The old house was sound. He had taken care of that, but he hadn’t redone anything. He didn’t care much for modern things, and Lily seemed not to mind. But perhaps he should have the roof checked again, before another rain. It seemed that the circles had a damp spot in the center of each.
The steps came tripping down the stairs again; Lily entered the parlor, holding the rifle cane carefully in both hands. The gutta percha that formed it was a bit dusty, and she wiped it with her dust cloth before handing it to him.
Livingston twisted the dog’s-head grip, unlocking the mechanism from the cane’s barrel. He pressed the latch, letting the spring zip forward. He blew the dust out and squeezed the grip, pulling the spring back into place, where he locked it with the latch again.
The barrel was also dusty. He sent Lily for his gun-cleaning kit and pulled the swab through by the tough string. When he looked through, the inside was shiny again.
The mechanism was so simple that there was nothing else to do except to load the thing. There were cartridges of all calibers in the breakfront, along with his loading equipment. Once the .32 cartridge was in place, the stock relocked onto the barrel, the cane became, once again, a respectable gentleman’s support, never betraying its deadly contents. The weight was just right—not too much for a cane that could be carried comfortably. He rose, using it as a support, and moved around the room.
“I don’t know why I haven’t used this more,” he said, tapping briskly around the big table. “It’s just the right length, and I could use it for a sort of trademark. It’s old enough not to come under the Firearms Act, too, so I shouldn’t be in too much trouble if I got caught with it.”
“Wash wouldn’t care,” Lily said. She looked more relaxed, now.
“I travel a lot. But when I travel, I’m not likely to meet either Martin or his look-alike. So if I use it here at home, taking it with me for display, then I suspect it will work out rather well.” He smiled at her, feeling an unaccustomed warmth.
They had lived together without quarreling but without overt affection for so long that it took him a while to realize what he felt as a remnant of that old childhood love they had shared.
“We’re both crippled, you know?” he mused aloud. His own voice startled him, and he glanced up at Lily, afraid that he might have wounded her.
But she was nodding. “You’re right. I have been crippled in my mind, you in your body, and we’ve been trying so hard not to show it that we haven’t had the time to take care of each other properly. But I think that has changed, Stony.
“Maybe those nasty men did us a favor. We needed a shock, something harsh and painful, to wake us up. And now that we’re awake, let’s not go black to sleep. I want to keep alert, because that big man reminded me too much of Martin.
“Martin would come back and kill me, if he discovered he hadn’t done the job completely the first time. You didn’t know him, but I knew him entirely too well. I want to sleep with one eye open for a while.”
Livingston had been trying to ignore his own intuition. He, too, had a feeling that the problem was far from over. “Why don’t I call Shipp and see what they’ve discovered?” he asked, pulling himself up and balancing on the cane.
When Lucy Fowler answered, he was assaulted with questions. “Yes, we’re both all right. No problem. I just wanted to find out if Shipp knows anything yet. They did find those fingerprints, and there should have been time to get word about the FBI files on them.”
Lucy, of course, knew anything that the sheriff did. “The word came in about a half hour ago. Shipp was going to come out and talk with you, but he was called away to an accident. I can get it—yes, here it is, on the computer.
“The prints are those of Donald Crowley, white male, twenty-seven years of age, convicted in St. Tammany Parish five years ago of armed robbery, rape, and homicide in connection with the holdup of a convenience store and the capture of a hostage. One nasty customer, Stony.”
“How in hell did he get out of prison so soon?” Livingston felt a helpless rage building in his chest. “With all those convictions, he should have been put away for good.”
She sighed audibly. “You know how it goes. They appealed, and the appellate court found a tiny technical flaw in the first trial. A misplaced comma or something just as ridiculous. So they turned him loose, and now he’s at it again. His twin, David, is just as bad a piece of work, but he has never been convicted, yet.”
“Is there any information that might lead to the others? That big man that looked like Martin Fewell, for instance.” He heard keys tapping. Then, “In prison, Crowley was boon companions with a fellow called Myron Duson. His people came from Louisiana, but he has kin all over southern Texas as well. He was in for extortion with the threat of violence. The picture they faxed to us looks quite a lot like Martin Fewell.
“They know, Shipp said, that he’s been into a lot of things, from dope to prostitution to grand larceny, but he’s been too slick to get sent up for more than a couple of years. And he got out early for good behavior.”
She paused and cleared her throat. When she spoke, it was carefully, as if she didn’t want to alarm him. “His M.O. is very simple, actually. He never leaves a witness alive.”
“Damn!” Livingston found that he was gripping the phone with a hand suddenly damp with sweat. “I had the feeling—Lucy, I think Lily is in a lot of danger. What should we do?”
“I’m not the lawman around here, Stony. I just don’t know. But when Wash gets back, I’ll have him call or come out and talk to you both. We can’t have you and your sister living in fear. If you need to leave the house for a while, do you have someplace to go?”
Livingston thought for a long moment. The only possibility was not one he fancied. “Well, yes, Lucy. But I’d like to put that off as long as possible. And I would like for it to be kept secret, even from you and the deputies, if you don’t mind, so I won’t mention where it is. You tell Wash to call. And thanks.”
