A Killing at Cotton Hill

by Terry Shames

  I get up. “I’ve got one or two things I ought to see about. It’s best if you face the lions by yourself.”

  I don’t say so, but I can’t help thinking that it will do her good to face off the family with a winning hand behind her. After all, the land belongs to her. And something tells me that when it comes to Wayne Jackson and Leslie Parjeter, she’s going to need a backbone made of steel. I tell her I’ll run her over to the church to pick up her car, but she says she’ll walk over there. “It’s just a few blocks.”

  “You still remember the way out to the farm?”

  Her face goes hard. “How could I forget?”

  It’s late afternoon and I’m suddenly restless. It has been a harrowing day. I’m happy to walk down to where the cows are. They low their greetings, and that soothes me. I walk among them, automatically checking them for anything unusual. Before long I’ll have to think about which ones to give up to auction, which ones to breed next spring. But for now I’m content just to be with them.

  When I get back to the house, Loretta has been there. She has left a note on the table along with a few slices of cake. Then I remember that I told Jenny Sandstone I’d see her this evening.

  I start to call and tell her I can’t make it, but then it occurs to me that Jenny may be able to find out something about Dora Lee’s land. That perks me up enough to call her, and she tells me to come on over.

  “If you can’t guess, I’m not much of a cook,” Jenny says.

  She stands flustered at a pristine counter in her gleaming kitchen, trying to arrange a few pieces of cheese on a plate so that they don’t look like mangled chunks of plastic.

  “Jenny, I appreciate your going to the trouble, but I didn’t come over here to eat. The Baptist ladies took care of my appetite this afternoon. Here, let me do that.”

  It’s strange to me to see a perfectly competent woman be all paws when it comes to food. I move her aside, pile the cheese on one side of the plate and some crackers out of the box she has sitting on the counter on the other.

  We sit at the kitchen table where she has already opened a bottle of red wine and put out two glasses. With some women I might be thinking, Uh, oh, but I get none of the hints I usually get from a woman who is looking to rope me in. It’s more like she was going to have some cheese and crackers herself, and I happened to come by.

  I have never been in Jenny’s house. I like the way she has done it up. It’s comfortable without being fussy the way some single women get. No little glass figurines to catch dust, no smell of potpourri to smother you. The living room she led me through on the way to the kitchen is furnished with a big comfortable sofa and chairs, a handsome rug over polished floors, and a long bookcase full of books. The workings of someone with quiet taste who knows when to stop. On her walls she has a couple of nicely framed art gallery posters and a woven rug. Nothing to get excited about either way, but a welcome change in a town where a picture of Aunt Nelly looking stern or Jesus minding the flock tend to be the wall decoration of choice.

  She pours the wine and I sip it. I’m not much of a drinker, a little beer here and there, but the wine is good and I tell her so.

  “I like good wine,” she says, holding her glass up to the light. “I buy it off the internet. They ship it right here so I don’t have to run around finding it and hauling it home.”

  “Jenny, growing up in Bobtail, how come you moved to a small place like Jarrett Creek?”

  She twirls the stem of her glass, smiling a little. “I always liked Jarrett Creek. My daddy used to come over to Granger’s Feed Store when he was still farming, and he’d bring me with him. I know it sounds funny, but people always seemed to be a little more modern here than in Bobtail. Even though Bobtail is bigger, it’s stuck in the last century. My mamma always said folks here in Jarrett Creek thought they were up to something. Above themselves, if you know what I mean.”

  “You could have gone to Houston or Austin. A lawyer can make a fine living there.”

  She laughs, a big cheerful sound. “That’s what people say, but the truth is those places are overrun with lawyers. You can make a good bit of money, but expenses are high and I’m just not a big city kind of girl. In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t exactly have the build for fashion, and I knew early on that I probably wasn’t going to be one for marrying.”

  “Jarrett Creek is lucky to have you,” I say.

  She pours herself a little more wine and says, “Help yourself when you want more. Now, tell me if you’ve found out anything about that poor woman’s death.”

