A Deadly Affair at Bobtail Ridge

by Terry Shames

  She throws her hands up to stop me. “No, I will most certainly not press charges.”

  I follow her into the kitchen, where she starts brewing a pot of drip coffee. “But the restraining order? Can I talk you into that?”

  “I’ll have to look into it before I make a decision.”

  I have to turn my attention to the high school prom next weekend. I don’t remember it being such a big deal when I was in high school about a hundred years ago, but now the plans would rival a gubernatorial inauguration, with the pre-party and the prom and the after party.

  This afternoon I have a meeting with the students in the gymnasium to warn them to behave themselves. The principal talked me into it. I wonder if the students can sense how half-hearted my efforts are at issuing the warnings. I know they’re not listening anyway. No matter what I say, there will be a few students who sneak alcohol, and a few who refuse to adhere to the rules. But they can’t get away with much. If the NSA took lessons from the school PTA ladies, they’d learn a thing or two about security.

  CHAPTER 13

  Before I leave for Bobtail to meet Lyndall the next morning I release Ellen’s ex with a warning. He gives me a good bit of surly lip. I phone Ellen to tell her he’s out and to nudge her one more time to look into a restraining order. But she’s unmoved.

  The Borland place is ominously quiet when Lyndall and I arrive. I expected the dogs to set up a fuss, but the dogs aren’t around, and apparently no one else is either. Wallace Lyndall sounds almost satisfied when he says, “Those boys aren’t here. If we’re lucky, they’ve gone for good.”

  It’s not likely, since the old clunker cars are still sitting in the yard. Only the beat-up Chevy is missing. I get a mental picture of Scott and Jett Borland in the front seat with their dogs hanging out the back windows, barreling down the highway looking for trouble.

  I knock on the front door and call out to them, but there’s no answer. Just for kicks I try to open the door, but it’s locked. I trudge around the back of the house, Lyndall following me, grumbling to himself. The backyard is filled with trash; they seem to be big on takeout and favor McDonald’s and Arby’s. Pizza boxes, beer and soda cans, and empty whiskey bottles are piled up in a corner of the yard near the fence.

  “Either of the Borlands married?” I say.

  Lyndall has his hands on his hips, surveying the backyard as if he’s thinking of cleaning up. “Scott Borland has a wife, but I don’t know offhand where she’s at. I’ll have to see if I can find out. Jett, has a girlfriend who stays in an apartment in town. We might get some information out of her, I guess.”

  I notice a trail leading off beyond the back of the property through weeds and underbrush to a thicket of trees and bushes. If I were inclined to cook up some meth, I’d probably do it in a shack a good ways behind the house in a hidden area just like that one. But without a warrant, I’m not setting foot anywhere near the trail.

  Back at Bobtail police headquarters, I ask Lyndall if he had a chance to look into the matter of Howard Sandstone’s disappearance.

  “Come on back to my desk,” he says. “I have the file there.”

  It’s a thin file. I take it to a vacant desk and read the notes. As Lyndall recalled, it was Sandstone’s boss, Larry (Curly) Fogarty, who reported him missing. Sandstone was working as a carpenter on a crew with Fogarty, building a subdivision out west of town. The officer who took the report left notes about his follow-up interviews. The notes say that Sandstone called Fogarty the day before he disappeared and asked for a ride to work because his car was out of commission. Fogarty reported that Sandstone seemed upset and had something on his mind.

  Fogarty also told the officer that there had been some talk of Sandstone having a flirtation with a local woman, and some people speculated that he had planned to run off with her. But apparently she was still around. The deputy then interviewed Vera Sandstone, who also said her husband had been upset and that she thought he’d gone off somewhere to cool down.

  The notes continued, “I asked her if he’d ever gone off like that before, and she replied that he had not, but there’d been some trouble at home and he was angry. I knew she was referring to the son, who’d been in some trouble. She seemed to think her husband would come back when he’d had time to reflect. I asked if she knew whether her husband had been seeing another woman. She insisted that he was faithful.”