He turned from the phone, leaning against the breakfront. He felt suddenly dizzy, and Lily came to his side, concern on her face.
“You okay?” she asked, helping him sit again in the over-sized chair.
He managed a grin. “Of course. Just too much excitement, I think. Shipp will be out, probably late. We’ll talk over what we need to do when he gets here, all right? I’m just not up to it right now.”
To his relief, she nodded and went back to her polishing. There was no need to worry her more than she was already.
But that left Stony to worry alone.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Washington Shipp
Wash got to his office early, after getting the input on the descriptions of the men who robbed the Frost home. He hadn’t slept well, couldn’t stop thinking about the attack on Lily Frost and the theft of her brother’s guns. Both thoughts filled him with gloom.
He was glad he hadn’t thrown that earlier interstate report away—he dug it out of the desk drawer where he had put it and read it over again. This almost had to be the same bunch mentioned there, the Duson bunch, and he hated to think of their being in his territory. The fact that Duson never left a witness alive was particularly troubling. He’d had only one conviction, because of his careful methods. Given that, there was a good possibility that he, at least, might come back to silence Lily.
Poor Lily. Life had dealt her a pretty bad hand, beginning with Martin Fewell. The Fewells had lived on a hard-scrabble farm down near the Nichayac, back when Wash used to visit his grandparents on their farm deep in the river bottom country. His Aunt Libby knew Mrs. Fewell, as they were both devoted gardeners, but she carefully avoided knowing the old man.
“They’s religious folks and they’s mean folks, but when you get both kinds together in one skin, you’ve got a really nasty kind of person,” she had told his mother once when he was small.
Wash, quiet as usual, and listening with both ears, had found himself wondering how religious people could be mean,
but he knew better than to open his mouth. When he was lucky, grown folks tended to forget he was there at all.
“Mister Fewell sure is religious, and that seems to make him particularly mean,” his mother had said. “I was down that way and met Miz Fewell walkin’ along the road. She had bruises down her arms and her face was a sight to see. Said she’d fell down the porch steps, but I know the shape of a fist-bruise. That old man’d been beatin’ on her again.”
Aunt Libby nodded solemnly. “The children say he knocks his young’uns round all the time. The girls are afeared to talk about it, but young Marty, he talks too much. They say he cusses his old man so as to make a sailor blush.”
Unseen, Wash had nodded agreement. He had heard that himself. He knew he ought to feel sorry for a boy whose Pap beat him, but somehow he couldn’t. Martin seemed to be as mean as his daddy, and tough as a bois d’arc root. He hit any child he could reach and lied with a straight face if the kid complained to his parents.
Wash had avoided the fellow all his life, and even now, as a lawman, he found himself frowning, just with thinking about him.
But the attacker hadn’t been Martin Fewell! Just looked like him. With the descriptions and the fingerprint, surely he could get an I.D. on that one. Even as he thought that, Amy brought in a printout.
“Fingerprint identification,” she said. “Con named Crowley, known associate of Myron Duson, the one they mentioned in those dispatches you had yesterday. What you want to bet they figured out a partnership while they were in stir?”
“It’s a good guess, but at this point it’s just that. We’ll wait to find out more before we wind up our springs and go off into orbit.” He placed the printout in a file along with the report and turned to the rest of the accumulation on his desk.
Every day was a long day for the Sheriff of Nichayac County.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Martin Fewell
In twenty years, Martin Fewell had grown old. Not in years—he was only forty-nine—but physically and mentally. His craggy face was runneled with wrinkles that seemed to be caked with the dust of centuries, and his hair was a nondescript brown-gray. His husky frame, which had been misused so often in mistreating Lily and others, had shrunk on its bones, leaving his back humped and his skin hanging loosely at neck and belly.
He felt as old as God, he often thought, as he made his erratic way from town to town in the ten-year-old Chevy pickup that seemed to intend to last forever. Keeping it running and finding a way to feed himself kept him strapped for cash and working at penny-ante jobs to survive.
No longer did sheriffs and police chiefs automatically give him his walking papers when he came through town to post bills advertising the circus that was his present employer. He didn’t even look threatening any more. Just dingy and down-at-heel. He often studied his image in the mirror and felt an emptiness where his old macho aggressiveness had been.
He often wondered what had become of Lily. When he was sober and in a good mood, he had always known that she was the best thing he ever had going for him. Her gentleness, her attempts to keep him well fed and clothed, and her need for something stable in their lives had annoyed him often. Now he knew that he would give anything to undo the terrible series of actions that had turned her against him at last. He sighed as he stepped down from the pickup and took out the posters he must put up that day.
Being the advance man for a circus should have been interesting, but it was only more dog-work. And now, as he held a poster against a tree and readied the staple gun, there came a curious policeman, gesturing for him to stop.
“Something wrong, officer?” he asked. “The permits should have been arranged a week ago. Carroll Brothers Circus and Carnival.”
“We’ll check,” the man said, taking him by the elbow and waltzing him toward the storefront housing the city hall. “You just come with me.”
