I murmured sympathetically.
“But he ’uz so proud of that job.”
“What—could you tell me something about what he did for Mr. Garnet?”
She shook her head. “Don’t know too much. They ’uz doin’ some expansion over to the plant. They had Nebo diggin’ holes and movin’ tree trunks and stuff like that.”
“Expansion?” I tried to keep my voice conversational.
She shrugged. “They cleared off that back part. Needed some more parking spaces. And they were building some kinda outbuildings. I’m not sure. Things ’uz goin’ big over there then. Lotsa people around here worked at Garnet then.” She shook her head, her jowls jiggling. ’Things hadn’t been so good for some time. Sad to see.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“’Course, Nebo set up his own hard times,” she acknowledged.
A surprisingly candid assessment, I thought.
“Nebo never did have right good sense. So gettin’ that job humpin’ that big digger around went to his head. Nebo always managed to mess in his own bed, if you’ll pardon my language. Had to go flip that back loader over down the creek bank. Now how’s that for fixin’ your own little red wagon?”
“Is that when he hurt his back?”
“Yeah. ’Course, he tole ever’body he lost his job because he’d hurt his back and had the permanent rheumatiz. But truth be told, his supervisor fired him. Stood over him there, upside down in the creek, screamin’ that he ’uz fired. Didn’ faze Nebo. Rode outta there on a stretcher, and probably worked out for himself how to turn a buck somewhere between there and the hospital. Nebo wasn’t smart but he could figger. Usually figger some way to get hisself into more trouble and more work than if he’d just done it the right way to begin with.”
I nodded. I’d been to law school with guys like that—smarter, maybe. But always “figgerin’” a short cut.
“He received a worker’s comp award?”
She nodded, her chins participating fully. Then she pursed her lips. “They keep payin’ on any of that disability that he got? Like to a survivor or anything?”
I shook my head. “No. I doubt that.” Figgerin’ must ran in the family.
She sighed and stared at the television screen. A local used-car commercial jerked across the screen. She’d muted the sound, but still couldn’t keep her eyes off the bucktoothed guy on the screen.
“Nila, did Nebo ever talk about building that parking lot?”
She blinked, breaking the TV’s hypnosis. “Lemme think. He did mention how they had to build up the back part of the lot, back toward the woods. It shelved off there. I ’member him tellin’ about it ’cause he ’uz so proud about bein’ the one to do the diggin’ and the movin’. Like it ’uz some manly thing.”
She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Seems like they used some stuff from the plant that they had to get rid of anyway—you know, junk they ’uz going to have hauled off. Scraps and trash and such. And he got to be the one to bury it.” She pronounced bury as an odd cross between burro and berry.
“Guess Nebo was one of the first recyclers,” she said and giggled, her hand flapping to her mouth, then back to her lap.
I smiled at her joke, hoping the bells clanging in my head weren’t sounds she could see reflected on my face.
“So Nebo stopped working for Garnet in the early seventies?”
“We-ell, not egg-zactly. He did get fired from his regular job and got the worker’s comp. But Mr. Garnet musta felt some soft spot for him. Which, truth be told, always surprised me considerin’ Nebo pulled that stunt about hurting his back and got the disability. But he kept giving nun odds and ends to do. And sometimes givin’ him a place to stay.”
She sighed another bosom-raising sigh. “Guess things come around. That free place to stay got him kilt. And if Mr. Garnet hadn’t been so free and easy with a ten here and a five there, Nebo wouldn’t’a had to sleep it off up there. Some might think ill ’a me for this”—her hand went back to the wide expanse of her neck—”but I wouldn’t never let him sleep it off here. He knew that better’n he knew his own name when he ’uz drunk. Some might say my hard heart killed him. But I ain’t hearin’ none of it. Nebo picked his own path.”
“Yes, ma’am. I guess we all do.”
“We surely do. You sure I can’t get you somethin’ to drink?” Her glass sat empty and she was back to staring at the TV.
“No, thank you. I really need to get going. Again, I’m sorry about your brother. And sorry I couldn’t do more to help.”
