Precious Bones (32 page)

Wednesday morning when I got on the school bus and sat down next to Little Man, I didn’t say a word about what I had done the day before. I was too ashamed to tell him I had lied to my mama and done a stupid, dangerous thing. I was not in the mood for sharing something like that.

All that day I felt like I had a little gray cloud hovering over my head. For that matter, the entire next week felt like that. One whole week had passed since I’d given Sheriff LeRoy his solid evidence, or at least what I thought was solid, and we had not heard one word from him. Not one word. I was beginning to feel like the sheriff was just a big puddle of water.

Thursday afternoon Little Man came home with me after school and helped me give Pearl a bath. We were out back when the dogs started barking and we heard the toot of a car
horn from the front yard. We walked around front to find the hulking frame of Sheriff LeRoy leaning against his car.

I turned around so fast I bumped broadside into Little Man. Before I could speak a word, he put both his hands on my shoulders and said, “Let’s go see what the sheriff is here for.”

Just then, Nolay opened the door and walked out. “Howdy, LeRoy, what brings you out here today?”

“Well, if it ain’t a bother, I got something I need to talk to y’all about. It’s pretty important and I figure I should get it done with.”

“Ain’t no bother, LeRoy, come on in.”

Little Man leaned over and whispered in my ear, “There ain’t nothing to be scared about.”

“I don’t know, I hope you’re right. We better get inside so we can find out.”

Me and Little Man ran back and hosed Pearl off, then ran into the house.

Mama heard LeRoy’s voice and came out to greet him in the living room. “Hello, LeRoy, how are you today?”

“Just fine, Miss Lori. I got something I need to talk to you folks about. Sorry to be bargin’ in like this, but it’s mighty important.”

“It’s all right, LeRoy, you just have a seat.”

LeRoy squeezed into one of our living room chairs. He took his Stetson off and placed it on the floor.

“Would you like a cup of coffee? I just made a fresh pot.” Mama kept a pot of coffee on nearly all day. She had told me
one time, “A cup of coffee and a Lucky Strike is one of the little joys of life.”

“Why, yes, ma’am, that would be fine, if it ain’t too much trouble.”

“No trouble at all.”

Little Man and I made ourselves comfortable and as invisible as possible on the floor. Mama came in and placed the coffee on a little table in front of the sheriff, then sat next to Nolay on the couch.

LeRoy took a sip of coffee and opened a folder full of papers he held on his knees. “I been down in Miami since last Wednesday, just drove up this morning. You remember last time I told you about going down there? Well, this here is the results of the investigation.”

Nolay and Mama watched silently as LeRoy shuffled through the papers. He took another sip of coffee. “Mighty fine coffee, Miss Lori.”

“I’m glad you enjoy it, LeRoy.” I could tell by the determined look on her face that Mama wasn’t about to offer him any food to go along with it.

LeRoy raised his huge head and said, “First off, I reckon I got them city po-lease a little more interested in what them two fellas, Decker and Fowler, were up to. Me and this detective, we started to poke around in the neighborhood where Fowler lived. Come to find out the neighbors had plenty to say about the Fowlers. Seems Mr. Decker spent a lot of time over at the Fowlers’ house when Mr. Fowler was away. I do believe Mr. Decker and Mr. Fowler’s wife was having them a little go-around.”

LeRoy stopped midsentence, glanced sideways at me and Little Man, and lowered his voice, as if we would not hear him sitting two feet away. “If you know where I’m gettin’ to with that.”

Nolay said, “Yeah, LeRoy, we understand what you’re saying. So then what happened?”

“Appears they got a search warrant and went to Decker’s house.” LeRoy leaned back in his chair and looked around as if to make sure he had the full attention of everyone in the room. “Know what they found in his closet?”

Nolay shook his head. “No idea, LeRoy, what did they find?”

“They found a .38-caliber pistol, same kind of gun that was used to shoot Fowler. You will recall that when I found that man’s body, there was a bullet hole in his head.” LeRoy sipped his coffee. “Next thing they did was test that gun. Law enforcement has come a long way; they got ways of testing things out like that now. You know what they found?”

Nolay and Mama sat silently and stared at LeRoy.

“They found that that gun was the exact same one used in the killing.”

