really liked that man"

"Yeah. Nice guy"

Marvin slid in at the table and blew on his coffee.

I continued. "As I understand, he was really caught up in
this UFO business around here"

Jack, now curious about the UFOs, looked at the old man
with anticipation.

Peering suspiciously at me from under his bushy white
eyebrows, Marvin said. "He tell you about what he found?"

A tiny flame of anticipation coursed through my veins. At
least he hadn't brushed the UFO business aside, as everyone
else did. "He mentioned some things, but he never showed
me anything."

The old man continued to study me. "When he came
here a few months back, he only had a few dollars. There
was something about him." He shook his head thoughtfully.
"Like he was looking for something. I don't know, maybe a
place to call home, maybe a place where he felt like he could
belong. I guessed from talks we had later that he didn't have
much of that when he was growing up"

I thought about the Chesters and their money and the
palpable rancor that swirled about them like a Central Texas
tornado. Marvin Lewis was a perceptive man.

"Anyway," he continued after sipping his coffee, "I had a
room at the back of the museum. Kinda like a storm cellar.
You got to go down a flight of stairs to get to it. Like I said,
he only had a few dollars, and I wasn't using the room, so I
told him to stow his gear there. Keep the museum clean, and
he could stay there for nothing. A couple days later, he got a
job at the school" He paused, raised his eyebrows, and said,
"Not much more to say except he started asking a bunch of
questions about the UFO that landed here in 1897"

Jack snorted. "You got to be kidding. There's no such
thing as UFOs"

A tolerant grin slid over the old man's wrinkled face.
"Well, son, some say yes, some say no. Most folks around
here say it was a hoax. I ain't never read them, but I've been
told that down at Hooker's store, there's a letter Jim Bob
Houston wrote to a newspaper back in the fifties claiming
that his grandpa and two other men made up the story, as
well as an article in a Dallas paper about it"

I nodded. "They're there. I've read them"

Frowning, Jack asked, "You mean you never read the letter, even after all these years?"

The older man smiled. "Never did"

"Why?"

Marvin sneered. His next words sent chills up my spine.
"I ain't never bothered to read it because I know for a fact it
is a lie"

Jack's jaw hit the table.

Mine wasn't far behind.

ack caught his breath. He looked up at me suspiciously,
then cut his eyes at Marvin. "You're saying there was a
UFO? Did you see it?"

The old man pushed back from the table and shuffled
over to a window. "See that hill right out there? The one
that's got a bunch of fresh holes in it?"

We both peered out the window over the sink.

The crest of the grassy knoll was pocked with filled-in
holes.

"What about it?" Jack asked.

"My grandfather, S. D. Lewis, he was a judge. Well, he
had a windmill out there. Pumped water for his cows. My pa
was just a younker when it happened. One night when I was
about ten or so, Grandpa Lewis and I was sitting out on the
porch of the old home, and that's when he told me that one
night in April about twenty-odd years before, a spaceship
crashed into his windmill, tearing it down and destroying the ship. They found the pilot. He was dead. He was short
and odd looking with a head the size of a watermelon"

Jack whistled softly.

The old man hesitated, his eyes looking back into the
hazy memories of his life. He chuckled. "Grandpa Lewis
was always telling stories, stretching them real far. I figured
that was what he was doing then. My pa was on the porch
with us, and I looked up at him. He had a funny grin on his
face, half serious, half laughing. He just nodded and said,
`Pa's right, boy. This ain't one of his stretchers.' "

By now, Jack was absorbed in the tale. So much for Mr.
Cynic, I told myself.

Personally, I tried to take the story with that proverbial
grain of salt. I believe very strongly that if a person tells a lie
long enough, he'll come to believe it. And there is no one
more indignant than a liar who is discovered. The question
was, which group in Elysian Hills was lying-those who believed, or those who scoffed?

His voice now registering only a minimal degree of
skepticism, Jack whispered, "They saw the body?"

The old man continued staring out the window at the
grassy knoll on which the windmill had once sat. "That's
what they said" He turned back and fixed us with his steady
blue eyes. "The pilot was short-three, four feet. Big head.
According to Grandpa Lewis, a few neighbors come over
to see what was going on. They had seen the spaceship fly
over real low that morning and were close enough to hear
the noise when it crashed. They all decided right then to
bury the dead pilot in the cemetery but keep the grave
hidden."

Jack drew a deep breath. "Why would they do that? They probably could have made a bunch of money showing off
the body"

Marvin Lewis smiled sadly at Jack. "And have people
coming from all over, trampling your crops, upsetting your
way of life?" He shook his head. "No, siree"

"Well, yeah, but-" Jack looked up at me for help.

I shrugged. "That was over a hundred years ago, Jack.
People were different then"

"Yeah, but-"

"I've asked myself that same question, Mr. Edney," Marvin replied. "I still don't know"

"Well, has anybody ever dug him up?"

Shaking his head, Marvin replied, "They hid the grave.
Everybody agreed that only a few would bury him. Them
that knew the location carried it to their own graves" He
paused and added, "But Justin worked hard trying to find
the location."

With a heavy dose of skepticism coating my words, I
replied, "He have any luck?"

Marvin shrugged. "If he did about the burial site, he didn't
say anything to me about it. As far as the other stuff, that's
why the hill out there is all dug up. Justin spent several days
out there with a metal detector. He'd hear something, then
he'd dig it up"

We returned to the table. I sipped my coffee, which was
growing cold. Resting my elbows on the table, I leaned forward. "Did you see any of the stuff he found?"

"Some," Marvin replied with a tiny shrug. "I'd gone to
visit my brother, Benjamin, over to Gainesville for three or
four days when Justin-" He hesitated. "When the accident
happened"

"Did he ever show you a piece of metal that unfolded itself?"

He frowned and shook his head slowly. "No. Most of
what I saw could have come from pieces of the windmill or
any of a number of things. Grandpa Lewis rebuilt the windmill. There was a well house out there. They're all gone
now, but as much as I hate to admit it, because he wanted it
so much, those pieces Justin found could have been from
broken pumps, sucker rods, wind generators, fan blades.
Those parts could have been left over from any number of
windmills over the last hundred years"

The old man must have spotted the frown on my face, for
he added, "Oh, I believe it happened, but it's hard to imagine that anything would be left around after all that time"

Jack blew softly through his lips. "But it is possible, huh?
Still, that is awfully hard to imagine."

I chuckled. "You've got plenty of company." I changed
the subject. "If you don't mind, Mr. Lewis, we'll go out and
pack Justin's things. Everything is just about wrapped up
around here"

I wasn't really lying. I'd spoken with many who had
known Justin; with those who had found him after the accident; and those with whom he had shared his belief in
UFOs.

Now, I knew Tricia Chester had suspected that her siblings had had something to do with the death of the younger
brother, but I had found nothing to implicate them.

I had a couple of questions that puzzled me, such as the
injury to the back of Justin's head, but then, all sorts of crazy
things occur in accidents. As far as the aircraft skin, I'd have
to see it to believe it.

The only person remaining with whom I wanted to visit
was the justice of the peace. I'd do that tomorrow.

A few minutes later, I paused at the top of the steps leading down to Justin's room. "You coming down, Jack?"