“The thing is, Buford and me, we spent a lot of time together. I knew about his momma and him. I know the truth about Billy John’s momma’s move and what happened there. Buford told me everything, but he never told me about you. Don’t you find that kind of strange?”
“I knew about his momma and him, too. As for Billy John, I think that’s best kept private, don’t you think?” I’d kept my hands behind my back, so Tucker didn’t see them shaking.
A hand clasped my shoulder. “Ivy Sawyer, I’m pretty sure Buford would be upset to see you flirting like this with his best friend at his own funeral.” Christopher Lacy squeezed that strong hand into my shoulder bones. It kind of hurt, but I was eternally grateful.
“I am not flirting with this man, Officer Lacy,” I said.
“It’s Detective Lacy, ma’am.”
“Oh, yes. I forgot. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Buford hadn’t brought you around The Backwoods, had he? You probably didn’t get to know the regulars there?”
“No, sir.”
“You’re not giving her trouble, are you, Tucker?” Christopher had yet to let go of my shoulder.
“Not a bit,” Tucker lied. “Just introducing myself. Didn’t even know Buford had a girlfriend, and come to find out he was getting married? Just surprised, is all.”
“You shouldn’t be. Your reputation, it’s likely Buford knew better than to share his good news with you. You’ve got a record a mile long Tucker, and most of its charges brought against you from women. Would you expect him to want you around his fiancée?”
“I wouldn’t do anything to my best friend’s fiancée, Detective, you know that.”
“I would hope you wouldn’t, but I’m guessing Buford knew better.”
Tucker Hyut’s eye burned with hate. “That ain’t kind, Detective.”
“I knew Buford a lot better than you think I did,” Christopher said. He glanced at the people in the room. They’d begun moving in through the doors to Buford’s visitation room. “Looks like it’s time.”
“It is,” I said.
“After you,” Christopher said.
“Thank you, Detective.”
Tucker Hyut trailed behind us, staring, I was sure, at Christopher’s large hand on my shoulder the entire time.
“Thank you for that,” I whispered into Christopher’s ear.
“You’re welcome.”
Atticus Mableton spoke at the funeral. His words were kind, generous, and loving. His mother cried, and I cried too. Boone asked for a tissue, and I gave him one. After he swiped his nose across the sleeve of his graying white button down, I gave him another one.
When we drove to the plot in the cemetery, I hung toward the back, feeling horribly uncomfortable, not because I pretended to be the dead man’s fiancée, but because everything was so final, so permanent. Watching them place the casket in the ground, knowing that was it, that Buford Lester was gone, done, his life definitely over forever hit me then, and I couldn’t stand to watch.
Okay, that might sound overly dramatic. Yes, I knew he was already dead, and all that was true the moment he died, but there was an absolute finality to it all when a coffin went into the dirt. I’d never seen that before, and it shook my core. I blubbered like an idiot. I didn’t need to draw from the loss of a dog. I didn’t need to recall back to fourth grade when my teacher told me I’d not tried hard enough and would never succeed. I didn’t need to pull up any horrible, sad memory and relive it. I was genuinely sorry, honestly upset, and terribly distraught because this young man’s life was overall because of a wasp sting and his inability to get to his EpiPen in time.
The tragedy of that overwhelmed me. Only, part of me didn’t believe it.
“I’m glad the good-for-nothing loser is dead.” Billy John stood behind me, whispering in my ear. I flipped around and saw him, that’s how I knew it was him.
I’d been sobbing into my hands, but that brought me back into reality.
“May he never rest in peace.”
“You are an evil, horrible man.”
“He deserved to die.”
“Nobody deserves to die.”
“He did, and if you think it was a stupid wasp that killed him, you’re as dumb as the rest of his family. No one liked that man. Ask around. You’ll find that out right quick.”
My stomach burned, and I had a strong urge to bolt, but I obviously couldn’t. Instead, I pressed my lips together and did my best to remain calm.
If Billy John Jefferson wanted me to think Buford Lester didn’t die from a wasp sting, he’d done an excellent job of it. If he’d wanted me to believe he’d somehow killed the man, he was awfully convincing of that, too, and he’d just changed my acting gig from fiancée to fiancée slash pseudo investigator.
5
“Why wouldn’t the medical examiner perform an autopsy?” I asked Christopher.
I’d asked him to meet me on our side of town after the refreshments were served—a mourning process lost on me—and he’d agreed. Still upset from my little chat with Billy John Jefferson, my iced tea cup vibrated in my unsteady hands.
Christopher took the sweating plastic cup from me and placed it on the metal table. “You’re going to spill that down that pretty outfit. What’s going on?”
I wiped my hands on a napkin. “Lord, I don’t know what I’ve gotten myself into.”
“I could have told you that, Mayme. These people aren’t the kind you should be messing with. Why’d you get involved with this in the first place? Acting is one thing, but these people are entirely different.”
“I’m an actor, and the agency, it’s an acting agency.”
He leaned back in his seat. “If you say so.”
“Professional mourners are real, look it up on the internet.”
“Did President Lincoln post about them on social media or something?”