  There’s a note dated a week later that says Mr. Sandstone’s car went missing the same evening that he did and had not yet turned up. Mrs. Sandstone said she had contacted her husband’s mother (father deceased) and his brother, but neither had heard from him. “Decision: Texas Highway Patrol will be on the lookout for Sandstone’s car, but with no evidence of a crime being committed, there will be no further action from the Bobtail PD.”

  By now Lyndall is gone, so I ask at the front desk if it’s possible to talk to the officer who took down the information in Howard Sandstone’s file.

  When I tell him the name of the officer, the deputy says, “He’s long gone. He must have been on the cusp of retirement when he wrote that report. I never met him, but I think he died quite a while back.”

  So I have to make do with the cursory report that was done at the time. I can understand why the police didn’t make too much of it, but I can’t understand why Vera Sandstone didn’t push them to find her husband. Does it have something to do with his first wife? There’s no mention of her in any of the notes on his disappearance. From what I’ve seen in the file, I’m beginning to see my chances of finding Howard Sandstone recede. I’ll try some national databases, but if he went to any trouble to hide, changed his name, for example, I don’t see a lot of promise for tracking him down.

  Before I leave the police station, I give Will Landreau a call and tell him we struck out locating the Borlands. “Maybe they’ve run out of steam anyway,” I say. “From the look of the place, they’re not the kind of people to focus much on a task.”

  “I hope you’re right.” He sounds distracted, and I start to tell him I’ll be in touch when he says, “Craddock, can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “How do you think Jenny is doing?”

  “You were at her mamma’s funeral. Did you talk to her?” I say.

  “Not much. She had a lot of people to tend to.”

  “I don’t know how well you know Jenny, but she and her mamma were pretty close. Stands to reason she’s upset. I’d give her time. Any particular reason you’re asking?”

  He sighs. “Just work stuff. I’d hate for her work to slip.” And then in a rush, he tells the real truth. “I guess I’m selfish. I want the old Jenny back.”

  I don’t tell him, but from what I’ve seen I’m not sure the old Jenny is coming back anytime soon.

  Jenny calls me later in the day and says she’s spending the night at her house tonight and wants me to come over. When I arrive, bearing a pot of soup, we sit at her little dining table and talk like everything is back to normal. After a while we take the bottle of wine we were sharing into the living room and get comfortable.

  “I am so glad to get back home. You know how I loved my mamma, but I believe she kept every damn thing any kid ever gave her—including the Teacher’s Day cards. If I see one more card with a picture of an apple for the teacher on it, I’ll set fire to her place.”

  “How much longer do you think it’s going to take to finish?”

  “It’s going slower than I hoped. People keep dropping by. They want to chat. I don’t have the heart to tell them that I would rather not talk—I want to get this over with.”

  “Why not leave it for a week or so until you’ve had a chance to settle down from losing your mamma?”

  Her reaction is oddly curt. “I can’t do that. I need to get it done fast.” Her face has that strained look again, like I’ve crossed an invisible line.

  “You planning to sell the place?”

  “I haven’t decided. Mamma owned it free and clear
, so I don’t have to make a decision right away.” She jumps up and says, “Look at that. We’ve gone through a whole bottle of wine. I’ll get another one.”

  I start to protest, but she scoots out of the room. I’m surprised the bottle is gone. It doesn’t seem to me like I’ve drunk much more than a glass.

  I wonder if I ought to tell Jenny that I’ve tried to find her daddy and my efforts have come to nothing, but she’s been stirred up too much lately. I’ll wait until things return to normal before I bring it up. There’s no hurry.

  It occurs to me later that it’s curious that Jenny has inherited the house and its contents. Vera’s neighbor said that Eddie was the apple of his mother’s eye. So why didn’t she leave any of it to him?

