"Now let me get this straight," Luke said carefully. "You're telling me that Hardy only had one coffin like the one you picked out, and you saw what you believe was that very same coffin in the shed after Henrietta was buried?"
"That's right."
"And now you think that's why Ozzie and Hank wouldn't let you stay because they took her out of the coffin you bought and put her in a different coffin?"
Jubal nodded. "A cheaper coffin, Luke. That's why he would've done it. He charged me for the better one, then switched."
Luke was not about to confide his suspicion that Hank and Ozzie had probably not bothered to switch coffins and had dumped her right in the ground and quickly covered her up. "Well, I can only say I hope you're wrong."
Jubal's voice cracked and tears trailed down the wrinkles in his face like water streaming through a canyon. "I think that's the way it was, Luke. And I want you to do something about it. I want her dug up and put in her own coffin, and I want that no-good, thieving varmint to pay for daring to commit such a sacrilege."
Luke got to his feet but motioned for Jubal to keep his seat. "Don't worry. I'll check it out and get back to you, but it may take a few days."
"No hurry," Jubal called after him. "Henrietta isn't going any place."
Luke did not turn around as he let himself out the front door because he did not want Jubal to see how he was smiling. He had good reason... because he might have just found a way to bring the hammer down on Hardy Moon.
Chapter 10
"For the last time, Betsy, I am not going to open that coffin."
Hardy was blocking the door to the viewing room and the metal coffin containing the remains of Betsy Borden's nephew, Normie Meese. He had been killed in Vietnam; his body had arrived on the afternoon train from Birmingham. The funeral was not scheduled until the next day, but Hardy was wishing he could send Hank and Ozzie to dig a hole and throw Normie in it then and there. Betsy and her whole weird family were driving him crazy with their demands to open the sealed coffin. They had been in and out of the funeral home all afternoon, and now it was after ten, and they refused to leave.
"He's our kin," Betsy said not for the first time.
Behind her, five heads bobbed to agree. Hardy swept them with a cold glare of contempt. Betsy smelled like the fish she cleaned at the supermarket. He could see little scales on the tattered sweater she wore over a flannel shirt and baggy overalls.
Towering behind her was her dim-witted father, Ebner Meese, who was just as scruffy as his daughter. The legs of his bib overalls barely stretched to his calves, and Hardy cringed to see bits of food trapped in his bushy gray beard. Betsy's brother, Dougie Meese, and his wife, Frannie, were no better. Normie's mother, Ruth Meese, was likewise disgusting.
Hardy turned away, unable to stomach them any longer. "If you don't leave, I'm going to call the law. I've already let you stay past visitation time."
"You call this visitin'?" Betsy protested. "When all we get to do is stand here behind this little rope and stare at a gray box? Besides, we done told you for the last time that we can't be sure our kin is even in it till we see for sure."
Hardy again tried to make her understand. "The remains were identified by the government, and the coffin was sealed, because your nephew was killed nearly three weeks ago. The body isn't fit to view. The smell would be atrocious." Even worse than you, he thought, if that were possible. "I have no way of opening it, anyway. It would take a crowbar, for god's sake, and the coffin would be destroyed in the process.
"Now I'm telling you one last time," he shook his finger as he spoke, "if you don't leave this instant I'm calling Sheriff Ballard and having you arrested for trespassing."
"I think he means it, girl," Ebner said, tobacco juice running from the corner of his mouth. He swiped at it with the cuff of a tattered sleeve.
Betsy stood there a moment longer, eyes narrowed as she stared at the coffin. "All right," she said finally and thoughtfully. "We'll just have to take the government's word for it that Normie is in there."
"Are you sure?" Ruth asked doubtfully.
Hardy stared at the little stick hanging from Ruth's brown-stained lips. She was a snuff dipper. The stick was a custom of the women of her generation, used to roll the wad of snuff around in the mouth from time to time. He found it even more repugnant than chewing tobacco.
Betsy took Ruth's arm and led her out, whispering in her ear. Hardy didn't care what she was saying. He didn't care about anything except getting them out of there, locking the door behind them, and having a good, stiff drink.