“Ah-h.” She hoisted herself out of her chair. “I just didn’t want to be missin’ out on somethin’ that shoulda been comin’ to me. But…” She shrugged and picked up her tea glass.
I let myself out, since any other maneuver would have resulted in us both being wedged inextricably in the narrow door opening.
Leaving Nila Barling’s, I steered the car around the track through the trailer park, trying to avoid kids and dogs and those little orange and yellow plastic toddler cars.
At the exit, I stopped, my feet holding both clutch and brake to the floor. Where to next? Nila Earling hadn’t told me anything earth-shattering, but she’d told me enough.
I had a few more questions that needed answers. But the only place I could think to go ask them was a place nobody in her right mind would go. I sat, the engine throbbing, the sun soaking through the window glass into my bones, and tried to think of another option. Any option.
The horn blast behind me startled my foot off the clutch. I choked the engine and had to restart it, shift gears, and wave apologetically at the panel van that had come up behind me.
Fortunately, when I turned right, he squealed left onto the paved road. I drove slowly toward Main Street, trying to think through how I would approach them and what I would say. And whether I could fathom any other way to find the same information. After all, our last conversation had not been altogether satisfactory.
But at least it gave me a direction. I turned left and headed toward the old Heath house—the house that, much to the consternation of both the County Historical Society and the sheriff, had been purchased a decade ago by the Posse biker gang. For cash.
Fifteen
Few people in Dacus knew the Posse motorcycle gang personally. But everyone in town had known when they’d moved into the area. Admittedly, they were little more than a group of aging, husky guys with ponytails who frowned menacingly at grocery clerks and gas station attendants. They kept mostly to themselves.
That didn’t keep the town’s collective nose from sniffing around the edges of their affairs. If they engaged in anything illegal, they kept a pretty low profile because it never showed up on the arrest records printed in the newspaper. But as far as most people in Dacus were concerned, the gang’s unforgivable sin had been buying the old Heath place.
The historic Heath house sat far back off a rough-paved county road, out of sight in a thick stand of trees. Nothing more than a large white farmhouse, it had once presided over a sizable pre-Revolutionary War farming operation and had boasted amenities such as glass windowpanes and more than two rooms long before such affluence became common in the upstate.
The rim of deep blue mountains overlooked fields now choked with slash pines and weeds. But, in the area’s backwoods primitive days, the house had hosted visiting dignitaries, including a French naturalist who’d extolled the Heaths’ hospitality in his 1780s travelogue. Thus the house had earned itself a spot in Camden County history back when few houses could boast of indoor toilets.
Having it fall into the hands of a motley assortment of questionable characters had drawn attention. The gang had ridden into town—reportedly from Charlotte or Miami, some city forcing out adult bookstores, prostitution rings, and mud wrestling. No one really knew what they did, how many of them lived here, or why they’d chosen Dacus. After all, they hadn’t joined the Chamber of Commerce. But folks still speculated.
I’d heard a rumor that, shortly afte
r they’d moved in, a delegation of local ladies had paid a visit. A sort of stern, impassioned No-Welcome Wagon. The reports of what transpired had grown bigger and better as time went on. Best I remembered, Sylvie Garnet herself had been on that visit—probably led it.
I turned the long nose of my Mustang onto the rutted washboard dirt road—overgrown on both sides by an impenetrable tangle of brambles, cedar, broom sage, and saplings-and bumped the half mile to the house. I wondered how the ladies had been received. Not that it mattered. Max and I were on a first-name basis.
Now that I was here, ten miles from town and too far from any hope of help, I strained to remember why I thought this trip so necessary.
I pulled into the weedy yard and around the circular drive. The house needed paint and the landscaping made a strong back-to-nature statement. It looked like a house where an elderly couple on a fixed income lived. After I turned off the ignition, I noticed the Harley chopper displayed on the second-floor porch.
No one stirred. No vicious guard dogs rushed out. No armed sentries pointed automatic weapons at my head. No questioning eyes peered around the Confederate flag that served as a downstairs curtain. Nothing.
