An Unmarked Grave (21 page)

I shrugged. "Who knows?" I offered my hand. "You take
care, you hear?"

After we pulled back onto the highway, Jack said, "We're
not really leaving, are we?"

"I won't know until we see what's in that camera," I replied,
indicating the disposable between us on the seat.

On the outskirts of Fort Worth in a suburb named Haltom City, we found a pharmacy that offered one-hour film
developing. We waited next door at a McDonald's. Jack put
away three Big Macs, a Diet Coke, and an apple pie. I had
a coffee. I was still full from Lewis' sugar cookies.

Sitting in the pickup an hour later, I took the envelope of
pictures and quickly thumbed through them. I paused at the
exposure made of the open casket.

"Well," said Jack, "what is it? Huh?"

I studied the shot a few moments, noting the crook in the
left femur, then handed it to Jack. "Take a look. The left leg"

"Jeez" was all he could mutter.

Slowly nodding, I replied, "Yeah. That's Jim Bob Houston. I'd bet anything." I studied the snapshots another few
moments and added, "And you can clearly see there are no
extra bones in there" I handed Jack the picture. "See what
I mean?"

"I see," he muttered. Then Jack looked up at me with a
puzzled frown. "I wonder ... Does that mean the spaceman wasn't killed? That he's alive, like Barton claimed? Or
that he never existed except in the minds of the good people of Elysian Hills?"

I shrugged. "I'll go along with the latter. They just made
him up"

Jack paused, a curious frown on his face. "Or maybe he
had no bones, just a sort of ectoplasm"

"Ectoplasm?"

"You know, sort of a jellylike stuff. He could have just
dissolved in there"

All I could do was shake my head. "Come on, Jack"

"Well, it could be," he retorted, handing me the picture. "So, now what?" His lips parted as another thought struck
him. "Hey, you don't suppose-you don't suppose that Justin
Chester knew about this, do you? The bones, I mean"

"How could he? All he knew was what Barton told him,
that the spaceman wasn't in the grave"

Jack frowned. "I don't know. I-"

I held up a hand. "Hold on. Let me ramble a minute" I
paused, trying to shape my thoughts. "I don't think he had
any idea Houston was buried there. Justin discovered the
location of the grave and was determined to dig it up. Someone in Elysian Hills had to learn that Barton and Chester
had found the site of the grave. And that someone knew it
was only a matter of time until Justin would exhume the
casket. They couldn't let him do that, so they had to stop
him. They struck him on the back of his head hard enough
to kill him and made the car wreck look like an accident" I
drew a deep breath. "Well? What do you think?"

"Can you prove it?" he asked, looking at me.

"No," I said. "But if it happened that way, I will."

"Hold on. If Barton knew who was in the grave, why
didn't he tell Justin?"

For a moment, I pondered his question. "Remember when
Harlan started out the back door? He made the remark that
maybe he should have told Justin, but he didn't know how
far he could trust him. You remember that?"

Slowly, Jack nodded. "Yeah. Yeah. I remember that"

"That's why."

y the time we reached our motel on the outskirts of
Reuben, the snow was falling more heavily. We hurried into
our room and turned on the heater.

Jack pulled out a fifth of Jim Beam from his suitcase and
held it up. "Too cold for beer. Want a drink?"

I did, but now wasn't the time. I wanted to keep my head
clear while I put together my thoughts on who might have
killed not only Justin Chester, but also Jim Bob Houston.

Jack poured a large drink, splashed a tad of water into it
from the tap, and crawled onto his bed to watch TV. I pulled
out my notes and laid them out on the table.

Then I thought about the three sheets of paper I'd taken
from Justin's "safe" While Jack watched TV, I went downstairs and copied the three pages, rolled them up, and, once
back upstairs, deposited them into my briefcase.

Now I had copies.

I pulled out a blank pad and began writing.

The only absolute certainty I had was that the spaceman,
if there were one, was not in his grave. And I felt with as
much certainty that the bones in the grave were those of Jim
Bob Houston.

From then on, all was conjecture.

My day had been busy, but I had not learned as much of
Perry and Ford as I did about Houston and his wife. Tomorrow I'd try to learn more-casually, of course.

I wondered about Jim Bob Houston's wife. Had they divorced? Or was she now a widow? And where was she?

And if the bones were those of Houston, then who set up
the trust funds Mabel had mentioned for needy individuals
in Chicago?

A blast of cold air slammed against the window. I paused,
lifting my gaze and peering through the motel walls in the
direction of the Diablo Canyons behind Harlan Barton's
place, shivering as I imagined the intensity of the cold out
there tonight. Slowly I shook my head, going back to another
question that continued to nag at me. If Barton knew that Jim
Bob was in the grave, why didn't he go the police?

The only explanation I could come up with was that Sheriff Perry was part of the murder scheme with Buck Ford. That
would explain why he denied knowing Justin Chester, the
sloppy accident report, and why Ford lied about the pickup
in the creek. As far as motive, both men had the same: to
prevent the discovery of Jim Bob Houston's body.