  “I wish I could tell you I had, but there’s not much to go on. ” I admit to my failure in not taking seriously Dora Lee’s fear about the car she saw parked out in front of her place the night she died. And about poor old Skeeter being poisoned. “Whoever did it wanted Skeeter out of the way.”

  “Pure meanness,” Jenny says.

  I tell her about walking the land to see if there’s any sign of oil or gas. We have a laugh over Leslie Parjeter’s interest in the possibility, and about him and Jackson circling the wagons to be sure I don’t run off with any goods. I wind up talking about Clyde Underwood’s low-ball offer for Dora Lee’s land. “I wonder if you might be able to find out if there’s anything special about that land,” I say. “You know people over in Bobtail at the courthouse. They may have some news.”

  Jenny is looking off into the distance. “I’m trying to think what I heard recently. It seemed crazy to me, so I didn’t hold it in my mind.”

  I sip the good red wine and eat a piece of cheese while she ponders.

  She slaps her hands together and then points at me. “A race track.”

  “Horse racing?”

  “Oh, good heavens, no. That, I’d have remembered. I mean like a Nascar track. You know, car racing. Some Houston outfit is thinking it might appeal to people around here.”

  I picture the dust rising from cars tearing around a track out there in the pastureland, a big parking lot with hotdog and beer stands and bleachers—and money pouring into the county. I don’t know a thing about car racing, but it doesn’t seem crazy to imagine that land being useful for such a venture. “I guess they figure if people come here for the lake, they’ll come here for car racing, too. I wonder what kind of money car race tracks bring in?”

  “I’m trying to think who I heard it from. It’ll come to me and I’ll call and see what they know.”

  “With what you’re telling me, I think it’s probably time for me to have a talk with Clyde Underwood.”

  “Lord, I hate to think somebody would kill that old woman for her land.”

  “Greed makes people do terrible things,” I say. “But I’m thinking Underwood wouldn’t have had to kill her to get that land. He could have offered her a little more to get her to go along with selling the place.”

  “People get funny about land,” she says. “Maybe he’d had a conversation with Dora Lee, and she had turned him down flat.”

  “Could be. I know nothing about Underwood. Maybe he’s all kinds of crooked. Might be a good thing for me to go to San Antonio and nose around, find out what he was up to.”

  Jenny smirks at me. “See, I knew you’d be the man to do this investigating.”

  “Well, I haven’t gotten anywhere yet.”

  Then I go into telling her a little bit about Caroline’s past. She watches me, her eyes calculating.

  “She’s a good-looking woman,” Jenny says. “Maybe got used to a better life, and now she’s down and out. What’s the chances she asked her mamma for help and when Dora Lee turned her down, she got mad and used a knife on her?”

  I squirm a little. I don’t like the idea that Caroline might have done that to her own mamma, but I can’t rule it out. Something runs deep in Caroline that I haven’t begun to work out. But all I say is, “I’ll have to think about that.”

  Jenny has been on social time with me, and all of a sudden she’s got the eagle-eyed lawyer look about her. “She’s the
kind of woman that can blind a man to her shenanigans.”

  I rear back. “I’m a pretty good judge of character.”

  “I’m just saying what I know from a woman’s standpoint. A certain kind of woman says things and does things that another woman sees right off are tricky. But if you tell a man what you sense, the man wants to protect her. That’s what Caroline’s like.”

  I remember Maddie Hicks saying how wild Caroline was back in the day, and I recognize how quick I’ve been to protect Caroline from the women of Jarrett Creek and even from her own relatives. And although I don’t really want to admit it, I also think about Caroline’s seductive ways. “I’ll take that under advisement. Could be you’re right. That doesn’t mean she killed her mamma.”

  Jenny cocks an eyebrow at me and shakes her head, in that way women have of saying, “Men! What can you do with them?”

  We have a laugh over it. We gossip a little about the Baptist ladies, who are always generous with their funeral spread, but who expect to make a little money for the church for their trouble.