Damn! He thought. You watch—those bastards probably forgot the permits, and now I’ll have to pay a fine and this will be another job gone into la-la-land.
He sat in an uncomfortable chair shaped like a wash tub, while the policeman went into the back room. There were few others there, and he could hear a radio droning the news in the adjoining city police office.
A name of a town caught his attention. “...men apprehended at five o’clock a.m. are suspected to be those wanted in a burglary and assault last evening near Templeton, Texas. Two others escaped into the darkness and their trail has not yet been found. It is thought that a stolen car, found abandoned later beside Highway 171, may have been used in avoiding arrest.
“The collection of Livingston Frost, noted dealer in antique firearms, was taken in the robbery, and his sister was injured. There is an all-points bulletin out in eastern Texas and western Louisiana for those suspects not yet apprehended.
“One suspect is tentatively identified as Myron Duson, present address unknown. His companion is still unknown, though he is described as being tall, heavy-set, and wearing a hat with a wide brim, which hides his face.
“Another robbery has been reported in Many, Louisiana, this one involving two teen-agers armed with switch-blades....”
Martin switched off his ears. Livingston Frost—his sister had to be the girl he knew. And her brother had been a wimpy little cripple.
Could he be a gun dealer? Antique guns? Probably. It was the sort of easy business a man like that might get into, though the subject of her brother’s business had never come up during the time with Lily.
As he sat thinking, the officer returned. “No permits have been obtained,” he said, his tone brusque. “Sorry, Mr. Fewell, but you’ll have to leave your posters unposted. There’s no fine, as you hadn’t put one up, but I’d suggest you move on. Granger isn’t a good town for itinerants.”
Martin nodded and went back out to his truck. He’d never seen a hick town that was a good one for itinerants. He could say that he was an expert on the insides of shabby jails and the wrong sides of red-neck police and deputies who were long on muscle and short on brains.
The cop had followed him onto the street, and he turned suddenly and said, “Could you tell me how far it is to Templeton, Texas?”
The man looked puzzled for a moment. Then his face brightened. “Oh, yeah. Little town on the Nichayac River. I don’t know in miles, but I figure about four and a half hours, driving the speed limit.”
Martin tried to smile. “Thanks. Got folks over there, and I think I’ll pay ’em a visit.”
When he pulled away, the old truck rattling and groaning, the cop was still staring after him. Martin thanked his luck that it had been twelve years since his trial and the bad publicity when he’d been turned loose. Those country cops could figure out ways to hold you that would boggle the mind.
He turned west on Interstate 10. Lily didn’t want to see him, he knew, but he had suddenly realized that he needed to see her. To say something to her.
Maybe just to tell her he was sorry. Not only for what he had done to her, but for what others like him had done as well.
CHAPTER NINE
Alison Frost Vernier
Allison Frost Vernier was ninety-one years old and still going strong. She had married late in life, and after taking that drastic step, she had been so absorbed in getting her house (and her somewhat bewildered husband) into order that she lost touch with her kinfolk in Templeton.
Their father had been her nephew, which made them somewhat distant both in age and consanguinity, and that made it easy for them to slip out of her immediate ken. When the phone rang, early on a rainy morning in late March, she expected it to be one of her many acquaintances who shared her passion for breeding registered English Setters.
But it was her great-nephew, Livingston. His voice was one she recognized only after some thought, for she missed his first words, her hearing not being as accurate as she pretended.
“Who?” She shook the receiver, as if that might clear up the tinny stream of words.
Again he
spoke. “Aunt Allie, it’s Livingston. Stony. You remember me—my grandfather was your brother. Lily and I haven’t seen you in years, but surely you remember us!”
She detected in his voice something too much like desperation to be comfortable. “Of course I remember. I am not senile, Livingston, whatever anyone might say. And what might I do for you?” She was hoping devoutly that this was an idle chat, for she drove herself and everyone on her large farm with an intensity that brooked no interruptions.
She was always frantically busy and had little time for socializing, kin or no kin.
“We need…we need a place to hide, Aunt Allie.”
She shook the phone again. Surely he’d said he needed a place to hide, and that simply could not be correct. “Repeat that. I thought I heard you say....”
“That I need to hide. Yes. Or rather, Lily needs to. We were robbed, and the ringleader of the criminals never leaves a witness alive. Lily saw him. Aunt Allie, we’ve got to find someplace where he can’t find us. Just for a while. Will Uncle Louis mind?”
Had it been that long? She sighed. “Louis died two years ago, Livingston. And if you need a refuge, of course you can stay with me. I hope you don’t mind working in the kennels a bit—we are short-handed, right now, and extra help would be a godsend.
“Is Lily...?”—she paused, trying to think of a tactful way to ask the question—“...is Lily feeling up to helping out, too?”
His voice reassured her. “Lily has pulled out of her problem, almost all the way. That’s why I want to get her completely away, so none of this new mess can send her into a tailspin.
“She works like a Trojan. Keeps house and cooks for me, works in the garden. She can help too, Aunt Allie. I’m the one who has a bit of trouble getting around.”
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