Buried Memories (11 page)

“Yeah. We could use a storage shed.” He looked around the large lot. “Let’s see. How about over there?” he said, gesturing toward the rear of the backyard.

“That wouldn’t be convenient. No sense in going all the way back there when we need something. Just build it here over the patio.”

“Over those old cinder blocks?”

“They can be moved.”

“That’s a bad place. Just look at the center. It’s all sunken in. May have a water problem or something.”

“I really want the shed here.”

“No, Betty, there’s another problem. I’d have to get the gas company out to move the butane tank so we’d have enough room.”

“So move the tank.”

“Betty, you’re not being reasonable. On a half-acre lot we have dozens of places. There’s no need to put it there.”

Her bottom lip protruded. “Why are you acting that way? All I asked was for a storage shed so our place would look nicer, and now you’re arguing with me.”

Betty went to him and spread her arms around his broad shoulders. “Please, Jimmy Don. Please do it for me?”

A few days later, Jimmy Don was piling all the cinder blocks in several stacks and busily adding dirt to the sunken spot when Phyllis’s husband, William Coleman, drove over.

“What’s going on?” William asked.

“This is known as “Betty’s Shed,’ ” Jimmy Don joked. “She wanted this built, but for some reason she had her heart set on it being right here. Couldn’t talk her out of it. We had to do without fuel for the water heater and stove all day yesterday while the gas company moved the butane tank.”

“Sounds like a hell of a lot of trouble,” Coleman said.

“It was. But when my wife makes up her mind, there’s no changing it.”

Thirty-one-year-old Jackie Collins idolized her Uncle Jimmy Don Beets. When his name flashed on her computer at J.C. Penney Insurance where she worked in the Dallas suburb of Plano, she took particular care to read the new life insurance policy. She was stripping the policy—taking the policy information from her computer and verifying that it perfectly matched the insurance application.

The policy had been in force for a month because the first premium had already been paid. Initially, Jackie saw nothing unusual about the $10,000 policy, until she checked the address. The address given on the application differed from her uncle’s and even the address of his new wife. An attached note indicated all correspondence regarding the policy be directed to an address on Park Street in Mesquite, Texas. She had no idea who lived there.

Jackie sat back in her chair and analyzed the situation. Without his address being used, her uncle may not know about the policy. A sense of uncertainty grew in her stomach. She decided to give him a call.

After catching up on his new marriage, she asked, “Did you take out a life insurance policy recently?”

“Life insurance? No, why?”

“One just came across my desk with your name on it.”

“You’re kidding me. I never applied for any insurance. How much is it for?”

“Ten thousand.” She heard her uncle’s low whistle.

“There’s another thing,” she said, “we’re supposed to send all correspondence to a Mesquite address. Doesn’t that sound strange?”

“Sounds more than strange. I’ve got over $100,000 in insurance already with Betty’s name as the beneficiary. I sure don’t need any more. How about sending that to me, honey, so I can get to the bottom of this?”

Jackie agreed, then hung up the receiver, but she couldn’t get the policy off her mind. Who lived at that Mesquite address? A person needed an insurable right before they could purchase a policy on someone else. Who knew Jimmy Don well enough to get a policy without his knowledge?

She searched the application and found a phone number for that address. After punching in the number, she waited through several rings. No one answered.

Clutching the papers, Jackie decided to talk with her supervisor. Jackie’s office was in the large Penney’s headquarters building, and it took a few moments to walk the long carpeted corridor and into the spacious, well-appointed office of her boss.

She explained the situation to him, and he listened patiently.

“Actually this sounds rather serious, Jackie. If someone’s buying insurance that the insured doesn’t know about, there may be, well there could be something sinister about it.” Then he chuckled. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ve been watching too many mysteries on TV. But my gut tells me we should check this out.”

Jackie’s eyes widened as she listened. “You mean someone could be planning to kill him to collect the proceeds?”

“Let’s not get carried away, but that’s a possibility. It could be someone he feels safe to be around, but he’s in danger since he hasn’t been told about the policy.”

“This is terrible. My poor uncle.”

“Tell you what. Take those papers and leave work right now. Hand carry the policy to your uncle, and we won’t have to worry about it any longer. If Mr. Beets doesn’t want that policy, he needs to cancel it immediately. Just precautionary, of course.”

As Jackie drove to the Number Nine fire station in southeast Dallas that her uncle commanded, she couldn’t get her boss’s concerned expression off her mind.

Once she arrived at the big, open fire station, Jimmy Don gave her a hug. He pulled up a chair for her, then reached for the policy and glanced at it. A shocked expression lined his handsome face.

“I have no idea what this is about.” He drew a diagonal line across the face of the policy and wrote “Please Cancel, Jimmy Don Beets” in large letters.

After reading more of the policy, he said, “Hmmm. Betty’s the beneficiary. I’m going to have a little talk with her when I get home.

“Now that I see it, this Mesquite address looks familiar. I think it belongs to Betty’s daughter, Faye Lane. This
is
strange. Faye doesn’t get any of our other mail.”

Late the next afternoon, Jimmy Don returned to the lake from his shift. He walked through the pristine house and found Betty in the laundry room sorting his socks.

After he gave her cheek a peck, he said, “What’s with this insurance policy?” He waved the copy his niece had left for him.

Betty looked mystified. “I’ve no idea. I certainly didn’t buy one.”

He frowned as he told her about his niece who discovered the J.C. Penney policy.

“All I remember about Penney’s is getting something in the mail to open a charge account. Isn’t that all right?”

“This isn’t a charge account, Betty. It’s a $10,000 policy on my life. And
you’re
the beneficiary.”