I didn’t laugh at his joke. “You wouldn’t understand.”
He leaned forward. “Try me.”
I told him my horrid, embarrassing story.
He didn’t laugh. He didn’t smile. He didn’t make a stupid joke. Instead, he leaned in even closer, squeezed my hand, and spoke in a soft, comforting whisper. “You’ll get through this, Mayme. It’s not the end of your career.”
I attempted a smile, but the effort didn’t work. “I appreciate that I do, and I know you’re right, but I have to act, even though I’m not entirely comfortable with what I’m doing,”
“Why?”
“Because it’s who I am, and if I want to earn my spot back on the Off-Broadway circuit, I need to keep my game fresh, keep myself moving forward.” I sipped from my cup, shaking hands be darned. “None of the community theaters in town would have anything to do with me. They all know what happened. Exit Stage Left was my only option, and if I’m going to try and earn back some kind of decent name for myself, I need to do this.”
He nodded. “Okay. Okay, but why Buford Lester? Why this family?”
“I didn’t have a choice. I was assigned the gig.”
“People die every day. There had to be someone more to your…your…” He left that hanging.
“The agency might not get all that many clients. I don’t really know.” I tapped my finger on the table. “I have a question though.”
“Go ahead.”
“That Billy John Jefferson jerk, he said something that makes me think Buford didn’t die from a wasp sting, and Atticus said they didn’t do an autopsy, but I thought those were always done in suspicious deaths? Is that not the case?”
He straightened in his seat. “Our medical examiner decides whether an autopsy should be performed, so I can’t say whether one would have been done in Buford’s case, but I can look into it if you’d like.” He rubbed his chin. “What exactly did Billy John say to you?”
“He said no one liked Buford and that he deserved to die.”
“He’s right, at least about how people felt about Buford. A lot of people didn’t like him, bu
t that doesn’t mean a wasp didn’t kill him, or that he deserved to die. No one deserves to die.”
“He also said if I thought it was a stupid wasp that killed him I was as dumb as the rest of his family.”
His eyebrows went up. “Well now, that’s interesting.”
“And I asked Clementine James, the funeral home director, about the makeup she had to use to cover up the wasp sting on his neck, but she said they didn’t have to cover up any sting on his neck, which doesn’t make any sense since that’s where he was stung.”
“How do you know he was stung on the neck?”
“Because that’s what it said in the dossier.”
“The dossier?”
“The file from Exit Stage Left. It’s got all the information on Buford and his family.”
His left eyebrow rose as his chin dipped the opposite direction. “Remind me to make sure I wipe the internet clean of everything about myself, will you?”
“I don’t think they got it from the internet. They were hired by a family member.” I looked him straight in the eyes. “That’s not the point. Something’s not right here, you know?”
“I agree, and I think you need to quit that job, Mayme. These aren’t the kind of people you should be messing around with, you hear me?”
“I can’t quit. I signed a contract. Besides, it pays well, and I need the money.”
“There’s a lot of other jobs in town.”
I straightened in my seat. “Okay, Mom.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Funny.”
“Can you just please find out why the autopsy wasn’t done? Atticus said Alice pitched a fit. Said she didn’t want her nephew cut up, but if there wasn’t a sting mark, that just doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t she want to know how her nephew died?” Maybe not if she’d killed him, I thought. But how could that be? Buford wasn’t a little guy, and Alice clearly had some kind of medical issue going on so I couldn’t see how she could pull off killing him. Then again, where there was a will, there was always a way, though I had no idea what would make her want to do that.
He sighed. “Maybe he was stung somewhere else?”
“Not according to—”
“The dossier, I know. If I look into it, will you let it lie?”
I promised him I would, but I wasn’t sure that was a promise I could keep, depending on what he found out, at least.
Christopher spent another thirty minutes trying to convince me to quit my job and stay away from Buford’s kin, but I assured him his efforts were futile. Determined to keep my acting skills fresh and set on finding out if there was any truth to what Billy John had said, I fully intended to continue down the path I’d already been walking on. I just didn’t tell him that.
I rushed home, changed into a pair of black leggings, my red cowboy boots, and a heavy sweater, clipped my hair up, and headed back to Alice Mableton’s house. Atticus mentioned everyone gathering there after the funeral refreshments, and he’d asked me to stop by.
I stopped at Buford’s rig to snoop through it before driving over to Alice’s trailer. I’d kept the key, accidentally on purpose, and on impulse, I went inside.
Someone had been there after my last visit and whomever it was had made a mess of the place. Buford’s bed sheets were in shambles, his pillows ripped to shreds, their down feathers lying everywhere. Papers lay strewn across the seats, and everything was left in shambles. Why? I had no idea. Someone purposefully come into Buford’s rig and ransacked it but for what reason?
The passenger door swung open, and Tucker Hyut glared at me. “What’re you doin’ here?”
Crouched in the driver’s seat, I leaned back and crossed my arms over my chest. “I could ask the same of you.” I jutted out my chin and did my best imitation of my fourth-grade music teacher. I did not like my fourth-grade music teacher. She was big and mean and scary.
