An Unmarked Grave (7 page)

I grinned. "I know exactly what you mean. Now, would it
be possible for me to see him?"

Five minutes later, a light knock sounded at the door. It
opened, and a secretary looked in. "Justin's here, Georgiana"

"Send him in."

If anything, Justin Chester had grown thinner. His hair
was close-cropped, and a tentative smile on his thin lips replaced the haunted look in his eyes from the photo. In a
way, he looked content.

After Georgiana introduced us, she left us alone.

I sat, and Justin took the second chair. He was perplexed.
"A private investigator? I don't understand"

Succinctly, I explained why I was there.

His brow knit in pain when I told him of his father. Resting his elbows on the chair arms, he leaned back and stared
through me. "I wasn't a very good son, Mr. Boudreaux. I
tried, but I could never make my father proud of me. I never
meant to worry anyone"

I've made so many mistakes in my life that the last thing I
would do is judge anyone else's behavior. "I suppose when
they couldn't find you, they feared the worst," I said simply.

He gave me a shrewd look that told me he was much more
perceptive than he let on. "I never tried to hide from anyone.
I used my own name, driver's license, Social Security number, and sometimes even had telephone and electric service.
No, they didn't want to find me" He hastened to add, "I
don't blame them for that. I know you're supposed to love
your brothers and sisters, but mine-well, it was really hard.
So we just all sort of ended up going our separate ways"

Trying to bring a note of levity into the conversation, I
replied, "Well, with your inheritance, you can certainly do
that. Any ideas what you will do?"

To my surprise, he answered almost immediately. "Oh,
yes. I'll come back here"

"Mrs. Irvin says you're a model employee"

His face grew warm. "I like the kids. At that age, they accept a person for who he is. Makes no difference if you're
rich or poor, important or not-any of those things. But I
wouldn't come back to work here"

His reply puzzled me. "Oh, then why come back here?"

He looked at me as if he couldn't believe I could ask such a question. "Why, to find the pilot of the UFO that
crashed here in 1897"

I whistled to myself, thinking that the old codgers back
at Hooker's might not have been too far off on their suppositions regarding Justin Chester.

Justin lived in a small underground room behind the museum. We had to climb down a short flight of eight or ten
steps to reach it. I sat on his cot while he packed what little
he possessed into a worn sports bag. When he saw me looking at the bag, he grinned and with great pride said, "Would
you believe, someone threw that away? I found it beside the
road"

What could I say? "Not bad"

As I looked on, he removed a two-by-four from the closet
doorjamb and pulled out a few bills and slid them into his
wallet. He grinned sheepishly. "My `safe.' The door doesn't
have a lock, and as much as I hate to admit it, we do have people passing through who aren't above taking something that
doesn't belong to them" He fit the two-by-four back into
place and, stepping back, surveyed the tiny room. "That's it"

His only mode of transportation was a bicycle, so we
tossed it along with his bag into the back of my pickup.

By now we were on a first-name basis. I wanted to top off
the gas tank before we pulled out. Justin sent me to Fuqua's
Stop and Shop, the second convenience store in Elysian
Hills. While the tank was filling, I called Tricia and told her
we'd be in at around six or seven.

When I went inside to pay, Justin was talking excitedly
with the older man behind the register. When he spotted
me, he introduced us. "Tony, this is Sam Fuqua. I've known him ever since I came here a few months ago. I was telling
Sam that after I get my inheritance, I'm coming back here
to find the Martian pilot they buried out at the cemetery"

"Nice to meet you, Sam," I replied, handing him my credit
card and ignoring Justin's conversation with the elderly man.

As we pulled out onto the road for Austin, Justin Chester
sat silently, staring blankly out the passenger window.
He mumbled, "These are fine folks out here. The salt of the
earth. Even if I don't find the pilot, I might just stay here
anyway."

I made the mistake of asking him about the UFO.

He scooted around in the seat, his eyes alight with enthusiasm. Right before my eyes, his shyness morphed into animated exuberance.

Words tumbled from his lips, and for the next six hours,
all the way back to Austin, I learned more about the mysterious UFO than I wanted to know. "It all started in April,
1897. April nineteenth, to be exact. A slow-moving spaceship crashed into a windmill. You remember seeing the house
on the hill behind the museum?"

When I nodded, he continued. "That hill just east of it
is where the windmill stood. Anyway, the ship broke into
hundreds of pieces. When the people searched through the
wreckage, the story goes they found a small body with a
big head. The townsfolk gave the little man a proper burial
in the local cemetery. Some of the pieces of the ship had
some sort of hieroglyphics or symbols on them. There was
even a write-up in a Dallas paper."

I listened with both appropriate interest and equally appropriate reservations.

My reservations grew as Justin, caught up in the enthusiasm of his mission in life, spoke of the Changing World
Order, then The False Green Gospel, and finally ended up
bogged down in Signs of the Last Days.

I had a friend who believed in those sort of far-out theories and initiatives. To his disappointment, the world had
not come to an end the eight times he had prepared for it. In
his attic, he had stored crates of Ramen noodles, cases of
tinned meat, and so many five-gallon containers of water
that the ceiling over the bathroom gave way.

