A Deadly Affair at Bobtail Ridge

by Terry Shames

  His expression darkens. “Yeah, I know him. I was out taking care of the yard the other day and he came around and told me if I expected to get paid for doing it, I could think again.”

  That explains his hesitation with me. “You don’t need to worry. Jenny will take care of your expenses.”

  “Nobody needs to pay me for anything. Mrs. Sandstone saved me from going down a bad road, and I’ll always be grateful to her.”

  “Jenny will want to compensate you anyway. She appreciates everything you’ve done.”

  “That’s up to her. Eddie told me he inherited the house and he’s moving in and there’s no need for me to come around anymore.” His face is flushed at the memory of Eddie’s rudeness. “I don’t mind saying it’s going to be a change having somebody like him living in this house.”

  “Have you seen him around here a lot?”

  “Just that one day. He was trying all the doors to see if any of them were unlocked. I didn’t know who he was, so I wanted to be sure it wasn’t somebody trying to break in. I came over and asked who he was. When he found out I lived next door, he asked me if I had a key to the place, but I didn’t.”

  “Did he say what he wanted inside for?”

  “No, and I didn’t ask.”

  “Look, Jenny needs help getting all the boxes moved out of here, and I’m looking to hire someone. You interested?”

  “As long as I don’t have to deal with her brother I am. Does she want the furniture moved, too?”

  “Let me call her and find out.”

  I put in a call to Jenny and ask her if she still wants to go through with having someone else move things out of the house.

  “Yes, I do. Ever since we talked about it last night, I’ve felt better. It was hanging over my head.”

  “What about the furniture?”

  She thinks for a minute. “Take everything. I’m not leaving a thing for that son of a bitch.”

  When I hang up, I say to Holloway, “Furniture, too. You’ll need to get someone to help you.”

  “Say no more. I know a fellow with a truck. How soon do you want it done?”

  I tell him the sooner the better and ask him if he can arrange to rent a storage space, too. He heads home to start making arrangements, and I go inside to see if I can find what I’m after.

  The house is stuffy inside, despite the air-conditioning still being on. Odd how fast an unlived-in house begins to go stale. I survey the three bedrooms and then the garage to take stock of how many boxes I have to go through to find what I’m after.

  It’s possible that Vera kept no record of Eddie’s first marriage, but I doubt it. The problem is, whatever information she might have kept is at least twenty-five years old, and there’s no telling where it’s stashed. I could get the information from the courthouse, but I want to see what mementos Vera kept about the wedding, if anything.

  In one of the rooms is a desk that hasn’t been cleaned out, and I take a cursory look through the drawers in case Vera kept old records there. All I find is current information. In the closet I find several boxes on a shelf. I pull them out and open the one that was farthest back on the floor of the closet. It contains tax returns from twenty years back. There’s no need to keep tax returns more than seven years, but like everybody else, Vera Sandstone stuck them in a box and never opened the box again.

  It takes me almost an hour to go through each of the boxes from the closet, and none of them has any personal information about Eddie. I’m going to have to be smarter about my search. I go out into the garage, thinking it’s possible she stored her oldest stuff there. I’m relieved when I see that the boxes are labeled—Jenny’s toys, Jenny’s grades one through three. And then there are boxes for Eddie’s things—yearbooks, school projects, trophies. Under them is a box simply labeled “Eddie.” I move the other boxes off it and open it up.

  It’s full of photographs from childhood through high school, some of them in shoeboxes—mostly pictures of Eddie with friends. Tucked onto the side of the box is a shoebox, and when I open it I’m sure I’ll find what I’m looking for. There’s a tassel from his graduation mortarboard, some letters from SMU, and then a small manila envelope. Inside is a clipping from the Bobtail Weekly News showing a picture of a young girl in a light-colored suit and a hat with a veil. She’s a pretty girl with a sweet smile. It announces that Eddie Sandstone and Estelle Cruz were married right after Estelle graduated from Bobtail High, and that Eddie attended Bobtail Junior College.

