A Killing at Cotton Hill

by Terry Shames

  “I don’t know what to say.” His face is a mixture of uncertainty and eagerness. I’m struck by how damned young he is.

  “I had a fire at my place last night,” I say.

  His expression freezes. “A fire? What about your art? Was anything burned?”

  It’s the right response. I just flat don’t believe he would have set that fire. “No. Everything is safe.” Again, I see no reason to bring up the Thiebaud.

  He blows out a breath of relief. “That would have been like, I don’t know, the worst thing I can think of.” He looks around his studio, as if imagining his work being burned. “How did it happen?”

  “Nobody’s sure yet. Could be somebody set the fire.”

  He jumps up. “Set it? On purpose? What would they do that for?”

  “That’s a good question. I’m going to leave that to the fire inspector to worry about. Now I need to talk to you about something else. I went off to see your old teacher, Alex Eubanks, yesterday.”

  Greg shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels. “I know. He told me. He came by here yesterday afternoon as mad as a wet hen.”

  “What was the problem?”

  “He seemed to think I said something that made you suspicious of him. I told him I only told you the truth.”

  “Was it the truth?” I say.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You told me your grandma couldn’t pay for lessons, and that you’d outgrown him as a teacher. I think there’s more to it.”

  Greg goes over to his easel and stares at the painting he’s begun. I realize the colors are different; some flesh tones and softness. It makes me think of a woman’s skin. “I guess you’re right,” he says.

  “Eubanks have a daughter?”

  He nods.

  “She came out here to see you yesterday. What did she want?”

  As if he’s on automatic, Greg chooses a color from his pastels and lays a few strokes on the canvas. “Same thing she’s always wanted,” he says, eyes on his work. “Sex. I don’t mean to sound conceited, but she’s always been after me. She said she came out to tell me she was sorry about my grandma, but it was just an excuse.” He makes a few more strokes, then lays down the pastel and looks at me. “Why me? She could have a lot of guys.”

  I think about Caroline being so seductive toward me. I’ve asked myself the same thing. Why me? “I guess it’s the age-old question,” I laugh a little. “Maybe because you weren’t available.”

  He wipes sweat off his brow with the back of his arm. “It’s not like I don’t think she’s cute.” He gestures toward his painting. “But I don’t have time to do the things she wants to do. Go out and ride around, go to movies. Even if I did have time, I don’t have the money.” He picks up another color and starts dabbing at the painting.

  “And her daddy got mad because you hurt her feelings?”

  Greg pauses and looks at me curiously. “No, he didn’t know anything about us. She was always scared he’d find out we were messing around.”

  “Then he just came out here because he was mad that I came to see him?”

  He puts down the chalk and dusts his hands off. “He told me you pretended to be looking at his paintings, but you were just snooping around. I told him he was wrong, that you probably were looking at the art, because you’re really interested.”

  “Did you tell him I had an art collection?”

  He puts his hands on his hips, staring at me. “I did. Was it the wrong thing to do?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not.”

  When I walk back in my house, my phone is ringing. “Listen to this,” Jenny says. “You know that business about the racetrack? Well, it turns out that may be real. I talked to a businessman I’ve done a little lawyering for, and he told me he thinks that outfit from Houston is serious about buying up several spreads around there.”

  “Would you happen to know the name of the outfit?”

  “Samuel, what kind of lawyer would I be if I didn’t get that information for you?”

  She tells me it’s called “Best Land Use Enterprises.”

  “Well the name doesn’t leave anything to the imagination, does it?”

  “You want me to give them a call and find out what I can?”

  “Let me try it first.” I want to talk to them about the Underwoods in person, which gives me one more reason to head over to Houston.

  So now to tackle my main reason to want to go over there. I fish out a card from a gallery that Jeanne and I did a fair amount of business with, the one we bought the Wolf Kahn through and a couple of other pieces. I’m glad to hear that George Manning is still around. The last I knew of it, his son was coming up in the business.

  “Oh, yes, I still take an active role,” he says, when he hears who is calling. “Art is in my blood. I hope when I drop dead it’s in front of a fine painting. But that’s not what you’re calling to hear. Are you ready to add something to your collection? Or are you out to sell a piece?”

  “I wish it was that uncomplicated. I’ve got two things on my mind.” I tell him about the theft of the Thiebaud.

  He is suitably outraged about the fire. “That just makes me sick. You’ve got probably the best Wolf Kahn I ever had my hands on. To think that somebody would willfully destroy it is beyond understanding. And the Thiebaud! Whoever did this must not know much about art. It will be impossible to sell it to a legitimate dealer. Only the most underhanded ones will touch something that unmistakable.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. Suppose somebody took it who doesn’t know that? If it gets to be too much trouble to find a buyer, I’m afraid they’ll do something foolish, like destroying it.”

  Manning groans. “I hope we’re not looking at something like that.”

  “So my question is, is there some kind of network that you can call into play so potential buyers will be on the lookout for it?”

