Unraveled (3 page)

Chapter Six

The scruffy man once heard a story about something called a wraith. He looked it up in a dictionary.
“A ghost or ghostlike image of someone, especially one seen shortly before or after their death”
sounded exactly like him. He liked the dark sound of the word so much he memorized the definition
,
and The Wraith came alive. It was time for a reckoning.

***

Harriet Clay, now a widow, sent word to Ned that she needed to see him at her house, if that was possible. It was the least he could do for her, and in his opinion, it was his job to give her the bad news in person.

Ned drove to the Clay house half an hour after the ambulances took Frank and Maggie away. Set half a mile off Highway 79 toward Hopewell, the Queen-Anne style farmhouse was barely inside the Chisum City limits and surrounded by tall burr oak trees. Folks up on the river tended not to move into new houses if they could stay where they were raised, but in order to run for mayor, Frank Clay had to live in town.

Shade was thick and solid around the house built back in the late 1800s. Ned parked under a tree with a hitch ring grown into the trunk. Sheriff Cody Parker pulled up and killed his engine. They met at the house.

Cody rubbed his chin. “They live in town, so I guess I'll tell her.”

“Nope.” Ned absently touched his small constable's bade with one finger. “They're really Center Springs folks. I'll do the telling.”

Cody's response was cut off when Wes Clay stepped outside. Tough and strapped with corded muscle, Wes had packed a lot of life into fifty years, spending more than a few of them in prison down in Huntsville. Most people said Wes would fight a buzzsaw.

He scratched his flat belly through a dingy white tee shirt. “Well?”

The two lawmen walked closer to the porch. Ned stopped and looked up from under his brim. “Harriet sent for us.”

“You gonna tell her my baby brother's dead?”

Cody thumbed his hat back. “We need to talk to Harriet.”

“You can talk to me. I'll tell her.”

Ned felt his face flush. “Is she in there?”

“She is.”

Cody jerked his head toward the house. “The kids close by?”

“Naw. I took 'em over to Andy's house. They don't need to be here for a while.”

Ned knew Andy and most of the huge Clay family. “You gonna invite us in?”

Wes planted his feet as if they were about to lunge.

The tense situation evaporated in an instant when Harriet's weak voice came through the screen door. “Howdy, Ned, Cody. Wes, it's all right.”

Her brother-in-law refused to move, but Ned and Cody climbed the steps and parted around him. Harriet held the door and gave a vague wave to come in. Every window in the house was open to catch any available breeze on that still, humid morning. The air was thick and fragrant with the odor of bacon.

“Y'all sit.” Harriet's dark hair was messed, as if she'd been running her fingers through it. Her eyes were red from crying.

Neither lawman sat. Instead, they backed up to the couch, holding their hats.

Harriet dropped heavily into a blue chair. “He's dead for sure, ain't he?”

Ned nodded. “I'm sorry.”

Instead of dissolving into tears, she ducked her head as if thinking. Her Baptist raising prompted the next question. “Had he been drinking?”

Ned took the conversation. “We don't know.”

“Was he driving?”

“We don't know for sure.”

“I heard someone else was driving.” It was a statement. “That his car's across the river in Juarez.”

“We don't know that for a fact, yet. Frank was in the car with Maggie Mayfield. She was still behind the wheel, so I believe she was driving, though I don't know how she stayed in.” Ned hesitated after realizing he was talking too much. “They went off the bend in the Lake Lamar Dam. There was some skid marks. She might have been going too fast for the curve, or maybe she tried to miss a deer or something on the dam.”

“She is…was, Frank's secretary.” Harriet dried her eyes with a damp handkerchief. “He hired her here-while back. She may have been bringing him home. He's worked late a lot lately, 'cause of the job. Maybe his car wouldn't start or something.”

The tightness in Ned's stomach released now that he had an answer to his questions. “Well, that explains a lot.”

She worried at a button on her blue print dress. “He's been getting ready for the election in the fall. It takes a lot of time to lay groundwork. He's been doing so much on his own, and even though he has what he calls his staff, he needed someone to handle the little day to day things. Maggie was supposed to take some of the pressure off and now she's taken him with her.” She broke down in sobs.

“I bet you're right.” Cody fiddled with the brim of his hat. “They worked late last night and she was bringing him home.”

Ned didn't believe that, because evidence pointed toward the west, away from where they would have been going. He also hated giving the information piecemeal, but he didn't seem to be able to stay in charge of the conversation. He wiped a film of sweat from his bald head.

They waited in awkward silence until she composed herself. “Did he suffer much?”

“I don't know for sure.” Ned tapped his hat against his leg, a sure sign that he was ready to go. “We'll never know.”

“My poor babies don't have a daddy anymore.”

