Champagne for Buzzards

by Phyllis Smallman

  CHAPTER 6

  I screamed and jumped away as if the vile claw might reach for me. I looked around to see if my scream had brought anyone. I was alone. Just me and the thing.

  Had I really seen what I thought I saw? I leaned forward, stretching out my neck to see the gruesome details without moving any closer. Holy shit! It was still there. Really, it wasn’t much of a hand. Just bones in the shape of a hand since much of the meat had been stripped away.

  Crazy jumbled thoughts tumbled over each other in my brain. Who did the hand belong to? How did it get there? But the biggest question of all was what were you supposed to do when you find such a thing? Of all the dangers Ruth Ann had warned me about, nothing ever came close to this.

  Still terrified the thing might reach out and grab me, I edged forward to see what was attached to the hand and saw a leather watchband encircling the wrist bones. Above the watchband a scrap of red plaid stuck out from under the tarp. It wasn’t just a stray hand. The lumpiness of the covering told me the owner of the hand was probably under the tarp.

  “Holy crap.” I started to crumble to the ground in shock but remembered the cost of the suit and leaned against the car behind me instead. I disabused myself of any faint hope that the person was sleeping and it wasn’t a dead body in the bed of the truck. If he wasn’t dead it sure must hurt like hell when the vultures went to work on him. I stifled my hysterics with the back of my hand and dug in my bag for my cell phone. I definitely needed help here. I punched in a nine and a one but just before I added the last digit the practical part of my brain took over. This wasn’t an emergency. The man was already dead. Should I take him to the hospital or to a doctor? Well that was pretty much ditto for the emergency number, not a lot they could do now. What in hell was I supposed to do with a dead body? Drive it to the morgue? And where would that be? What I needed was the police.

  Detective Styles, with the Jacaranda police force, was the cop in charge of the investigation when my husband Jimmy was murdered. Tough but honest, I knew I could rely on him. I pushed Styles’ number only to be told by his electronic voice that he was away for a week and giving me an alternative number to call if the problem couldn’t wait for his return. I didn’t make another call.

  My brain, over its initial shock, was working again. This body had nothing to do with Jacaranda. The buzzards sitting on the truck before I ever left Riverwood said it was already there when I slid behind the wheel that morning. The Sunset Bar and Grill was slowly getting on its feet and didn’t need any bad publicity about people dying of unnatural causes around Sherri Travis. I was already part of too many colorful stories in Jacaranda. I liked the idea of taking my troubles to new territory. Besides, maybe the guy in my truck hadn’t died a violent death. Perhaps he had been feeling sick and climbed in there to rest but instead he’d died, died of natural causes. It could happen.

  I wasn’t buying any part of the story I was telling myself. Only one thing was clear. The guy was quite dead so it didn’t matter to him where his death was reported and waiting wasn’t a problem; nothing was going to hurt him anymore. I scrambled into the driver’s seat and hit the lock button, keeping myself safe from the thing in back.

  Freaking out and seriously melting down, I tore out of the parking lot, while saying, “Take it easy, take it easy.” The last thing I needed was to be stopped by a cop, with a dead body on board.

  And within blocks I realized I’d made another serious mistake. I shouldn’t have driven back along Main Street with its stop and go traffic and the sidewalks crowded with people who wove in and out of stalled traffic. At every crosswalk I waited for someone to look into the bed of the truck and start shrieking. If that happened I’d play dumb, my best act.

  I should have at least made sure the hand was covered. Yeah right, as though that was going to happen. No way was I getting close to those bones.

  I crept through town waiting to be caught, expecting the waking nightmare to get worse.

  Once I crossed over the causeway to the mainland my panic subsided and my heartbeat eased its mad tattoo. It was even better when I merged onto the freeway. I thought my troubles were over. Not even close.

  That’s when the wind caught the tarp, sending a blue corner snapping back and forth outside the back window, the grommet striking the window like a bony knuckle rapping to demand entrance. Why the hell hadn’t I tied the tarp down? But then I would have had to get close to the monstrous thing, would have had to reach into the truck bed and pick up the tarp, pull it tight over the body and see the hand again, touch what it had touched. No, no, no…not going there. Let it flap.