A vein on Tucker’s forehead pulsed. It ran from between his eyebrows to the base of his hairline, or where his hairline would be if he didn't have that horseshoe hair thing with a ponytail going on to compensate for it. That never looked as good as a man thought, but I sure wasn’t going to be the one to tell Tucker that.
“Buford was my partner, I left a lot of stuff in this rig, and I’m looking for something. You’ve been in here. You take more than just the stuff on that little pull-out table out?” He climbed into the rig and shut the door.
My stomach churned, and my throat dried up like a river during a drought. I had a thing about close spaces to begin with, but tight spaces with menacing men took my somewhat claustrophobic tendencies to an entirely new level. I busied my hands by straightening the papers I’d gathered in them. “I didn’t take anything that didn’t belong to Buford.” At least, not that I knew of.
“What’d you do with it all?”
“It’s at the—I don’t think that’s really any of your business now, is it?”
“I’m looking for something in particular, Ivy.” The way he said my name sent chills down my spine. “How about you let me check?”
“How about you tell me what you’re looking for, and I’ll tell you if I have it?”
A smile formed on his lips and promptly curled into a snarl. “That ain’t the way this here’s gonna work, little girl.” He eyed me up and down. He reached over and tapped my boot with his finger. “I think you know what it is I’m looking for, and I’d like it back.”
I jerked my foot away. “I have no clue what you’re talking about, and I’d like you to leave now.”
“Honey, I ain’t going anywhere until you give me what I came here for.”
A pounding behind me sent me flying toward the scary man. Luckily, I stopped myself before I fell into him. The driver’s side door flung open. “Ivy, what’re you doing in here? Momma’s asking for ya.”
I turned around, and Atticus Mableton winked at me. “Tucker, you don’t need to be hanging out in Buford’s rig. Ain’t nothing here for you now.”
“His fiancée here, I think she’s got something that belongs to me. I’d like it back.”
I glared at Tucker Hyut. “I told you, I don’t have anything that belongs to you.”
“You heard the lady,” Atticus said. He sniffed, and it sounded like a loud duck. I would have laughed, but I thought he probably intended for it to look intimidating, not funny.
Tucker reached behind him, his eyes locked with mine, and slowly opened the rig’s door. “I’ll check back with you later, pretty girl. I’m sure we can find the time to go through those things of Buford’s alone together.” He snarled that same creepy snarl from earlier, and I wanted to curl up into a small ball and roll away.
He climbed out of the truck and sauntered away like he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Don’t let Tucker Hyut scare you. He’s a jerk, but he’s harmless, for the most part, anyway.”
“That’s not what I’ve heard.”
“Yeah, I saw you talking to that cop. What’s his name? Lacy?”
“Christopher Lacy.”
“You know him?”
“Sort of. He knew Buford from The Backwoods.”
“Everyone knew Buford at The Backwoods. We all know of Lacy from there, too.”
“Christopher,” I paused, “Lacy goes there?”
He nodded and helped me climb out of the rig. I locked the door behind me and make sure the rig was completely secured.
“Most of the cops that hang out there don’t because they’re being social. They’re either looking for information on a case, or the owner pays them under the table to keep an eye on things. Probably why Buford never took you there.”
Or because we’d never actually met. “He was very protective of me.”
“I can see that. I’d be protective of you, too.”
Boone wandered up in a pair of ripped up jeans. “Atticus, Momma’s been asking about you. What’re you—” he saw me and cut his question short. “Oh hey.” He held up a hand and waved. “How ya doing?”
&n
bsp; I smiled. “Okay. Just checking on Buford’s things. You know anyone that’s been around here? Since I came by, things are all messed up. I don’t know who’s been in the rig or how many keys there are. I forgot to return the one your momma gave me the other day, so I know no one took that one.” I made eye contact with each of them. “Any idea why someone would come inside and make a mess of things?”
They both gave each other a quick look, then Boone stared at the ground and shrugged.
Atticus finally spoke. “Looks to me like it was probably Tucker. Maybe he’d have a key, and he said he was looking for something inside, so seems like he’d be the one to blame, don’t you think?”
I was inclined to believe him, but watching Boone shift his weight from one foot to the other and refuse to make eye contact with me had me wondering if he knew something Atticus didn’t. “Boone, have you been in there?”
He glanced up at me and then quickly looked away. “Uh, no ma’am.”
Atticus pressed his lips together. “Boone, what’s going on?”
He inhaled a deep breath and closed his eyes. “It ain’t no big deal, Atticus. He just asked me to help him find something of his is all. We looked, but couldn’t find nothing. Momma said she was gonna ask Ivy here to clean out the rig anyway, so I didn’t see no reason to keep it in order or nothing. So, when Tucker asked to get into the truck, I obliged. Figured it was the least I could do for his partner.”
Wait what? Me, clean out the truck?
Atticus asked me for the key to the rig and opened the driver’s side door. He climbed in and checked out the mess and then climbed back out, his face flushed, his lips a single, straight line. “You did this? You and Tucker?”
“No, Atticus. I just knew he was gonna go looking for something. Had me keep a lookout is all.”
Mourning Crisis Page 10