A Killing at Cotton Hill

by Terry Shames

  When I go back into the kitchen, I find several people have been here to visit and are ready to leave. I exchange a few words with them, a couple of them eyeing me in an odd way, wondering how I come to be here. I slip out back to get Greg. He needs to have a presence with these folks.

  I see right off that Greg is not a person well suited to the morning. He comes to the door with his hair sticking out all over and his eyes unfocused. He smells like he slept in his clothes. When I tell him people are here to pay their respects and he ought to be there, he gives an ornery grunt and tells me he’ll be over at the house after a while.

  “I’ve let you sleep as long as I can. This is something you have to put yourself out for.”

  “I told you I’ll be there in a minute,” he says. Yesterday the shock of Dora Lee’s death had him a little cowed, but today he’s back to his prickly self.

  I look him up and down. “It might be a good idea if you took a shower, too.”

  Back in the kitchen, Loretta is stowing another dish of macaroni and cheese in the refrigerator. A woman I don’t recognize is sitting at the kitchen table. She introduces herself as Frances Underwood, from the next farm down. She’s in her forties and skinny, all sharp edges and bright eyes with some calculation in them.

  Although I’ve run into most people around here one time and another, I don’t know the Underwoods. Dora Lee said they were a little snobbish. I sit down across the kitchen table from her. “You’re the woman who found Dora Lee?”

  “I am. I don’t ever want something like that to happen to me again.”

  “It must have been terrible.” I’m thinking it was a damn sight worse for Dora Lee. “What time of the morning was it?”

  “Early. I was bringing Dora Lee some eggs. I’ve got a few good layers and she said she wouldn’t mind having some fresh eggs.”

  “You can’t find good fresh eggs like that at the grocery store,” Loretta says. “How much do you get for them?”

  I translate. Loretta wants to know if this woman was giving the eggs, or selling them.

  “They’re real reasonable. I don’t charge a bit more than you’d pay at the Quick Stop.”

  “You can’t do any better than that,” Loretta says, patting the curls at the back of her neck.

  “When you came to bring the eggs yesterday morning, I don’t suppose you saw anybody around that shouldn’t be here?” I say.

  “There’s nobody out and about that time of day. I like to get my business out of the way early.” She has one of Loretta’s cinnamon rolls in front of her and she picks off a little corner of it. “They say it was that grandson of hers that killed her.”

  “You ever see any signs of problems between them?” I ask.

  She puts the morsel of roll into her mouth and mashes it around. She’s so skinny that you just know she and food are not on good terms. “I never saw the boy more than once or twice, so I couldn’t tell you.”

  “How long have you lived out here?”

  “When Mamma had to go into a home, we moved into her house. We’ve been here almost two years now.”

  I prick up my ears. Most people around these parts move back to their parents’ old place when the old people can’t do for themselves. They move back to help out, not to displace them. “Wait a minute, I remember your folks. Ed and Agatha Shockley. Ed died, what is it, fifteen years ago now?”

  “That’s right. Mamma wore herself out with the farm after that.”

  “And how’s your mamma doing?” Loretta saves me from having to ask. Her voice is full of sugar. She’s thinking the same thing I am, that this woman stashed her old mother somewhere and confiscated her house.

  “She died a few months back,” Mrs. Underwood says. “Mamma was glad we wanted to keep the old place. So many folks don’t appreciate the land. But my husband wanted to do a little farming.”

  She wants us to know that she had her mother’s blessing. But I didn’t notice a lot of farming going on at the Underwoods’. Like Dora Lee’s land, it is sorely depleted by years of cotton crops, and most people don’t have the money to repair the soil. Alfalfa is about the only thing that will grow, and there’s plenty of that, so the prices aren’t worth planting it to sell.

  “Let me ask you something,” I say. “I was talking to Dora Lee a couple of days ago, and she said she saw a car around here that she didn’t recognize. You see anything like that?”

  She manages to swallow the piece of roll. “I wouldn’t have noticed such a thing. My husband and I lived in San Antonio for twenty years before we came out here. We got used to seeing all kinds of people coming and going.”