  As I’m putting the box back, I see another one, marked “H.” Howard. The things Vera kept from her husband are poignant. Their framed wedding picture shows two raw young people grinning as if life will never be anything but good. She kept the marriage certificate and a newspaper clipping about the wedding. And there are photos with just the two of them, before the children were born. A little cracked leather pouch contains an old driver’s license from when Howard was eighteen, an old checkbook with his name on it, and a high school transcript.

  No other box is marked with his name or initials. I don’t remember seeing any men’s clothes in Vera’s closet, and when I put the box back I check the bedroom closets to make sure. I wonder when Vera decided her husband wasn’t coming back and it was time to pitch out the things he left behind. I wonder if he took any clothes with him. Maybe he took a suitcase, and she knew all along he had planned to leave and wanted to keep the information from her two kids as long as she could.

  As I drive off, I think about the wedding photo of Estelle Cruz. That long ago it would have been highly unusual for a young Hispanic woman to walk out on her husband. The only thing I could think of that would persuade her to do so would be if she went back to her family, or if she ran off with another man.

  Right after Eddie Sandstone graduated from high school, his daddy ran out on the family. And two years later Eddie’s wife did the same thing. Losing one person is unfortunate. Losing two starts to look like a pattern.

  And that’s when it hits me. I don’t know why it has taken me so long, but I suddenly realize that I’ve been wrong all along about what Vera Sandstone meant when she asked me to find “his” first wife. She didn’t mean Howard’s first wife. There was no such person. She was talking about Eddie’s first wife, Estelle. A pang runs through me. What is it that Vera had in mind?

  Gabe LoPresto said I could find him most of the time at Bobtail Ridge these days with the surveyors. I drive over and as soon as I take the freeway ramp off and turn into the subdivision, I immediately see why the city council chose this site for their mall. First of all, it’s right off the freeway. Any mall worth the money put into it needs to be easy to get to. Second, it’s surrounded by fields, which means there’s room to expand.

  Also, like Loretta said, the housing development has not fared well. Whoever built it clearly used the cheapest materials he could get; most of the houses sag in one way or another—porches dipping in the middle, roofs looking like they are ready to slip off onto the ground, windows gone out of true.

  I find the surveyors, and they tell me that LoPresto has gone off on a coffee break and will be back before too long.

  I drive through the streets of the subdivision and find a buzz of activity going on. On every block there are two or three houses with garage doors open and cardboard boxes stacked inside. In a couple of driveways there are moving trucks parked, ramps down, with movers conveying boxes into the vehicles. Many of the houses are already vacant. At the end of one of the streets I stop and get out to look around.

  Beyond the subdivision lies a huge open space with several tractors parked on it. I assume the area has been bought up for the mall. I note that the trailer park where Scott Borland’s wife lives is on the other side of the open space. It reminds me that I need to talk to the vet about what those pills were that Jett Borland intended for the horses.

  I drive back out through the big rock pillars that promised such grandeur back when Bobtail Ridge was built and make my way along the frontage
road until I find a place where I can get a hamburger and a cup of coffee.

  When I get back, Gabe LoPresto is talking to four other men. He breaks off and invites me over. I’d previously told him that I wanted to meet the contractor who built Bobtail Ridge. “Let me introduce you to Rich O’Connor. Rich, for some reason, Samuel, has a burning desire to talk to you.”

  Rich O’Connor is over sixty but sturdy and with a sharp-eyed look. I have a feeling he doesn’t miss much.

  “So you built this?” I wave my arms to indicate the houses in front of us.

  “Hate to admit it. Doesn’t look like much. I knew it wouldn’t stand up. The son-of-a-gun developer nickeled and dimed us every which way. I told him these houses would fall down around people’s ears, but he said not to worry. I guess he’s right. Folks here have gotten a nice buyout. They can’t wait to get out of here.”

  “You remember a man who worked for you by the name of Howard Sandstone?”

