by J. D. Horn
Frank held the phone up to his ear. “Frank Mason,” he said as his free hand moved to lay claim to the pack of cigarettes Nola had left on the bar. He pulled one out and nodded to Nola for a light.
“Frank,” the voice on the other end said. “This is Sheriff Bell. I’m out here at Whitey Vaughn’s place.” There was a moment’s silence. Frank suspected it meant Bell was worried someone might be listening in on the farmer’s party line. “Listen. I was just . . . I just ran into a couple of local boys, Dowd Johnson and Bob McKee.” Another pause. “I was wondering if maybe you or Bayard might have met with them in a professional capacity.”
Professional capacity. Frank nearly laughed, but wiped the smile from his face as he took a puff from his cigarette. Bell was well aware of his profession. He and Bayard worked for the Judge, making sure his sideline businesses ran smoothly. They collected debts and kept agitators in line, occasionally taking them out when the need presented itself. Of course he knew Dowd and Bob. Everyone around these parts knew everybody. But no, they hadn’t had “professional” dealings with the boys in question.
“No, sir, can’t say that we’ve ever had dealings with those gentlemen,” Frank said automatically, then cast a wary glance at Bayard, who had abandoned his drink and sat at the bar sharpening his knife’s blade against a whetstone. They usually handled all their “work” together, but Bayard did have his hobbies. “Hold on. I’ll see if they’re Bayard’s buddies.” He rapped his knuckles on the bar to draw Bayard’s attention. His dull blue eyes met Frank’s, but he never broke the rhythm of the striking of steel against flint.
“Dowd Johnson, Bob McKee. You been going out on your own again?” Frank asked him. There was no need to go into further detail. Bayard would understand that his partner was asking if he had killed the two. Or worse, played with them, then killed them.
Bayard shook his head, then returned his attention to his blade, turning it so that the bar’s artificial light glinted off its razor edge.
“Nope, Sheriff. We haven’t seen ’em.”
“You sure about that?” The sheriff’s voice crackled as it came down the wire.
“Yes, sir.” Frank took a draw on his cigarette. The click in his ear told him Bell had hung up. Shrugging, he returned the receiver to its cradle.
“Trouble?” Nola asked, reaching out for the bottle of bourbon Bayard had been hoarding. In a flash, Bayard plunged his knife’s blade into the bar, slicing the air between his bottle and Nola’s hand. He did it without speaking a word. “Jesus, Frank. Will you do something with him?” She huddled back against the cabinet behind her, wrapping her arms around herself.
“Bayard,” Frank called his name in a calm, even voice. “Put that thing away.” Bayard looked at him through narrowed, resentful eyes, but he pulled the blade from the wooden surface and returned it to its leather carrier.
Bayard needed violence like crops needed rain. Normally there were plenty of opportunities for that capacity to be channeled into work, but lately the Judge hadn’t had much of a head for business. The Judge was letting his fields go fallow, and Bayard was wilting along with them. Frank didn’t know what to do about the Judge, but he was going to have to take Bayard out to run him, like a good hunting dog. Maybe a trip over to the colored side of town would give him a chance to blow off some steam.
“It ain’t been the same since we brung her back,” Bayard said. They’d had this conversation nearly every day since delivering Ruby to the Judge. “We should’ve killed her right where we found her.” He grasped the neck of his bottle and flung it to the concrete floor, shattering glass and wasting good whiskey. “Those people out there. They done something to her. And now she’s going to do it to us.”
“Clean that up,” Frank said to Nola. He pointed at Bayard, “And you, shut it.” Frank reached behind the bar and grabbed himself a fresh bottle of bourbon. Maybe enough booze would keep him from thinking about what he’d seen in California. The bourbon burned on its way down, but it didn’t burn brightly enough to keep the memories of what’d happened three months ago from resurfacing.
To Frank, the Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal looked more like a fancy church than it did a train station. Marble floors and big rounded doorways. Huge chandeliers. Bayard turned gray at first sight, casting uneasy glances around the place. He looked like he’d do just about anything to climb back on the train and return to Conroy. But although the fancy station gave Bayard the jitters, Frank had to practically pull him out of the air-conditioned cave and into the searing sunlight. Once outside, the building’s exterior did little to rid Frank of his impression that the terminal looked like a church. Hell, the damned place even had a kind of steeple.