LeRoy took another sip of his coffee. “Now we were startin’ to get some evidence put together. But we still did not have anything solid that would put Decker in the same place where that murder took place.” LeRoy stopped and looked in my direction. A smile played across his wide face. “That is, until Miss Bones here found that watch out in the swamps. After we cleaned it up, we saw an inscription on the back of it, to Decker from Fowler’s wife. Sorta like a little love letter.
There wadn’t no doubt who it belonged to or how it got out there. That pretty much sewed up the case.”

Little Man whispered, “A watch?”

I turned to look at him. He had that question mark sitting right in the middle of his forehead.

Mama sat straight up. “A watch? What watch?”

Sheriff LeRoy replied, “Why, the one Miss Bones took me and Nolay out to the swamps to find. She said Speed had given her the directions, and by golly, there it was.”

I could see by the look on Mama’s face she was trying to sort out all this information. She said, “Bones, that’s what you went out in the swamps to find?”

“Yes, ma’am. I know it was wrong to lie. But it was like all the things Mr. Speed was trying to tell me came together. And when I found that watch, I just knew it was the same one that Silver almost ripped off that man’s arm the day the two of them came out to our house.”

Mama sat quietly, blinking her eyes. Then she said, “LeRoy, what does all this mean?”

“Well, Miss Lori, it means they arrested Decker for the murder of his partner, Mr. Fowler. Seems Decker and Mr. Fowler’s wife was planning on having them some fun with that fifty thousand dollars of insurance money.”

Me and Little Man sat with our mouths open like two gulping fish. Nolay and Mama remained silent as stumps. I could almost see LeRoy’s words hovering around their ears like bees.

Mama and Nolay turned to look at me. Nolay slapped his
knee and said, “Gol-durn, Bones! And here I thought that watch didn’t mean anything. I sure was wrong this time.”

Mama kept her eyes on me. “Your daddy and I certainly owe you an apology. Especially me. I should have paid better attention to what you were trying to do.”

LeRoy shook his head. “I wish you could have seen the look on Decker’s face when I walked into that interrogatin’ room and laid that watch on the table. I thought he was gonna swallow his tongue. He looked at me and said, ‘Where did you find this?’

“And I tolt him, ‘In the swamps, pretty close to where you dropped off your partner’s body.’ He started ranting and raving about having paid those stupid Reems brothers good money to find it for ’im. Appears them Reems bothers was in cahoots with those Yankee real estate boys. They were gonna go around and hep ’em buy up property real cheap and sell it off for a profit.” The sheriff let out a little laugh. “But I guess they weren’t that stupid, ’cause they knew that area would be under water until winter came and the swamps dried up.”

LeRoy stopped and took a sip of coffee. “That’s why it was so easy for Miss Bones to find it.” He looked in my direction and nodded in approval. Then he continued, “When they arrested Mrs. Fowler for being an accomplice to murder, she turned on Decker quicker than a squirrel a-hidin’ a nut. Told them city po-lease how Decker killed her husband and dumped his body in the swamp. Being that the two of ’em had got into that confrontation with Nolay, Decker thought that would be the best place to dump the body.” LeRoy took a sip
of coffee. “I reckon he thought the gators would take care of the body and nothing would ever be found. He would just report his partner missin’, and that would be the end of it. He didn’t count on losing that watch.”

LeRoy took another sip of coffee and continued. “Still ain’t real clear on how the leg got separated from the body. Although when I found it, the body was pretty well chewed up. Could have been any number of swamp critter to do that. Got to admit, Decker was a smart Yankee, but not smart enough to get away with murder.”

Nolay leaned forward. “LeRoy, does that mean I have been cleared of the charges?”

“It sure does. It means your name has been cleared. You are no longer a suspect. You are a free man.”

The reality of Sheriff LeRoy’s words spread inside me like drops of oil shimmering across the surface of water. I turned to Little Man. Words bubbled up and stuck in my throat. Before I could utter a sound, Little Man smiled and turned away.

Mama clasped both hands together as if in prayer. “Thank you, LeRoy. Thank you.”

A flush of crimson crept steadily up LeRoy’s long face. He hung his giant head and mumbled, “Just doin’ my job, Miss Lori.” He drained the rest of his coffee and set the cup down on the small table. “Now, the next situation is that one with ol’ Peckerhead Willy. I knew who done it, ’cause ol’ Charlie was brave enough to tell me. It was just a matter of figurin’ out how to catch ’em, without causin’ no harm to Charlie.” LeRoy looked longingly at his empty coffee cup.

Mama said, “LeRoy, would you like some more coffee?”

