Kansas Troubles (25 page)

“It looks like the old Chevy pickup in the picture of Gabe and his dad!”

“It
is
the one in the picture,” he said proudly, stroking a fender with one knotty, oil-stained hand. “A 1950 Chevrolet three-speed three-quarter ton. I was with Rogelio when he bought it. First new truck he ever owned. Bought it in honor of his son being born.”

“You did a wonderful job restoring it.” I walked around the shiny blue truck, opened the driver’s side door, and peered in at the restored upholstery. “Have you had it all these years?”

“Nah, Kathryn asked me to get rid of it after Rogelio died. I sold it to a fella down in Winfield. About a year later I got a bug in my ear about it. I knew one thing about that old Winfield boy, he never threw nothing out. Sure enough, it was sitting there out back of his barn. I’ve been tinkering with it, waiting for the right time to give it to Gabe. Him getting married again and living there in the country, such as it is in California, seemed like a good time. Think it’ll be a fitting wedding present for you two?”

“It’s incredible. I love it. He’s going to love it.”

He chewed on the stem of his pipe, his cheeks rosy with pleasure. “Well, now, I thought you two being a bit long in the tooth and both married before, you probably already had a toaster oven.”

Out front, Becky’s horn honked, and I hurriedly helped Otis pull the tarp back over the truck.

“No one knows about this but you and me,” he said, locking the door behind us. “Keep it under your hat.”

“Cowboy’s honor,” I said, crossing my heart.

“What were you and Otis doing back in his garage?” Becky asked, pulling out on the highway.

“He was just showing me some of his tools.”

“Heaven knows, he has enough of them.” She took a backroad that eventually brought us to the entrance of the Kansas turnpike. “This’ll get us into Wichita faster. So, are you all ready to do a little sleuthing, Sherlock?”

“You know as well as I do that the cops have already taken anything remotely suspicious,” I said. “I am curious, though, about how Tyler lived. After hearing how she grew up, I can’t help wondering what our world must have initially seemed like to her. Talk about culture shock.”

“No kidding.” Becky took the ticket from the toll attendant, and seconds later we were barreling down the turnpike at eighty miles an hour. “I’ve got about ten boxes in the back there. Hope it’s enough.”

“I assume you know where we’re going,” I said.

“I called Dewey this morning and got the address as well as the phone number of her landlady, Mrs. Parker. She sounded relieved that someone was picking up Tyler’s stuff. I guess there’s some kind of family crisis, and she needs the room cleaned out right away.”

The Wichita neighborhood where Tyler had lived was an older one of moderately maintained two- and three-story wood-frame houses built in that utilitarian farmhouse style that seemed so popular everywhere in the Midwest. Children, both black and white, rode their bicycles along cracked sidewalks under trees lush and ancient enough to shade the whole width of the street. It was a neighborhood of fifteen-year-old cars, wraparound porches filled with vinyl-webbed aluminum patio furniture, and patchy front lawns. Mrs. Parker’s three-story house was painted a deep blue with white trim. Someone obviously liked zinnias, because they filled the front-yard flower bed in a riotous blast of yellow and red.

We pulled into the driveway, walked up the front steps, and knocked at the door. Mrs. Parker let us in. She was a tall, full-bodied black woman with fluffy hair the color of an oyster shell and a silky contralto voice that was probably the pride and joy of her church’s choir.

“I’m sure sorry I got to put you through this so soon after that poor child’s misfortune, but my sister’s done kicked her son out the house, and he’s stayin’ on my living room sofa. His snoring’s about to drive me crazy. I got to get him in his own room.” We followed her lumbering form up steep wooden stairs. “You relatives of Tyler’s?”

“No, just friends,” I said. “But we have permission from her husband to get her things.” I held out the note for her to read.

She flipped it away. “Oh, I believe you, honey. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to steal any of her stuff. Sweet little thing, she was, but she didn’t have much. She’d come down to the parlor sometimes, and her and me, we’d sing like two of the Lord’s sweetest birds. Musta been raised in the church ’cause she knew all the old hymns by heart.” When we reached the third floor, she stopped and looked at us. “Husband, huh? Well, she never said nothin’ about him, but I had my suspicions she was running from something. Seen it before and will more’n likely see it again. She was a good tenant, though. Always paid her rent right on time. What was he, one of them abusive types?”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” I said. “He’s, uh, Amish.”