Did one get out and ring the doorbell? Honk the horn? Start the car and drive furiously back to the road? The eerie calm of this place held their thunderous visit to my cabin in stark contrast.
I focused so intently on the front door that, when knuckles rapped on the car window beside my ear, I jumped. An embarrassing reaction, since it was my old friend Do-Rag.
He’d appeared out of nowhere, artfully sauntering up in my blind spot, which was amazing, considering his sheer size. I smiled up at him and cranked down the window, an awkward act in the little car. The air outside carried the faint smell of wood smoke and the customary late-November nip, although the sun had warmed the inside of the car nicely.
Nothing in Do-Rag’s tone or manner radiated any particular warmth. He just stood there, his beefy arms slack at his sides, his head slightly cocked to see me under the car’s convertible top. No “Hi, how are you? Care to come in?” Just the stare.
“Wondered if Max was around.” I tried to keep my tone casual, as if this sort of house call was not at all out of the ordinary for Avery Andrews, attorney-at-law.
He shifted his weight slightly from one foot to the other, but didn’t respond.
“I spoke with Sheriff Peters. About Max’s request. I need to follow up with Max about something.”
That might not create an exactly accurate picture of the reason for my call. But L.J. had spurred their visit to my cabin. And this time, the mention of her name got Do-Rag to bend over and pull the latch on the car door.
Of course, the door didn’t open. I always lock it. So we entertained ourselves for a few seconds with a silly routine of fumbled locks and latches before he swung the long door open and I crawled out. No graceful way to extricate one’s self from a low-slung Mustang. Good thing I’d worn slacks with my navy blazer.
Do-Rag, without uttering a word, walked around the front of the car, clomped up the steps, and opened the front door. It hadn’t been locked. Guess there was no need for that out here in the country. I pushed the car door shut and followed Do-Rag into the house. In the front hallway, he said over his shoulder, “Wait there.” Then he disappeared down a dim hallway beside a narrow set of steps that led to the second story.
The floor, made of heart-of-pine boards that are impossible to find now, lay scuffed and gouged. No antique oak hall tree or credenza overflowing with flowers graced the dingy foyer. Autumn sunlight streaked through windows that might not have been washed since the Battle of the Cane Break. A card table and a scattering of cardboard boxes, topped with everything from a motorcycle headlamp to the week’s mail, completed the foyer’s decor.
Eyeing the mail, I tried to picture one of the outlaw bikers perched at the kitchen table with checkbook and calculator, paying the light bill and the department store charge cards. I bit the inside of my lip to keep from grinning. If I allowed myself even a chuckle, I’d collapse in a giggle fit. This felt too much like being in church—quiet, serious, and alien to other experience.
The creaking floorboards and scuffing boot treads warned me of Do-Rag’s return. He brought Max with him.
Max thudded to a stop, his fingers hooked loosely through his jeans pockets, with Do-Rag a step behind him. Max wore a faded flannel shirt unbuttoned enough to reveal part of the words printed on his T-shirt. On his thin chest, the only word fully visible was bullshit.
His bucked front teeth remained hidden inside his bushy beard, but he gave me a half nod. When I didn’t speak right away, he did the polite thing by asking, “Yeah?”
“I appreciate your agreeing to see me on the spur of the moment.” Maybe an extremely formal tone would provide some balance to his insolent stare. “I hoped you could answer a couple of questions for me.”
He didn’t invite me into the parlor for tea and scones, but he also didn’t spin on his boot heel and leave me alone, so I continued.
“I delivered your message to the sheriff. She says she’s following up on it.”
He nodded. His expression said he’d already known that. He still hadn’t blinked.
“When we talked at my house, you indicated that Noodle had gone out on his own. Can you tell me if Noodle—if he had anything to do with Garnet Mills, other than burning it down?”
Max gave a small blink of surprise. But he quickly returned to his accustomed unblinking stare.