  “I can certainly notify people I know in Texas, but the problem is, whoever stole it could take it out of state and I don’t know what happens then. If he gets it to someone unscrupulous, they could have contacts with those who don’t care how they get a piece of art. They’re willing to pay for it, because they won’t ever show it. It will just sit in their vaults.”

  “I’ve heard about people like that. The Van Gogh piece that will never see the light of day.”

  “It’s the most famous, but there are others. I’ll do what I can to make the alert. Art dealers get their backs up over this kind of thing, so they’ll put out the word. Now the problem you have to face is publicity. TV news people will get wind of it right away, and you’re likely to be the object of a lot of attention.”

  I hadn’t even thought of that. “I’ll have to handle that the best way I can. If you can keep my name out of it, I would appreciate it.”

  He says he will, and advises that I also call the gallery I bought the piece from out in California. “Their name will be on the back of the painting, so whoever took it might think that’s a clever way to sell it.”

  I thank him for the suggestion.

  “Now you had something else you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “This is a whole different topic. I don’t pretend to be good at this, but a young man has come to my attention who looks to me to have some talent.”

  “You have a very good eye,” he says. “Maybe not as discerning as your wife’s, rest her soul, but I’ll take a look at his work if you think this boy is worth it.”

  “I do. I happen to have some urgent business in Houston. What if I brought the boy in tomorrow?”

  We agree on early afternoon. That means another trip out to Cotton Hill to tell Greg. I don’t want to talk to him on the phone about it, because I’m afraid he’ll make up some reason why he’s not ready. I think it’s just as well to get him to Houston fast, so he doesn’t have time to brood on what pieces to bring in. If he’s like any other beginning artist, he’ll just start finding flaws and get
himself all worked up.

  And while I’m out in Cotton Hill, I believe it’s time I put in a visit to Clyde Underwood.

  I’m just thinking about whether I ought to phone Woodrow Callum regarding Allen Eubanks, when from the front room I hear my name called. “Samuel.” Caroline’s voice has a timbre to it that gives me a chill.

  “Come on in and sit down,” I say, trying for a natural tone, but feeling unaccountably nervous.

  Caroline sets her purse on a chair, and walks into the kitchen, toward the table, moving like somebody walking through a bog, and worried about quicksand. I don’t smell alcohol coming off her, but her eyes have the glazed look of somebody on a bender. I go over and pull out a chair for her, because it looks like she would have trouble negotiating it. She sits down and crosses her legs. She’s wearing a tight skirt and a low-cut shirt.

  “Can I get you some ice tea or a cup of coffee?” I say.

  She gives a throaty little laugh. “Maybe a little water,” she says.

  My mouth is dry, so I get water for both of us and sit down across the table from her. She’s tracing the lines of plaid on the tablecloth with her finger as if it’s the most fascinating design she’s ever been up close to.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” The words both sound and feel false, but I have to start somewhere.

  “I’m on my way back to Houston, and I came by to apologize,” she says. “I feel like I owe that much to you.”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” I say. The person she owes an apology to is her mamma, but Dora Lee is dead, so she’s not going to get the benefit of it anyway.

  “I didn’t behave very well the other night. It wasn’t fair to you, as nice as you’ve been to me.” Her hands are starting to jitter, and she rubs them along her arms.

  Suddenly her strange manner comes clear to me. “You’re high,” I say.

  She curls her lip. “You think I could face that farm any other way?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I don’t have the information I’d need to make a judgment on that.”

  “No, I guess you don’t.”

  “So why don’t you tell me?” A bead of sweat rolls down the side of my face, and I dash it away with the back of my hand. I have the windows open, trying to air out the stench, but the heat is so oppressive that I’m wishing I’d closed up the house and put the air-conditioning on.

  “You really want to know?”

  I nod.

  Sweat is glistening at her cleavage, and she plucks the shirt away from her body to get some air. “Everybody in this town looks at me like I’m a monster for leaving here and never seeing my mother again. I tried to make myself come back once or twice. But I couldn’t stand it.” She lifts her hair off her neck and lets it fall back. “If you all knew what I had to put up with out at that farm, you might be a little more forgiving.” She sips her water, and her eyes wander around the room. She winces as she looks at the blistered back kitchen wall, but doesn’t say anything about it.

  “Caroline, I know your daddy was a violent man.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  I don’t think it takes a genius to figure out what more was going on, but from the pain I see in her eyes, she needs to tell somebody, and it might as well be me.

  Her voice turns harsh. “You asked for it, and I’m going to tell you. My daddy started coming to my bed when I was eleven years old. The first few times he kept his hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t scream. I thought I was going to suffocate. I learned to keep quiet. I was a child and I believed him when he said it was my fault for being such a sexpot. Those were his words. My own daddy.”

  “Caroline, I’m so sorry.” It makes me sick to think what Teague was up to. You can’t live in the world and be ignorant of such things, but you never think it will be someone you know; even someone as low-life as Teague Parjeter.

