Where You Once Belonged (9 page)

So one afternoon they walked up onto the front porch and rang the doorbell. But after Mrs. Burdette had opened the door to them she didn’t ask them in. She merely waited inside, in the dark front hallway of the house, listening to their questions and foolish talk from beyond the scarcely-opened door. They continued to explain to her what they had come for. Then they stopped talking; she hadn’t said anything yet. She had simply stared at them out of those clean little wire-rimmed glasses while she studied one face and then another. She didn’t seem to know or even to care what they were talking about. In exasperation, one of the men said to her: “But, Mrs. Burdette, look here: you do know Jack’s gone, don’t you? You do read the local newspaper? Why, it’s been in the
Mercury
. Haven’t you seen it?”

When she spoke finally, her voice sounded harsh and rusty, as if she hadn’t used it in days. “I don’t know anything about your newspapers,” she said. “And I don’t want to. I read the Bible.”

Then she shut the door in their faces. They could hear her locking it. Afterward they could hear the faint sound of her steps retreating into the interior of the silent house. So the men were left standing on the front porch. They felt foolish. They looked at one another and moved quickly down off the porch like little boys who had done something silly.

I
n any case, by the end of January the alarm in Holt had turned at last to shock and fear. People had finally grown afraid that something serious had happened to Jack Burdette and they were disturbed to think so. They still liked Burdette and thinking something bad had happened to him made them feel less secure for themselves in their corner of Colorado. The police had begun to send out all-points bulletins across the state, hoping that might turn him up. But nothing did. Burdette had disappeared without a trace.

Meanwhile at the Farmers’ Co-op Elevator things were a mess. Without Burdette there to manage the elevator every day, nothing was getting done properly and Arch Withers and the other members of the board of directors didn’t know what to do. Finally they decided to ask Doyle Francis to come back. They wanted Doyle to run things again, on a temporary basis, so that the routine shipment of corn and wheat might continue once more, until Burdette turned up, or until … well, until they had to hire his replacement. Still they refused to think it would come to that.

Then, about the middle of February, that private feeling of shock and fearfulness in Holt turned suddenly to hostility and public outrage. For, by that time, Doyle Francis had had sufficient opportunity to examine the books at the elevator. And in going over the books he had discovered that something was wrong. He called a special meeting of the board to tell them about it. It was on a Tuesday afternoon.

“Jesus Christ,” he told the men when they were assembled before him in his office. “What in the goddamn hell were you boys thinking of anyhow?”

“What do you mean?” Arch Withers said.

“Didn’t you even check on him? Didn’t you even think to look at these books yourselves?”

“Of course we did. We looked at them. Charlie Soames went over these books every year with us. So did Jack Burdette. What’s wrong with them?”

“Plenty,” Doyle said.

“Like what, for instance?”

“Like this, goddamn it.” Doyle pointed to the books spread out before him on the desk. “As near as I can tell, you’re missing about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That’s what’s wrong with them.”

“What? Hold on now. You mean to say—”

“I mean that’s just an old man’s estimate. It’s been going on for three or four years.”

“What’s been going on? What are you talking about?”

Doyle explained it to them. In careful, rational detail, he showed the men sitting across from him what had happened, how the books had been manipulated, how they had been juggled by someone who knew what he was doing. But just a little at first, Doyle said, pointing to the pages of neat figures, then in larger and larger amounts as the months passed. And all very cleverly, in a kind of sleight of hand, as a CPA might do it if he had in mind to do something neat and criminal. Doyle said it had taken him days to understand how it had been done. Finally he had, though. “Oh, it was careful,” he said. “I’ll give them that much.”

The men sat silently, looking at the opened books on the desk. They picked at their hands and refused to look at one another. For his part, Doyle Francis sat back in his chair watching them.

At last Arch Withers said: “All right. If what you say is true, who did it? Who’s them?”

“What?”

“You said them. Who do you mean by that?”

“Who do you think I mean?”

“How the hell do I know? Do you mean Charlie Soames?”

“Why not? Charlie did the books, didn’t he? He did the books when I was here before and I assume you boys kept him on after I left.”

