Champagne for Buzzards (4 page)

I ditched the suit and was back on the porch in time for the first official to arrive, a deputy named Michael Quinn. He introduced himself calmly, like he was making a social call. Tall and slim, his good looks would normally have held my attention but today nothing was going to distract me from the horror in my truck.

Deputy Quinn listened to what I had to say and then went to his car and got out a small canvas carryall. At the pickup, he pulled on disposable gloves before lifting the blue tarp. He spent some time considering what was before him and then he gently lowered the tarp.

A second car arrived in a cloud of dust, a red bar of lights flashing, and a yellow door swinging wide even before the car was fully stopped, as if by rushing the driver could reverse what had been final hours ago. The man who stepped out and surveyed the scene was a man very much in charge. Beside me, Ziggy said, “Sheriff Red Hozen.”

The sheriff headed for my pickup at the double and reached for the tarp. The deputy stretched an arm to stop him, said something quietly and then handed the gloves he held in his hand to the sheriff.

The sheriff struggled into them before he pulled back the tarp and examined the body. “Shit.” The sheriff slammed the tarp down.

“What's got him so upset?” I whispered.

“It doesn't seem to be what he was expecting,” Tully replied.

“Or who,” Ziggy put in. “Looks like he already had it figured out who it was going to be and is disappointed.”

“Now why would he think he knew who was dead in the back of Jimmy's truck?” Tully asked and handed me a mug. I looked at it dubiously. “What is it?”

“Ma always said tea was best for shock,” Tully told me.

“In that case Grandma Jenkins must have drunk a barrel of it, given the Jenkins brothers' bad habits.”

A newspaper that Ziggy had been reading when I slammed to a stop in front of the house was scattered around my feet. I bent down to pick it up as the sheriff headed our way, the built-in tidiness for guests kicking in.

“I'll do that, baby,” Uncle Ziggy said, coming to help me. At the foot of the stairs the sheriff took off his hat and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “I'm Sheriff Hozen,” he told us. The red hair that gave Red Hozen his name was fading to white, a transformation that was nearly complete in his crisply trimmed goatee.

Sheriff Hozen was dressed in freshly ironed matching brown shirt and pants, as if he had dressed for the occasion. As neat and tidy as they were, his shirt was a little tight, his paunch straining the dark buttons. He resettled his hat precisely.

Tully introduced us and said, “Come and sit down, Sheriff.”

After he climbed the stairs, the sheriff chose to stand but he did remove his wire-framed Ray-Bans and sink back against the railing. “I need a little more information, Miss Travis. Start at the beginning and tell me everything.”

I did as instructed.

He didn't write it down. That surprised me.

“The pickup was there all night?” he asked. “You didn't have it out yesterday after you arrived, is that right?”

“That's right. Tully drove Uncle Ziggy and me into town to the café for dinner. The truck was here when we left. Least I think it was.” I looked at Tully and then at Uncle Ziggy. “Wasn't it?”

“Far as I remember,” Tully said. “My truck was by the bunkhouse, not under the drive shed, so I had no reason to look and see if Jimmy's pickup was there.”

“Who is Jimmy?” the sheriff asked.

“The truck used to belong to my deceased husband, James Travis.” I turned away from the sheriff. “Do you remember if it was there, Uncle Zig?”

Uncle Ziggy set his badly folded newspaper on the floor beside him. “Wouldn't likely have noticed it if weren't.” He smoothed back his hair. “Course, what am I saying? We'd 'ave noticed it being driven out the lane. Suppose it had to be there as long as we were, sure would have noticed it leaving.” Tully and I nodded in agreement at this sensible statement.

Sheriff Hozen wasn't interested in our musings. “What time did you arrive yesterday?”

“About four. The truck was full of plants, not a body in sight. Dad and Zig helped me unload the plants. We put them under the tree and watered them and then we came out here for a cold drink. We were going to plant them today.” My voice choked up, our normal life shattered by death.

Uncle Ziggy reached out and patted my arm. “No matter, honey, I watered them for you. Those pretty little pink things will be fine.”

The sheriff barked, “Who else had keys to the truck?”

“No one. But I leave spare keys behind the visor so anyone can use it if they need to. It wasn't locked.”

“So anyone could have driven the truck away or met Percell here.”

“Was he killed here?” I asked.

Sheriff Hozen's lips tightened. He didn't like being questioned. “Too early to say. He could have been murdered elsewhere and placed in the truck. There was no one on the property to see what happened, to see if someone took the truck off the property?”