  Too many Stephen King books gave me a vivid picture of what driving around with a dead body on board meant. At any moment that hand would slither into the cab and grab me, bony fingers wrapping around my neck and choking off my breath with a maniacal chortle. My head sank down closer and closer to my collarbone, going into protection mode, to make death by skeleton as difficult as possible.

  CHAPTER 7

  Independence was now full of shoppers — pulling out of the hardware store parking lot in front of me, stopping to talk to neighbors or just jaywalking. I drove through town at a snail’s pace and watched the sky for the return of the buzzards.

  When I turned off the road and onto the long twisting lane to the ranch house, my heart was going triple time. “Thank God,” I breathed. My relief was boundless.

  Tully was out in front of the house on a riding lawn mower, going around and around in circles, a cloud of dust following him as he cut what was supposed to be lawn but was mostly weeds and bare patches.

  Near the house the driveway divided, one fork going left to the barn and the working part of the farm and the other arm going around to the front of the house. I went right and pulled up in front of the house. I slammed into Park and jumped out of the truck while it was still rocking. “Dad,” I screamed, running like no lady should or could.

  Maybe it was that one word or maybe it was the way I tore into the yard, but he’d already shut off the tractor and was running across the lawn towards me.

  He swept me up into his arms without asking anything, just holding on tight to stop my trembling. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said over and over, although he obviously didn’t know how untrue that was.

  Uncle Ziggy came down off the porch in his awkward limping jog. “What’s wrong, what is it?” His hands gripped my shoulders while Tully made meaningless soothing sounds as old as time.

  I freed an arm and pointed to the truck. “There, there,” I said. They both looked to the truck and Tully asked, “What, honey, what is it?”

  “An arm, a man I think, there.”

  They started towards the truck, holding me between them. “We have to go to the other side,” I told them at the tailgate. “It’s sticking out over there.” I stared at the blue covering, waiting for it to move. We shuffled together around the truck with the two of them still holding onto me. I balked when we got closer to the thing. “I can’t,” I said.

  Tully left me with Uncle Ziggy and went and lifted the covering.

  Tully jumped back. “Jesus Christ.”

  So that answered my question. The hand was still there. I’d been praying it would disappear on the drive out from Jacaranda.

  Ziggy pulled me away and shoved my head into his neck so I couldn’t look at the thing in the back of the truck. “Who is it, Tully?” Ziggy said.

  It took some time for Tully to answer. “Head’s pretty battered but it looks like Lucan Percell to me.”

  “Oh no,” I whimpered. Lucan Percell was the man Clay had driven off his land for poaching the turtles along Saddle Creek. Lucan Percell had bagged about sixty soft-shell turtles when Clay caught him. When Clay called the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission he was told that the mass hunting of soft-shell turtles was legal; only the gopher tortoise was protected. A long and heated war
had begun between Clay and Lucan. Only Clay’s threat to have Lucan Percell arrested for trespassing could keep him off Saddle Creek and keep the turtles safe.

  It couldn’t be a coincidence that Lucan Percell’s body was found on Clay’s Riverwood Ranch. “Oh no,” I said again. Trouble had surely come to visit.

  Uncle Ziggy led me away, up onto the porch, shoving me down into one of the wicker chairs. He left without saying anything while I leaned forward, putting my head between my knees and took deep breaths.

  “Drink this,” Uncle Ziggy ordered, holding out a glass of amber liquid. The whiskey burned all the way down. I handed it back to him and croaked, “More.”

  “Nope, you got to stay sober.” Tully climbed the steps to the veranda.

  “Great! Of all the times for you to turn into a tea-totaller on me. Just when I need a friend the most.”

  “We have to decide what we’re going to do.”

  “I already know what I’m going to do. I’m going to call the sheriff.”

  “Nope,” Tully disagreed. “I’m going to. I’m going to put the truck under the drive shed where it was and call the sheriff. Tell him I just found it there.”

