Tombstone Courage jb-11

by J. A. Jance

  He did it again in that moment. When he looked across Burton’s desk, he didn’t see an angry forty five-year-old professional lawyer with a loosened silk tie knotted halfheartedly around his neck or the monogrammed cuffs of the stiffly starched white shirt. What he saw instead was a shirtless, towheaded seven-year-old boy barefoot child wearing nothing but a pair of Oshkosh coveralls cut off just above the boy’s scrawny knees.

  Both of those bare knees were scraped raw and bleeding, as was the boy’s nose. There was a deep gouge on his chin, a cut Harold suspected was serious enough to require stitches, one that was going to result in a permanent scar.

  It was summer. The boy and his uncle stood in the cool, gloomy barn. They faced each other in silence while a cloud of sunlit dust motes danced gaily around them. Dangling from the man’s hand was a thick, supple leather strap. The boy’s fists were clenched.

  His chin trembled, and tears glistened in his eyes, but his head was unbowed.

  “Burtie, your aunt Emily says you won’t tell Holly you’re sorry you hit her with the rock.”

  “That’s ‘cause I’m not,” Burton Kimball declared fiercely, sniffing and wiping away the trickle of blood that had dribbled over the lump of his swollen upper lip. “If she ever does it again, I’ll hit her harder next time.”

  Harold Patterson took a deep breath. He wanted desperately to impart this needed lesson to the boy, to make it stick. As his Christian duty, he had taken in his dead sister’s orphaned and abandoned son, had taken him to raise, but Harold was determined Burton not grow up to be like his no good, worthless father.

  “Look, son,” Harold explained patiently. “This is important. It’s something you got to learn and understand once and for all. Men don’t go around hitting women. Ever. No matter what.”

  “Holly was tickling Ivy,” Burtie countered. “She was tickling her, and she wouldn’t stop, not even when I asked her nice.”

  “Tickling’s not bad,” Harold said. “She didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Yes, she did, too,” Burton insisted. “Holly did it until it hurt, until Ivy cried, until she peed her pants.”

  He blushed then, embarrassed that he knew about Ivy wetting her pants, humiliated by having to talk about it to Uncle Harold, and outraged that Holly had laughed at Ivy, pointing at her muddied garments and calling her a stupid cry-baby.

  Burton sniffed again, but he straightened his shoulders. “Give me my licking, Uncle Harold” he said, swallowing hard. “But please don’t make me say I’m sorry.”

  “Doc Winters sure did a good job of sewing up your chin that time,” Harold said suddenly shifting with a time-warping jolt back to the present. “Scar hardly shows at all.

  Looks more like a dimple. Who’s that movie actor? The good-looking one with the dimple?”

  “Kirk Douglas,” Burton answered mechanically “But don’t change the subject, Uncle Harold, I want to hear you tell me exactly what you think will happen to Ivy if you go through with this fruitcake idea.”

  Remember that time I had to give you a licking in the barn after you chucked Holly over the head with a rock?”

  “I remember,” Burton Kimball answered grimly.

  “You were right back then, you know,” Harold said, “Holly was the one who should have had her butt whupped over that one. I used the strap on you because your aunt Emily insisted, but I didn’t hit you all that hard, not as hard as I could’ve. And here you are, all these years later, still sticking up for Ivy.”

  “It seems to me,” said Burton Kimball, “that I shouldn’t have to. Her father should be the one looking after her instead of her cousin.”

  There was another momentary lull in the conversation.

  “I reckon this means I’ll have to change my will,” ‘ Harold ventured. “I already talked to Milo Davis’s girl about changing the beneficiary agreements on my life insurance.”

  Maybe, in the interim, Burton Kimball, too, had been caught up in a remembered glimpse of that long ago scene in the barn; of that determined and unrepentant little boy standing his ground in a swirl of spinning dust motes.

  “You’re changing the life insurance, too? Dear God in heaven. I don’t believe it. What’s gotten into you?”