I rushed on with my explanation. “I realize your group has certain—rules of conduct. But there’s more at stake here than an arson. Did Noodle ever do any work for Harrison Garnet?”
Max just stared. Do-Rag shifted from one foot to the other. I’d struck some kind of chord. I just didn’t know what tune.
“It’s important. I know you’re concerned—sensitive to—” I took a deep breath. “I’m not handling this very well. What I really want to know is, do you have any idea why Noodle set the fire? Did he do it on his own? Or did Harrison Garnet hire him to do it?”
Max stared that bald-eyed stare of his. Finally, the set of his mouth said he’d made up his mind about something.
“I don’t know how Noodle came to get mixed up in it. Like I said, he went off on his own.” He propped himself against the stairs that led to the second floor, looking thoughtful. I hadn’t noticed that the banister was completely missing, the railings broken off in splintered nubs.
“Clyde.” He turned to Do-Rag. “When was it Noodle did that hauling?”
Clyde?
Do-Rag screwed up his mouth. “Don’t recall. Back before he did that stint on that distribution charge.”
“That’d be what? Twenty-five years ago? Thirty?” He stared at the floor near Do-Rag’s—Clyde’s—scuffed boots. Then he stared at me.
“Noodle used to do some contract hauling. Had his own rig, till he lost it. Hard to make payments from inside CCI.”
His inside joke stopped me a minute until I realized that the Central Correctional Institute—the crumbling nineteenth-century prison on the riverfront in Columbia—would’ve still been operating when Noodle got sent “up the river.”
“Yep,” Clyde said. “Hauling watermelons to New York. Thought he’d pack some of ’em with snow.” He almost smiled at the thought, then frowned. “Musta made somebody mad. Cops pulled him before he made it to the state line.”
“Made somebody mad?”
They both shook their heads solemnly, knowingly.
“Cops don’t just happen to have a drug dog along when they pull a watermelon truck heading outta Hampton.”
I nodded. So Noodle had gotten himself ratted out before. Interesting fellow, with some nice friends.
To get back to the subject, I asked, “So he did some hauling for Harrison Garnet, before he got arrested?”
Max nodded, staring now out the front door behind me. “Yeah. That was about his only local customer.”
“Wh
at got him into the trucking business?”
Max shrugged. “His brother or brother-in-law. I dunno. Somebody had a rig. Noodle’s always thinking of an angle. Angled himself right into fifteen years.”
“What’d he haul for Garnet? Any idea?”
Another shrug. “Garnet’s in the furniture business. I remember a load of school desks going somewhere in the Midwest. Big trip for Noodle. One of his first long-distance jobs.”
“He always carry—um, contraband on his trips?”
Max shook his head. “Naw. Not at first. But Noodle’s greedy. Always looking for an angle.”
“That all he did for Garnet?”
“Did some short-haul stuff—equipment, supplies, something. Once he worked several days, helping move stuff outta the plant. Remember ’cause he needed some guys to help. These guys here told him to stick it. But he hired a coupla derelicts to help him.”
“Help him?”
“Load and unload. Noodle’s not one to do too much actual work if it can be avoided. Delivering to a business, he could usually contract so he didn’t do the grunt work. But not on this project. Ol’ man Garnet wanted the barrels moved out, loaded, and unloaded.”
At the mention of barrels, my shin twinged from its remembered meeting with the rusted barrel ring in the woods behind Garnet Mills. Now the warning bells clanged in my head. I’d been looking for a connection. This proved to be more than my half-hatched plan had expected.
“Do you remember when he hauled those barrels? About what year?”
Max blinked, finally. My eyes burned just from watching him stare. “Sure do. That was his last big job before he left to work out his Hampton watermelon scheme. Again, that’d’ve been twenty-five years ago, at the least.”
Do-Rag nodded.
“Come to think of it, about that time he got that contract to back-haul some stuff down here. From some place in upstate New York. Figured he had himself quite a business—snow-filled melons up and storage drums back. Then he got himself ratted out and busted.”
“Storage drums? What’d he do with those?”
Southern Fried Page 21