A Deadly Affair at Bobtail Ridge (6 page)

“Truly?” I call out.

“Chief Craddock. I'm in here.” His voice sounds weak.

I fumble around on the inside wall of the stable and turn on the lights. Truly is sitting, propped up against the wall that holds riding gear—halters and such. Blood is seeping from a head wound down the side of his face, and he's holding his arm tight against his side. A length of pipe lies a few feet away next to his bedroll.

“I'm glad to see you,” he says.

“Hold on, Truly, let me check first and make sure nobody is lurking around here.”

“I think he's gone,” he says.

Both horses are awake and have poked their heads over the stall gates, ears pricked forward like a couple of gossips, but they're quiet, so I suspect Truly is right. Still I check the stalls and the tack room before I come back and crouch down next to him to look closer at the wound. His hair is short, so I see that he's bleeding from two places. “What happened? Who did this?”

He groans. “I didn't see who it was. I got the horses put away and went to my truck to fetch my bedroll, and when I got back somebody jumped me.”

“How many were there?”

“I think it was only one. He hit me with something that felt like a lead pipe before I had a chance to fight back.”

“The pipe's right here. Not too clever of somebody to leave it lying around. Did you get in any licks?”

“Naw, it happened too fast.”

It's possible whoever did this was wearing gloves, but I'll have the pipe examined for fingerprints anyway. “Did your attacker say anything?”

Truly gives a half-groan, half-laugh. “Yes, sir, he said, ‘That'll teach you, nigger.' I'm not sure what I was supposed to learn from getting beat up.”

“Well, you've still got your sense of humor so I guess you're not hurt too bad.”

“Feels like it, though.” He shifts his position and groans. “I'm glad they picked on me and not those horses. They look okay, don't they?”

“They're fine. Can you walk?”

“I think he might have broken my shoulder, but at least I've still got my legs.”

“Hold on, I've got to find something to carry this pipe in so I can have it examined for prints.” In the tack room I find a box of plastic bags in a drawer. I use a couple of them to wrap the pipe.

On the way to the emergency room in Bobtail, I call Zeke Dibble and tell him what happened and ask him to go keep an eye on Jenny's place until I get back there. I think about calling Jenny, but I hate to rile her up any more than she was tonight. She needs some rest.

CHAPTER 8

With Truly Bennett out of commission, I've got a problem. I can't keep an eye on Jenny and her horses alone. And I can't keep this latest incident from her. I'll have to tell her so she'll be careful, and she'll need to decide whether she wants to hire someone to watch her horses or if she wants to board them somewhere else for a while.

On the way out of town I stop by Art Visions to check in on Ellen Forester. She's in the middle of a class but comes outside to talk. She has dark circles under her eyes. “Gabe's crew did all the repairs yesterday,” she says. “That was really nice of them to get to it so fast.” She sounds overly cheerful. She's worried.

“Have you thought anymore about who might have done the damage?”

She shrugs but doesn't meet my eyes. “I was hoping you might have turned up something.”

I talked with Bill Odum yesterday. He's a young deputy and has a good way with our habitual troublemakers. He said he'll poke around and see if he can get anybody to point him in the right direction. But I'm still putting my money on Ellen's ex.

“Ellen, if you think your ex-husband did this, I need to know. He doesn't seem to be getting the message that you're not going back. And he needs to stop harassing you.”

She rubs at a spot of paint on one of her hands. “I called Seth and asked if he had anything to do with it. He said he didn't, but . . .” She clasps her arms to herself and shakes her head.

“But you didn't believe him?”

“He said it may be the lesson I need to get me off my high horse.”

He has a different idea of her than I do. “You consider getting a restraining order against him?”

She shakes her head. “I don't want to do that. I'm still holding out that it was high school kids.”

“Maybe so. I'll keep my ears open and hope this is a one-time thing.”

Without thinking, I reach out and touch her arm to reassure her. She jumps like she's been burned.

“Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you.”

She flushes deep red. “No, no, it's okay. I'm just . . .”

“You take care,” I say.

When I go to Vera Sandstone's house to tell Jenny what happened to Truly last night, I find her in the garage staring at a wall of rusted tools. “These tools belonged to my daddy and I don't think anybody has touched them since he left,” she says. “I don't know whether anybody would want them, or if I should pitch them out. I don't think they're old enough to be antiques, but they're probably too old to be useful to anyone.” She's not looking at me. I expect she's still mad that I pressed her too hard yesterday asking about her brother.

“Leave this until after the funeral, when you've had time to catch your breath,” I say to her. I persuade her to go back into the house, where I make some coffee. We sit down in the living room, surrounded by empty packing boxes.

I give her a short version of the attack on Truly. I don't want her to feel guilty that something happened to him, but she has to know that there's been another incident.

“Why would somebody attack Truly?”

“It seems obvious they were after your horses, and when they found Truly there, they attacked him instead. Now that's the third incident involving your horses. It's time we got to the bottom of it.”

She draws a sharp breath. “With Mamma being gone, I don't know what I'd do if something happened to those horses. They're okay? They weren't hurt?”

“They're fine. I checked again this morning.”

She gets up from her chair and walks around, agitated. “You're right. Something's got to be done. With my mind on Mamma, I haven't paid enough attention.”

“Settle down, now. That's why Truly and I have been keeping watch over them, so nothing would happen. But with Truly being injured, we need to come up with another plan. If you want to hire somebody to look out for them, I can recommend Buzz Carter's son Alvin, who helped me corral the horses when they got out last week.”