“Yes, ma’am, if you got some more, that would be mighty fine.”

As Mama got up and walked toward the kitchen, she hesitated, glanced at Nolay, and then said, “LeRoy, would you like some sausage biscuits with your coffee? I have some left over from breakfast.”

“If it ain’t no bother, Miss Lori, I sure would appreciate it.”

“It’s no bother, LeRoy. No bother at all.”

LeRoy’s eyes glazed over as Mama placed a heaping plate of biscuits stuffed with sausage patties on the table in front of him. Nolay looked at me and raised one of his eyebrows. A smile nudged at the corners of his mouth. We were in for a long, slow story. One that we were all anxious to hear.

LeRoy picked up a sausage biscuit, and in two chomps it disappeared into his huge mouth. “Miss Lori, that is a biscuit comparable to my mama’s. Now, like I said before, law enforcement has come a long ways. For a couple of years, I been dabblin’ in something called fingerprints. It’s been around for a while, but being we ain’t a very big po-lease force down here, it was harder to come by.” LeRoy held up one of his massive hands and pointed to the fingertip. “You see all them little squiggly lines. Every person has their own special lines. Each time we touch something, we leave a little fingerprint trail behind us.”

Me and Little Man held our hands out in front of us and compared fingertips.

LeRoy talked around another biscuit. “When Charlie told me about Whackerstacker using a branch as a weapon, I went
out and found it. It was hid up under some bushes, so it still had some blood and hair on it and some usable prints. The next thing I got was that chicken crate over at Charlie’s that Whackerstacker picked up. It had prints on it, too. And then there was the shovel he used to try and chop off Nolay’s head.”

The sheriff stopped for a biscuit break, then continued. “Now that I had the evidence, I needed to get it all up to Jacksonville, where they had the proper FBI equipment to document everything. Course there were other prints on everything, but turns out all of ’em had one print that matched up perfect. They was all from the same person: Whackerstacker Joe Reems.” LeRoy took a sip of coffee. “For your information, late yesterday afternoon, me and two Florida State po-lease men arrested Joe Reems for murder. He is now sittin’ in the Titusville jail.”

A smile spread across Nolay’s face as he looked at the huge man scrunched up in one of our chairs. He stood up, walked over to the sheriff, and stuck out his hand. “I’ll be durned, LeRoy, you have made me one happy man. I always knew you had it in you. You’re an even better sheriff than your daddy was.”

LeRoy hung his head and mumbled, “Well, I don’t know about that. I’m just doin’ my job.”

“You done a dang good job. Let me ask you one thing. What about ol’ Whackerstacker’s boys? They’re young, but they’re still meaner than a pack of cornered weasels. You think they might try to hurt Charlie?”

“I don’t think so, not after what just happened to their daddy.” LeRoy shook his head and let out a little chuckle. “I
do believe them state po-lease men put the fear of the devil in them boys. That oldest boy could have been arrested for being an accomplice. If he goes to jail with his daddy, them other two boys would end up in reform school. So I don’t think they’ll be causing any more harm to Charlie.”

When the last biscuit was gone, LeRoy looked wistfully at the empty plate. He sat silently for a moment and then said, “I clean forgot about one more thing—the bail money. Soon as you can get up to the Titusville Courthouse, you can sign for it and it will be returned to you.”

Mama said, “The bail money? But it doesn’t belong to us.”

“Why, sure it does, Miss Lori. Now that Nolay is cleared of all charges, that money is yours, free and clear. All you gotta do is go pick it up.” He gathered up his folder of papers, picked up his Stetson, and placed it on his head. “I best be gettin’ on now, it’s been a long day. I just wanted to let you folks know the good news.” He tipped his hat in Mama’s direction. “Much obliged to you, Miss Lori, for the coffee and biscuits.”

Mama looked up at the massive man standing in front of her; her eyes sparkled like dewdrops in the sun. “Thank you, LeRoy, for the best gift we have ever had.”

Nolay stood up. “I’ll walk you out to the car, LeRoy.”

LeRoy jingled across the room and was just stooping to walk through our door when I jumped up and ran over to him. “Sheriff LeRoy?”

He turned and looked down at me. I stuck out my hand. His huge hand slowly stretched out and wrapped around mine, as soft and gentle as a dishcloth. “Sheriff, I just want to
say thank you, and I want to tell you that I think you are a mighty fine sheriff.”