  CHAPTER 14

  The next morning I go over to the Jarrett Creek High School and meet with principal Jim Krueger to review plans for the end of the school year. Every year he wants to discuss the best way to handle the inevitable rowdy behavior that accompanies senior day, the prom, and then graduation day itself.

  I’m only half paying attention. My mind keeps drifting back to Jenny. She was drinking a lot last night. Why does she get so wrought up at any mention of her brother? I haven’t given any more thought to how Eddie knew Vera was in the hospital. Did Vera ask someone to call him? If she did, she must have had a relationship with him. She must not have had the same problem with him that Jenny does.

  In the afternoon I run back over to Bobtail to the Borland place, but it still looks deserted—no dogs, no people, and no cars. On the way out of town I drive by Vera Sandstone’s house and stop when I see Jenny’s car in the driveway. Jenny answers the door in jeans and an old Dallas Cowboys T-shirt. “I am so glad to see you, I could cry,” Jenny says. “Getting Mamma’s stuff together is driving me crazy.”

  “Have you been working on this all day?” I gesture toward the boxes stacked in the living room. The house is starting to look bare—Jenny has taken the pictures off the walls and the knick-knacks off the shelves and tables.

  “No, I went into work this morning. I’ve only been here since two o’clock.”

  “How much longer do you think it’s going to take?”

  “Another week at least. I keep getting sidetracked. I didn’t know that Mamma used to write stories, and I keep finding them and then I stop to read them.” Her eyes suddenly fill with tears. “I hear her voice in the stories. I don’t know why she never tried to get them published. She was really good.”

  We talk a little longer, and when I get up to go, I say, “Did your mamma leave a will?”

  Jenny looks surprised. “Samuel, I’m a lawyer. You actually think I’d let Mamma die without a will?”

  “Some people won’t listen to their kids,” I say. What I really want to know is whether her brother is in the will.

  “Mamma had a lot of sense,” she says. “And she thought I was a good lawyer.”

  “So I assume there’s no problem with you being able to dispense with this place the way you see fit.”

  Her eyes narrow. “Not a bit. Why would you think otherwise?”

  “I don’t want you to get all riled up, but I wondered if she left anything to your brother.”

  “You’ve been hanging around your friend Loretta too much. You’re going to turn into an old gossip. I believe I’ve made it clear that my brother is not a subject that’s up for discussion.”

  It’s before five, so I stop at the Bobtail Police Department to take a look at the arrest record for Eddie Sandstone’s assault charge. The record is straightforward: Eddie attacked a man at work in August of the year he graduated from high school—around the same time his daddy walked out on the family. Eddie was working for a builder and went after one of the men he was working with. The man had to have stitches after Eddie worked him over. There’s no indication of what the altercation was about, only that the man eventually dropped the charges. I jot down his name, Otis Greevy.

  The officer at the desk sends me back to Wallace Lyndall’s office. Lyndall is getting ready to head home.

  “Now what are you going to pull my chain about?” he says.

  “The report about Howard Sandstone’s disappearance mentioned that his son attacked a coworker. You remember it?” I show him the file.

  He glances over it. “I remember it because I was new on the force. It didn’t make any sense to me why Greevy didn’t press charges. He had every right to. Eddie Sandstone hit him with a shovel and kicked him around before some fellows pulled him off. Was me, I would have had his hide.”

  “So it never went to court?”

  “No. But the Sandstone boy paid the price anyway. He was supposed to get a scholarship to SMU and they rescinded it once he got into trouble.”

  Lyndall says Greevy still lives in town. “I don’t know if he’s retired or not. I don’t remember how old he was, but he was several years older than Eddie Sandstone.”

  We turn our attention back to the subject of the Borlands. I tell him I went back to their place and still found no sign of them.

  “I called Jett Borland’s girlfriend, and she said she wasn’t seeing him anymore and didn’t know where he was. But wherever he is, he’s up to no good, that’s for damn sure,” he says.