“Amish? You mean those people who dress like the pilgrims and do all that pretty quilting? Well, bless my soul. I always thought she was kinda odd. If that just don’t beat all.” She shook her head and opened a door with one of the keys from a huge ring on her patent leather belt. “Well, if you ladies need any help, just give me a holler. I’ll be downstairs in the kitchen.” She shook her head. “Like I said, she was a real sweet young girl. Too sweet to be in the business she was in. I knew that the first time I met her. Me bein’ up till all hours waiting for my no-good son to be gettin’ in, I’d watch her come in all wrung out and tired, big ole black circles under her eyes, and I’d say, ‘Honey, what are you doin’ killing yourself for this fool thing that may never happen ? Nothin’s worth this much pain. Why don’t you go on home?’ And she say, ‘Louella, I can’t. I just can’t.’ Oh, she wanted that fame and fortune, all right. She just wanted it so bad. I reckon I just don’t understand wantin’ something that bad.” She gave us a perplexed look and headed down the stairs.

I stepped across the threshold into Tyler’s room. It was small with only a single bed, mirrored dresser, rocking chair, bookcase, nightstand, and a small student desk in that cheap Early American maple style popular in the fifties. The room was warm and stuffy, since the one screenless window was closed. With a few hard shoves, I managed to get it open.

Becky wrinkled her nose and frowned. “All that trouble to get her husband’s permission, and Mrs. Parker didn’t even glance at the note.”

“But if we hadn’t, maybe we’d be breaking some kind of law.”

“I suppose. Why do you think that first note got stolen?”

I shrugged and opened the middle drawer of the desk. “Who knows? Maybe it wasn’t stolen. Maybe it just fell out of my purse in all that craziness.” Or, I thought, maybe there’s something here someone doesn’t want us to find.

Becky placed her hands on her hips. “Mrs. Parker said the furniture came with the room, so I guess everything else must be Tyler’s.”

“The police were pretty neat,” I said. “You can’t even tell anyone’s been through her stuff.” A paperback rhyming dictionary lying on the nightstand caught my eye. Its pages were flimsy and slightly oily from use. It sat on top of a two-week-old issue of
Billboard
and a copy of
Country Weekly
magazine with a picture of Rick Trevino, an up-and-coming young singer, on the cover. The sight of those trade publications and all the dreams they represented to Tyler, dampened my interest in looking for clues among her belongings.

“I’ll get the boxes,” Becky said. “Guess you may as well start.”

I went back to the desk and peered into all the drawers. They were full of the usual paraphernalia that most people shove into a desk. I started taking out the pencils, papers, rubber bands, and other junk and piling it on the bed.

Becky and I were a good team. I started at one end of the room, she at the opposite end, and we worked toward each other, filling the cartons, occasionally making a comment about some little thing we picked up. We both became increasingly quiet and sober as we folded and packed. I stood up after pulling out bags of winter clothes she had stored under the bed and wiped at the sweat trickling down my face.

“Here,” Becky said, reaching into a box she’d just brought up and tossing me an icy cold bottle of Evian water. “I knew we’d get thirsty.”

“Bless the foresight of experienced mothers.” I sat cross-legged on the hardwood floor and leaned against a wall. “All we have left is the closet.”

She sat on the bed and gave me a tired look. “This is harder than I thought it would be. And creepier.”

“Yeah.” I picked at the Evian label and thought of the day Dove and I cleaned out Jack’s things and packed them in boxes that were still sitting in the back of the barn. What should I do with them now? I had wondered. What will Hannah do with Tyler’s possessions? Boxes of books and cards and letters and the different little mementos we pick up here and there as we live life, never thinking that someday someone will have to find a place for these things. That’s why there were antique stores, I supposed. I’d always wondered where those stained pictures of sober-faced people and ashtrays bought at the Chicago World’s Fair came from. Now I knew.

“Well, let’s get it done,” I said, draining the bottle of water and standing up. We opened the closet and started pulling clothes off hangers and folding them up. Becky pulled out a white cardboard box and set it on the bed.