  “What sort of work did your husband do in San Antonio?” Loretta asks.

  “Wasn’t just my husband. We had ourselves a real estate office. I worked right alongside him.”

  About then Greg comes in the back door, smelling of soap and with his hair slicked down. Mrs. Underwood’s eyes widen, like she can’t believe he’s walking around free. And it isn’t long before she scoots out of there.

  Loretta fusses over the boy, and he is properly appreciative of the cinnamon rolls. By the time he wolfs down the third one, there’s no way Loretta believes he could have killed his grandmother.

  After that, things speed up. We have funeral arrangements to make and people in town to call. All this recalls bad memories for me, but I remind myself this boy has been through more than I’ve ever had to deal with, so I push it all back.

  At some point I call Gary Dellmore down at the bank and tell him to set up a temporary account in my name to pay for Dora Lee’s funeral and farm expenses. I tell him I’ll drop by in a while to transfer some funds into it from my bank in Bobtail. He asks me why I would take care of Dora Lee’s expenses. I come close to telling him it’s none of his business, but if I do, it’ll be all over town that Dora Lee and I were up to something. So I tell him that Dora Lee’s poor grandson has nobody to fend for him and that as Dora Lee’s old friend, I’m lending a hand. I tell him I’ll get my money paid back when the estate is settled.

  “I wouldn’t count on that. Dora Lee’s got it mortgaged to the limit.”

  I tell him there may be some things he doesn’t know about. I don’t mean anything by that, but it satisfies me to know that he’s eaten up with curiosity. Plus, it doesn’t sit well with me that he’d blab Dora Lee’s financial information so easily, which is why I’ve always kept most of my funds in a bank in Bobtail, so Dellmore has no idea what I’m worth.

  Ever since Frances Underwood introduced herself, I’ve been trying to remember where I saw the name Underwood recently. It has to have been in the papers I sifted through last night. It doesn’t take me long to find what I’m looking for. In the stack of correspondence I put together last night, there’s a letter dated last May, from Clyde Underwood. I read it over, and it makes me so mad I have to sit quiet for a minute. It seemed that Mr. Clyde Underwood wanted to do Dora Lee the favor of buying her land. Cheap.

  Back when I was in my forties, after I was finished with my stint as chief of police, my brother-in-law hired me as a landman for his oil and gas exploration business. Landmen are in demand in Texas because so many folks want to find out if they have oil or gas on their property that’s worth drilling for. When he first offered me the job, I said, “DeWitt, I don’t know a thing about being a landman.”

  He said, “Samuel, you’ve got the first part down. You know this part of the state like the back of your hand. And the specifics of oil and gas I can teach you in a week.”

  And he was right. He was a shrewd businessman with a nose for oil and gas, and he said I was a quick study. I made a good living at it until I retired when Jeanne got sick. In the process I learned a good deal about what land was worth in the county—farm and ranch land, agricultural land and commercial enterprises, in addition to natural resources. What Clyde Underwood offered Dora Lee you wouldn’t offer for swampland.

  I sit back and put my feet up on the desk and consider if Clyde Underwood k
new about Dora Lee’s precarious financial situation. If I hadn’t just talked to Gary Dellmore, I might not have put it together, but something tells me that Clyde had an inside track on who was hurting for money around here. And that inside track had to come from the person who held the mortgage on Dora Lee’s place. That man is Gary Dellmore. I wonder what Underwood really wants with the land. There’s never been an oil or gas find right around here.

  I’m thinking myself into a fine temper, when I hear a car engine approaching the house. I step into the front room and see Rodell come wheeling up into the side yard, skewing the car to a stop. I go out to meet him, hoping I can head him off of Greg’s trail.

  Rodell untangles himself from his black Chevrolet and eyes me up and down. I can smell the alcohol leeching out of his pores. His eyes are bloodshot. “You’ve got yourself all set up out here, ain’t you?”

  “Let’s cut to the chase, Rodell. What is it you’re after?”