As planned, Joe Crane, the private investigator whom the Judge had hired to track Ruby down, was waiting just outside the station in a white delivery truck marked “Canyon Grocers.” Bayard spotted the truck first, and made a beeline for it. Frank followed a bit behind, stealing a few moments to absorb the sights and sounds of this new place. As they approached the truck, the detective, all lantern-jawed and watery eyed beneath a gray flat cap, acknowledged them with a nod.
“Toss your luggage in the back and get in,” he called out, motioning with his thumb to the passenger-side door without bothering to get out from behind the steering wheel. He’d clearly recognized them right off, but Frank wasn’t sure if it was due to his detective’s intuition, or because the two of them looked like a couple of hicks who’d fallen off a turnip truck. Frank opened the truck’s back door and put the case the Judge had loaned them inside, careful not to scuff its leather. That done, he closed the back and followed Bayard around to the side.
Bayard tore open the passenger-side door and dove in, giving Frank a frustrated look when he realized he’d be the one sitting next to the stranger. Frank slung himself in and closed the door before Bayard could complain, as he’d been doing ever since they’d left Conroy. Truth be told, Bayard was obviously scared shitless. Until the Judge had sent them on this trip to California to bring Ruby home, neither of them had been any farther west than Natchez.
Bayard acted tough, but Frank could tell he was frightened by the big city. Not Frank, though. No, he wanted to peel off his skivvies and dive right in. A group of young women approaching the truck caught his attention. He gawked out the delivery truck’s open window and whistled at one dark-skinned beauty.
“You whistling at the mulattoes now?” Bayard asked. They hadn’t even pulled away from the station yet, and Bayard was already trying to pick a fight. Frank felt too good to care. He turned back to Bayard and winked. “I am at that one.” He laughed as he watched Bayard struggle to form an appropriate look of disgust.
Crane looked over his shoulder, then leaned a little further back to catch sight of the woman Frank had been eyeing. “Naw, she isn’t a mulatto. That there’s a Mexican señorita.” He nearly sang the last word. “Plenty of ’em around here willing to entertain fine gentlemen such as yourselves if you’re interested. I could help arrange . . .” Crane stopped talking midsentence. Bayard was a firm believer in the separation of the races, and Mexican or mulatto, the skin of these pretty young women was decidedly not white. Frank couldn’t see the look on his partner’s face, but he knew it must have silenced the detective.
“Your young lady is just a few miles from here,” Crane said, firing up the truck and pulling out, “in one of the big houses on Sunset.”
“Sunset Boulevard, like in the movie?” Frank asked, a bit too much excitement in his voice. He’d never seen anyplace famous before, and he would probably never get the chance again.
“The very same.”
“The Judge ain’t sent us here to be no damned tourists,” Bayard snarled, rubbing a hand as if for comfort on the knife concealed at his waist.
Frank decided to let Bayard’s smart comment slide and sat back, soaking in the sight of his first palm tree. Crane ignored his oafish partner, too. “You like the movies, do you?”
Frank
turned to Crane. “Yeah. No crime in that, is there?”
“None at all. Like ’em just fine myself. You know, your Ruby, the house she’s at doesn’t belong to just any old body. It’s Myrna King’s place.”
“Myrna King? The actress?”
“That’s right. That lady takes a lot of interest in young folk. The magazines say it’s what keeps her young. Seems to be working for her. I’ve seen her with my own eyes. She must be in her fifties, but she could easily play an ingénue if she still made movies.” He stopped at a red light. “Keeps a constant flow of young courtesans running through her place.”
“Courtesans?” Frank asked.
“It’s a nice word for ‘whore,’” Crane explained and shifted, pulling forward as the light changed.
“So Ruby’s out here whoring herself,” Bayard said with obvious pleasure pulsing beneath the surface of his voice.