I dug through a box that contained a slew of rejection letters from music publishing companies, sheets of notebook paper with what appeared to be half-finished song lyrics scribbled on them, old phone bills, and still more rejection letters. I sighed, wondering what I expected. Any personal letters would have certainly been taken by the detectives.

“Benni, look at this.” Becky’s voice was excited.

I backed out of the closet and faced her.

She held up a small rectangular wall quilt made of navy blue, bright pink, forest-green, and black. “Can you believe it? I thought Tyler had sold all her quilts.”

I walked over to her and stared down at the pattern, searching my store of knowledge for its name. The single-star pattern made from triangles seemed familiar, as if I’d seen it recently. The name tickled the tip of my tongue, but wouldn’t come to mind.

“Just look at these stitches,” Becky said. “I’ve seen a lot of Tyler’s work, but this is the best quilting of hers I’ve ever seen. I’m taking this right out to Hannah. I’m sure she’ll want it. Maybe it’ll make her feel better. Do you recognize the pattern? You did pretty good that first night at my house.”

“It looks familiar, but I can’t think of it.”

“Oh, well, we’ll look it up in one of my reference books when we get home. It’s not important. I’m sure that Hannah will be thrilled to have it.”

We finished packing up the rest of Tyler’s clothes and carried the boxes down to the car. As Becky turned on the ignition, I made an excuse to go see Mrs. Parker again.

“I’m going to tell her we’re all through,” I said.

“Okay,” Becky replied, leaning her face close to the air conditioning vent. “I’ll cool off the car.”

Mrs. Parker was in her large red and yellow kitchen stirring a pot of dark green vegetables.

“We’re finished,” I said from the doorway. She gestured me in. I walked over and peered into the simmering pot. Tiny pieces of ham floated in the bubbling liquid. “Turnip greens?” I asked.

“Why, that’s right!” she exclaimed. “Where’d you say you was from?”

“California,” I said, smiling. “But my family’s from Arkansas.”

“Why, so’s mine!” She put the lid back on the pot and faced me, wiping her hands on her flowered apron. “My mama’s side anyway. Papa’s side hails from Alabama.” She looked at me curiously. “How’d you come to be involved with that crazy business up there?” She gestured above us.

“Becky—that’s the lady who’s with me—was friends with Tyler. Becky’s my sister-in-law. I married her brother about five months ago.”

“Umm . . .” She nodded her head. “Meetin’ the new family, huh?”

I smiled and shrugged. “Yeah, something like that.”

“Well, I just hope that poor girl Tyler’s family gives her a proper buryin’. She deserves at least that. We all deserve at least that.”

“I’m sure they will,” I said, even though I wasn’t.

“And I hope they catch whoever did that terrible thing to her. I told those policemen that, too.”

“I guess they questioned you right away,” I said.

“Next day. Three of them. If
that
ain’t just the craziest thing. I told them I couldn’t tell three of them any more than I could tell one. No wonder our taxes is so high. Too many people doin’ the same thing.”

I nodded and made an agreeing sound. “What did you tell them?”

“Not much to tell. She didn’t bring men home, which is what they really wanted to know. She was a nice girl, ain’t nobody gonna convince me of nothin’ different. She didn’t have a phone, you know. Had to use mine. But she always left money on the table, even if it was a local call. There’s others around here that ain’t that considerate.” She sniffed irritably and turned around to pull a bag of cornmeal from the shelf over the stove.

“Did she get many phone calls?”

“The police asked me that, and my answer hasn’t changed. Not many, although this last coupla weeks she got more than usual. Always the same man. Always late at night. Always said, is Tyler there. That’s it.” She ripped open the paper sack and poured some cornmeal into a bowl without using a measuring cup, just like Dove.

“Would you recognize the voice?” It was a remote possibility, but I had to ask.

“Police asked me that, too. Tell you what I told them. All Midwestern white folks sound the same to me.” She chuckled and shook her head.

I laughed in agreement. It was true; like native Californians, Kansans really had no discernible accent. Of course, that didn’t help me, seeing as all the people who were suspects had been born and raised here.

“Well, it was nice talking to you.” I started for the door.