“He sounds perfect. As soon as I get Mamma's house cleared up, I'll be spending more time at home.”

“Jenny, until we figure out who's behind these pranks, I don't think you or the horses are safe. The last time I talked to you, you seemed to have an idea who's behind it, and I don't understand why you won't tell me.”

She stops her pacing and glares at me. “I told you I'd take care of it, and I'll get right on it. Meanwhile, if you'll hire Alvin for me, I'd appreciate it. Right now I need to get over to the funeral home to finish up arrangements.”

“Okay, I'll be on my way.”

Apparently I don't hide my frustration very well, because her expression softens. “I'm sorry. I don't mean to be short with you, but I don't want you to worry about me. I can take care of myself.” She hesitates. “Do you mind running a couple of errands for me while I'm gone? When I get back I'll bring us some lunch.” She's asking for my help as a way to put aside our spat, and I'm glad to comply.

I go to the grocery store and the hardware store to pick up things on Jenny's list, but I'm still back before she is. She left the back door open, so I go in and put things away and then wander through the house, trying to see if there's anything I can do to help.

In the bedroom there are boxes in various stages of packing. Photo albums and loose photos are piled on the bed, and I look at a few of them. Jenny was a tall, gangly girl. There's a photo of her fifth-grade class, and she and one other girl tower over the others, both wearing that same expression that says they wish they could disappear into the earth rather than having their picture taken with their pint-sized classmates.

Time didn't improve things much. A teenage school photo shows her face as too long, her nose too big, and her eyes hidden behind unflattering glasses. The scowl on her face doesn't help. She always told me that she was a wallflower in high school because she was self-conscious about her height and her looks. It's too bad she couldn't see into the future: that her face would settle into good proportion as she got older, and that contact lenses and a little makeup would turn her into an attractive woman.

One photo that catches my interest shows a family of four—Vera and a man I take to be her husband stand behind two kids, Jenny, who is scowling as usual, and a boy who looks to be a few years older, who has a devilish grin. Jenny's around eight in the picture. The kids look alike, although the boy is better-looking. On the back someone has written four names: Vera, Howard, Edward, and Jenny. Edward must be Jenny's brother. Why won't she talk about her brother? Did he get in some kind of trouble? Did he disgrace the family in some way?

I'm interested in the way Howard looks in the photo. Jenny said he walked out on the family, but you would never have guessed it from the way he beams into the camera. What made him decide to leave? Probably that old story of the kids getting old enough to talk back, and the dad starts to feel trapped, and then he meets someone younger who makes him feel like his old self, and he decides he should start over and get it right this time. Vera asked me to locate him. Although Jenny doesn't seem enthusiastic, I can't help thinking it would be a fine thing for her to at least know where Howard is. And then I remember the other thing Vera asked me—to find Howard's first wife. Jenny said he wasn't married before, but she might not have known. But the question is, why did Vera want me to find her?

I flip through other photos and they're versions of the same picture, as if it was a ritual to have their family picture taken every year to mark the passage of time. The last picture in the stack was taken when the kids were in their teens, both of the children towering over their parents. But what stops me in my tracks is that I recognize Eddie Sandstone. He was the man coming out of the hospital the day I last went to visit Vera.

I hear Jenny drive up and make a hasty exit from the bedroom. I've put myself in an awkward position. Now I know that her brother was at the hospital, but if I tell Jenny I saw the photos, she'll know I was snooping.

Jenny has brought some barbecue brisket for lunch and we eat on the kitchen table. Neither of us has much appetite and we have a hard time keeping up a conversation.

When I get home midafternoon, I turn on the computer. I'm curious to know if there's an obvious reason for Jenny to be ashamed of her brother. In no time I'm staring at a string of entries for people named Eddie Sandstone. It's amazing how many people have the same name—even an unusual name like Sandstone. I narrow it down to Texas and query the state files that I can access through the Texas Public Safety sites. Apparently Jenny's brother has lived in Temple for many years—a couple of hours' drive from here. Although he has a contractor's license, he seems mostly to do sheetrock work. He's been married for two years, with no children, and was married once before. Except for a few traffic tickets over the years, he has had one run-in with the law, an assault charge, which was dropped later. In other words, I find nothing to account for Jenny's animosity toward her brother. But family feuds don't have to have much of a reason.

CHAPTER 9

I wondered if Jenny's brother was going to show up at the funeral, but I don't see him in the considerable crowd. Jenny is down front surrounded by her mother's friends. She contacted her aunt and found out she'd recently had back surgery and wasn't able to travel, so there's no family to mourn Vera except Jenny. I go down and say hello to her before I take a seat farther back.

The service is ready to start when I hear a bit of buzz at the back of the room, and I turn to see the man I recognize as Eddie Sandstone walk in, alone. He makes his way down the aisle, and I wonder if he plans to sit next to Jenny. He slows, though, and tucks in a few rows back. But the stir caused by his arrival has alerted Jenny. She cranes her head to look and then snaps back, fast. You don't have to be a genius at reading body language to notice her shoulders stiffen. Whatever happened between the two siblings, the death of their mother has not patched up anything.

At the reception, there's no sign of Eddie. I was hoping to have a few words with him to find out if he ever heard anything from his daddy. If he and Jenny were on the outs, I wonder how he knew his mamma was in the hospital and that she died.