by Donna Ball
The interior of the small house was over-warm and crowded with the hubbub of the same sort that had filled the funeral home the night before. I handed off my basket of muffins to a female relative, who placed them on a big table that was already crowded with ham and chicken and stews and casseroles, pies, cakes, cookies and gelatin salads of all descriptions. There were a lot of “ooh”s and “ahh”s as Cisco moved with me through the crowd, and he paused appropriately to be petted by everyone who reached for him.
Pepper, in his dark blue funeral suit, seemed surprised to see me. “Good of you to come by,Miss Stockton.” He shook my hand, and then stroked Cisco’s head. “And you brought your dog. Mama surely did enjoy him.”
“I’m sorry I missed the service,” I told him. “I brought Cisco by to see your aunt. She was talking last night about how your mother wrote about him in her letters. I thought it might bring her some comfort to meet him.”
“Why, that’s real thoughtful of you. “ He glanced around the room. “I believe she might be lying down.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll find her,” I said. Then I added, “I saw the surveyor’s tape when I was driving up.”
He nodded. “It was hard to sell, but there was no reason to hold on once Mama went in the home. And to tell the truth, the money was needful.”
I agreed that the economy had been hard on all of us, and when one of our neighbors came up and put a comforting arm around his shoulders I took the opportunity to slip away.
The house was typical of shotgun style farm houses, with four rooms opening off a central hallway, and it wasn’t difficult to find Ella in the last room on the right, in what I knew must have been Annie Mae’s room. It was a plain bedroom with pine furniture and lace curtains, faded watercolors and cross stitch homilies framed on the walls, and dozens of photographs arranged on the surfaces.Ella was lovingly smoothing out the wrinkles in a patchwork quilt that was folded at the foot of Annie Mae’s bed when I tapped lightly on the door.
She turned and her sad, haunted face softened with a smile when she saw Cisco. “Oh, my! It’s that wonderful dog!” She opened her arms and Cisco obligingly wiggled and wagged his way over to her when I dropped the leash.
She sat on the edge of the bed and petted and fussed over Cisco, and when he lifted his paw to shake on command, she actually laughed. “Where did you go to school to learn that, pretty boy?” She shook his paw and sighed wistfully, stroking Cisco’s silky head as he sat down and grinned up at her. “He reminds me of the dog Pepper had as a boy. Those two were a sight together.” And then her smile faded. “Of course, that evil Henry just about beat the spirit out of the poor thing.” A tear caught in a finely powdered wrinkle on her cheek.“Just like he did Annie Mae.”
“Henry was Annie Mae’s husband?” I came and sat beside her, gently. “He must have been a difficult man.”
She nodded, her eyes on Cisco, her gnarled fingers working the feathery fur around his ears. He looked up at her with an adoring smile and eyes half closed with delight.
“My daddy was the judge around here back then,” I said, prompting her to continue. “Henry Potts came up before him a few times. I understand he was a drinking man.”
“He was a beast,” she said flatly. “The things he did to my sweet sister, and that poor little boy… He broke her arm once because the stew was too salty. I begged her to leave, I told her we’d go away together, take care of each other… but she wouldn’t. She was too afraid. She said he’d find her wherever she was, and kill her baby.”
I swallowed hard and stroked Cisco’s head, my fingers brushing Ella’s. I couldn’t imagine the kind of terror that would make you choose to stay in an abusive marriage in order to protect your child. “It sounds like he deserved what happened to him,” I said quietly.
“He deserved it a lot earlier, if you ask me,” she replied. “The night we buried that man in my garden plot was the first time my sister had a night’s sleep since she married him.”
My heart started to pound. I hadn’t really expected her to say it. I had known since last night that the secret was eating her alive, and that she wanted to tell someone the truth. But I hadn’t thought the truth would come so easily.
“Remember I told you my daddy was the circuit judge back then,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Henry Potts kept coming up before him on drunk and disorderly, but he never could hold him on anything more serious because Annie Mae wouldn’t press charges. Until that one time.”