  “Sure I remember Howard.” He smiles and then checks himself. “Damnedest thing. He was a steady fellow. I never would have figured him for somebody who would walk off the job and never say word one about it. But that’s exactly what he did. Why are you asking?”

  “Something came up that made me curious. His family never heard anything either after he left. You say he was a steady worker?”

  “Up until then, yes. In this business you find out who you can count on, and he was one of them.”

  “Did anybody ever suspect foul play?”

  O’Connor hooks his hands in his back pockets and shakes his head slowly. “I never heard anything like that. Fact is, there was some talk about him maybe having a woman on the side and maybe he ran off with her.”

  “Who was she?”

  He laughs. “Some of the talk got pretty wild. Somebody said he thought Howard was interested in one of the women in the church choir, and then somebody else said there was some woman who played fast and loose that he’d hooked up with. Couldn’t have been the choir lady, because as far as I know she never left town.”

  “He had a son working for you, too. Eddie Sandstone. Do you remember him?”

  “I do, vaguely.”

  One of the men who was talking to O’Connor when I got here perks up. “Edward Sandstone? He applied to work on the demolition here. Supposed to start right away.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Sandstone is a building material. Funny that he’s in the building trade. That’s why I remember it.”

  “I mean you’re sure it was demolition he was applying for? He’s got a sheetrock business up in Temple.”

  The man laughs. “Yeah, he told me that. He’s applying for the sheetrock job, too. But he said he helped build this place and he also wants to help tear it down.”

  “Did Eddie talk about his dad after he disappeared?” I ask O’Connor.

  “Now you’re asking a question I wouldn’t know the answer to. Eddie might have talked some about his daddy, but he wouldn’t have been talking to me. I didn’t get involved much with the day-to-day activity. The head carpenter hired him because he was Howard’s son. He mostly did grunt work.”

  “Head carpenter. Man by the name of Fogarty?” I remember the name from the file I read about Howard Sandstone’s disappearance. Fogarty is the man who reported him missing.

  “Yeah, Curly Fogarty. Gabe, have you talked to Curly about working with you?”

  “I haven’t gotten that far.”

  “Let me give you Curly’s information,” O’Connor says to me. “He’s probably on a job, but tell him I sent you by.”

  I call Curly Fogarty, and he says he’ll be leaving the job he’s working on now in an hour and I can meet him at his house.

  Fogarty lives between Bobtail and Jarrett Creek, on a nice piece of land with several trees and a small creek running through the front yard. “This is a handsome place,” I say, when he comes to the front door. He gets his nickname honestly, with a thick head of curly gray hair that would please a poodle.

  “Built it myself. My wife says it’s getting a little big for us with the kids gone, but I told her they’re going to have to take me out of here feet first. I’m not building another house, and I wouldn’t be satisfied with anybody else’s work. I told her if she has to leave, I’ll get me a new wife.” He laughs heartily.

  “I heard that,” a voice says from somewhere in another room. “One of these days you’re going to regret it.”

  He grins at me. His wife appears around the door. She’s a plump little dumpling, a contrast to his lean build. But it’s clear the way they look at each other that they’ve got a solid marriage. For a second I feel the pinch of Jeanne being gone. “This is my wife Linda,” Fogarty says and tells her who I am.

  “Let me get you two a beer,” she says. “Go on out on the back deck.”

  “Yes, boss,” he says and winks at me.

  The back deck is on the shady side of the house. The backyard dips down to a gentle slope with lots of trees. “Beautiful property,” I say.

  Fogarty is a talker, and while we wait for the beer he tells me how he came to buy this piece of land and how long it took him to build the house. Usually I’d be impatient to get on with questioning him, but I’ve had a hard few days and I’m glad to let him chatter.

  Eventually we have beer and tortilla chips on the table between us, and Fogarty asks what I can do for him.

  “Hope your memory works well.” I ask him if he remembers Howard Sandstone and his son Eddie.