“Yeah, her and that young man she came out here with.” Crane looked over at them and nodded to confirm what he’d just said. “Handsome young fellow like that probably gets more attention from the gents than he does the ladies.” He hit the clutch and shifted gears. “Out here it isn’t that uncommon . . . the whoring, that is.” He paused. “Well, I guess the other thing, too.”
“So if you know where she is, why play dress-up with this truck and the uniform?” Bayard asked. “Shouldn’t we just go knock on the door and tell Ruby we’ve come to bring her home?”
Crane gave them a sidelong glance. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the King house for a few days now. People always coming and going at odd hours.” He looked back at the road just in time to swerve around a stopped vehicle. “Some just pop in and come right back out. Others, young folk like your Ruby, they go in and stay. I’ve been asking around about Myrna and her friends. Seems some years back she got herself messed up with that bunch of occultists who’ve up till recently been running around up in Pasadena.”
“Occultist?” Frank asked. “Like an eye doctor?” He had never heard the word before.
Crane looked over and laughed. “No, not like an eye doctor. These people think they can do magic. They do sacrifices. Get up to all kinds of nonsense. Their leader, an honest-to-God rocket scientist, blew himself up a year or so ago while trying to work some kind of spell. After that, they began trickling into the city from Pasadena.”
Bayard turned to Frank, his face ashen. The man was so damned superstitious, Frank worried he might just turn tail and run. “But it’s all nonsense, right?” Frank asked, hoping the man’s answer would help put Bayard at ease.
“Maybe. Maybe not,” came Crane’s unhelpful reply. “I’ve lived out here for quite a while now. Seen some mighty strange things.”
FIFTEEN
Lucille sat at the Judge’s kitchen table, her hands clutching a cooling and untasted cup of coffee, wondering if she were simply trapped in a dream too stubborn to shake. None of what she’d experienced in the last day could really have happened. Ruby was dead. Dead and buried for these last two months. Lucille knew that. She’d soloed a capella on “Amazing Grace” as Ruby’s casket was slid into the crypt next to her mother. Lucille had forced a smile on her face and thanked Mrs. Blanton when the old woman commented that colored folk had the most melodic voices.
No, it was impossible. Plain and simple. But that cruel laughter she’d heard was undeniably Ruby’s, and deep down she knew that if hell were going to shut its door on anyone, it would be that darkly exquisite, manipulative young woman.
Lucille had known the Judge’s daughter for more than ten years now, ever since she’d taken over as the family’s housekeeper, back when Ruby’d been nothing more than a mere slip of a girl. Marva, the maid Lucille had replaced, had grown too old and blind to work anymore. Lucille knew beyond a shadow of a doubt it was the only reason her predecessor had been allowed to leave the Judge’s employment. On Lucille’s first day, Marva met her on the Judge’s front porch. Without further ado, the older woman rolled up her sleeve to expose a burn scar extending from her wrist to her elbow. “Mind yourself around the little one,” she said before shuffling back into the house.
Since then, there had been plenty of opportunities for Lucille to witness Ruby’s cruelty firsthand, and she’d borne the brunt of it herself more than once. At first, Lucille tried to feel for Ruby, to sympathize for the pain being motherless must have caused the girl, but sympathy could only stretch so far before snapping. Ruby proved to be the most unkind, greedy, and covetous child Lucille had ever met. Lucille could not begin to understand what had happened to twist the girl’s soul into such an unfeeling knot.
Many times Lucille had been forced to step in and protect children who’d been strong-armed into joining Ruby for playtime. Ruby’s sole source of happiness seemed to be toying with people, humiliating them, ruining anything that made them feel good about themselves. What she couldn’t steal, she’d destroy. Lucille would never escape the image of that poor Blake girl, clasping her hand on her cheek, blood spilling through her fingers. It had been Ruby’s twelfth birthday party, and someone said the Blake girl was almost as pretty as Ruby herself. The girl would always have an ugly scar.
As Ruby grew, her methods of torture took on a greater refinement. While Ruby the girl had enjoyed weaving lies to land others in trouble, Ruby the young adult preferred learning secrets and using them to keep those around her in line. God help the soul whose sin Miss Ruby uncovered. Eventually Lucille decided to stay the hell out of her way.
