by Fay Robinson
“Come here.” He pulled her down and rubbed her back, intending to hold her and let her fall asleep. “At the risk of being a man, can I tell you something?”
“Yes.”
“I think it has to be normal to be scared. Hell, I’m scared. I worry every day about what kind of father I’ll be.”
“You don’t think I’m terrible for resenting the pregnancy at first?”
“No, and I think you’re going to be a terrific mother.”
“Mmm. You always make me feel better.” She slid her hand across his chest, then moved it downward to stroke him through the cotton boxers he liked to wear to bed. She slipped it in through the flap. “Nifty little thing, that hole in the front.”
“I thought you were tired.”
Her thumb lightly grazed him, but it was enough to make him leap in response. “I was, but I just remembered that your being a man has definite advantages.”
CHAPTER NINE
RAY LIKED the boardinghouse he’d moved into in Potock. The food was good, the other tenants didn’t disturb him, and the owner was a nice-looking widow named Carla who called him “handsome” all the time, as if it was his name.
She cooked pot roast twice a week because he’d mentioned it was his favorite dish, and winked at him a lot. He didn’t mind. He winked back. One of these nights he might do more than wink if she gave him the signal.
He’d told her right off he was an ex-con and a thief and that sometimes the itch to steal was pretty powerful. Instead of showing him the door, she’d showed him around.
“If you see anything you want, take it now as a gift,” she’d said. “But if you live here, I won’t put up with you stealing from me. Are we clear?”
“Yes, ma’am. We’re clear.” He respected a woman who said what she meant. He’d moved in right away. And not once in all these weeks had he taken anything or wanted to.
The sheets smelled clean, but not like the ones from the prison laundry that reeked of starch. These had a sweet kind of scent from being dried outside on the clothesline, and that made it nice to lie between them at night.
The best part about the place was the quiet. Prison was never quiet, never dark. He’d had a hard time sleeping here in the beginning because he was used to the drone of voices always running as an undercurrent in his sleep. The only noise at night now was the occasional car passing outside.
He wasn’t too keen on his job at the car wash, but it gave him something to do and kept his parole officer off his back.
He’d been good. The clean life grated a bit on his nerves, but for once he thought he could hack going straight.
Still, he hadn’t yet faced J.T., hadn’t told him he was out of prison and in town. His son wouldn’t be happy to hear the news. But then, nothing between them had ever been easy.
SUNDAY AFTERNOON the Mathison clan gathered, as they often did, in the backyard at Lucky’s parents’ house. After lunch her mother took her grandmother to the hospital to visit a friend who’d broken her hip.
Lucky, Leigh and Shannon stretched out in loungers to watch the men play basketball, while the children played with their dolls nearby. Cal had brought a female friend, whom Leigh had quickly dubbed “the Prom Queen,” because she looked eighteen. She’d left a while ago, though, to go to work. Now only the three sisters were left.
Lucky’s engagement ring had gotten nods of appreciation from everyone in the family but Leigh. “So what does this ring mean, exactly?” she asked. “Does the Yankee intend to stay this time?”
“Leigh, for goodness’ sake,” Shannon admonished.
“It’s okay, Shannon. Yes, Leigh, he intends to stay. I want him to. And he’s not a Yankee, for your information. He was born in Biloxi, Mississippi.”
She thought that would shut her sister up, but it didn’t. “You’ve been married to this man for a year and you’re just now finding out he was born in the next state? Don’t you think that’s a bit strange?”
“Not at all. He went through a terrible time when his parents died and he doesn’t like to talk about the past.”
“But Lucky—”
“Don’t, Leigh, please. You’re my sister and I love you, but sometimes you don’t know when to quit.”
“Hear, hear,” Shannon said.
That did it. Leigh sulked quietly, nursing her glass of tea.
The men shed their shirts with the rising temperature. Despite his pale body, Jack looked delicious in only shorts and tennis shoes—muscular and fit. Those stomach crunches he did every morning really paid off.
Shannon nodded toward him. “You need to put that man back in the oven and brown him up a bit.”
“I’m taking him fishing later. Maybe I can toast him on both sides.”
“He does have a spectacular body, though. Mmm.”
Even Leigh begrudgingly admitted he was well put together. “Nice rear.”
“I’ll bet the other side’s pretty good, too,” Shannon added, giggling.
“You two are terrible,” Lucky told them.
“Bill used to have a six-pack like that, but all the Little Debbie cakes he eats have given him a no-pack.”
That got them all giggling.
“WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE women talk about when they’re alone?” Bill asked the other men, nodding at his wife and her sisters. “They sure are having a good time.”
Jack took his shot from the foul line and tossed the ball to Cal to take it out. “Babies probably.”
“Shopping and stuff,” Cal said.
Lucky’s dad chortled at that. “You boys sure have a lot to learn, that’s all I’ve got to say.”
After three games Matt begged off, saying he was getting too old for so much activity and was going back to the house for a drink.
“That’s it for me, too,” Jack said, suggesting Cal and Bill go head-to-head. He put on his shirt and followed his father-in-law inside to the kitchen.
“Water or tea?” Matt asked, filling two glasses with ice.