Ella nodded slowly, and the faintest shadow of a wan smile curved her lips. “I’ll tell you a secret. After all this time, it doesn’t matter.” She shifted a glance toward me, but didn’t quite meet my eyes. “It wasn’t Annie Mae that signed the complaint,” she said, so softly that I had to bend forward to hear. “It was me. We looked so much alike back then, not many people could tell us apart. I knew she was never going to stand up for herself, so I did it for her. That monster spent three nights in jail.”
She paused for a deep breath, and went on. “I told Annie Mae it was her last chance to get away, but she wasn’t fast enough. She was still too scared, you know. But I managed to get her to start throwing a few things in a suitcase when Henry came home and found us. He started swinging a two by four.”
She stopped to catch her breath again, her fingers going still on Cisco’s fur. I nodded silently, waiting. The most dangerous time for a victim of domestic violence is when she tries to leave. Only this time it had been dangerous for Henry.
In a moment she went on, half whispering, “He would have killed her. He would have smashed her head in if little Pepper hadn’t come home from school just then.”
I took a moment, choosing my words carefully. My throat was so tight it was hard to speak. “How old was Pepper? Ten or so?” Old enough, around these parts, to be accurate with any firearm he could lift.
“I was thirteen.”
The voice, cold and flat, came from the doorway, and my heart leapt to my throat. Cisco, sensing my alarm, got to his feet, his tail wagging uncertainly.
Pepper came into the room, his face hard and his eyes stripped of all emotion. “I think you’ve said enough, Aunt Ella,” he said. “This woman is not family.”
She heaved a great, sad sigh. “It doesn’t matter anymore, honey. It was all so long ago… and it just doesn’t matter anymore.”
I stood slowly, and Cisco, in his usual good-natured way, took that as a signal to move on to the next person who might want to pet him. Pepper caught my dog’s collar, hard, and jerked him around before I could call him back. Cisco gave a little yelp of surprise and sat, confused.
“Don’t hurt my dog!” I cried, and lunged forward. The look in Pepper’s eyes stopped me.
“Nothing’s going to happen to you or your dog, Miss Stockton,” he said, “if you just get on out of here and forget whatever you heard. My aunt is an old lady and this is family business, all a long time ago.”
I swallowed hard. I looked at Cisco and tried to communicate with my eyes a sense of calm control I did not feel. He started to pant and gave me his familiar grin, but I could sense his anxiety. “I know it was,” I said. “I understand, and no one is blaming you. You did what you had to do. I would have done the same thing.”
I could see his fingers relax marginally on Cisco’s collar. I breathed a little easier. “That vest Cisco is wearing has a pocket on the side,” I said. “There’s something in it that belongs to you.”
He looked wary and confused, but in a moment he reached down to fish the object out of Cisco’s vest. In order to do that he had to release Cisco’s collar. The moment he did so I commanded, “Cisco, here!” and Cisco bounded across the room and into my arms.
The point of consistently training the emergency recall with food rewards is for that one day when you will have to call your dog in an emergency and you will not have food to lure him. The well trained dog will come just as enthusiastically as if you had a porterhouse in your hand. And as I wrapped my arms around my goo
d dog’s neck and whispered lavish praises, that was exactly what I promised him as soon as we got out of there.
I put Cisco in close heel position, winding his leash around my hand, and watched Pepper’s face as he studied the mud-stained and crumpled Dr. Pepper hat he had removed from Cisco’s vest.
“You had it last night at the visitation when I left around eight,” I told him. “And I found it in the woods behind my house after someone broke the police tape and tried to get into the excavation site last night. I guess you were hoping to remove the rest of the bones before the police found enough to identify the body.”
Behind me, Ella stood up. Her voice was quavery. “Pepper? What is she talking about? What body? Didn’t you bury the body like I told you?”
I gave her a sympathetic glance over my shoulder. “Yes ma’am, he did. He buried it in the garden by your house on the pond.” I looked back at Pepper. “But when you sold the property and found out they were going to be excavating around the pond, you knew they’d find the remains. So you dug them up and moved them to a place they’d be easy to hide—the foundation you had already dug for my building. If the weather hadn’t held you up, the foundation would have been poured the next day and no one would ever have known.”