  I shook my head in denial. “It’s my truck and I’ve been driving around Jacaranda all morning. People saw me. One thing I learned from Styles, no matter what you tell the police, or any other authorities, you’re stuck with it. Any inconsistencies will come back to bite you.”

  “You sure you don’t want your dad and I to just take him out and bury him somewhere?” Uncle Ziggy asked. “Clay’s got hundreds of acres of wilderness out there with more than one gator hole to drop him into. Even if the gators leave anything of him behind, cops will think he just had an accident. Everyone knows he poaches all ’round here.”

  “Zig’s got a point there.”

  “Everyone knows he and Clay don’t get on. You aren’t listening; I’m going to tell them I found his body. Clay will be well out of it. No matter what happens, no one can think I killed him.”

  “All right, don’t get excited, we’ll do whatever you want,” Tully said, patting my shoulder.

  “Sure we will, sweetie,” Uncle Zig agreed, but he didn’t sound like he thought it was a real good idea, more like he just wanted to keep me from totally losing it.

  “Can I have another drink now?”

  “Nope,” Tully said.

  “Well, this is a hell of a time to go AA on me.”

  “You need to stay clear-headed,” Tully said and went to look up the sheriff’s number.

  CHAPTER 8

  I ditched the suit and was back on the porch in time for the first official to arrive, a deputy named Michael Quinn. He introduced himself calmly, like he was making a social call. Tall and slim, his good looks would normally have held my attention but today nothing was going to distract me from the horror in my truck.

  Deputy Quinn listened to what I had to say and then went to his car and got out a small canvas carryall. At the pickup, he pulled on disposable gloves before lifting the blue tarp. He spent some time considering what was before him and then he gently lowered the tarp.

  A second car arrived in a cloud of dust, a red bar of lights flashing, and a yellow door swinging wide even before the car was fully stopped, as if by rushing the driver could reverse what had been final hours ago. The man who stepped out and surveyed the scene was a man very much in charge. Beside me, Ziggy said, “Sheriff Red Hozen.”

  The sheriff headed for my pickup at the double and reached for the tarp. The deputy stretched an arm to stop him, said something quietly and then handed the gloves he held in his hand to the sheriff.

  The sheriff struggled into them before he pulled back the tarp and examined the body. “Shit.” The sheriff slammed the tarp down.

  “What’s got him so upset?” I whispered.

  “It doesn’t seem to be what he was expecting,” Tully replied.

  “Or who,” Ziggy put in. “Looks like he already had it figured out who it was going to be and is disappointed.”

  “Now why would he think he knew who was dead in the back of Jimmy’s truck?” Tully asked and handed me a mug. I looked at it dubiously. “What is it?”

  “Ma always said tea was best for shock,” Tully told me.

  “In that case Grandma Jenkins must have drunk a barrel of it, given the Jenkins brothers’ bad habits.”

  A newspaper that Ziggy had been reading when I slammed to a stop in front of the house was scattered around my feet. I bent down to pick it up as the sheriff headed our way, the built-in tidiness for guests kicking in.

  “I’ll do that, baby,” Uncle Ziggy said, coming to help me. At the foot of the stairs the sheriff took off his hat and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “I’m Sheriff Hozen,” he told us. The red hair that gave Red Hozen his name was fading to white, a transformation that was nearly complete in his crisply trimmed goatee.

  Sheriff Hozen was dressed in freshly ironed matching brown shirt and pants, as if he had dressed for the occasion. As neat and tidy as they were, his shirt was a little tight, his paunch straining the dark buttons. He resettled his hat precisely.

  Tully introduced us and said, “Come and sit down, Sheriff.”

  After he climbed the stairs, the sheriff chose to stand but he did remove his wire-framed Ray-Bans and sink back against the railing. “I need a little more information, Miss Travis. Start at the beginning and tell me everything.”

  I did as instructed.

  He didn’t write it down. That surprised me.

  “The pickup was there all night?” he asked. “You didn’t have it out yesterday after you arrived, is that right?”