“Water.” Jack wiped the sweat from his face and neck with the hem of his shirt. They both chugged their drinks and got a refill. “Matt, I need to talk to you about something while we’re alone. Can we go to your study? I don’t want anyone walking in on us.”
“Something wrong with Lucky or the baby?”
“No, nothing like that. A case I’m working on.”
“Come with me.” In the study Matt sat behind his desk, leaving Jack to pull up a chair in front. “I don’t do investigating anymore, but if you need help looking into something, maybe Leigh can—”
“No, she can’t.” Jack cut right to the chase. “I wish I didn’t have to be so blunt, because you’ve always treated me fairly, but there’s no way around this. Were you having an affair with Eileen Olenick at the time of her death?”
Matt stopped drinking and set down his glass. Jack had stunned him; that was clear. “What’s this question got to do with a case?”
“I’m looking into the possibility that Charlie Bagwell may have had something to do with her death. Rolly Akers seems to think you have firsthand knowledge that Charlie wasn’t her lover.”
Matt grunted. “Rolly. Now there’s a fine one to be pointing fingers at other people.”
“Rolly was involved with her?”
“I don’t think physically, but certainly emotionally.”
Hell, this was getting more complicated by the minute.
“And were you?” Jack asked him again.
He stood and walked to the window to look out across the backyard. “Sometimes even smart men do foolish things.”
“I understand that.”
He turned. “I’m talking about regrets. You’ve hardly lived long enough to have them.”
“Believe me, Matt, I have more than my share.”
“My biggest regret walked into the Register twenty-one years ago to ask me to write an editorial about the importance of art in the schools. I was a middle-aged man with four children and this lovely young woman ac
ted as if I’d hung the moon. I was flattered by her attention, I guess, and I became her lover.”
“How long was the affair?”
“A few weeks. Didn’t take me long to realize that what I had at home was worth more than the few hours of pleasure Eileen could give me, but the damage was already done.”
“Ruth never suspected?”
“No, and it would kill her if she ever found out.”
“She won’t hear it from me. I promise you.”
“Thank you. I ask for your silence not for my sake, but for hers. I wouldn’t want her hurt by something that meant so little.”
Jack nodded. His respect for Matt was stronger than his distress at the man’s one indiscretion. And it would hurt Lucky, too, if she ever found out. Jack had no doubt about that.
“Do you know how Charlie Bagwell might have fit into Eileen Olenick’s life?” he asked.
“I don’t know that Charlie did. I never heard her mention him, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she was sleeping with him, too. I discovered quickly that there were other men.”
“Anyone in particular?”
“I can’t be certain. Paul Hightower possibly.”
“Hightower.” Jack had to think to place the name. “We interviewed him on another case. Indian artifacts that might’ve been dug up on federal lands. He’s a forest ranger out there?”
“Land Management Forester, I think, is the correct term, but yes, he’s the head ranger. He’s managed all the federally owned lands in this area for a lot of years.”
“Would he have known Charlie Bagwell?”
“Oh, of course. Paul recommends the logging contracts and Charlie had some of them.”
So Hightower knew Olenick, knew Bagwell and also managed land where artifacts might have been illegally obtained. Jack sorted through the pieces of the puzzle, not liking the picture that was starting to form.
“Artifact theft,” he said. “Is that something you’ve written stories about?”
“Plenty over the years. From what I understand, it’s a major problem and big business. There’s a thriving underground market of buyers and sellers.”
“What kind of money are we talking about?”
“Hundreds of dollars for a simple pot. Thousands for items that are particularly rare, like human remains.”
“Could somebody make a hundred thousand a year selling them?”
“I wouldn’t think so around here unless he found a big site that hadn’t yet been discovered and protected. To dig out enough for that kind of money would take a lot of time and effort.” He said he’d kept clip files on all his stories and Jack could borrow them.
“I’d appreciate that.”
“Is there a connection here? You’ve asked about Charlie and Eileen and now about artifact theft. Is Charlie’s death somehow tied up in all of this?”
“Will what I tell you remain in this room?”
“Son, I just got through admitting the biggest secret in my life, so believe me when I say you can trust me to keep quiet. But if you don’t feel comfortable…”
“Actually, Matt, it might help me to lay this out for someone I trust who knows all the players. Tell me if I’m crazy.” He described the inconsistencies at the scene of Bagwell’s death, the extra wealth Bagwell had socked away and the empty storage shed. “There seems to be more here than what’s obvious on the surface.”
“Do you think Charlie was murdered?”
“I have no hard evidence of that.”
“What are your instincts telling you?”
“That someone had to help him up that railroad bank. Now, why anyone would kill him, I don’t know. And whether or not there’s a connection to the Olenick case, I don’t know that, either. The more questions I ask, the more confusing things get.”
“I have photographs from when Eileen disappeared if you want to see them. They’re faded after all this time, but we kept negatives. Leigh had Lucky make a print or two off them for that article she wrote in the spring when they moved Terrell Wade to Horizon House.”
“They’d be a great help. The police files and evidence are missing. Rolly says they were probably thrown away to make room for new files.”