Pepper was turning the cap over and over in his hand in a slow thoughtful motion, scraping off bits of mud with his thumbnail, worrying out the wrinkles.His face looked tired, his voice low and thoughtful. “I remember it like was yesterday. You’d think after all these years some of it would go fuzzy. I heard her screaming way down the road, and him yelling. I heard that a lot, and it always scared me so much that sometimes I’d run hide, but not this time. This time I decided it wasn’t going to go no further, this time was the last time. So I came busting in that door, swinging my lunch box—I remember it was this Superman lunch box that was all dented from bouncing up and down in the basket of my bike—and I started beating on him with it and yelling like a coyote. All I wanted to do was get him off of her. Then I saw he’d left his snake gun laying right there on the kitchen table.”
A snake gun was what we commonly called a .45 caliber pistol because so many farmers carried them around on their tractors to dispose of snakes and whatnot in the fields. The hole in the skull that had been excavated in my back yard had very likely been caused by .45 caliber bullet.
Cisco whined suddenly and gave a small tug against the leash in my hand, and I looked up to see Buck standing quietly at the door behind Pepper. Apparently his conversation with Maude had led him to the same conclusions I had drawn. I don’t know how much he had overheard, but from the somber expression on his face, it was enough.
I said to Pepper, “You were just a kid. You were protecting your mother.”
His jaw went firm. “And I’m still protecting her. After all she went through, I wasn’t going to let her last days be spent in jail. I swear before God I wasn’t. That’s why I dug up the bones before somebody else found them and put together what happened. I was going to throw them in the pond, but knew that wouldn’t do no good, so I came up with the idea of burying them again. We’d just finished digging your foundation and were set to start pouring the concrete in a day or two. I’m always the first one there on the dozer, and it was no problem to toss the sack in the ground and cover it up.I’m sorry you got involved, Miss Stockton. Nobody ever should have known. The whole thing should have just stayed buried, same as it has since the day my mama picked up that snake gun and plugged the no-account bastard between the eyes.” He glanced at his aunt. “I’m sorry, Aunt Ella, but that’s the truth of it.”
“Oh, honey.” Ella moved around me, and laid a gentle hand on Pepper’s arm. She must have seen the uniformed officer standing at the door behind him, but her eyes were only for her nephew, and they were filled with love and regret. “No, it’s not. All these years you’ve been thinking you were protecting your mama…. But it was me, honey, don’t you remember? It was me that picked up the gun and shot that awful man dead. It was me all the time and…” Now she turned and looked over Pepper’s shoulder straight into Buck’s eyes. “I don’t regret it for a minute.”
Pepper stared at her. “Aunt Ella… you know that’s not so. I remember it. I remember it all.”
Ella patted his cheek sweetly. “Honey, your mama, God rest her, never had the gumption to swat a fly. I knew all along if anybody was going to do anything about that monster that called himself your daddy, it was going to be me. So I did. And I never lost a minute’s sleep about it, not once in all these years. When I left to marry my beau, my sweet Jimmy, I did it knowing you and your mama were safe.”
Buck came into the room, and Pepper turned to face him, looking as confused as I felt. Buck said quietly, “I’m really sorry for your loss, Pepper.” He nodded to Ella. “Yours too, ma’am.I’ll just wait around until you say goodbye to all the folks out there, and then maybe you both could come down to the office with me and let’s get this thing straightened out.”
Pepper wrapped his arm protectively round his aunt’s shoulder. He said, “She’s eighty-two years old. She’s confused. That was such a bad time…her twin sister just died…She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
Buck nodded gravely. “I tell you what, Pepper. Why don’t you give Lou Erickson a call, tell him what’s going on, and ask him to meet you at my office in an hour.” Lou Erickson was our most respected attorney.“Probably the first thing he’ll tell you is not to let your aunt answer any questions—or you either—until he gets there. I’d listen to him if I was you.”