Wes used a forefinger and pulled the screen door open. “That's enough now.”

Ned agreed with him. “I reckon you're right.”

Cody surveyed the bright, airy room that was neat as a pin. A cluster of pictures on the wall showed Frank with a Texas senator, a member of the Texas House of Representatives, and the former Chisum mayor. “Harriet, I'm sorry.”

The lawmen exchanged looks and Ned wiped his head again, ready to get outside where at least a little air was moving. “All right, then. That's all we know. You holler if we can do anything for you.”

She buried her face in the handkerchief again. A black woman Ned didn't recognize came in from the kitchen and put her arms around the grieving widow. Neither looked up as Wes held the screen open.

The lawmen filed through and were in the yard when Wes' soft voice stopped them. “She's a Mayfield.”

Ned stopped and sighed. “Yes.”

“No Mayfield had oughta work for a Clay. Frank shoulda known better, but he'd hired one already.” He jerked his thumb toward the house. “Did you check to see if there were tire marks other'n hers? Whoever run 'em off the road got two birds with one stone, 'cause he was in the car with that high-yeller woman that was married. I heard them Mayfields didn't like it that she'd been seen across the river in Frogtown since her old man run off. They'll pay for that.”

“No they won't.” Cody's face reddened. “We don't know it was intentional. It was an accident until we find out something different. Stay out of it.”

“I hope y'all are going over to that nigger slut's house to see what she was up to. I think there's more to it than you're lettin' on.”

Ned leveled his gaze at Wes who was working himself up. “We'll do what we do. That's none of your business.”

“It
is
our business. He's kinfolk. Them Mayfields are some sneakin', fightin' sonsabitches and they took Frank with 'em when they got rid of that slut. I'm gonna find out for sure what happened. When I do, I'll take care of it.”

Cody clamped his jaw. “He's already told you to keep your nose clean. It's law business.”

Wes lit a cigarette, flicked the match at Cody, spat onto the boards between his feet. “It's
family
business, now. It just came clear to me. A Mayfield killed a Clay. There'll be blood over it.”

Chapter Seven

The Wraith thought about crossing the river for a beer, but recognition was too dangerous. Instead, he drove to the lake overlook and stayed in his truck, sipping from a half pint of whiskey and thinking about how close he'd come to being run over the night before because he'd been drunk and not paying attention. He thought about the two who died with little interest other than their names. Mayfield and Clay. An idea was born. He chuckled and tilted the bottle toward two houses barely visible in the distance opposite the glistening body of water.

***

Late Saturday afternoon Ned and Judge O.C. Rains were drinking coffee in the back booth of Frenchie's Café, only a block north of the Lamar County Courthouse. Boyhood friends, they argued like an old married couple most of the time.

Judge Rains blew over the surface of his coffee and took a tentative sip. “Say she picked Frank up and gave him a lift?”

“That's what I think happened. He hired her for a secretary last week. I went by his office here in town, and some of the young folks who volunteer for his campaign say they'd been there late in the night and were the last ones to leave.”

“So did his car not start? Is that what happened?”

Oklahoma Sheriff Clayton Matthews had located Frank's Ford in the parking lot of The Black Cat, one of the many honky-tonks just across the Red River. No one had seen Frank in the club, nor Maggie either.

Ned picked at a rough edge of one fingernail. “Can't say yet.”

“It's a mystery. That's a fact.” O.C. knitted his white eyebrows together. “I can think of one or two reasons a man might be with a woman.”

“Not one that's high-yellow, and not Frank Clay. They're…they were both married and he's one of the best men I ever knew. He was a good husband and doted on them kids of his. The problem is that the wreck's done relit the fire between them two families. You know of that Mayfield bunch Maggie was married into. John Washington says every one of them boys are mean as snakes an'll kill you for your hat if he decides he's partial to it, and the Clays are just as bad. Hell, O.C. you sent Monte Clay up for shooting his own brother's business off two years ago when Monte thought he was messin' with his wife.”

O.C.'s eyes flicked over Ned's shoulder when the bell over the door jangled and followed the customer down the counter to watch Frenchie pour coffee. “Hell, if you're part of that Clay bunch, you're either sorry as the day is long and belong under the jail, or you're such a teetotaler that you won't admit that you like a beer ever now and then.”

“Cody went over and asked around too, and said nobody saw Frank in any of them joints last night. Somebody woulda recognized the mayor, if he'd been in there.”

“I figured you'd be the first to suspicion something.” O.C. leaned forward and laced his fingers. “Especially since Maggie's been spending more time across the river than usual.”

“If you knew that, why didn't you tell me?”

“You didn't ask.” O.C. grinned and let him off the hook. “John told me this morning.”