* * *
Outside the funeral home, Dougie and Frannie dutifully crawled up into the back of Ebner's pickup truck and pulled old feed sacks around them to ward off the night chill. Ebner backed the truck out of the driveway. Ruth sat in the middle, and Betsy, by the door.
"So what do we do now?" Ruth wailed. "I just don't feel right about it. That might not be my boy in that box, and till I know for sure it is, I can't say good-bye to him. I'll always wonder if he's alive somewhere, and..."
"You don't gotta wonder, Ruth," Betsy said.
"Why not? You heard Mr. Moon."
"That don't matter. Just let me and Dougie handle it, and I promise we'll find out for certain if it's Normie. Now let's get on home. Me and Dougie need a nap 'cause we got work to do later."
* * *
It was nearly five in the morning when Betsy and Dougie returned to the funeral home with crowbar and flashlight, parking Ebner's truck two blocks away. They kept to the shadows to stay out of the glow of streetlights. Betsy explained to Dougie that she had checked things out when they were there earlier and noticed that a window in the room next to Normie's coffin was unlocked. "All we gotta do is slide it open real quiet and crawl right in."
The window opened as easily as Betsy had hoped, and in seconds they were inside. Remembering the chair sitting in front of the window, she whispered to Dougie to step down onto it and not trip.
Finally standing before the coffin, she turned on the flashlight. "Now be as quiet as you can. Mr. Moon sleeps upstairs, and if you make any noise, he might hear and come runnin'."
In his wilder days, Dougie had done his share of breaking and entering, luckily without getting caught, so cracking open the metal coffin was a piece of cake for him. One quick snap, and the metal twisted beneath his strong hands. "Here goes." He gave a hearty yank. Then, with the air inside the coffin rushing into his face, he cried, "Oh, shit," and gagged as the turtle stew he'd had for supper found its way back up his throat.
"Do it over there, stupid. Not on the floor." Betsy shone the light at a potted plant. Her stomach was stronger, but still she fought against nausea as she turned the flashlight beam down into the coffin.
"What the hell?" She backed away in disbelief, then moved cautiously forward once again. "This is Normie?" She picked up a plastic bag with what looked like rotting chicken guts inside and held it up for closer scrutiny. Then she saw the dog tag. Although it was smeared with body fluids and blood and turning dark, she could make out the name stamped on it, Borden, Norman Leroy, followed by a serial number.
She dropped the bag back into the coffin. "It's what's left of Normie," she said, sickened to the core. "Now let's get out of here before Mr. Moon hears us."
But Hardy had already heard noises coming from below and was dialing the number of the sheriff's office. On the other side of the bed, Lucy struggled to wake from a sound sleep. "Who are you calling at this hour?"
"Shut up," he growled, annoyed that no one was answering. "We got a prowler, and I'm calling the law."
Lucy sat up, not at all alarmed. "Well, why don't you go downstairs and look around before you bother the sheriff? It could be the cat. Did you remember to put him out?"
"Shut up," he repeated, harsher this time, for he had pulled the phone line to the window in time to hear the sound of footsteps running down the gravel driveway. Even without seeing anyone, he knew it was the crazy Bordens.
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Finally, Ned Tucker heard the phone ringing in the sheriff's office and stumbled sleepily from across the hall where he'd been stretched out on the magistrate's sofa. He listened to Hardy's complaint, then asked, "Did you check to see if anything is missing?"
"No. I haven't been downstairs."
"But you say whoever it was left."
"I heard someone running down the driveway, and I know who it was, too... Betsy Borden's looney family. They were here last night till all hours, demanding that I open their nephew's coffin, and..."
"Well, you need to go see if anything's missing or disturbed. You don't even know for sure they broke in. They might've been just trying to." Ned yawned, anxious to get back to the sofa. If he could snooze another hour, he wouldn't have to go back to bed when he got off work and could go fishing early and stay all day.
"What I need," Hardy roared into the phone, "is for you to send a deputy over here now, damnit. It's not my job to go looking for prowlers."
"Oh, hell, Hardy, I'm trying to tell you that you don't even know for sure you had one. Go check and call me back."