  “I’ve got two daughters,” Harold said. “The way it was setup wasn’t fair. One was in;one was out. I’ve thought about it all week. I’m going to talk to Holly about settling this thing with the understanding that she’ll have half the ranch, and Ivy will have the rest. Beyond that, I’m going to treat ‘em fifty-fifty. That’s fair.”

  Rolling his chair away from the desk, Burton Kimball got up and stalked over to the window.

  He stared silently out through the glass, studying a sudden burst of sunshine that glinted, blinding and silver, off the still-damp pavement of Main Street.

  The relationship between Harold Patterson and Burton Kimball was far more complicated than simply nephew and uncle, lawyer and client. Harold was the only father Burton had ever known.

  He had been raised and put through school by the unwavering kindness of this stubborn old man.

  Without Harold’s financial support, neither college nor law school would have been possible. Everything Burton Kimball was or owned, he owed to the generosity of this supposedly tough and hard bitten character.

  Burton Kimball had spent most of his forty-five years as Ivy Patterson’s champion and protector. The Pattersons had raised all three children in a manner that made them more like brother and sisters than cousins.

  Burton was five years younger than Holly, and Ivy was ten, but the dynamics of their childhood had always been the same. The two younger children had banded together as small but determined allies, united in their mutual resistance to Holly’s constant bullying and torment.

  From Burton Kimball’s earliest memory, Holly Patterson had been mean as a snake. Now, some forty years later, the bitch was doing it again, in spades.

  And so Burton Kimball found himself standing in front of the window, torn by a lifetime’s worth of conflicting loyalties, rocked by disappointment and betrayal.

  How could he condone a father turning on his own daughter? How could he help Harold Patterson rob Ivy of her birthright?

  The plain answer for Burton was that he couldn’t. He gave it one last try. “There’s nothing fair about it,” he said. “Don’t do it. Don’t cut Ivy out like this. Holly wants the Rocking P. She doesn’t need it. She’s got her career. Ivy’s different. She’s spent her whole life working like a dog on the ranch, and you know it. She’s never held a regular job, and I know for a fact that you’ve never paid a dime’s worth of wages or Social Security on her.”

  Holly’s broke,” Harold Patterson asserted.

  Burton stopped in mid-sentence. “You know that for a fact?”

  “She hated Bisbee,” the old man answered. “The only reason she’d come back was if she had to.”

  “Uncle Harold,” Burton said evenly. “Are you saying I’m supposed to feel sorry for Holly?”

  “You don’t know what happened to her,” Harold answered softly. “You don’t know any of it.”

  “No,” Burton agreed. “You’re right. I don’t know because you haven’t told me, even though I’m your attorney. If anyone ought to know, I should. What did happen to Holly, Uncle Harold?” Burton asked, his voice once more controlled, “Tell me the truth. Let me help you.”

  But Harold said nothing. For more than a minute no further word passed between them.

  “You won’t tell me?” Burton said at last.

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  Burton swung away from the window then turned and stared down at the old man who continued to examine the backs of his mottled, liver spotted hands with the utmost concentration and studied unconcern. And as Burton looked down at his uncle, a slow dawning-an awful realization washed across him. The younger man’s face blanched.

  “That’s not true, is it,” he said coldly.

  “What’s not true?”
Harold asked.

  “That there’s nothing to tell.”

  Harold looked up at Burton. On his face was an expression of feigned innocence, one that even the most inept juror would have seen right through.

  “My God!” Burton whispered. “It did happen, didn’t it. Holly’s telling the truth! That’s why you don’t want to go to court. That’s why you’re suddenly willing to settle. You’re afraid people around here friends and neighbors, the folks who think Harold Patterson is the salt of the earth-will finally see you for what you are.”

  With no warning, Harold Patterson’s eyes betrayed him. Again, as they had several times that day, they brimmed over with unexpected and unwelcome tears. He tried to brush the telling dampness away, but he wasn’t able to, not before Burtie saw the tears and surmised what they meant. With a clutch in his gut, Burton Kimball stumbled into the realization that Holly Patterson was telling the truth.

  “If that’s the case,” the lawyer said carefully, “then maybe you’d better go ahead and settle. But I won’t help you. I won’t have any part of it. Because you disgust me, Uncle Harold. I can’t even stand to be in the same room with you.”