  “I’m here to let you know I got a call from a Mr. Leslie Parjeter. He wanted to know what kind of a person you were, and what business you had nosing around Dora Lee’s place. He said you took it upon yourself to inform him of Dora Lee’s murder.”

  “Uh, huh. And you told him what?”

  “I told him I’d come out here and check things out.”

  “Is that a fact? Well, now you’ve checked things out, how about if you tell Mr. Parjeter that everything’s fine.”

  “I can’t do that, Samuel. You’re harboring the criminal that most likely killed poor Dora Lee. For all I know the two of you have cooked up to kill her and take over her property.”

  I’d laugh if I didn’t know that Rodell is like a skunk. He can’t do much damage, but he could sure stink up the place. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you tell Mr. Parjeter that if he’s worried he should come on over here and see for himself?”

  Rodell studies me for a minute. He’s not equipped to argue in a rational way, and it’s rarely called for. “Maybe I’ll just do that,” he says.

  Then I have an idea how I can soothe Rodell’s feathers and find out something at the same time. “Rodell, you being the law around here, maybe you can answer a question. Has anybody mentioned seeing somebody out here with a fancy car that they didn’t recognize?”

  Rodell ponders the question. “I don’t recall such a thing. I’m going to have to ask my lieutenants about that. How come you want to know?”

  “Dora Lee told me she saw somebody driving past her place more than once that kind of spooked her.”

  Rodell squints his eyes. “I fail to see how that’s any of your affair. You leave it to me and my men to figure out what’s been going on out here.”

  “Rodell, I’m going to do just that. I know you’re working hard at it.”

  He stares at me for a minute, trying to work out if I’m being a smartass, but he can’t make anything out of what I said. Finally he says, “You got that right. I’m on it.” He slides back into the car and peels out.

  Late in the afternoon the coroner’s office calls to say I can send somebody to come and pick up Dora Lee’s body. A sense of relief goes through me. I’m glad to get her out of the hands of people she didn’t know. I call Ernest Landau and he says they’ll send somebody up right away to take care of her. I appreciate the way he says, “take care of her.” He knows the right lingo.

  He asks me if I could bring the boy down to select a casket and go over a few things. I tell him I’ll have him down there soon and ask him not to bring up the issue of money with the boy, just to leave that part to me.

  I expect Greg to balk when I tell him we need to pick a casket and make some decisions down at the funeral home, but he says he guesses it has to be done. Without me telling him to he goes to his little shack and comes back wearing a clean pair of pants and a button shirt.

  It turns out that the boy has opinions about the casket and the music and the way the service should go. He privately tells me he’s not sure Dora Lee would have wanted Duckworth to perform the service. I tell him I agree with him, but that some things just have to be left the best they can be. It would cause a big commotion if we rattled that cage. He holds out a little longer, but seeing as how he doesn’t know anybody better, he agrees.

  Back at the house the refrigerator is full of casseroles and sweets, but suddenly I have an appetite for a good steak. “Look here, Greg. What would you think about going over to the steakhouse in Bobtail to get something to eat?”

  He gets real still and I suspect he’s worried about how to pay for his end of things.

  “It’s on me. I don’t think I can face a tuna casserole.”

  He manages a grin. “I know what you mean.”

  “Let me ask you this. Have you got a girlfriend, or a friend you’d like to invite to come along?”

  His face gets as red as a fire truck. “Nossir, I kind of stick to myself.”

  “Do you mind if I invite Jenny Sandstone? You may yet end up needing her law services, and it wouldn’t hurt to get to know her.”

  He says that’s fine with him. On the way to my place, we swing by Jenny’s office. It’s closed up tight, but since she lives right next door to me I can kill two birds with one rock. When I phone, she admits she was facing leftovers and is pleased to go with us.

  While we wait for her to get ready, I take Greg with me down to the pasture to check on the cows. One of them has a little pebble stuck in its hoof and I take the time to whittle it out with my pocketknife.