Ned hung up the phone and returned to the magistrate's office and the waiting sofa. When the sheriff's phone rang again, he ignored it.
* * *
"It's about time you got here," Hardy snapped at Luke as he opened the door to let him in. "I couldn't get anybody to answer the damn phone in your office till Wilma got there at seven this morning. You oughta fire that worthless piece of shit, Ned Tucker. Now come in here and see what some other worthless shit did. You're not going to believe this."
Hardy led the way to the parlor and pointed at the open window. "That's how they got in. Betsy must've noticed it wasn't locked when they were here earlier. Hell, why should I worry about whether my windows are locked or not? Who'd want to break into a funeral home, for god's sake? Only nitwits like Betsy and the Meeses, that's who.
"Now look at this." He went into the viewing room. "But I warn you, it might make you throw up like it did one of them." He nodded with disgust at the flower pot. "I'm gonna have to throw it out—another expense they caused me."
The vomit did not bother Luke, and he registered only mild revulsion after lifting the mangled top of the coffin to see the plastic bag with Normie's remains. Luke had taken his turn in Vietnam preparing the dead for shipment home and had seen plenty of little plastic bags containing only a handful of guts and goo. Claymore mines could do that to a human body. There was no need to use big, clumsy rubber bags. Fill a sandwich bag, add the dog tag, stick it in a metal coffin, and the job was done. Quick and neat.
"I want them charged with breaking and entering and vandalism. So go arrest them."
"You should have just opened the coffin, Hardy, and then there wouldn't have been a problem."
"It was sealed, for god's sake. You can see they had to use a crowbar, and..."
"You could have taken the screws out. It's a bit of work, but it can be done."
"Well, it's too late now. They've destroyed it, and somebody is going to have to pay for a new one, and..." The phone rang. "Excuse me. I'll be right back."
Luke watched him hurry away. A body might need to be picked up, which meant money, so Hardy wasted no time answering.
Likewise, Luke wasted no time in making his way to the room at the back where coffins were displayed. It had been nearly a week since he had promised Jubal he would check everything out, but there had been no chance without making Hardy suspicious, till now.
He flicked on the light. A dozen or so coffins were scattered throughout the room. He zeroed in on one that fit the description Jubal had given him: white pine with lavender lining and a big purple ribbon stretched inside the lid. Closer scrutiny brought a tight knot of fury to his throat as he saw that beneath it, on two corners, there were tiny little smudges of red clay. Jubal was right.
He could hear Hardy winding up his conversation and quickly went back to the viewing room. "I'll go talk to them," he said when Hardy returned. "Maybe I can get them to confess and scare them into buying a new coffin, but I can't see arresting them. A judge wouldn't put them in jail for wanting to identify their kin, especially when he sees they're nuts, anyway."
Hardy waved him towards the door. "You just tell them they'd better not ever step foot in my funeral home again. Betsy still owes me for burying her husband and kids anyway."
Luke drove out to the Meese cabin. Rusting cars were parked everywhere. Lubie Warsh, who owned the only garage in town and had the only wrecker service around, gave Ebner twenty dollars for each car he let him dump there. Sometimes Ebner made a little selling old parts.
Cats were all over the yard, and a couple of fierce-looking dogs tied to trees barked as Luke made his way up the rutted path.
Ebner was sitting in a rocker on the front porch, carving what was beginning to look like a rolling pin from a block of wood. "Mornin', sheriff," he said lazily. "What brings you out here? You come to look at Ronnie Turnage's Ford, I'll bet, or what's left of it. If I'd charged two bits a head when Lubie first hauled it out here, I coulda made me some real money. Everybody wanted to see Ronnie's brain layin' in the rear window."
Luke swallowed hard. "Run that by me again, Ebner. You say Ronnie's brain was still in the car when Lubie towed it in?"