  “Of course I remember them. I remember one of them with a little more fondness than the other. Howard was a hardworking man, a decent man. His son was a little more problematic. Kid had a good line of b.s. but didn’t always back it up with his actions.”

  “What do you mean exactly?”

  “Well, Eddie would tell you how hard he was going to work, but then he’d leave a little early or call in sick or give somebody a little trouble. His dad on the other hand could be counted on. At least until he skipped out.”

  “You were Howard Sandstone’s foreman and you reported him missing.”

  “I did, because it didn’t seem like him. But to tell the truth, I was one of the few that wasn’t totally surprised when he disappeared.” He takes a sip of his beer, sets it down, and hunches forward with his hands on his knees. “The morning he left he called and asked me for a ride to work. He said his car was out of commission. When I picked him up he seemed agitated. I assumed he was annoyed because of the car and I told him I didn’t mind picking him up, not to be upset about it. He said that wasn’t what he was upset about. It was a family thing.”

  “He didn’t tell you what it was about?”

  Curly grimaces. “I don’t like to pry in people’s business. You work around people all day and you hear things, but I keep out of it.”

  “You never heard anything from him after he left?”

  He shakes his head.

  “You remember anything else?”

  He takes a sip of beer and eats a chip while he considers. “There was one thing, although it doesn’t amount to much. I asked if his son needed a ride to work that morning, too, and he said Eddie was driving his own car. I thought at the time it was odd that he wouldn’t bring his daddy, but I let it slide. With Howard saying he was upset about a family matter, I figured they might have had a falling-out or something.”

  “Did you take Howard home that night, too?”

  “Yep, took him home, too. I seem to recall he was a little calmer by then. Hard physical work will do that, you know.”

  “How come you remember all the details?”

  “Because I had worked with Howard a long time and I counted on him in particular. It was during a week when we were pouring concrete. There were four or five slabs and they have to be handled right— the forms have to be removed at the right time. Too soon and the ‘crete can sag. Too late, and it’s hard to get the forms off without damaging it. Howard was good at judging the timing, and I left it to
him to take care of it. Without him, I had to go over and handle it myself. I wasn’t too happy about that.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Midmorning the next day I hear from Wallace Lyndall. “You know I told you it wouldn’t be long before we got something on Scott Borland?”

  “Yeah?”

  “The fingerprints on that pipe used to attack your man Bennett came back a match.”

  “Why would anybody be that stupid?”

  “As you know, criminals aren’t necessarily the PhD type. I’m going out there to make the arrest. You want to join me?”

  A half hour later I park in the lot behind the Bobtail Police Department and find Lyndall waiting in his squad car for me.

  The Borland place looks deserted again as we drive up, but then the dogs come scrambling out from under the porch, hollering. I’m surprised when Lyndall speaks sharply to them and they promptly turn tail and go back under there. They crouch there, eyeing us, but they stay put.

  No one answers the front door, but this time we have cause to search the place thoroughly, which means we can follow the path worn through the weeds in the vacant field behind the house into the thicket beyond. Before, I suspected that Borland might have a meth lab back there, but we didn’t have a legal reason to follow my instinct. This time, we’re within rights.

  We’ve gone about twenty steps into the high, yellowed weeds when I hold out my hand to stop Lyndall and point to a wisp of smoke coming from the stand of trees. The air is dead-still, and the column of black smoke is shooting straight up, with particles of something flying up into the air surrounding it.

  “Uh-oh,” Lyndall says. “That doesn’t look right.”

  A few seconds later we hear yelling from the vicinity of the smoke, and a door slams. Scott and Jett Borland come charging toward us through the trees. Behind us, I hear the dogs yelping. The Borlands barely make it out of the tree line and into the clearing when it feels like all the air is sucked out of the surroundings and all sound and sights pause for a few seconds. Then in a rush I see the Borlands sprawl forward just before I feel the force of the explosion hit me. We’re far enough away that it doesn’t bring us down, but I stagger back and the vegetation momentarily sways toward us. Bits of debris swirl in the air through a cloud of shimmering dust.