Leaning back in the chair, I stretched my arms over my
head, a jumble of thoughts ricocheting off the insides of
my skull. I thought of my boss, Marty, and suddenly his admonition to learn everything about everyone flashed
into my head.

For the next hour, I tried to run down even one of the
alleged trusts set up by Jim Bob Houston. Mabel Hooker
had said they were for needy individuals, but, try as I could,
I found no evidence of any trust in the Chicago area endowed by Jim Bob Houston.

Frustrated, I gave up, turning my attention to local land
records. Houston had sold his land before he disappeared.
Marvin Lewis in turn sold portions of the land to Gus Perry
and Buck Ford. Maybe I could find something there.

Digital technology is an amazing time-saver if the information is available. Availability. That's the key, but in Montague County, Texas, where Elysian Hills deeds were filed
and maintained, public records were only available digitally since 1992. Prior records had to be looked up the oldfashioned way, by hand.

Larger counties in the state, such as Bexar or Dallas or
Tarrant or Harris, have public records online back into the
eighties, but that's because, with a larger tax base, they can
afford to have the records copied.

I glanced at my watch. Almost eleven. Fully dressed, Jack
lay snoring on his bed. The back of my neck was stiff. I massaged the stiffness from it, then contacted Eddie Dyson for
all the financial records he could find for Jim Bob Houston in
Illinois.

During the night, the snow stopped falling, leaving only
a couple of inches. Next morning, I stood at the window,
staring out over the white landscape beyond the parking lot as the sun rose, a red ball on a solid black horizon. A white
Honda passed before my eyes, and by the time I threw open
the door, it had exited the parking lot.

Was that Taggart? And if it were, what was he after?

Early risers clogged the motel restaurant, filling it with
the buzz of conversation. We found a table by a window
near the rear of the restaurant and ordered.

Sipping our coffee while waiting for our order, we discussed the events of the last few days. "How do we find out
if that skeleton is definitely Houston, Tony? If you don't
trust Sheriff Perry, can't we just turn it over to some other
county or city official?"

"What will they do? It's out of their jurisdiction, and, believe me, it's a toss-up as to which is more important to a
cop, jurisdiction or Sunday afternoon football."

He chuckled.

The waitress placed steaming plates before us. I had scrambled eggs, sausage, and toast. Jack-well, he had a Jack-sized
platter of eggs, bacon, sausage, and pancakes.

I much prefer sunny beaches and skimpy bikinis to chilling snow and bundled snow bunnies, but the drive later
that morning to Elysian Hills provided spectacular scenery,
rolling hills covered with a blanket of pristine snow, the sun
reflecting off it like millions of glistening diamonds.

Once, at the edge of a thicket, we spotted two deer grazing.
The buck looked up as we passed, his big-eyed gaze following us until we were out of sight.

"Yeah, this is pretty, but it's too flat for me," Jack muttered.
"Give me rocky hills and tall pines." He grew silent, then, after a few moments, asked, "What's on the agenda this
morning?"

"Montague and then Mabel Hooker."

"Montague?" He frowned. "What's that? Sounds like
some kind of sickness."

I shook my head in despair. "The county seat. I want to
look at some deeds."

"Deeds?"

"Yeah. Land deeds."

After that, I had a few questions I wanted to ask Mabel
Hooker.

Montague was a small town in the middle of the Post
Oak Savannah of North Texas. Graceful Corinthian columns
with Doric capitals supported the gabled porticos of the
three-story, redbrick courthouse. As in many of the rural
courthouses of the twenties and thirties, the second floor was
really the main floor, the lower level being called the basement, although there were windows peering outside.

I didn't know exactly what I was looking for. I suppose
some evidence of collusion and conspiracy between the
sheriff and Buck Ford.

We parked in front and took the sidewalk that led to the
steep flight of steps to the main entrance.

Our first stop would be the tax office, where, after studying a plat of Elysian Hills to locate the property, I obtained
a legal description, and with that description, the county
clerk's office could point me to the deed-record books in
which the deeds were filed.

The books, two feet by two feet and each clothbound
with leather spines, lined the wall.

I had gone through this same process in the past in Travis
County. My first experience left me in awe at the detailed
records maintained by the county. An experienced eye can
take a piece of property and trace its ownership all the way
back to the days of Spanish land grants.

In less than fifteen minutes, I found the deed between
Marvin William Lewis and Jim Bob Houston dated November 23, 1985.

The deed stated that Lewis paid Houston $100,000.00 for
six sections of land and mineral rights. The signatures at the
bottom of the document were notarized by Pearl Ragsdale,
P.O. Box 749, Elysian Hills, Texas, 76251-4963, on November 23, 1985. I glanced at the filing date. March 12, 1986.

I paid little attention to the time between the signing of the
contract and the filing of the deed. There's always a lapse of
time between the two. Of course, almost five months seemed
unusual, but I reminded myself that out here in rural Texas,
time didn't mean as much as in metropolitan Texas.