  “That’s right. Tully drove Uncle Ziggy and me into town to the café for dinner. The truck was here when we left. Least I think it was.” I looked at Tully and then at Uncle Ziggy. “Wasn’t it?”

  “Far as I remember,” Tully said. “My truck was by the bunkhouse, not under the drive shed, so I had no reason to look and see if Jimmy’s pickup was there.”

  “Who is Jimmy?” the sheriff asked.

  “The truck used to belong to my deceased husband, James Travis.” I turned away from the sheriff. “Do you remember if it was there, Uncle Zig?”

  Uncle Ziggy set his badly folded newspaper on the floor beside him. “Wouldn’t likely have noticed it if weren’t.” He smoothed back his hair. “Course, what am I saying? We’d ’ave noticed it being driven out the lane. Suppose it had to be there as long as we were, sure would have noticed it leaving.” Tully and I nodded in agreement at this sensible statement.

  Sheriff Hozen wasn’t interested in our musings. “What time did you arrive yesterday?”

  “About four. The truck was full of plants, not a body in sight. Dad and Zig helped me unload the plants. We put them under the tree and watered them and then we came out here for a cold drink. We were going to plant them today.” My voice choked up, our normal life shattered by death.

  Uncle Ziggy reached out and patted my arm. “No matter, honey, I watered them for you. Those pretty little pink things will be fine.”

  The sheriff barked, “Who else had keys to the truck?”

  “No one. But I leave spare keys behind the visor so anyone can use it if they need to. It wasn’t locked.”

  “So anyone could have driven the truck away or met Percell here.”

  “Was he killed here?” I asked.

  Sheriff Hozen’s lips tightened. He didn’t like being questioned. “Too early to say. He could have been murdered elsewhere and placed in the truck. There was no one on the property to see what happened, to see if someone took the truck off the property?”

  I shook my head. “Mr. Sweet worked until I arrived and then left for the day.” Howie Sweet was Clay’s foreman, the man who looked after the ranch day to day and kept it going while Clay was away making money. Howi
e Sweet was also the man who had owned the ranch before Clay bought it. The Sweet family had been on this land for three or four generations as the family went on a long, slow slide into oblivion. Pearl and Howard Sweet only had one daughter, Lovey, and a granddaughter named Kelly. Lovey owned a small diner called the San Casa on the main street of Independence. “Did you know Lucan Percell, Miss Travis?” I shook my head. “Never met the man. Is that who the dead man is?”

  “Seems like it. That’s what the driver’s license says.”

  “Was there money in the wallet?” He thought it over before answering, “Some.”

  “So it wasn’t robbery.” The sheriff scowled at me.

  I felt it necessary to add, “If he was killed for his money, killed in a robbery, the killer would have taken the wallet. Of course, maybe the body isn’t that of Lucan Percell. Maybe someone stole the wallet and then the robber was killed and his body was put in my truck. Maybe that’s why the head was battered, so no one could identify him.” Sheriff Hozen was not real pleased to hear any of my ideas. “If it is Lucan, what was he doing in Jimmy’s truck?” Tully asked, getting into the game. “What was he doing in the truck unless he was killed here?”

  “Nothing to say he was killed here,” Ziggy answered. “Could have been killed somewhere else and dumped at Riverwood, someone wanting to make it look like Clay was involved.”

  “Look,” the sheriff said, his voice loud. “This isn’t helping. I just need to know facts and not conjectures. What do you actually know to be a fact, Miss Travis? What do you know happened?”

  “Nothing, I know nothing about this. It may seem that it’s just careless to let your pickup be used as dumping ground for murder, but I know nothing about it. I don’t know how a body ended up in my truck.” I couldn’t turn myself off; words just tumbled out of my mouth. “It’s just stupid. Why would someone kill Lucan and put him in my truck, especially if it was done out here. Why load him into Big Red when there’s all that land to hide him in?” I gave a broad wave of my hand in case he wasn’t sure what land I was talking about. “Doesn’t make any sense.”