A Deadly Affair at Bobtail Ridge (12 page)

I pause looking over the yearbook. “Handsome, talented, popular, smart . . . so why isn't he the governor?”

Mollie Cleaver laughs. “Some people peak too early. They walk out of here thinking life is theirs for the taking, and the first time they're faced with the real world, they don't know how to handle it. They go off to college full of plans and dreams, and they come home baffled by the fact that in college they met a hundred kids just like them.”

“Can you point out to me which of Eddie's teachers might be likely to remember him?”

She thumbs through some pages and comes to the football section and frowns. “The coach back then was Cougar Johnson. He died of a heart attack a few years ago. Maybe an assistant coach.” Her fingers trace the photos. “Here. Stubby Clark. He's moved up in the world. Coaches at the junior college, though why they think they need a football team is beyond me.” She writes his name down in neat, firm cursive and then looks through the books some more.

“Oh, yes there's one more.” She looks at me with a raised eyebrow. “This one will know any little thing that happened with the boys.” She taps a photo of a sultry-looking woman with pouty lips and dark, lustrous hair. “That's Careen Hudson. The typing teacher. You can see by her looks why the boys fell all over themselves for her. She got a lot of the athletes in her class, too, because she was an easy grader. She was only seven years older than they were and didn't have the sense of a goose. She got herself fired for making out with a seventeen-year-old boy in the backseat of her Chevy—right here on school grounds.”

This is the woman Rowena and her husband talked about at the reception after Vera Sandstone's funeral. “You ever hear any rumors that there was anything between her and Eddie?”

“Not that I recall, but that doesn't mean there wasn't.”

“You know where I might find her?”

“I've got to hand it to her—for all the scandal she caused, she stayed right here and rode it out. For a while she opened up a dress shop, but I think being around women all the time didn't suit her. For the last twenty years she's been working for the County Fair Association—I think she gets plenty of action there.”

I thank her for giving me two good leads.

“If you talk to Careen, you be careful. Last I heard she had ditched husband number three and was on the prowl.” She pauses, mischief in her eyes, “But then again, I think she goes for younger men.” Her yelp of laughter follows me down the corridor.

I call over to the college, but they tell me Stubby Clark is gone for the day, so I'll have to talk to him later in the week.

I'm going back by the hospital to see Jenny before I leave town, but I've got one more stop to make. Wallace Lyndall gave me the address for Jett Borland's girlfriend, Janice Gerson. She's a clerk at a grocery store, and I called and found out she's off today at five o'clock. I wait until she's had time to get home and settle in before I ring her doorbell at six o'clock. She lives in a duplex in a marginal neighborhood.

She answers the door carrying a little girl on her hip. The girl, maybe three years old, has been crying and is sucking her thumb, and Janice Gerson looks frazzled. “Oh,” she says. “I thought you were the pizza guy.”

“Pizza!” the little girl whines and buries her face in her mamma's neck.

“I'm Samuel Craddock, chief of police over in Jarrett Creek, and I'm looking for Jett Borland.”

“You're outta luck. Jett's in Abilene.” Janice is pretty, with short brown hair and soulful brown eyes. She's wearing jeans and a baggy gray T-shirt and sandals.

“You his girlfriend?”

She grimaces. “Sometimes.”

“You know when he'll be back?”

“Supposed to be back last night, but I haven't heard anything from him.”

“Mommy! Pizza!” The girl has a healthy set of lungs, and Janice Gerson flinches and pulls away from her.

“Kimberley, that's too loud,” she says. “You hurt my ears.”

The girl hits her mother half-heartedly, but instead of reacting angrily, Janice rolls her eyes at me.

“I'm sorry, why do you want to talk to Jett?”

“There are a couple of questions I need to ask.”

“This is about Scott, isn't it? Scott has only been out of prison a couple of weeks and it sounds like he's already managed to get Jett into trouble.”

“I don't know whether he has or not. That's what I'm trying to find out.”

She shifts her daughter to her other hip. “Kimberley, you're getting so big it's hard for me to carry you. You're a big girl.”

At those words, Kimberley is emboldened to look at me. “You've got a hat,” she says, pointing at the hat I'm holding in my hand.

“I do. A well-used hat.”

Janice grins at me. “A hat that's seen better days.”

“I'm not a big shopper.”

This time she laughs. “A cop with a sense of humor. A rare bird.”

“I don't want to keep you. Do you happen to know why he went to Abilene?”

“There was a ‘business opportunity' that Scott was excited about. Jett went with him to try to keep him out of trouble. Not that that has worked too well in the past.”

“When did they leave?”

She bites her lip, thinking. “Five days ago. I told Jett to stay out of his dad's business, but he's loyal.”

I hear a car pull to the curb and turn to see a pizza delivery car. The guy jumps out and runs up to the house, pizza in hand. “Sorry about the delay,” he says. “That'll be eighteen seventy-five.”

Janice looks at me as if she's hoping I'll take the hint and leave, but I'm going to try to stay long enough to get my questions answered. “Okay, wait,” she says. She disappears inside and comes back with twenty dollars. She hands it to the guy. “Keep the change.”

I take the pizza box and say, “Let me carry that in for you.”

“Okay, Slick, come on in,” she says.