Unfortunately, he was in the tub at the time and got his
arm snapped in two spots. But he still believes. Don't
ever doubt that for every sane person, there aren't at least
five kooks. Once, I heard someone say they'd known
people as nutty as a granola bar. And that was a problem
with no solution, for even if you took out the nuts and fruit,
what you still had left were the flakes. At that moment,
my opinion of Justin Chester was swinging in the same
direction.

He must have spotted the wry curl of my lips. "You don't
believe me, do you?"

With a shrug, I passed it off. "Never really thought about
it, Justin. It's an interesting concept"

"It's more than interesting."

I glanced at him.

He was animated, bouncing with excitement and exuding a vibrant enthusiasm. He continued. "In 1948, back before our time, the United Nations was formed. Right?"

I grinned sheepishly and flexed my fingers on the wheel.
"I'll take your word for it"

"Well, it was, and then Israel was given world recognition. As an independent nation, the country fulfilled the prophecy
that, in the years to come, she would be a world player."

Now I was growing uncomfortable. "I never heard that"

"It's true. It was a Biblical prophecy."

"Okay" I crossed my fingers that his lecture was over,
but I was disappointed. He was just getting started.

"To top everything off, today, ethical and moral values
are collapsing, and science is making greater gains in one
year than in the entire previous century."

I could feel his eyes boring into the side of my head.

In a somber voice, he added. "Those are the Signs of the
Last Days"

"So," not knowing what else to say, I asked, "how does
that tie into the UFO business?"

"It's all part of it. The UFOs and the Changing World
Order." He paused and studied me, seeing the skepticism in
my eyes. "You don't believe me, do you?"

"Well, I-"

He interrupted. "That's all right. With the inheritance, I
can buy equipment that will help me prove the UFO existed,
and when I do, you'll be the first one I call. Okay? Just to
prove to you I'm right."

Fortunately, the city limits of Austin came into view.

And I sighed with relief. "Okay."

I pulled up in front of the Chester mansion. Justin remained motionless. "It hasn't changed much" He looked
around at me. The expression on his face reminded me of
a frightened boy heading for the woodshed and a date with a
paddle. "Maybe we ought to go get something to eat first.
What do you think, Tony?"

"No. Your family's been waiting for you, Justin. They're
eager to see you"

Clearing his throat nervously, he mumbled, "Would you
mind very much going inside with me, Tony?"

His request took me by surprise until I realized that after
fifteen years, he was almost like a stranger in his own home.
And even if his family did not treat him as such, he would
feel that way.

With a grin, I laid a hand on his shoulder. "No problem,
Justin. Let's get it done"

Halfway up the walk, the door flew open, and Tricia hurried out to meet him, tears running down her cheeks. She
threw her arms around his neck and hugged him to her. "Oh,
Justin, Justin. It's been so long"

Tentatively, he put his arms around her. "Hello, Tricia"

At that moment, Vanessa and Frank appeared in the
open doorway. A wry grin played over Frank's lips, while
Vanessa's eyebrows knit with impatience.

I slapped Justin on the back. "Here you are. Good luck"

Anxiously, he turned to me. "No, come on in, Tony. We'll
get something to eat"

"No. It's your family. You'll want to talk about your plans.
Look me up later. We can shoot the breeze"

He looked at me wistfully, his eyes begging me to stay.

You've no idea how many times since that moment I've
awakened at night and wished I'd gone inside with him.

I talked to Justin one more time, but that day was the last
time I saw him alive.

he next couple of weeks flew by.

Two days before Beatrice Morrison's annual winter fete
for Austin's upper crust, Janice called with the welcome
news that her aunt didn't need the gumbo after all. She was
having a hundred and fifty pounds of herb-and-chipotlecrusted flounder with smoked-mushroom aioli and gingered
vegetables flown in from New Orleans. I had no idea what
it was, but I didn't argue.

Just after we hung up, I got a call from Justin Chester in
Elysian Hills. "I've got it, Tony. I told you I would, and now
I have it"

I frowned. "What?"

"Proof of the spaceship"

My first thought was that the ten million had driven him
over the edge. And, as he explained, I began to believe I was
right. "My metal detectors turned up a lot of items on the hill
where the ship crashed. But one piece of metal that I found while digging did not set off the metal detector. I haven't had
it tested yet, but if it didn't set off the detector, then it has
to be something unusual" He paused and in a hushed tone
added, "It has hieroglyphics on it, like the stories said" Before I could respond, he continued. "And something else
about this metal. It's thin, and you can crush it into a ball,
and then guess what it does?"

My guesses would have ranged from "fall to the ground"
to "remain crushed in a ball," but I refrained from the wisecracks. Instead, I noncommittally replied, "Beats me"

In a tone of awe and wonder, he replied, "When you lay it
down, it unfolds. Out flat. And there's no sign of any creases"
He paused, then repeated himself. "Fold it into quarters,
lay it down, and it unfolds itself."

Now, that was hard to believe. "You haven't been drinking, have you, Justin?" I was half joking and half serious
and half intrigued, although a few stiff drinks seemed to be
the only logical explanation for the phenomenon he was
claiming.

"Can't stand booze anymore, Tony. Not even beer. I get
sick when I drink"

I had no idea what to say next. So that's what I said. "So,
what's next?"