  He started toward the door.

  “Does that mean you quit?” Harold asked.

  Burton paused at the door. He answered with out looking back or raising his voice. “Yes, that’s what it means,” he answered slowly. “Given the way I feel at this moment, I don’t think I could adequately represent you. You’ll be better off with someone else, maybe with one of my partners.”

  “Please, Burtie,” Harold begged. “Your partners don’t know anything at all about this case. Don’t walk out on me now, not when I need you to help me get in touch with Holly or with her attorney. Nobody else could do that. Only you.”

  Burton felt the wave of cold fury begin to rise in his chest, threatening to drown him, to rob him of breath and speech both. It was all he could do to summon what could pass for a normal voice, but with a supreme act of selfcontrol, he managed.

  “Holly’s staying at Coo Viejo,” he said, “court order be damned! You’ll have to do your own dirty work, Uncle Harold, because I’m a son of a bitch if I’ll help you!”

  With that Burton Kimball stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Harold sat for several minutes, alone in the empty room, regaining his composure; coming to terms with the idea that he now had what he wanted, but not the way he wanted, not at this high a price. He had never thought he’d lose Burtie as well. Never.

  Shriveled by this latest penalty, it took some time for Harold to gather his strength and make his way out of Burtie’s private office. In the reception area, he paused in front of the desk that belonged to Maxine Smith, Burton’s secretary.

  “When Burtie gets back,” Harold said, “give him a message for me, would you? Tell him I’m sorry, and tell him thank you.”

  “Why certainly, Mr. Patterson,” Maxine said, jotting a quick note on a message pad. “Any thing else?”

  “No,” Harold Patterson said, shaking his head. “That’s all.”

  Holly PATTERSON sat in the back upstairs bedroom and stared out the window at the tawny wall of rock and tailings that rose two hundred feet in the air. Nothing green grew on the dump. It was dead, empty earth that reminded Holly of the moon. And of herself.

  The Stickley rocker with its stiff leather back and broad, flat arms groaned each time it arched across the hardwood floor. The sound reminded her of a door creaking shut. The door to her heart.

  She rocked and rocked. A cheerful fire crackled in the little stone fireplace, but nothing warmed her. Not the fire and not the two layers of woolen sweaters she was wearing, either. She was cold, and she was frightened. She had warned Rex Rogers, her lawyer, that it would be bad for her to come here, but Amy had insisted that they had to do it on her father’s home turf, and Rex had backed her up. They said there’d be a much better settlement if they bearded the lion in his own den.

  Amy Baxter, her hypnotherapist, had told Holly that coming back to Bisbee wouldn’t be that big a deal, had assured her that she’d be perfectly fine.

  Maybe for publicity and legal reasons, Rex and Amy were right, and Bisbee was the correct place to be. After all, they were the experts who had handled similar cases in towns and cities all over the country. But for Holly, being here was wrong. Bisbee and all the people in it were what she had spent thirty years trying to drink and drug out of her memory. Now that she was back, so were all the old bad feelings.

  No one here gave a damn that she had gone out into the world and made a success of her life for a while. If anyone in Bisbee knew or cared that she had a screenwriting play sitting in her aged unit back in Studio City, no one mentioned it.

  And if anyone knew that she had reached the pinnacle of success only to fall off and land in a series of mental and drug-rehab institutions, no one mentioned that, either. They didn’t care if she was a success or a failure. That didn’t matter. The people of Bisbee hated her anyway. They hated her because she was Holly Patterson. That was reason enough.

  Holly pulled the sweater tighter across her chest and looked down toward the base of the house.

  Amy, dressed in sweats, was down on the terrace working out on a trampoline. Catching sight of Holly peering out the window, Amy smiled and waved. Holly didn’t wave back. Now that the rain was gone and a fitful November sun was peeking through the cloud cover, Amy Baxter was far too energetic for Holly to tolerate. Too energetic and too positive.

  Holly, on the other hand, was more like that gaunt, brown-needled pine tree thirsting to death at the top of the once-lush gardens, remnants of which still lingered on the grounds of Cosa Viejo.

