An Unmarked Grave (20 page)

"Well, Mr. Boudreaux," he drawled, "you'll have to ask a
smarter man than me"

Back in the pickup, I jotted my notes on cards. Jack
watched. I knew him well enough to know what he was thinking. Finally he said, "This Houston guy left town back in
eighty-five or six, and old man Barton claimed it was about
twenty some-odd years ago he saw someone burying those
bones out there" He paused.

Half smiling, I looked at him. "So?"

He snorted. "So, you know as well as me, those bones
might be this Houston guy's."

"That's why," I replied, laying a hand on the throwaway camera, "we're taking off early today and running down to
a one-hour developing service in Fort Worth. I want to take
a look at the bones in the casket"

"So you think the guy in the casket is Houston?"

"I don't know. It fits in with Gibons' remark that Houston had lived here all his life, so why up and move? And so
suddenly. If they are Houston's bones, then Barton's remark about Elysian Hills `having a dark side that not many
ever see' would make sense"

He nodded. "And whoever the old man saw in the cemetery were the ones that killed the guy"

"Yeah"

"Any ideas?"

"No, but some questions. First, the sheriff claimed not to
know Justin Chester when I first hit town, yet he'd run a
criminal check on the man. The guy rode back and forth in
front of the sheriff's office every day for months. In a place
like Elysian Hills, you're telling me that a guy riding a bicycle up and down the highway wouldn't get your attention?"

"It would mine," Jack replied.

I continued. "Then there's Buck Ford. He said-"

Jack interrupted. "He's the one who said he saw the pickup
from the bridge."

"Yeah" I flexed my fingers on the steering wheel. "He's
the one"

Jack snorted. "He couldn't have"

"That's what I think"

On impulse I pulled into Fuqua's Stop and Shop. The temperature was dropping. A few drops of mist gathered on the
windshield. We could be in for some unpleasant weather.

Sam Fuqua stroked his neatly trimmed mustache and
greeted us with his perennial smile. We each bought a cup of
coffee and gathered around the space heater. The diminutive
man had no customers, so he joined us.

I sipped my coffee, enjoying the warmth of the steaming
liquid filling me. "You've been in business here a long time,
haven't you, Sam?"

"All my life. Me, I'll be seventy-three next month" He
nodded emphatically. "My mama and papa, they opened this
store" He made a sweeping gesture with one arm. "This is
all I know"

"So, you've seen Elysian Hills grow"

He laughed and held his hands out to his sides. "She don't
grow much no more. Not since the post office, it go to
Reuben. That was before my time"

"Did you know Jim Bob Houston and his wife, Sara
Ann?"

"Oh, yes. They come regular. Jim Bob and me, we grow
up together." He gestured out back of the store to the creek
that ran past the cemetery. "We spent a lot of summer days
at the old swimming hole in the creek out there"

"Were you surprised when he left town?"

He nodded. "Me, I didn't expect that. This town is where
his mama and papa is buried." With a sad knit to his brow, he
added, "Of course, today, most of our young people, they go
to Dallas or Fort Worth. Another hundred years, they won't
be nothing left of Elysian Hills.

"What about his wife, Sara Ann? They said she had an
affair with some local man, and that's what caused the
breakup"

"I hear that" He tapped a fist against his heart. "That kill me, right here. She was good lady. I don't believe what they
say about her"

I asked him about Harlan Barton.

He studied us warily, then replied, "He tell me many
things, some hard to believe."

"About the spaceman? What did he tell you about that?"

His eyes shifted suspiciously from me to Jack. He lowered his voice. "He said the man was alive. I don't believe
him. Once when I was driving Harlan home, I stopped at
the side of his house. I saw something go in the barn. Like
a child. When I tell Harlan, he just look at me and tell me to
forget it. Not to never tell no one, or bad things would happen to the thing"

Jack muttered in disbelief, "You saw it, for sure?"

The small man smiled sadly. "I don't know what I saw,
but it was small" Raising his eyebrows, he shrugged and
held his hands, palms up, out to his sides. "Who knows?
Maybe just shadows. I never see it again, and I been out to
his place many, many times. And I never see it again."

"I heard that before Houston left, Marvin Lewis bought
his place"

"Yes" His brow furrowed. "I don't know much, but once
Marvin, he give Jim Bob money, and Jim Bob used his land
as collateral. Then later, when Jim Bob, he want to sell,
Marvin buys him out" He paused, then shrugged. "Me, I
don't know no details" He paused and added, "You'd have
to ask Marvin Lewis"

By now, the coffee was lukewarm. "Marvin Lewis, huh?"
I remembered Mabel's saying that after Lewis bought the
Houston place, he sold land to Sheriff Gus Perry and Buck Ford. The PI in my blood made me want to learn more
about the relationship among the three.

As we made a U-turn and headed back to Marvin Lewis'
place, I noticed a white Honda pulling away from the feed
store and heading northwest, away from us. I remembered
the white vehicle that had driven past the cemetery the day
before. Taggart? Or one of the locals?

wring the short drive to Marvin Lewis' place, Jack
cleared his throat. "Do you think Fuqua really saw the spaceman, Tony?"

I considered the question for a moment. "Giving the old
man his due, he saw something. I figure a shadow or a cat
or something. Raccoon maybe, but not a spaceman"

There was a tone of earnestness in his voice when Jack
replied. "You really don't believe in them, huh?"