Then, when she was nearing eighteen, Ruby seemed to transform overnight. She fell in love with that Dunne boy, Elijah, who was stupid or crazy enough to love her back. The affair came out of nowhere. The two had known each other all their lives; just all of a sudden it was like Ruby finally took notice of the boy she’d been happy to ignore till then. For a brief while, it looked for sure like the two were heading for the altar, but in the end it didn’t last long. Right about the time Lucille received the letter informing her of her husband Jesse’s brave sacrifice, Elijah left to play soldier in the same conflict. In no time at all, Ruby took to disappearing and hanging out with the boy who ended up running off to California with her. Lucille had seen Ruby’s disappearance as a great mercy, and she would feel very little shame in admitting she regretted that the Judge’s investigator had ever hunted Ruby down. It would’ve been better for everyone if she’d stayed gone, or, failing that, had stayed dead.
Because Lucille knew Ruby was back. Perhaps more than anything, what convinced her of that fact was the way those men had accused her son of a theft the boy hadn’t committed. Setting up her playmates had been one of Ruby’s well-worn pranks. More than one of Ruby’s unfortunate young patsies had faced a furious switching after the disappearance of a prized object from the Judge’s house. Right about the time the child was able to move again without bleeding, the missing knickknack would suddenly reappear in its customary place. The kids involved knew better than to say a word to anyone.
Just as little Ruby framed her friends for her own amusement, the resurrected Ruby had somehow stitched Willy up as a thief to entice Dowd and his buddies to group together where Ruby could take them out with a single strike. Why Ruby had wanted to harm these men, Lucille had no idea, but she did feel sure that her son had been used as bait. In some twisted way, Lucille felt certain Ruby had meant it as a way of honoring her, like a cat bringing a dead bird to his owner’s doorstep.
At least now both her children had escaped, headed north where Lucille prayed they’d stand a chance for a life better than the one their mother would know here.
SIXTEEN
Mrs. Dunne had entrusted Corinne with the after-lunch washing up while she did laundry. Corinne had just finished the chore when she heard a car horn bleat out a tentative beep. She dried her hands and walked down the dark hall to the front door, watching through the glass as the black-and-white Hornet pulled down the long drive, sending the crunching gravel scattering like shrapnel even though the car proceeded at a careful pace
. The sheriff’s car. She opened the door and headed out onto the front porch. The Hornet pulled to a stop, and the man she recognized as the deputy killed the engine. The sheriff spat out the open window, but then flung open the door, arduously extricating himself from the car as if he’d aged a hundred years since he’d dropped by earlier that morning. The deputy did not move.
“Sheriff,” Corinne said.
“Ma’am.” The officer touched the tip of his hat curtly.
“I’m afraid you’ve just missed Elijah.” Corinne registered the annoyance on the man’s face in his lowered brow and twitching mustache. “He headed back into the fields, but he knows to call you at four,” she added quickly to dispel the sheriff’s frustration, “like you wanted.”
“Yeah, I reckon that is what I had asked, but there have been some new developments, and I can’t wait till this afternoon.”
“I’ll be glad to go find him for you.” She took a step or two back and opened the screen door. “Would you and your deputy like to come in and wait for him? We have some of Mrs. Dunne’s peach pie left, and I’ll brew up some coffee if you’d like.”
He took off his hat and used his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his brow. “Cold water would be just fine,” he said, then climbed the steps up to the porch.
“And your deputy?”
“He’s feeling a bit green around the gills right now, ma’am. We’d best leave him right where he is.”
Before opening the main door, Corinne flashed a quick look out at the deputy, who certainly seemed out of sorts. She stepped into the hall, marveling once again at how dark it was with all the shades pulled down to ward off the growing heat. For a moment she missed San Francisco’s seemingly never-ending cool sunshine. He shut the door behind them. “This way,” she said, immediately feeling self-conscious about her choice of words. She was the stranger here. The sheriff might have been to this house many times for all she knew.