I shook my head. “Mr. Sweet worked until I arrived and then left for the day.” Howie Sweet was Clay's foreman, the man who looked after the ranch day to day and kept it going while Clay was away making money. Howie Sweet was also the man who had owned the ranch before Clay bought it. The Sweet family had been on this land for three or four generations as the family went on a long, slow slide into oblivion. Pearl and Howard Sweet only had one daughter, Lovey, and a granddaughter named Kelly. Lovey owned a small diner called the San Casa on the main street of Independence. “Did you know Lucan Percell, Miss Travis?” I shook my head. “Never met the man. Is that who the dead man is?”

“Seems like it. That's what the driver's license says.”

“Was there money in the wallet?” He thought it over before answering, “Some.”

“So it wasn't robbery.” The sheriff scowled at me.

I felt it necessary to add, “If he was killed for his money, killed in a robbery, the killer would have taken the wallet. Of course, maybe the body isn't that of Lucan Percell. Maybe someone stole the wallet and then the robber was killed and his body was put in my truck. Maybe that's why the head was battered, so no one could identify him.” Sheriff Hozen was not real pleased to hear any of my ideas. “If it is Lucan, what was he doing in Jimmy's truck?” Tully asked, getting into the game. “What was he doing in the truck unless he was killed here?”

“Nothing to say he was killed here,” Ziggy answered. “Could have been killed somewhere else and dumped at Riverwood, someone wanting to make it look like Clay was involved.”

“Look,” the sheriff said, his voice loud. “This isn't helping. I just need to know facts and not conjectures. What do you actually know to be a fact, Miss Travis? What do you know happened?”

“Nothing, I know nothing about this. It may seem that it's just careless to let your pickup be used as dumping ground for murder, but I know nothing about it. I don't know how a body ended up in my truck.” I couldn't turn myself off; words just tumbled out of my mouth. “It's just stupid. Why would someone kill Lucan and put him in my truck, especially if it was done out here. Why load him into Big Red when there's all that land to hide him in?” I gave a broad wave of my hand in case he wasn't sure what land I was talking about. “Doesn't make any sense.”

The sheriff had had enough. “Mr. Adams, where can we get in touch with him?”

I turned over this information. I'd talked to Clay after I'd called the sheriff. Laura Kemp had already phoned him earlier and from his frosty tone I was lucky there was only one dead body on Riverwood. I also assured Clay there was no need to come home, not that he'd offered.

“You'll have to come into the station and make a statement about all this.”

“Of course, although you now know all I know.” The sheriff frowned at me and then turned to Tully and Ziggy and asked, “Have you seen any strange men around Riverwood?”

They answered in the negative and then the sheriff asked, “How about you, Miss Travis?”

I shook my head. “Only these two very odd guys sitting here, they're pretty strange.”

My words pained him. “We're looking for a man seen in this area. Likely our killer, so if you see him call me at once. I'll leave Deputy Quinn in charge here. I'll have to go tell April Donaldson, the woman who lived with Lucan.”

The sheriff's words brought back bad memories of Detective Styles coming into the Sunset and telling me that Jimmy was dead, not that I had believed Jimmy was dead. Reality didn't sink in for days, and then the horror of what had happened to Jimmy, the horror of them only finding bits of him out in the mangroves, well, that nearly swamped me.

“April's the only one that's going to care that Lucan is dead,” the sheriff added. “Most everyone else will be relieved. Come to the office tomorrow and someone will take your statement.” He was done with me. He turned and jogged down the steps.

Tully said, “He sure won't miss Lucan from what I hear at the Gator Hole.”

“Why?” I asked. “What did he have against Lucan?”

“Lovey Sweet, Howie Sweet's girl. She and Lucan had a history and now the sheriff fancies his chances with Lovey.”

“Ain't hardly likely,” Uncle Ziggy put in. “No way, no how. A woman like that ain't gonna to have no truck with a man like Hozen, nearly as old as me and no more honest than he needs to be from what I hear.”

“Ziggy loves Lovey,” Tully told me. “Covets her.”

“You're just a man that naturally has evil thoughts, Tulsa Jenkins, always have, always will. You just don't understand friendship between a man and a woman.” Tully snorted with laughter.

I was too baffled by what was happening to join in this fun. “Seems to me the sheriff was expecting someone else when he looked into the bed of the truck — even hoping to see someone else there.”

“I thought the same,” Tully agreed. “And why's he asking about some stranger?”

“Maybe he doesn't think anyone in Independence would do such a thing.”

I was still trying to wheedle a drink of something stronger than tea out of Tully when Howie Sweet showed up.

We watched Howie Sweet stop to talk to the sheriff. They seemed on very good terms, but then Howie was a long-term resident of the area, part of the old establishment.

Howie shook his head, denying something. The sheriff patted him on the shoulder and hurried off, getting into his car and tearing out of the yard, nearly colliding with an ambulance coming in.