I follow her into the kitchen and put the box down on the counter. She tries to set her daughter down onto the floor, but Kimberley clings tighter. “No!”

“Let me do it,” I say. I open the pizza box. Janice pulls a door open and points to the plates. I get out a couple of plates and put them on the table, and Janice pulls out a chair and sits down.

“Here you go, Pumpkin,” she says. “Might as well get a plate for yourself, too,” she says to me. “Looks like you plan to stay.”

“Thanks, but that's okay. I'll be out of here soon. I need to clear up one more thing.”

“Suit yourself. You mind getting me a Coke out of the refrigerator and some milk for Kimberley?”

I do as requested and then sit down and watch her feed pieces of pizza to her daughter and herself.

“Do you know what kind of business Scott Borland was looking into?”

She shakes her head. “Not a clue. He's always got some big scheme going.”

“Going back into the meth business?”

She flushes and pushes her hair back from her neck. “I couldn't tell you.”

Kimberley wiggles down off her lap, and Janice heaves a sigh of relief. “Go find your doll,” she says. Her daughter wanders off into the living room.

“Tough being a single parent.”

“Sometimes. My mamma takes care of her during the day, so it's not so bad. And she's a good baby.”

“Is she Jett's?”

“No, but I was with him so long that she thinks he's her daddy. He still comes by to see her.” She looks embarrassed. My guess is he comes around and sweet-talks her and she's lonesome taking care of this baby by herself and so she spends time with him.

There's a crash from the living room, and Kimberley sets up a wail. “Uh-oh, bedtime.” Janice jumps up and heads for the living room. I follow her. Kimberley is sitting on the floor wailing, having pushed a vase onto its side on the coffee table. It had a single flower in it, and water from the vase is dripping onto the floor. “Nothing to cry about,” Janice says. “Let me get a rag and you can help me mop it up.”

“I'd appreciate it if you tell Jett I was here.”

She seems like a nice girl. I don't know why she'd be mixed up with somebody like Jett Borland.

I stop back by the hospital to fill Jenny in on the conversation I had with Janice Gerson. The bruise from the bump on her head has spread out so that her whole forehead and one eye are shades of purple and yellow. “Bottom line,” I say, “we can't find Borland at the moment, but we'll keep checking back at his place.”

Jenny sits up a little higher, wincing as she does so. Just then the door opens and a familiar face peeks around the corner.

“Monica!” Jenny says.

The nurse I couldn't seem to get along with when Jenny's mother was in the hospital bustles over to the bed and gives Jenny a hug. “I heard you were in here, and I came to see you as soon as I got done with my rounds.” She looks at me and her face clouds up. “Oh, it's you again. Trying to cause trouble with Jenny now that you've finished with her mamma?”

“Monica, stop that!” Jenny starts to laugh and then groans. “Ow, don't make me laugh. That hurts. Listen, Samuel is a good friend of mine, and you have to be nice to him.”

“If you say so. Now, honey, if there's anything that isn't right in here, you let me know. I'm not on this ward; I'm upstairs. But you send somebody to find Monica and I'll set everybody straight.”

“I will. But if I have any say in it, I'll be out of here tomorrow.”

Monica cocks an eyebrow at Jenny. “You'll do what the doctor says! I know people like you. You think you don't need to follow the rules like everybody else. And the next thing you know, you're back here with an infection or pulled stitches. You stay put until the doctor says otherwise.” Monica turns her attention to me. “If you're such a good friend, you'll make sure she follows orders.”

“Count on it,” I say.

Monica glances at her watch. “All right, I've got to get back.” She's almost to the door when she pauses and says, “Did the man who came to visit your mamma get everything squared away with the paper he wanted her to sign?”

Jenny looks confused, but before I can hear the explanation, my cell phone rings. Monica glares at me, but I have to answer it because it's Zeke Dibble.

“You on your way home?” Dibble says. “Jim Krueger's after you. Apparently he has a prom rebellion on his hands.”

CHAPTER 17

“The kids are giving me trouble,” Jim Krueger says. He mops beads of perspiration from his forehead, dislodging a long thread of hair from his comb-over so that it springs up like a question mark.

“I'm not surprised.” I could have told him the kids were likely to rebel at some point. Every year the rules for the prom get tighter. First it was more chaperones, until it seemed like there were more chaperones than students. Then the doors of the gym were guarded during the dance so that the kids couldn't go in and out—not a bad thing, because it cut down on the drinking outdoors between dances and the girls didn't have to put up with boys who could barely stand up, much less dance or drive home. Then it was tightening the reins on after-prom parties.

This year someone's bright idea is to keep the kids in the gym all night. The plan was to have party games and a casino with fake money, ending up with breakfast. But the Baptists put up a fuss about the casino, and the organizers ended up with a bunch of games that sounded like they were more appropriate for children than teenagers.

“Several of the kids signed a petition saying they aren't going to attend unless the rules are relaxed,” Krueger says. “Trouble is I can't figure out who's behind it. And the parents who planned all this are demanding that I find out which kids are behind it and expel them.”

He looks so bleak that I can't help laughing. “Jim, I wouldn't have your job for a million bucks.”

“That doesn't help me much. Any ideas? I hate to think of the kids tearing around all over town after the prom getting into mischief.”