  I walk back over to my house and am surprised to see that Caroline’s car is not back. It’s ten o’clock and I can’t imagine what she’s got to talk to the Parjeters about so late. For a second I imagine her lying dead out there, the Parjeters having swarmed on her like Lord of the Flies.

  Inside, I start to get undressed, and then in a stroke of insight, I know exactly where to find Caroline. I sit on the side of the bed with my boots off. I rub my feet. They don’t want to go back into the boots, and I want to get into bed. But neither of us is going to get our way.

  At night the Two Dog looks better than it does in the daytime, because the shine from the blue neon lights hides the shabby parts. But it still doesn’t look good. The building sags on one side, making it look like a heavy wind could tip it over.

  I park my truck next to Caroline’s beat-up car and heave myself out. My boots crunch on the gravel that’s scattered over the hard-packed ground. Two other cars are here, one of them Rodell’s. I pause at the door, thinking about what Jenny said about men protecting a certain kind of woman, and wonder if I should just leave Caroline here.

  Inside, a stranger is sitting on one of the stools watching Caroline, who is in a clench doing a slow dance with Rodell. His hand is gripping Caroline’s butt, pulling her close in. The song on the jukebox is a country-and-western number I never heard before.

  The stranger is most likely on the road between Houston and Austin. There’s no good direct route between the two cities, and the highway that runs through Jarrett Creek is as good as any other for getting back and forth. Oscar keeps the Two Dog solvent on money from men who stop here to fortify themselves for the final run to one of the two cities. This traveler is enjoying the show Caroline and Rodell are putting on, looking like a hound with a bitch close by. His eyes are little and his mouth slack. I go over and park myself on the stool next to him and ask Oscar for a beer.

  Oscar looks at me like I’ve got a two-headed snake on my shoulder. He’s not used to me coming in here much, and especially not late at night. “Samuel, what brings you out this time of night?” he says.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” I say.

  “I hear that,” Oscar says.

  The stranger looks over at me and winks, and then turns back to watch the show.

  Caroline has seen me and she looks me in the eye for a second before closing her eyes and continuing the dance. I take a sip of the beer and it tastes awful after the wine I’ve had. I can’t even begin to justify to myself why I came in here, but I suppose I’ll have to see it through.

  The song ends and Caroline peels herself away from Rodell. He wipes his mouth and anybody can see he’s hard from grinding up next to her. He leans down and whispers something in her ear, grinning. She turns toward the bar and walks away from him, and his face darkens.

  “I’ll have another drink,” she says. Without looking over at me, she says, “Hello, Samuel. I wouldn’t have taken you for a man who’d drink here.”

  “Just passing the time,” I say.

  Oscar hands her a drink that has a cherry in it. I’m surprised he has any cherries back behind the bar, much less knows how to make a drink with one in it. Caroline takes a sip and then eases over to me, coming closer than I feel comfortable with. She puts her hand on my thigh. “I hope you’re not checking up on me.” On the jukebox another song starts up, some woman with a voice like an alley cat.

  It’s not like Caroline is a different person than she was this afternoon, but that whatever coiled thing lives just under her skin has been allowed to slither out into the open. She’s wearing the same clothes she had on this afternoon, but now I see how tight the pants are and she’s unbuttoned a couple of buttons of the blouse so you can see her endowments.

  Rodell is watching us. “You here to get some of the action?” he says, his voice mean.

  Caroline’s face goes white and she puts her drink down on the counter so hard it sloshes over. She doesn’t look at Rodell, but closes her eyes. I’m worried she’s either going to faint or upchuck.

  “Don’t get all stirred up,” I say. “I just came by to see how Caroline’s getting on. She’s had a hard day. If you recall, she buried her mamma today.”

  Some kind of sound like a growl comes out from Caroline and she pushes herself away from the bar and goes back to Rodell. “I want to dance some more,” she says. She puts her hands on Rodell’s shoulders and molds her body to him.

