Harvestman Lodge (69 page)

Most of all, though, Megan enjoyed the dancers who performed on some of the entertainment stages around the park. “I’m going to work here someday,” she announced to her big sister. “I’ll be able to dance as good as that when I’m old enough.”

“I don’t doubt you will,” Melinda told her. “Whether you’ll work here or not may be less assured. There are rumors this park is being bought by a successful country singer and may not be Silver Dollar City much longer.”

“Who?” Eli asked.

“Native of the county, big blonde wig, big chest … “

“Her?”

“That’s the rumor.”

“Let’s go find some lunch,” Eli said as the fiddle and banjo music faded and the smiling, gingham-clad dancers heel-and-toed their way off the little stage.

Chapter Forty-Three

RAWLS PARVIN ENCOUNTERED ROLLY FLATT on Center Street and found him in a serious frame of mind. As always, the faint essence of barbecue scent clung to his clothing. “I’m worried about something,” he said. “I saw Lukey today, going by in a car. He wasn’t driving it, though. Some Japanese guy, it looked like to me.”

All at once Rawls had something to be worried about, too. He remembered Lukey’s fear someone was following him with bad intent. The “Japanese” man, maybe?

“Another thing, too,” said Rolly. “Lukey was looking over in my direction and I nodded hello at him with him staring right at me. And it was like he didn’t see me at all. Or that maybe something was wrong with him. Real drunk, maybe, or drugged out. But I know he’d have at least give a nod to me if he’d been able. He didn’t even blink.”

Rawls thought of a third possible cause for Lukey’s blank-eyed unresponsiveness. He hoped he was wrong.

“Yeah, he would have nodded or wiggled a finger or something,” Rawls said. “But I know he’s trying to lie real low while he’s here. Maybe he didn’t want to draw any attention. Hell, he told me I shouldn’t even tell my daddy he was in town … and Daddy is Lukey’s own brother.”

“Why’s he lying so low?”

“Got his reasons. He isn’t one to tell his business much.”

“Considering the business he’s in, I can understand that, I reckon.”

If you only knew
, thought Rawls.

MEGAN DROPPED THE BOMBSHELL INSIDE a small park cafe, where they’d stopped to eat roast beef and cheese sandwiches with corn chips. What prompted her was the entrance into the cafe of an Asian family. As the father of the family led the way through the door, Megan gave an audible gasp and dropped a chip.

“What’s wrong?” Melinda asked. Eli was not present at the moment, having headed back to the men’s room, leaving the females alone at their corner table.

“That man … he scared me. He gave me a chill.”

Melinda looked around and saw the man sitting down with his family at a wall booth. “He looks harmless enough to me,” she said, making sure her voice was low enough for the family not to hear her. “Just a typical family man. What scared you?”

“I thought for a minute he was the same man I saw watching our house last night.”

It was Melinda’s turn to be chilled.

“Somebody was … watching our house?”

“Yes. Somebody like that man.”

“Like that man … you mean an Asian man?”

“Yeah. He was out at the edge of the backyard, and there was another man with him. It was Rawls.”

Melinda gaped at her little sister. “So … in the night, in the dark, you saw an Asian man and Rawls. In our backyard.”

“Yeah.”

Melinda couldn’t squelch a chuckle. She almost asked if there were any dancing elephants out there, too. Instead she said, “Meggy, you had a dream. There are no Asian people living in Tylerville, not that I’ve ever heard of, and Rawls isn’t likely to come around our house at night, not after what happened with Dad and his gun.”

“It wasn’t a dream,” Megan insisted.

“Then it was a trick of the dark. Just shadow shapes.”

“It wasn’t that. either. Remember that lightning last night? The kind Daddy calls heat lightning? That was when I saw them. It was bright as daylight for a second or two. There wasn’t any darkness. They were there.”

Melinda was growing ever more uneasy. Megan seemed quite sure of what she was saying, and she’d never been the kind of child to confuse imagination with reality. Melinda couldn’t believe Megan had actually seen what she was claiming, because it simply made no sense, but neither could she believe that Megan wasn’t telling the truth as she thought it to be.

“Why would Rawls have been out there in the night?” Melinda asked.

Megan looked down at her plastic plate, which was shaped like a Gold Rush miner’s pan, and all at once seemed less sure of herself.

“Well … it looked like Rawls, in the face. But his hair was kinda different, maybe.”

Now we’re getting somewhere
, thought Melinda.

Megan went on. “His hair looked gray. And it was cut kinda funny … short around his ears, but it hung down long over his back collar.”

“I saw Rawls not very long ago, Meggy, and his hair is as dark as ever. And it’s not cut that way at all. So if you saw somebody out in the yard, it wasn’t Rawls.”

“But his face was the same.”

“Sweety, it was probably just somebody who resembled him. Or maybe it wasn’t anybody at all. If what you saw wasn’t a trick of the dark or the shadows, maybe it was a trick of the lightning.”

Megan pouted. “I know what I saw, Melly. There was a man who looked like he was from Japan or one of those other countries like that, and there was another man with Rawls’s face.”

Melinda saw no point in talking further about it. Megan’s imagination had overtaken her, and now she was too proud to admit that what she’d seen really was unlikely to have been there. Because it made no sense.

Yet Melinda had to remember that many of the Parvin men had quite similar features. It wasn’t impossible that Megan could have seen someone who looked enough like Rawls that, in the brief moments of a lightning flare, he might appear to have “had Rawls’s face.”

But why would such a man, though, or any other, examine the Buckingham house in the middle of the night? And who was the Asian companion Megan claimed was at his side?

Childish imagination. It was the most sensible explanation.

“Did Eli fall into the toilet?” Megan asked, then giggled into her hand.