  Like all women I’ve known, Jenny takes a while to get ready, but finally she calls and we go and pick her up. It’s a squeeze getting the three of us into the truck, but Jenny smells good and is in a fine humor, and nobody seems to mind being a little crowded. We have a pleasant evening. Jenny manages to put the boy at ease and none of us brings up the matter of Dora Lee’s murder. For my part I enjoy the steak and feel livelier than I have in some time. I’m guessing it has something to do with suddenly being handed a purpose.

  Saturday morning, Loretta comes back out and has to get caught up on every detail of the funeral arrangements. I ask her if she would mind figuring out what clothes to put Dora Lee in for her final resting. She tells me she’ll be proud to do it. “But you know Ida Ruth was Dora Lee’s best friend and she got back last night from Waco. I better call her to come out here and help me, or she’ll get her feelings hurt.”

  “I’m glad you thought of it. And that reminds me of something else. You remember Dora Lee had a daughter that moved out to California? Well, I’m having trouble locating her. You reckon Ida would know anything about that?”

  “You can ask her when she gets here.”

  I get on back to Dora Lee’s office. I didn’t get through all the papers yesterday, and it’s time to tackle that. It takes me twenty minutes to figure out what happened to Dora Lee’s money. Apparently, the reason Teague took out a big mortgage on the house before he died was to cover his medical expenses. I’d known Teague had diabetes, but I didn’t know how it ravaged his body and that he didn’t have any health insurance. Although Dora Lee had some money left over after he died, and she was frugal, keeping up mortgage payments had slowly leeched away her funds.

  By the time I hear Ida Ruth come in the back door, I’m feeling mighty low, thinking how worried Dora Lee must have been in her last year.

  I greet Ida Ruth and ask her if I can talk to her after they’ve picked out the burial clothes for Dora Lee.

  She and Loretta make a tour of the house, exclaiming over the quilts, wondering what’s to be done with them. They finally disappear into Dora Lee’s room, and I go back to my sad work. I make a list of Dora Lee’s outstanding bills, among which is a loan she took out from her brother-in-law, Leslie. I can imagine the blow it must have been to her pride to have to go to him for help. That explains why he was interested in her will; he wants to be sure he gets paid back.

  The women take their sweet time, and by the time they’re done it’s almost noon. Loretta heats up a tuna casse
role and the three of us sit down to eat.

  “Ida, how long did you and Dora Lee know each other?”

  Ida Ruth is a large, unattractive woman with big teeth and a burn scar along her left ear where a kerosene stove exploded next to her when she was a girl. She has a habit of listening with her head cocked, as if she’s got trouble with her hearing. “How long? Forty years we’ve known each other. Ever since Earl and I moved here and joined the Baptist Church. Dora Lee and I quilted together and raised our kids together.” She stops to take off her glasses and wipe her eyes. “Lord, I’m going to miss her. How could that boy have done such a thing?”

  “Ida Ruth, it’s time to put a stop to this. I don’t know who’s been pumping up the rumor that her grandson killed her, but there’s not a shred of evidence that he did any such thing.”

  “They say he wanted the money from the farm. That he’s going to up and sell it and go off somewhere.”

  “I don’t know who they are, but they don’t know what they’re talking about,” I say.

  She sniffs and exchanges a glance with Loretta, who looks nervous. Ida Ruth has a reputation for being scrappy if she’s crossed. Loretta won’t want to get into it with her, but there’s nothing to stop me from wading in.

  “It’s up to you to stop rumors like this, so I’m going to tell you the truth. The truth is, Dora Lee didn’t have a dime. The property is mortgaged and even if it’s sold, there won’t be much left over.”

  Loretta claps her hand over her mouth and Ida Ruth falls back in her seat as if I’ve struck her. Loretta has told me in the past that every old woman’s worst fear is being left destitute.

  “Didn’t have a dime? She never let on,” Ida Ruth says.

  “We were all fooled,” I say.

  “Then the boy probably didn’t know either,” Ida says, tapping the table firmly. “Young boys don’t know a thing about finances. He probably thought she was rich.”

  “He knew she had no money. Dora Lee wanted to send him off to art school, but he said she couldn’t afford it.”