Just then Ebner noticed that one of the cats was lapping out of the cup of cider he'd set on the floor next to his rocker. He spat a wad of tobacco juice and hit him square on top of his head to send him bolting from the porch. "Dang cats," he grumbled. "Nothin' but trouble. Can't get rid of 'em, and they multiply like flies. Tried puttin' out poison but wound up killin' two of the dogs, and I need them to chase off the thievin' assholes who creep around here at night tryin' to steal off the cars." Getting back to Luke's question, he confirmed, "Yep, it was there, all right. A big gray glob."
Luke was livid and didn't know who to blame—the rescue squad or Lubie. Death cars always drew the morbidly curious but to leave a brain inside? Jesus. "Is it still there, Ebner?"
"Naw. Ronnie's old man heard about it and came to get it the next day, mad as a wet hen, but it was gone. I reckon the cats ate it that night. I'd been chasin' 'em off it all day."
Luke made a mental note to raise enough hell with those who might have been responsible that it would never happen again.
"I need to talk to Betsy."
"She's inside, washing one of Dougie's younguns' hair. Teacher sent him home again with lice."
Luke walked on up the steps and into the cabin, and promptly felt something squish under his foot. Looking down, he grimaced to see he had stepped into a pile of chicken doo.
"Gotta watch where you're walkin, sheriff," Betsy said from where she had a small boy doubled over a washtub pouring what smelled like kerosene over his head as he screamed bloody murder.
Luke glanced around. There was hardly room to move because of so much furniture crowded in the tiny room: old sofas that vomited stuffing, rickety chairs set around a three-legged table, stacks of newspapers ready for shredding to use in the outhouse, and eight stained mattresses on the floor.
The smell was awful, too, of grease, onions, urine, but maybe the worst was the sight of the chickens picking and cackling, and dropping more doo on the floor.
Betsy saw him staring and shrieked at the hens, "Out! Right this minute."
Luke thought she meant him, then realized it was the chickens she was talking to when she lifted her hands from the water and kerosene to wave at them and yell, "Shoo! Shoo!"
As they began to obediently make their way to the door, she called after them, "You all know you ain't allowed in here when I got company. Now git before you wind up bein' supper."
He was amazed at how they obeyed her, the hens walking out in single file behind a cocky red rooster leading the way.
"Now what you want, sheriff?" Betsy turned back to her task. "Kids," she grumbled. "Send 'em to school and they come home full of nits. I'll be glad when they all turn sixteen so's they can quit."
Luke doubted it would be that long before Betsy's numerous nieces and nephews dropped out. Not a one of the Meeses had ever gone beyond sixth or seventh grade. "Hardy Moon says you and your family broke into the funeral home last night and busted your nephew's coffin open."
"Well, it's his word against ours."
"Did you do it?"
"What if we did?" She jerked the boy's head out of the tub, covered it with a rag, and told him to go outside and dry off.
"Betsy, you can go to jail for breaking and entering. Damaging that coffin is called vandalism."
"Look, sheriff," she talked as she dragged the bucket to the back door and tipped it out to empty the water in the yard. "If'n we did do it—and I ain't sayin' we did—it was because that ass Hardy Moon wouldn't let us make sure it was our kin inside that box. We had a right to know."
"And are you satisfied now that it is?"
She grinned. "Uh-uh, sheriff. You ain't trickin' me into sayin' we done it. You gotta prove it."
Luke saw one of her front teeth was missing, and the rotten one next to it didn't look like it would be in her mouth much longer either.
"Can you?"
"Betsy, I could take you in for questioning, and if I dig hard enough, and long enough, yeah, I can probably prove it, but I'm not going to, because I can understand how you felt."
She nodded without looking at him.
"Okay. That's settled. Now let's talk about you and your family paying for a new coffin. The government isn't going to spring for two."
"There ain't no need. A bag of guts don't need no box. Me and Pa and Dougie are going to the funeral home this afternoon and get Normie and bury him in the family graveyard up on Crow's Knob. Dougie and our cousin, Lem, are up there now diggin' the hole."
Luke saw nothing wrong with that. Maybe it was bending the law a bit, but he leaned on the theory that sometimes it was best to go along to get along, especially with people like Betsy and her backwoods family. "I'm going to let you slide by this time, but if you ever pull a stunt like that again, you'll be spending some time in jail. Understand?"
Final Justice Page 13