I looked at him. "You're not starting to believe in the
spaceman stuff, are you?"

Defensively, he shot back, "Hey, there's a lot of things
we don't know" He paused, then, in an effort to save face,
added, "I'm not saying I do, and I'm not saying I don't."

I laughed. "That's what I've always liked about you,
Jack. When you take a stand, you take a stand"

His round face colored. "Look, all I'm saying is that there are a lot of things we don't understand. You can't tell;
this might be one of them"

He was right. There were many things around us we
don't understand or comprehend, but as far as I was concerned, a Martian spaceman with a head the size of a watermelon and who lived three hundred of our years wasn't
one of them. "You're right, Jack" was all I said.

As we pulled up in front Marvin Lewis' place, a flake of
snow struck the windshield.

Jack grunted. "Good thing I bought a heavier coat"

With a grin, I glanced at him and eyed his rotund body.
"You don't have anything to worry about. You got plenty of
insulation even without the coat. It's guys like me with no
meat on their bones that have to worry."

He muttered a curse. "You skinny guys always say stuff
like that. I'll have you know, I get just as cold as you do and
just as fast"

A sharp gust of wind hit the Silverado, rocking it.

"You staying out here or going inside? We can leave the
engine running"

He waved my suggestion off. "I'll go inside."

Marvin Lewis heard us drive up, and as we hurried
through the light snowfall to his porch, he opened the door
and screen.

"Hurry up, boys!" he shouted, holding the screen open
for us. "Go on into the kitchen. It's warm in there," he said
as we hurried past him.

I sniffed the sweet, full aroma of baking cookies or cake.
"Something smells good"

He laughed as he closed the door. "Cookies. Fix them ever'
once in a while for the grandkids-actually, they're greatgreat-grandkids. They stay here after school until their
mother picks them up." He led the way into the kitchen.
"They're good company for an old codger like me." He
gestured to the table. "Sit" He opened the oven door, and
the warm, rich smell reminded me of my childhood back in
Church Point.

My mother, Leota, was an orphan, so when she and my
old man married, they lived with my grandparents. Mama
Ola loved to cook and bake. That's where my mother picked
up the finer points of baking. About once a week Mama Ola
baked up a heaping batch of cookies. I could smell them as
soon as I climbed off the school bus a quarter mile down the
lane.

Without asking, Marvin set cups and coffeepot on the
table. "Pour your own. I need to take out the cookies, or
they'll burn."

After stacking most of them on a platter, he placed several of them in a chipped plate and set it on the table before
us. "One of my biggest sins," he said, seating himself and
pouring a cup of steaming coffee, "is dunking sugar cookies in coffee."

I took a bite. He was right. Anything that good had to be
sinful.

"So," he asked after his first bite, "what can I do for you?
I figured you'd be headed back to Austin by now."

"Just about ready. By the way, do you know anyone around
here who drives a white car, a small one, maybe a Honda?"

The white brows over his blue eyes knit in a frown. He
scratched his head. "Not right offhand. Why?"

So it was Taggart. "Just curious. I've seen one around,
but I didn't recognize the driver. Figured it might be someone who knew Justin"

For a moment, the twinkle in his eyes vanished. "Might
be some of those who live up the road at Woodbine, commuting to work"

"That's probably it," I replied, dropping the subject.

"I heard you was with Harlan when he had his heart
attack"

"Yeah" I went back over the same story I had told the
sheriff. "He said he'd seen the spaceman"

"Yeah," Jack put in. "He really believed there was one
out there"

Marvin laughed. "He told me too. I don't think so. I
believe the man is still buried out there somewhere in the
cemetery. Probably nothing but dust by now."

Jack glanced at me. I cleared my throat. "You're probably right. Wouldn't it be a surprise for your mayor if the
bones were found?"

The older man frowned. "What do you mean?"

"That mayor who wrote the letter to the newspaper.
Houston-the guy who left Elysian Hills and no one heard
from again. I figure he'd really be surprised"

A wary look momentarily replaced the twinkle in his
eyes. "I imagine he would"

After taking another bite of dunked cookie, I said, "Makes
you wonder why he went to Chicago and why he never came
back. I guess it was because his wife left"

"I suppose so" His tone was noncommittal.

"From what folks in town say, you must have been the
last one to talk to him when you bought his land"

The wizened old man smiled and nodded. "Reckon I could
have been. Jim Bob just wanted to get shed of it, and since he
owed me for a previous loan, I just paid him the difference"

I sipped my coffee. "How many acres?"

"Six sections"

My eyes widened. "Six sections. Close to four thousand
acres. Must run a bunch of beef"

He shook his head. "I sold some to Gus and Buck. I was
getting up in years and didn't want to bother looking after
that much"

I grinned. "I can understand that"

At that moment, the front door burst open, and a young
voice shouted, "We're here, PawPaw!"

"In the kitchen, kids." He grinned up at me. "The kids."

Bundled against the dropping temperatures, a boy of about
ten entered, leading a younger girl by the hand. They stared
at Jack and me shyly as Marvin introduced us. But as soon as
he pointed to the cookies on the cabinet, their shyness fled.

Marvin accompanied us to the door. "You fixing to head
back to Austin?"

"As far as I know, unless the family wants me to do anything else"

He frowned. "What would that be?"