“He has been gone a good while, hasn’t he?” Melinda replied. “I hope he’s not sick or something.”

“Constipated, betcha,” Megan said, and giggled again.

“Don’t say that kind of thing so loud. I mean it. It’s embarrassing.”

“Sorry.”

IN REALITY, ELI WAS NOT stalled in any such undignified situation, but seated in the small office of the cafe’s manager, a young woman a few years older than he whose name and title he’d read on the office door while making his way to the restroom. After he’d finished his bathroom visit, he’d knocked on the door. The door opened and the woman inside looked out at him quizzically. “Can I help you, sir?”

“Uh … yes. Maybe. Pardon me for interrupting your day. I just noticed your name on the door and realized I’d heard of you.”

“I’m Sally Ogle, cafe manager,” she said, putting out her hand. “And you are … “

“Eli Scudder.
Tylerville Clarion.
A newspaper you have some history with, I think.”

“Oh my gosh! I sure do! It’s been a few years, but I served my sentence honorably. Or so I like to think.”

“Well, you impressed David, anyway. When I was interviewing for my job, he told me you were the biggest staff loss he’d experienced, and would have you back in an instant.”

“That prospect is shudder-worthy to me. To think of going back there … no. Won’t happen. Come in, won’t you? Have a seat. You can tell me what it is I can do to help you today.”

“I’m with my fiance and her little sister,” Eli said. “I left them up front at a table … probably I should go let them know what’s up.”

“Just what
is
up, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I’m following an impulse. When I recognized your name on the office door, I recognized your name from what David had said, and it came to me that you might have some information about an aspect of Kincheloe County history that seems to be an untouchable subject. I was hoping that in your reporting days you might have learned something about … “

“… About the Fraternal Order of Tennessee Harvestmen,” she finished for him.

Eli’s jaw dropped. “Yes. Exactly! How did you know?”

“I didn’t. I just took a guess. You and I, we need to talk,” she said. “If you want, you can bring your fiance and her sister back here with us. too. I’ve got a table in here where I can host and feed guests.”

“Thank you … but let me ask this much in advance: do you know the full story? And if you do – and if it’s what I suspect it is, is that something you could talk about in the presence of a twelve-year-old girl?”

“Your fiance’s sister?”

“Right.”

“It would be … clumsy. Too much so.”

“You’ve pretty much verified something for me in saying even that much,” Eli said. “I’ll just run up front and tell Melinda, my fiance, what’s holding me up back here.”

“I’ll wait inside my office.”

ELI SUMMONED MELINDA AWAY from the table and spoke to her in whispers so Megan could not hear. The little girl made no attempt to hide her annoyance at being so obviously shut out of whatever was going on. Eli couldn’t worry about it. He was on the brink of confirming his fundamental suspicion about what had been the great and secret sin of Harvestman Lodge. Like Sally Ogle, he couldn’t imagine talking freely about that subject with the big, innocent eyes of a twelve-year-old girl looking at him.

“I’ve got to be part of this, too, Eli,” Melinda said. “I’m going back there with you.”

“What about Megan?”

“She’s old enough and smart enough to sit by herself in a public place for a few minutes without dire results, I think.”

Eli felt a reflexive resistance. “Are you sure you’d want to do that? If something happened … ”

“Nothing’s going to happen, Eli. You know that.”

“Okay. Yeah. Tell her, then, then come on back and join us. The office is on the left, across the hall from the restroom doors.”

Melinda went to deliver the news to Megan, who was not glad to hear it, while Eli went on back to the manager’s office. Melinda soon followed, Megan glaring after her.

“I’M JUST CURIOUS, ELI,” SAID Sally Ogle. They were seated at her office table, eating sandwiches and beginning to talk. “What did Davy Carl say about me in your interview?”

“Well, he said you were his best reporter, but that you got lured away from the newspaper by an offer from a local shopper publication that ended up going south. He implied you might have been in a relationship with the man who … but I’ll not go there. That’s not relevant.”

“Thank you. Because you’re right: it isn’t relevant. Mostly because it didn’t happen. My leaving the
Clarion
had a lot more to do with Davy Carl than with anybody outside the paper.”

“Uh … you mean you and David were … ”

“Eli!” Melinda interrupted, sensing where he was going. “You can’t ask that!”

Eli knew Melinda was right. Then he noticed Sally was laughing.

“If you were about to say that Davy Carl and I were in some kind of personal relationship, you couldn’t be further from the truth. The only relationship I had with him was eternal contentiousness. Some of it was my fault, I can now admit. I was young, immature, a little petty sometimes. The main problem, though, was that at time I believed in this particular, peculiar heresy: Newspapers should publish the news, not hide it. I still believe it.”

“Are we talking Harvestman Lodge here?”

“We are. It would have been the best story ever to be published in the
Clarion
, but pressure from certain sources kept it from ever seeing the light of day.”

“What sources?”

“One was the sheriff at the time. But there was one other pressure source besides Sheriff Hawes.”

“Was he named Sadler?”

“The name’s right, or was at one time, but not the gender. She was a Sadler before she married. Now she’s a Brecht.”

“Oh my gosh,” Eli said. “You don’t mean it!”

“I do. And it’s why I left,” Sally Ogle said. “I’d worked hard, gathering facts for a story that needed to be told, and then it was killed before I could connect the last dots and get the full picture. I couldn’t handle that. I left. And don’t believe Davy Carl when he says he’d take me back. If I set foot in that office, he’d have the law drag me out.”

“You don’t really believe that!”

“With all my heart I believe it.”

“What would cause both Sheriff Hawes – whom I have met and who seems to be a very moral-minded, honorable man – and Miz Deb … what would cause both of them to want to see such crimes as apparently went on at Harvestman Lodge covered up? Who, or what, were they trying to protect?”