“I wouldn’t rule out that he made them disappear.”
“I’m not ruling anything out.”
Matt looked at his watch. “I’ll run down to the office now while nobody’s there and get everything. I can be back in thirty minutes.”
“Should I come?”
“No, that’ll arouse suspicion. You stay here, and if any of my daughters ask, tell them I went to buy tobacco for my pipe.”
“Who’s an expert on Indian artifacts? I need to educate myself quickly.”
“Down at the university in Tuscaloosa I’m sure you’ll find any number of people, but there’s someone local who knows as much as or more than anyone and probably has photographs to boot.”
“Who’s that?”
“You’re living with her.”
“YOU’LL DO MUCH BETTER with a worm.” Lucky wiggled one at Jack and smiled. He was sitting in the other end of the boat trying, with little success, to get a raw chicken liver to stay on his hook.
“I’ll stick with this, thank you,” he grumbled. He was obviously not thrilled about her dragging him out here this afternoon.
“They aren’t snakes, you know. You don’t have to be afraid of them.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “I knew I’d regret ever telling you that.”
“Snakes have a bad rap. They’re really very sweet, and unless they’re threatened, they’re much more likely to retreat than attack. They aren’t slimy like people think. I’ll catch one and show you if you want.”
“That’s okay. I’ll take your word for it.”
“Touching one might help you get over your fear.”
“Nothing short of being held at gunpoint will ever make me touch a snake. I found one in my closet when I was a kid, and I couldn’t sleep for a month worrying if he had a family.”
“In the house? Wow, that’s pretty strange. I’ve heard of it happening in really run-down places, but rarely in nice houses. How’d it get in there?”
“Crawled in through a vent, I guess. I don’t know.”
“That would spook a kid.” She cast out her line and reeled it forward a couple of turns. “I can’t believe you’ve never been fishing before. How come your dad never took you?”
“Too busy.”
“That’s sad. Every kid should learn to fish. I believe it’s one of life’s little pleasures.”
“I can see that,” he said sarcastically. He accidentally caught his thumb with the hook and stuck the thumb in his mouth before remembering it tasted like bloody chicken liver. Immediately he made a “blah” sound and started wiping his tongue on his shirt.
Lucky sighed. This trip had been a disaster. He loathed fishing, just as she had loathed golf when he’d tried to teach her how to play.
They were total opposites. She was a morning person. He was a night person. She liked life to be casual and rustic. He planned his day to the hour and was happier in a suit than jeans.
“You’d better cover up,” she told him. “You’re getting pink.” God knows she didn’t want him to blister on top of everything else.
He pulled his shirt on over his head and adjusted his baseball cap to shade his nose. “How long does this usually take?”
“Depends on the weather, the water temperature, if the fish are hungry or not…”
“We’ve been out here for over an hour and I haven’t caught anything. They’re eating all my bait.”
“That’s how it goes. Sometimes you can stay out all day and not even get a bite.”
He didn’t respond but made a low growl in his throat that said he’d rather pick up snakes than fish all day.
After another hour had passed, he was definitely getting antsy, shifting on the boat cushion, making unnecessary noise. When he stuck himself with the hook for the third time
, she knew it was time to quit. Some things weren’t meant to be.
She put her hand on her spine and stretched. “Ow, my back’s starting to get stiff. I think I’m going to have to call it a day. Is that okay with you?”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” he said, perking up. He quickly brought in his rod.
“Before we go to the house, I want to show you something.”
She brought in her own rod and closed her tackle box. Cranking the motor, she zoomed out and headed downriver, with Jack facing her on the front seat.
The Forks were only a few miles away, but she doubted Jack had ever seen where the Mulberry, the branch of the Black Warrior they lived on, flowed into the main river. You needed to be in a boat to really see it.
They met a string of barges three abreast. When Lucky passed the towboat at the rear, she waved and the pilot blew his big horn in response. “Hold on,” she yelled over the wind, and angled the boat into the waves. They bounced hard a couple of times and water splashed up.
Jack mouthed an expletive, but Lucky loved getting sprayed.
When they reached their destination, she slowed, pulled to one side and cut the engine. The main channel of the river stretched out ahead of them.
“What do you think of my river? Isn’t he wonderful?”
Jack grunted something noncommittal.
“He’s bold and courageous like his namesake, Chief Tuscaloosa,” she went on. “Tuscaloosa defeated DeSoto when the Spaniards explored the southern part of the U.S. in 1540, but the soldiers later killed him.”
“Did that battle happen around here?”
“No, much farther south. That’s a whole different group of Indians than the ones we had in this area, but that’s where we get our latest name for the river. Taska means warrior and luce means black. Taskaluse, or Tuscaloosa as it’s spelled today, translates into ‘black warrior.’ The river’s had ten or more names over the centuries.”
“Do people find many Indian artifacts hereabouts?”
“A good many. Flint points. Ax and grinding stones. I’ve run across everything over the years, and people sometimes call me to look at artifacts they’ve found in their fields, since I know a bit about them. I uncovered a strange little effigy pot shaped like a woman when I dug a hole for that azalea bush out on the other side of the drive.”