“Let me see.” She placed her hand on her chin. “There was something about insurance, but I thought they were just insuring the charge account in case I missed a payment or something.”

Jimmy Don shook his head. “Betty, promise me. Leave the business affairs to me, okay? You obviously don’t understand them.”

Betty knew enough of Jimmy Don’s finances to know that Jamie Beets hadn’t paid his father rent for living in his lake house all those months before the fire. In addition, Jimmy Don paid his son’s utilities.

Betty goaded her husband into another meeting with Jamie. “A Come-to-Jesus” meeting she called it. “It’s high time that that boy of yours learns to be responsible.”

Since Betty had already coached her husband, she felt confident enough to let him handle it. She’d go shopping.

Jimmy Don’s insurance company had promptly paid him several thousand for the fire damage to his house, but his handyman skills had saved him money. When Betty learned about the windfall, she had no intention of letting it go to Jamie Beets, even if Jamie’s property did burn along with the house.

Jamie strolled up to the trailer door to meet with his father. But once he stood at the door, the scene felt all too familiar. Every conversation with his father would be uncomfortable since his father knew how much Jamie detested Betty.

Jimmy Don opened the door and Jamie came in with a hat-in-hand demeanor. He looked into the eyes of his father, the father he always seemed to fail. With all that his father had given him, what Jamie wanted most was his father’s approval.

Jimmy Don motioned for his son to sit at the kitchen table where he had placed a few sheets of papers with numbers on them.

“Okay, here’s what I figure you owe me from the rent you didn’t pay, in addition to the utilities.”

Jamie looked at “$3,000” scribbled on the paper and gulped. He had no savings.

“Here’s what I plan to do. I’ll keep that much from the insurance settlement and consider your debt paid.”

Relief swept over Jamie, and he smiled.

Jimmy Don handed him a check for $850. “Here, this should cover any clothes and personal belongings your family lost in the blaze.”

Fortunately for Jamie, he and his family had packed many of their clothes for their Christmas trip to his wife’s mother’s, and that’s where they had lived during the lake house’s construction.

Jamie took the check, relieved and excited at the same time. He reached out to hug his father, but Jimmy Don pushed him away.

“The only thing I want from you is to see my grandchildren.”

Both relief and anger struggled inside Jamie. He would have been more upset had he known that this would be the last time he’d ever see his father alive.

A year before Jimmy Don married Betty, her brother Dewey had died and Jimmy Don had driven her back to Virginia for the funeral. Betty was grateful to have Jimmy Don there, for he was comforting and understanding. The unexpected death of Betty’s brother, only two years older than she, had shocked her. She cried at the funeral home when she first saw him in his casket and cried again through the entire service the next day.

Her mother, Louise Dunevant, suggested Betty and Jimmy Don return this year. It would be a happier time, and she could get to know the nice man Betty had brought with her. They left on July 3, 1983, and took Bobby with them for the two-week trip. Robby, the oldest son, stayed home by himself because he had a summer job pumping gas at a station in Seven Points.

Betty was eager to get reacquainted with her younger brother and sister, who were still small when she left home at fifteen to marry Robert Branson.

Once in Virginia, Betty’s mother exclaimed how delighted she was to see her with a man like Jimmy Don Beets because Betty had never looked so happy in her life.

Home alone, Robby took advantage of the situation and played with his parents’ toys.

First he took in the glittering lake and envied people out there racing their boats. It was always hot in mid-July and today seemed hotter than most. He glanced at Jimmy Don’s boat, then back at the water. Jimmy Don always kept the boat’s ignition key on the key chain for his car, so there’d be no point looking for it in the house. Robby disconnected the ignition wires, spliced them together, and soon the boat’s engine roared to life. He raced across the lake, smiling as the breeze cooled his skin and blew his thick hair.

A few days later, he decided to try out his brother’s new motorcycle. It was small compared to his, but Robby wanted to air it out.

Only two years older than Bobby, Robby had a man’s body compared to his 120-pound kid brother, who always rode his motorcycle cautiously. He knew that his brother kept the key in his top dresser drawer.

Jumping on the cycle, he started it, gunned the engine until it screamed, and took off down the narrow road in front of his house, racing the cycle to higher and faster speeds. He found it fun to push the cycle at speeds his wimpy brother refused to try.

He turned sharply on a narrow road, but his speed proved too fast for the machine. The cycle’s tires slipped on the oil-slick road and skidded. He lost control. Barely holding on, he stayed with the cycle as it spun off into the woods. Finally, crunching into a tree, it came to a halt with one wheel spinning and Robby underneath.

After a few moments, Robby collected himself and painfully unwound from the broken cycle. He surveyed the damage and winced at the sight of the front fender that had accordion-pleated over the flat front tire. Shaking his head, he limped home to get his mother’s truck.

He returned to the motorcycle, but because of the distance he had ventured into the trees, he couldn’t avoid driving through deep mud to reach the cycle. At the time, he was just glad the truck didn’t get stuck in the mud. Heaving the mangled motorcycle into the truck bed, he closed the tailgate, and went home.

His mother always kept their house in perfect order. Every magazine was put away, no dirty dish ever sat out, and she daily whisked away every speck of dust. Robby took the immaculate home for granted, but he never thought of cleaning it himself. And he especially didn’t clean anything for the two weeks Betty and Jimmy Don were gone.

His favorite nighttime snack consisted of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a can of Coke. He took it into the living room, where his mother never allowed him to eat. After flipping on the TV, he set his Coke on the polished coffee table, put up his feet, and took a big bite of his sandwich. The nights he enjoyed this ritual could be counted by the number of Coke rings imprinted on the table’s wood surface.