  Holly knew about the gardens because she and Billy Corbett had ditched school there once during sixth grade. They had taken off their clothes and lain naked in the ivy until they were both itchy and covered with aphids.

  Billy had bragged to classmates at school that he had already done it. Twice. Holly had called him a liar and had dared him to prove he wasn’t.

  They agreed to meet in the covered garden behind Cosa Viejo, a wonderful turn-of-the-century mansion at the top of Vista Park. In an earlier life and under a different name, the brown stuccoed mansion, with its mission-style and molded-plaster details, was a place one of Bisbee’s original copper barons had once proudly called home.

  By the late fifties, the mansion had been renamed Cosa Viejo and the huge dump was already inching slowly across the desert toward the lush backyard, although the tailings weren’t nearly as close then as they were now, nor as tall. Fueled by grumbling trucks and noisy ore trains, the dump grew larger day by day. And the steady round-the-clock barrage of dust and noise began having serious detrimental repercussions on the fine old house.

  The wealthy widow lady who owned it and had lived there for twenty years sold out to a sharp eyed investor who carved it up into low-cost apartments for oversexed newlyweds who didn’t mind being awakened at all hours of the day and night by the roar of heavily laden trucks and the thunder of cascading boulders.

  At the new landlord’s direction, the gardens out back that had long been nurtured by a loving full time gardener were ignored. Left to their own devices, the covered arbors dried up and went to seed. For a while, without human intervention, only the ivy and one tall tree were tough enough to hold out against the dry realities of the arid Southwest. Now Jaime Gonzales, the new gardener, was starting the slow process of reclaiming the gardens and the upper terraces, but on that far lower level, all that remained was that one old tree, brown-needled and dying.

  Holly remembered how tall and alive it had been, green against a warm blue sky that spring afternoon. The precocious eleven-year-old Holly Patterson had been flat on her naked back, waiting for poor, hapless Billy Corbett to figure out how to make his dinky, useless “thing” stand up. It finally did, after Holly showed him how to rub her stiff little nipples with his groping fingers, but even then it didn’t work. When Holly had taunted hi
m, laughed at him because he didn’t even know where to put it, Billy had slapped her hard across the face. His blow had left a bright red handprint on her cheek, one she had been hard-pressed to explain to Mama that afternoon when she came home from school.

  Remembering that time, Holly rocked even harder and pulled the sweater closer around her body. Billy Corbett had died in Vietnam. His was one of the first names on the memorial plaque over by the new high school.

  It served him right, Holly Patterson thought, thirty-nine years after that jewel-dear spring after noon.

  Whatever Billy Corbett got, it served him right.

  There was a knock on the door. Holly jumped, surprised by her own nervousness. She would have to remember to tell Amy how she was feeling and ask her what it meant. Ask her to put her under and calm her, make the bad feelings go away. Maybe, later on, they could go for a ride in Rex Rogers’ bright red Cadillac. Maybe Amy would even let Holly drive.

  She had read in the paper that Marliss, the old battle-ax who wrote a weekly column for the Bisbee Bee, actually thought the car belonged to Holly. That was a laugh. When she was evicted from her last roach-plagued apartment, Holly Patterson had scarcely anything left to call her own. Amy had helped her salvage the few paltry possessions that remained in storage back in California. And what she had she could keep only so long as she continued to pay the month-to-month storage rental.

  The knock came again, and Holly realized she hadn’t answered. “Who is it?”

  “It’s me. Isabel.”

  “Come in.”

  Isabel Gonzales, the gardener’s wife who served as both cook and housekeeper, bustled into the room. She stopped short when she saw Holly’s untouched lunch tray.

  “You don’t like what I cook for you?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Isabel shook her head and ducked her tongue “Not eating is bad for you. It will make you sick.” This place is making me sick, Holly thought And it wasn’t just Billy Corbett, either, although at first she had thought it was, hoped it was. No it was something else, something much more than that, something about the dump itself, perhaps. Whatever it was, it remained just out of reach beyond the grasp of her conscious mind.