“Little too late for an ambulance, isn't it?” Tully asked. Various other cars pulled into the yard. We watched as men got out and put on white suits over their clothes before they pulled on blue gloves and went to my pickup, carrying their cases. One man climbed up into the bed of the truck and knelt down. I looked away. I didn't want to know.

Howie turned away from the scene as well and climbed the stairs to join us on the front porch. He looked like a man who had lost someone near and dear to him, which was strange because Uncle Ziggy said Howie and Lucan Percell had a long, hate-filled history with Lovey Sweet as the source of their vendetta.

Howie collapsed down into the wicker chair like a man whose bones had just given out. We all sat staring at him, waiting to hear what he made of the death of a man he hated.

“Lucan Percell?” he asked, as if he couldn't quite believe it and needed it confirmed. “Seems to be,” said Tully.

Leaning forward, with his hands hanging down between his knees, Howie stared straight ahead. Silent and shocked, there was no doubt this had hit him hard. Suddenly his eyes widened and he sat up a little straighter. “I know…” he started to say and then gave a little shake of his head and went silent.

“What do you know?” Tully demanded in a harsh voice more designed to scare than coax.

“Nothing, ain't nothing,” Howie answered and slumped back.

“Don't be a fool,” Tully told him. “You know anything you better speak up.”

Howie shook his head and jutted his jaw.

I caught Uncle Ziggy's eye, nodded at Tully and cocked my head to the side.

Uncle Ziggy pulled himself to his feet. “Tully, let's go see what the deputy is going to do with Jimmy's truck. We'll have to find something for Sherri to drive if they're going to keep it.”

“Well, it sure is time to get rid of it now, isn't it, Sherri? You don't want to be driving around in a hearse,” Tully said and followed Ziggy off the porch. Howie Sweet was thinking hard on something and hardly noticed they were gone. “I need a drink,” I said to Howie. “Let's go in.”

I'd said the magic words. Howie was on his feet and through the door before me.

I poured Jack Daniel's into a glass and added a little water. “Ice?” He shook his head and reached for the glass. Howie's hand trembled as he took it from me, drinking the whiskey down as if it was an antidote for snakebite and he'd just been bitten bad.

He shuddered a little and set the glass down on the counter. “You seem real upset by this.”

“It's a surprise, it surely is,” he said. He pushed the glass towards me. “Such a shock to think someone would murder Lucan and put him in that truck.”

He watched me pour a second drink, a little stronger this time, while both his palms smoothed out his shirt stretched across his broad girth.

“Why are you surprised that someone killed Lucan?” I asked, holding out the fresh drink and watching him.

“Don't expect a thing like that.”

“From what I hear, if ever there was a man who was born to be murdered, it was Lucan.”

Howie nodded his bald head, his eyes fixed on the glass in my hand. “A bastard,” he agreed. “Everyone in the county hated him.”

I remembered what the sheriff had said. “Not April Donaldson.”

“No one much bothers with April.”

“Including you?”

He didn't answer.

“She's just lost someone she cared about,” I told him.

“They wasn't married. It isn't the same.”

“That's nice and Christian of you.” I handed over the whiskey. His hands still trembled as they settled around the glass but this time he sipped at the liquid.

“Tell me.”

His faded blue eyes met mine. “What?”

“As you say, the sheriff's men aren't bagging your best friend out there. Everyone knows you two were enemies so you can't be that devastated by his death. Something else is going on here. Do you know how that body ended up in my truck?”

He drew himself up. “I don't think what I know or don't know is any of your business.”

“Wrong answer. I'm in this shit and I don't like it. You were the only one who could easily have taken my truck. I'll make sure the sheriff understands that; maybe I'll even tell him I saw you do it if you don't can the attitude.”

“You can't lie.”

I laughed. “Lying is one of the few things I excel at.”

He frowned.

There was something I was really curious about. “Even without knowing about my lying you already seem to think the worst of me, Howie, why is that?”

“'Cause you and Clay ain't married. You're living in sin and that's just wrong. Pearl says so.”

It was hard to believe that living with someone without marriage could still be an issue, which shows exactly how different things were in Independence from Jacaranda. Back in Jacaranda it was close to being the normal way of things.

“It ain't right,” Howie declared.

“Well, that's the least of the problems on Riverwood. There's something else going on here. Cough it up or I'm out the door to the deputy. I can be just about as bad as Pearl thinks I am.” He grimaced. “I mean it, Howie.”

“I took your truck,” he muttered into his glass with a voice barely loud enough for me to hear the words.

“Say again?”

He looked up. “I took it. I would have asked if you'd been here, but no one was home.”

“Where did you take it?”

“To the Gator Hole.”