Ned grinned. “She's been seen around them gun and knife clubs out by Frogtown. They'll let anyone come in and drink over there, white, colored, high yeller, or red.”

Despite how badly Ned despised the cluster of beer joints just across the river from his precinct, the joints backed into the deep woods several miles farther east were nothing but a deeper level of hell. The dregs of Oklahoma lived there, earning a living in mysterious, and usually illegal ways. It was a dark place of cuttings, fights, and unspoken atrocities. Not a man given to fantasies, he wished the whole collection of warped shacks would catch fire and burn clean.

Frenchie came by with a plate and headed for the booth closest to the door. O.C. gave her a grin when she passed and she winked at them.

“Careful, you old coot,” Ned chuckled. “One little dose of that'll kill you.”

“I'm too old to even think about it these days.” It was Judge Rains' way of saying things were still same at his house. His wife, Catherine, had been bad sick for years and the only relief for her was the white light at the far end of the tunnel.

O.C. tapped at the scarred table with a thick fingernail. “You talk to Tylee yet?”

“Ain't laid eyes on him. John asked around and says he went off visiting his woods children out toward New Boston. He got in a scrape and wound up in jail. Still there as far as I know.”

“Knowing how he is, that's the best place for him right now.”

“There'll be a killin' over this when he gets out.”

Ned shook a few grains of salt into his coffee to cut the bitter. “Maybe not. I hope they all learned their lessons after the war. Killin' one another don't solve a thing.”

“I hope you're right, but folks don't always pay attention to the lessons of their elders.”

There wasn't anything to say to both truths.

They sipped for a few moments, surrounded by the smells of fried food, coffee, and the constant underlying odor of bacon and grilled onions. The backbeat of customer's voices and the tinkling of dishes from both the booths and the kitchen was as comforting as a soft quilt to the two old lawmen who'd been eating there for decades.

Frenchie came around with a fresh pot and filled their thick mugs to the brim. “Y'all need anything else, O.C.?”

“You have any peach pie back there?”

“Nope. Cherry and apple.”

“I'd rather have peach.”

“You'll get either cherry or apple today. That's all I got to offer.”

“Why don't you ever have peach?”

“We do. But not
today
. Cherry or apple?”

O.C. frowned in disappointment. “I'll have to study on it.”

“Fine.” She popped her gum, smiled at Ned, and stopped by another booth to check on the customers there.

A ghost of a thought flicked through Ned's mind. Their ongoing discussion of pie, especially
peach
pie, made him think of Frank and Maggie, but it was lost before he could get a good grasp on what it was.

O.C. burned his lips on the coffee and hissed. “I knew good and well that was hot.”

“I've done the same thing myself. Stings, don't it?”

“It'll feel better when it quits hurtin'. Say Frank and Maggie came over the dam and went off the backside?” They were back on the subject at hand.

“Yep. Right where it curves.”

“Which way were they going?”

“Toward Center Springs.”

“That don't make no sense.” O.C. shook his head. “They didn't have any business being over there.”

“It's a free country, last time I looked.”

“Have you talked to any of Tylee's people yet?”

Ned studied O.C. for a long moment. “This is bothering you, ain't it?”

“That whole damn
family
bothers me. I've had members of both sides before my bench in the past. You know as well as I do what happened after the war before it all settled down. We're lucky more people weren't killed in that little feud. Hell, we don't even know for sure who killed who, and only two of 'em were sent to the pen.”

“Well, I'll get over there to talk to 'em directly.” He paused and picked a callus on his thumb. “I been thinkin' on it and can't rightly remember exactly how all this started to begin with.”

O.C. drank some coffee. “It was a silly disagreement. Frank Clay's uncle Randall Clay sold Old Man Mayfield a lame blue-nosed mule one Saturday in the Chisum wagon yard. Randall said the mule was fine when they traded, and that Mayfield'd lamed it on the way home.

“The next Saturday Old Man Mayfield was back in the wagon yard with the mule and told Randall he wanted his money back. They took to arguin' and before you know it, they almost went to fighting. A couple of cooler heads kept 'em apart, and it was a good thing they did. A black man hitting a white back then was cause enough for a lynchin'. Anyway, Mayfield finally shot the lame mule right between the eyes at a cutbank by the road, not far from the army camp and let it lay where it fell.”

“I remember now. Randall's own mule was found dead in his barn a few days later. Somebody'd cut its throat and Randall accused the Mayfields.”

“That's right. The whole thing spun out of control after that. Archie Mayfield's old truck had a flat on a high-bank gravel road a couple of miles from his house and he was changing it when William Clay came by in his car. Archie couldn't pull far enough off that skinny little road, and William Clay couldn't get past. It made him mad that a Mayfield was blocking his way, and he got out to give him a cussin'. When William looked in the back of Mayfield's truck, he saw half a bushel of pears and said Archie stole 'em from a tree on his property.