“That son of a bitch,” Bob Wilcox said. Wilcox was the young man on the board. “Goddamn that old—”

“And Burdette?” Withers said, interrupting him. “What about him? Was he in on this too?”

“Of course he was. Don’t you think he had to be? Why else was he going to charge those new clothes on Main Street and then disappear and not come back home again?”

“By god,” Wilcox said. “He’s another son of a bitch. We ought to—”

“Shut up,” Withers said. “It’s too late for any of your hysterics.”

“That’s right,” Doyle said. “It’s too late for a lot of things. Except I believe that Charlie’s still in town, isn’t he?”

“He’s still in town.”

“Then I’ll go get him, if none of you will. I’ll bring that—”

“Damn it,” Withers said. “I already told you to shut up. Now do it.” Young Bob Wilcox started to say something more, but Withers turned and stared at him. Then Wilcox closed his mouth tight and Withers turned back to Doyle Francis. “So what do you suggest we do about this? You seem to of thought about it.”

“Oh yes. I’ve thought about it,” Doyle said. “It’s about all I have thought about for the last two weeks.”

“So? Are you going to tell us what to do or not?”

“There’s only one thing to do. We let the sheriff’s office handle it now. We call Bud Sealy and tell him to go over to Charlie Soames’s house and arrest him and lock him up and then we wait for the trial. What else is there?”

“But there’s still the money, isn’t there? What about the money?”

“What about it?”

“Well goddamn it. It was our money. It was all us shareholders’ money.”

“Sure it was,” Doyle said. “And you can tell that to the judge too, when you get the chance. But I don’t suppose that will get it back for you. Jack Burdette’s been gone for a month a half and god only knows where he’s gone to. But wherever he is, he’s already begun to spend it. You can count on that.”

There was silence again while this new thought sank in. The men stared hatefully at the accountant’s books on Doyle’s desk. After a time, Arch Withers roused himself once more.

“Go on, then.” he said. “What are you waiting on? Make your goddamn call. Call Bud Sealy.”

“No,” Doyle Francis said. “I don’t think I will. I think one of you boys ought to be able to call him. It’s your funeral. I’ve been thinking about this mess for too long already.”

S
o Arch Withers, as president of the Farmers’ Co-op Elevator’s board of directors, called Bud Sealy from the manager’s office that Tuesday afternoon, with the books still spread out on the desk before him and while Doyle Francis and the other men watched him.

And subsequently that same afternoon Bud Sealy arrested Charlie Soames at his home in the six hundred block on Cedar Street, where Soames had a small office at the back of the house. Sealy drove over to the house, parked and knocked on the door. He was let in by Mrs. Soames. She was an excitable old woman with heavy breasts and meaty arms. She led the sheriff back to Charlie’s little office and stood in the doorway.

When Sealy entered the room—it was all neat and tidy as ever—Charlie Soames seemed to be waiting for him. He was sitting at his desk with his hands folded and he seemed to have everything in order. It was as though he had prepared himself for Sealy’s arrival, as if he were glad that it was over now. “So you know,” Soames said.

“Yeah. I just got a call from Arch Withers.”

“It took them long enough. I expected you a month ago.”

“I’m here now. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Ready?” Mrs. Soames said. “Ready for what?” She was still standing in the doorway, displacing air. Her hair stood out from her pink head. “Where are you taking him?”

“Your husband’s got himself into trouble.”

“My husband? What do you mean? What could he do?”

“Enough,” the sheriff said. “Now maybe you’d better go into the other room for a minute.”

“I’m not going into the other room. So he has done something. The old fool! He’s done something and now what am I supposed to do?”

“For one thing,” Sealy said, “you’re going to be quiet.”

“I didn’t do anything. You can’t tell me in my own house to—”

“Yes. You’re going to be quiet. Or I’m going to gag you.”

Mrs. Soames glared at the sheriff. “You wouldn’t touch me. You wouldn’t dare touch a lady.”

“Try me,” he said. He took a step toward her and she backed up.

“Oh!”

Then she began to shriek. Sealy shut the door on her. They could hear her excited noises. But after a moment the noises stopped.

“That’s better,” he said. He turned back to her husband.