Now you see why I married Buck.
There were probably a few more words, but I don’t remember them. My heart was pounding too hard, with the relief and the aftermath of tension, to allow me to care about much of anything until Pepper and Ella left the room, and Buck and I were alone. He glared at me for a long time, and he did not look pleased.
“I ought to throw your ass in jail for withholding evidence and obstructing justice,” he said. “Damn it, Raine, your uncle is not in charge anymore, and you can’t keep doing this. What if you’d been talking to a real killer? What if he’d been dangerous?”
By the time he finished, my adrenaline level was back to normal and I could breathe again. “You’re welcome,” I said. I glanced toward the door by which Ella and Pepper had just left. “You don’t really think she’ll go to jail, do you?”
He thrust a hand though his thick wavy hair and released a long breath. “I’ll do the best I can for her. Erickson ought to be able to do the rest.”
I nodded my approval. But I would have expected no less from him.
“By the way,” he said, somewhat reluctantly, “it looks like you might have been right about those bodies in Bullard. I talked to the sheriff up that way this morning, and it was enough of a theory to get a forensics team to work on it.”
“Good,” I said.
He frowned a little. “We were talking about something else, too,” he said. “About how what this area really needs is a cold case team, maybe one or two guys from each county, retired officers, maybe, working old cases we never had the manpower to put to bed. Of course, it would have to be volunteer, part time, but I was wondering…. How do you think Roe would like being in charge of something like that?”
I couldn’t help smiling. “You’d have to ask him,” I said. “But I think it’s a great idea.”
I clicked my tongue to Cisco and we started to leave, pausing at the door to give Cisco and Buck a chance to greet each other. “By the way,” I told him, when Buck straightened up from his whole-body rub-down of the wiggling Cisco, “you handled that just like Uncle Roe would have done. He would have been proud of you.”
He looked at me, and for the first time in weeks, I saw him smile. “Thanks,” he said. “Now, get on out of here before I change my mind about arresting you.”
_____________________
NINE
It was close to five o’clock before I made my way down the curving, tree-lined drive
of my aunt’s neat brick bungalow. I heard the sharp report of a collie bark the minute I pulled in front of the house, and my heart sang in response. I told Cisco to stay, and slung Majesty’s leash around my neck as I got out of the car.
Aunt Mart was waiting for me at the door. She had just had her hair done, a stylish silver white wave that swept away from her face to a razor cut in back. It was much shorter and far more fashionable than she usually wore, and she looked ten years younger.
“You looked fabulous!” I exclaimed as I hugged her. She smelled like an expensive salon. “Did LeBelle do that?”
She primped proudly. “Don’t be silly, that woman is twenty years behind the times. Miss Majesty and I drove into Asheville today and we both got our hair done.”
It was at that moment that I looked beyond her into the living room and saw Majesty, sitting on a faux fur throw that Aunt Mart had spread over the sofa. A fire was crackling in the fireplace, and she was grinning proudly. Clearly, she had been to a groomer who knew how to trim a collie, and could afford to use high-end products. Her sable coat gleamed gold; her white mane was so bright it practically made me squint. Her coat was blown out so luxuriously that, if Cruella DeVille had been around, I would have feared for Majesty’s life.Her paws were trimmed like fluffy little bunny feet, her hocks cut to perfect show standard.A tuft of fur had been gathered behind her ear and tied with a pink princess bow. I had never seen my girl looking more beautiful.
“You went to Asheville?” I repeated, still stunned.
“I hope you don’t mind.” A note of anxiety crept into my aunt’s voice. “She really was a mess after the rain, and there aren’t any groomers around here except you, and you had your hands full.”
“Mind?” I went over to my gorgeous dog, filled with wonder. “Are you kidding me? Aunt Mart, she looks incredible!” I took Majesty’s face in my hands and stroked her cheeks with my thumbs. I couldn’t help noticing that her tattered rolled leather collar had been replaced with a brand new rhinestone one. “Did you have the time of your life, my girl?Do you know how beautiful you are?”