“He backed around and headed straight for town where he swore out a complaint with Sheriff Poole. Well, you know Poole was crooked as a dog's hind leg and didn't need much excuse to arrest Archie. He'd arrest a colored fellow for breathing air, so he caught Archie at the wagon yard in town and worked him over for what he said was resisting arrest, and then took him in to spend a month in jail before they let him out. Archie drove straight to the bottoms and caught William having lunch under a tree by a cotton field he was plowing and beat the hell out of him. Archie went back to jail after that and woke up dead in his cell. Nobody knew how it happened. Old Judge J.W. Haynes ruled it a suicide and before you know it, it was one thing after another.”

The stories took Ned back for a long minute. “Well, things has changed over the years, even though there's still hard feelings. Both families have long memories, but at least a couple of 'em turned out all right, like Frank. He was a good man. The rest of them Clays are rough as cobs. I'll speak to a few of the Clays and have John talk to the Mayfields, and warn 'em off, but that's all I can do.”

“Better let Cody tell John.”

“Why?”

“He's sheriff. I don't believe you oughta be tellin' John who to talk to. He ain't
your
deputy, you know. Times are changing, and you better not be giving him orders no more, no matter how long y'all've been working together.”

“'I god, you're right. I'm just so used to working with him, it's got to be a habit.”

The bell above the door jangled and Ned's eyes lit up when he recognized Graham Harwell. Ned waved him over and pointed at a stool at the counter beside their booth. Their hats rested upside down on the counter, the usual way of reserving the stools so customers couldn't hear their conversations.

“Graham, sit there and tell O.C. what happened out by that damned lake the other day.”

O.C.'s expressive eyebrows rose at the unusual offer.

Graham took the stool with a sheepish look on his face. “Mr. Ned, that story's embarrassing.”

“Why come?” O.C. noticed Graham's arm was in a cast. “Your busted wing have something to do with it?”

Graham sighed. “I'm gonna get this out of the way and tell it one time. After that, I don't want to hear one question or one word.”

Ned chuckled. “Fine, then.”

“Well, Ned knows I bought me one of them used Airstream campers and have been itching to use it. Anyway, they opened the new campgrounds up out at Lake Lamar, and I pulled it over there and set it up. Some friends decided they wanted to see the trailer, so they came out and we had a big old time. We built a fire outside, and before you know it, more folks showed up and camped out, too.

“Anyway, a lot of beer came with 'em, and it was after midnight before we finally got tired. Some folks crawled in their own tents, and one or two drove back home, but a few stayed around the fire to talk. Linda and I went into the trailer and I decided to take a shower before going to bed. I was standing there, in a stream of nice hot water, when I heard her scream from the living room. She'd seen a snake crawl under the sofa.”

O.C. shuddered. He's always been afraid of snakes, especially since Ned threw one on him when they were kids.

“Buck-nekked and dripping water, I came running in there and she hollered that a snake was under the couch. I didn't believe her, but I got down on all fours to look.”

Ned's imagination got the best of him and he shuddered at the mental image.

“Linda's little Dachshund was passing through about that time and when he saw me on all fours, he cold-nosed me somewhere that we aren't going to discuss.”

Graham had to wait until the two old men regained control of themselves.

“What did you do, fall and break your arm?” O.C. had forgotten his coffee.

“I wish. I jumped forward and cracked my head against the table and passed out for a minute. Linda didn't see what happened and thought the snake bit me and caused me to have a heart attack, so she ran to the door and called for help.

“The guys hurried in to get me and take me to the emergency room. They made a stretcher out of a blanket and were carrying me out the door, still nekked as the day I was born, when Winston Moore got tickled about the whole thing and lost his grip on one corner of the blanket and dropped me half in and out the door. That's how my arm broke.”

Frenchie returned with the coffee pot and refilled their mugs and they realized she'd been listening from behind the counter. “Did y'all kill the snake?”

“You've only heard half of it,” Graham said. “While they were gone with me to the hospital, Hubert Stillwell stayed behind to do just that. He looked the trailer over and couldn't find the stinking thing, so he told Linda he believed it was gone. She was worried sick and sat down on the couch and when one of those little throw pillows fell over, there that damned snake was and she fainted dead away.”

Graham smiled to himself on that one.

“Hubert killed it and seeing Linda passed out, he thought
she'd
had a heart attack and laid her on the couch. Anyway, he's had some training because he's a volunteer fireman, so he leaned over and blew in her mouth. Now, remember, they'd all been drinking some, so when Hubert's wife walked in right about then to check on Linda and saw them like that with his mouth on Linda's, she picked a cast iron skillet off the stove and laid him out.