Charlie Soames was still seated silently at his clean desk. It was as if he had been waiting for this too. Now he stood up and Sealy told him he had the right to remain silent. Then he put handcuffs around Soames’s thin wrists. Afterward they walked out of the tidy little office and on through the house. Mrs. Soames was waiting for them in the dining room; she followed the two men toward the front hallway. When they stopped at the door so the sheriff could open it, Mrs. Soames began to shriek again. She rushed her husband and began to slap at him, at his face and neck. Soames fell down under her hands. She slapped at his head. Finally Bud Sealy shoved in between them, pushing Mrs. Soames away.

“Quit that,” he said. “What do you think you’re doing? Goddamn it, stop that now.”

He lifted the old man by the arm and they went outside. Mrs. Soames followed them out onto the front porch. She stood watching angrily as the car drove away.

W
hen they arrived at the courthouse Sealy walked Charlie Soames down to the basement to the sheriff’s office and booked him for the suspected embezzlement of Co-op funds. Afterward he fingerprinted him and then he led Soames back to a cell. He stood over him while the old man sat down on the cot. Soames looked very small and tired. But he wasn’t quite defeated yet.

“Well,” the sheriff said. “You want to tell me about this?”

“What’s there to tell?

“Oh there ought to be something.”

“Do you mean you want a formal confession?”

“Something like that.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Well. For starters—I’m just curious—why in hell didn’t you take off too? You had your chances, didn’t you?”

“You mean why didn’t I leave?”

“Sure. Like Jack Burdette did. You and Burdette were in this together, weren’t you? Why didn’t you jump up and leave when he did? You could of left with him.”

“Him,” Charlie Soames said. The mention of Burdette seemed to awaken something in him. He sat up straight, agitated now. “Why that man … that—”

“What about him?”

“He didn’t even tell me he was leaving. We agreed on it. He promised me. He wasn’t supposed to leave yet. Then he—”

“Sure,” Sealy said. “Then he.”

“But you don’t understand.”

“Don’t I?”

“No. Because we were waiting for it to amount to two hundred thousand. That’s why. And I kept telling him we ought to leave now. I told him we have to take it and get out now. Before the auditors find out, I said. They were getting suspicious. I could tell that. I knew they were. I tried to tell him. But my god, that man kept saying: ‘Just another fifty. Just another fifty.’ Like it was play money or something. Oh, he didn’t understand the risks. He didn’t understand anything. And it was his idea from the beginning. I let him talk me into it. But I was the one that had to do the books, wasn’t I? Not him. And he kept promising me: ‘Wait until it’s two hundred thousand, then we’ll leave together.’ That’s what he said. We agreed on that. He promised me. But then he—”

“Yeah,” Sealy said. “Well. You poor dumb old son of bitch. So he didn’t tell you he was leaving either.”

“I thought I could trust him.”

“Of course. Except you weren’t the only one in town that thought that, now were you?”

“I trusted him, though. And what was I going to do now? Where was I going to go? He had the money. He took everything. He withdrew it all out of the bank over in Sterling. And—”

“Sterling? You mean you kept the money over in Sterling?”

“That’s where we had our account. I thought it would be safer. But I still thought I could trust him. I still believed he was trustworthy.”

“That’s right,” Sealy said. “Because he promised you. Because you agreed on it.”

Soames stopped talking for a moment. He looked at the sheriff.

“But wouldn’t you have said he could be trusted? Didn’t you think Jack Burdette was a trustworthy man?”

“I don’t know,” Sealy said, “Probably. But I might of said the same thing about you too, Charlie. And now look at you. Jesus Christ, look how you turned out.”

* * *

B
y evening everyone in Holt County knew about the arrest of Charlie Soames. They had heard about the embezzlement of Co-op funds and about his three-year involvement in it. So the panic and outrage had already begun. The Co-op Elevator was owned in shares by half the people in the area and they all wanted blood.

They would have preferred Jack Burdette’s and Charlie Soames’s blood, both, but Burdette had disappeared. Burdette was already in California, lost somewhere in the streets of Los Angeles. The police had finally managed to trace him that far, but then they had lost track of him. Consequently people in Holt began to understand that they were going to have to content themselves with the arrest of his accomplice, with the indictment and conviction of old Charlie Soames, and then with his rightful punishment. They expected to get something satisfying out of him at least.