  Caroline draws a shuddering breath, clutching her water glass so hard I’m afraid it will shatter. “He kept it up until I got the courage to leave. Everybody around here said I was wild, but it was the thing he was doing that made me wild.”

  For a minute I have to look away from her wretched expression. I’m wishing like hell I’d never pushed her to tell me. But I did, so I force myself to face her again. She’s watching me with her dark eyes.

  The smell of smoke seems stronger in the air than it was, making it hard to breathe. “Wasn’t there anybody you could go to? A teacher? The Baptist preacher?”

  “Who’s going to believe an eleven-year-old girl? You think the preacher would believe me?”

  I remember the Baptist preacher from thirty years ago. He was an elderly man, or at least he seemed so at the time, and I can’t picture any little girl trying to talk to him, especially about something as big as Caroline’s troubles. I shake my head.

  “For the longest time, I thought Teague was right, that it was my fault, and by the time I realized he was just a sick, nasty man, I felt too tainted to try to do anything about it. I had to get out of here.”

  And then I recall something Jeanne said after Caroline left, that sometimes people did what they had to do. “Did Jeanne know anything about this?”

  She stops her agitated moving for a minute and thinks hard on the question. “She must have guessed something. I told her I had to get out of here. She said I should tell her before I left and she’d see to it that I had some money. She gave me three thousand dollars and said not to worry about paying it back. That sometimes people just needed a boost, and she was glad she could help me.”

  I feel the sense of disorientation I always feel when someone tells me something I didn’t know about Jeanne, partly jealousy that they got a tiny piece of her I didn’t get, partly grateful to have her even stronger in my mind.

  “Why didn’t you tell your mamma?” I say. “She could have put a stop to it.”

  She shakes her head wearily. “If only it was that easy. I was afraid. About everything. I wanted to tell Mother. I hoped she would kill him. But then I was afraid she would, and then she’d go to jail. I wanted to run away, but I was scared he’d start on Julie. Julie was always more fragile than me, and I knew it would be the end of her.” She ends in an anguished moan. Tears are trickling from the corners of her eyes, leaving twin streaks of mascara. “What could I do? I was a kid.”

  She stands up and goes into the front room and grabs up her purse. For a second I’m worried she’s going to do something violent. I picture her bringing out a gun and shooting me, or herself. But she’s after a tissue. She wipes at the smears of mascara around her eyes.

  Back in the kitchen, she stands in front of me. “After I left, I began to wonder if Mother knew what was happening. How could she not know?”

  “I just don’t believe that. I wish to hell you had gone to her. She would have found a way to tell me.”

  She sits back down, clinging to my words. “Do you really think she would have done something?”

  “I do.”

  We sit quietly for a few minutes. I’m trying to make sense of why Jeanne didn’t tell me what she suspected. Was she afraid I’d kill Teague outright? I have mellowed some over the years, but maybe then I would have snapped.

  “I need to clear up another thing,” Caroline says. “I lied to you about the man I married. He didn’t take anything from me. I don’t know why I told you that. He tried to fix things for us, tried to be gentle with me.” She puts her head in her hands, and her hair cascades around her face. “He pretended he didn’t know I slept around behind his back every chance I got. But eventually he gave it up. I don’t blame him.”

  She walks to the refrigerator and pours herself another glass of water. When she turns back, she looks at me for a long time before she speaks. “I thought I’d feel better if I told someone, but I don’t. I’m damaged property, no matter what.”

  “You know it wasn’t your fault. You have to find a way to put it behind you.”

  She moves to my side and puts her hand on the b
ack of my neck and begins to rub it. For a few seconds I let myself go with it, sinking into the sensation of her fingers working my muscles. I imagine how it would feel to put my arm around her waist. She’s right next to me. But Jenny’s voice pops into my head with the one word, “shenanigans.” I put my hand around Caroline’s wrist and move it away. And at that moment I wonder if everything she told me was a lie.

  She turns away from me so I can’t see her face, and says, “I guess I’d better get on home.”

  I’m wavering on the question of belief in her story, and then I think, what would be the purpose of such a lie? To justify staying away so long? To explain her seductive behavior? I stand up. “Why don’t you let me fix you something to eat before you leave?”

  “I can’t eat anything.”

  But I make her a sandwich anyway, and while I work, she goes to one of the charred cabinets and touches it. “What a mess,” she says. “It smells terrible in here. How can you stand it?”

  I tell her I’m staying with a friend.

  “You could stay out at the farm. Wayne’s gone back to Houston. I’m sure Greg would be glad of the company.”

  “Maybe I’ll do that.”

  “How long is it going to take before the damage is repaired?”

  I set the sandwich down on the table, and she looks at it for a few seconds. There are dark circles under her eyes. Finally she sits down and picks up a half sandwich. I sit down across from her.

  “It might take some time. What I didn’t tell you and Wayne this morning is that one of my paintings is missing.”

  “Really. Was it very valuable?”

  I nod. “The thing is, that whoever stole it has got a problem on their hands. Nobody can sell that painting.”

  She almost has the sandwich to her mouth, but stops. “Why not?”