  It’s almost dark by the time I leave the Bobtail Police Department. I’m halfway home to Jarrett Creek when I see lights flashing and a few cars stopped by the side of the road. I slow down for a highway patrolman who is waving people past with a flashlight. There’s a highway patrol car on the side of the road next to the wreck of an SUV that has run off into the ditch and is lying on its side. My windows are open, so I catch an acrid smell in the air, like something burning, though I don’t see any flames. Another couple of cars are pulled off farther along the road, with people standing outside looking back at the accident.

  I’m past the wreck when I realize that the car in the ditch looks like Jenny Sandstone’s. I make a squealing U-turn and then another one to pull in behind the patrol cars. As I open the door to my truck, I hear a siren approaching from the direction of Bobtail.

  A body is lying on the ground near the SUV with a patrolman crouched next to it. When I get closer, I see that it’s Jenny, and for a moment my stomach clenches. But then I see that her eyes are open and the patrolman is talking to her.

  “Jenny, what the hell happened?” I say.

  Another patrolman steps into my path. “Sir, I need to ask you to step back.”

  I identify myself, and he tells me his name is Bobby Cole. He pulls me aside. “She’s hurt pretty bad, but she’s able to talk. She says somebody tried to run her off the road.”

  The burnt smell is stronger here. I glance over at the SUV and see a fire extinguisher lying on the ground. “Her car was on fire?” I say.

  He grimaces. “She doesn’t know how lucky she is. Somebody called in the wreck on their cell phone and we happened to be two minutes away. Flames were just starting up and we managed to get the fire out fast. Normally we would have left her in the car until the ambulance got here, but we figured there was a chance the fire might start back up. That’s why we went ahead and pulled her out.”

  I go over and crouch down on the other side from the patrolman who’s tending to Jenny. She’s got a goose egg–sized bump on her forehead, and her left arm is lying awkwardly across her torso. She’s pale as death.

  “You a friend?” the patrolman says.

  “Yes.” I lean over and put my hand on her shoulder. “Jenny, it’s me, Samuel. The patrolman said somebody tried to run you off the road. Did you see who it was?”

  She clutches my hand and groans. “Big black car, that’s all I know. Saw it coming up fast in my rearview mirror.” She shudders.

  The ambulance comes blaring up and screeches to a halt. The siren dies with a moan. I hear the doors slam, and one of the drivers says, “Man, look at that car. Lucky it didn’t roll over.”

  Jenny is still talking. Her voice is low, and I have to bend close to hear her. “I tho
ught he was going around me, but he hit me from the side. Hard.” She sighs and hums deep in her throat. “I saw that I was going off the road. I was scared if I tried to turn the wheel, I’d flip, so I steered toward the ditch.”

  “Smartest thing she could have done,” the patrolman crouched across me says.

  “Did you recognize the person who hit you?” I say.

  “Didn’t see the driver.”

  “Everybody move aside,” one of the ambulance drivers says.

  “No, I . . .” Jenny starts to say something.

  “Ma’am, you need to stop talking. We’re going to take care of you.”

  “No!” she says. “Horses.”

  “No need to put up a fuss,” I say, squeezing her hand. “I’m going to the hospital with you and I’ll call Alvin.” And I’m going to talk to Zeke Dibble, too. I want him to go over to her place and check it out.

  “I want to go home,” she says. Tears are slipping down the sides of her face.

  “If everything is all right, they’ll send you right home from the hospital,” I say, although it’s clear that isn’t going to happen.

  I stand up so the EMTs can get her onto the stretcher. Another patrol car has arrived and two more patrolmen have gone up to talk to the people pulled onto the side of the road, to see if any of them saw the accident.

  The patrolman who stayed by Jenny introduces himself as Arnold Mosier. Both he and Cole are in their thirties and could be mistaken for brothers. “We’ve called for a tow truck,” Mosier says. “I don’t know what else we can do unless there are witnesses.”

  I get a flashlight out of my truck and go over to look at the damage. There’s a deep dent on the left rear bumper, but no scrapes along the side, so not likely to be any paint residue on the car that did this.