  But his expression has turned nasty. He was thinking that she was a good time in the making, and I’ve reminded him who she is. He steps back from Caroline, adjusts his pants and looks at his watch. “I better get on home. My wife will be wondering where I am.”

  Caroline’s smile is slow and seductive. “Story of my life,” she says. She tries to nestle back into him, but he steps away. He’s halfway to the door when the man sitting at the bar, climbs down off his stool and prowls over to Caroline. “I wouldn’t mind a dance with you,” he says. He puts a hand on her waist and pulls her to him.

  “Oh, Lord, deliver me,” Oscar sighs. There’s no mystery what’s coming next.

  Rodell stops cold and turns, menace in every inch of his body. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he says.

  Caroline turns to look at Rodell, hair falling over one eye. She giggles and grinds into her new dance partner, who’s looking like he swallowed something that didn’t taste as good as he thought it would. “The lady said she wanted to dance, and you weren’t up to it.”

  Rodell only gets three steps toward them when Oscar says, “Bar’s closing. Rodell, get on home. And you, too, mister. Drink’s on the house.”

  His face twisted with fury, the man pushes Caroline away, pulls out his wallet and throws some bills on the counter. He shoves past Rodell. “Damn two-bit hick town,” he says, as he slams out the door.

  “You got that right,” Rodell says. He follows hard on the man’s heels. Oscar comes from around the bar to get outside to make sure nothing more comes of it.

  Caroline walks back over to her drink, her steps unsteady. She leans on the bar. “I guess you think now you know who I am,” she says.

  “It’s none of my business,” I say. “How did things go out at the farm?”

  She still hasn’t looked my way. “About what I expected. Between Patsy talking about the Lord and Leslie complaining about the money he’s out driving over here, they pretty much took up all the space. And those kids of Patsy’s. Reminds me of some movie about aliens. The way they look at you.” She shivers.

  “What about Wayne Jackson?” I say.

  She edges onto the stool next to me. “Oh, he’s all right. He’s had a chance to get a city shine on him, that’s all. He’s still the same little boy trying to get on Leslie’s good side. He can save his energy.”

  I wonder how the dynamic between father and son could have been so apparent to Caroline when she was a kid.

  Her mouth twists. “I can’t w
ait to get rid of that farm,” she says.

  Oscar comes back in and sees Caroline sitting next to me. He eyes me with a look I don’t care for. I’m not above appreciating a good-looking woman, but it wouldn’t sit well if people thought I was after Dora Lee’s daughter before Dora Lee was cold in her grave.

  Caroline sets her empty glass on the counter and slides off the stool. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Are you all right to drive?” I ask her when we are outside.

  She snickers. “What is it, five minutes to your house? With all the traffic on the road between here and there, I think I can make it.” She slips into her car, showing plenty of leg. I follow her to my place.

  If I think I’m done with Caroline, I find out pretty soon that she has other ideas. Once we’re inside my house, she starts humming, and prances up to me and says, “I’m not ready to go bed yet. You have any music? We could dance.” She takes a few steps, jiggling to whatever tune she’s hearing in her head.

  I suppose I should appreciate that the way her body is moving around stirs me up in a way that I haven’t felt in a long time, but I point at my knee and say, “My dancing is limited these days.”

  “You can watch,” she says, her mouth all pouty. She moves closer to me, all the while swaying her hips. Her breasts are inches away from my chest, her cleavage deep and inviting. My heartbeat speeds up and her smile tells me she’s heard my breathing get ragged. Despite my best intentions, I reach out and touch her hair. It’s as soft as it looks.

  “Come on,” she whispers. She puts her hand on my chest.

  I tear my eyes away, wishing I hadn’t drunk the wine at Jenny Sandstone’s. I take her hand and move it away from my chest. “You’re an attractive woman, no doubt about that.” My voice doesn’t even sound like my own. “But it’s been a long day, and I’ve got to be up early.”

  Her smile tightens. “You afraid somebody would find out?”