Hell With the Lid Blown Off Page 19

  Jubal’s body had been…where? Like Trent she had not seen the place where he came to rest, somewhere between Boynton and this farm on the path of the tornado. She was trying to triangulate the location on the map with her fingers when Grace cried, “Gee! Ma and me are drawing.”

  Alafair looked up, startled, to see Gee Dub standing in the kitchen door. Was it that late? “Why, there you are, son. My, I’ve lost track of time! Are your daddy and Charlie coming in?”

  Gee Dub’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “They’ll be right along, but I’d rather supper was late than stop y’all from finishing your works of art.”

  Alafair leaped to her feet and hollered out the back door for the girls to put away their playthings and come set the table, while Gee Dub admired Grace’s masterpiece. When she came back inside, Grace was on her brother’s lap and Gee Dub was studying Trent’s map. “What is this?”

  Alafair told him. “Trent was thinking that Jubal Beldon could have died anywhere along this storm track and then got picked up by the wind and deposited where you found him. But Jubal had to have lain dead somewhere all day Monday, somewhere off the beaten path or somebody would have found him.”

  Gee Dub nodded and looked back at the drawing. “Not exactly to scale, is it?”

  “You were the one who found Jubal’s body, son. Where exactly was it?”

  “Well, I can’t say for sure, Mama. It was dark as sin and I was lost. But I did run into Mr. Eichelberger right beforehand. And when us boys were clearing the road the next day, I did notice that there is a fallow field not too far back of his house. So upon reflection, if I had to guess I’d say right about…here.”

  “Out in this field here, halfway between our house and town as the crow flies? Behind the Eichelberger place?”

  “That’s right.” Something about her tone gave him pause. He shifted Grace on his knee. “What are you thinking, Ma?”

  Her countenance was the picture of innocence when she looked up at him. “Nothing. What do you mean?”

  “Mama, you know what Dad would say.” He put on a stern expression and came out with a fair approximation of his father’s voice. “Alafair, I do wish that just one time you’d leave the work of the law to the lawmen.”

  Alafair laughed at that. “Oh, honey, I’m just ruminating out loud. Jubal Beldon’s death, whether it was murder or just an accident, has nothing to do with me or mine. So I don’t intend to involve myself.”

  Gee Dub smiled. He had heard that declaration before. “Just in case, I won’t mention your rumination to Dad.” He and Grace went out onto the back porch to wash up for dinner and Alafair turned to clear the table, but her eye returned to Trent’s map and she found her finger moving over Jubal Beldon’s known route on Sunday.

  Late Sunday afternoon he had left the Masonic Hall in Boynton and chauffeured his mother and sister home. Then a couple of hours later he appeared at the Rusty Horseshoe with a wad of cash. He left an hour or so later and was not seen again that night. Then twenty-four hours later, his storm-violated body was found in the middle of a field three miles from his last known location.

  Where did he get that money? It only made sense to Alafair that he had extorted hush money from one of the many people whose secrets he had threatened to expose. Someone with a very, very bad secret. Not like what he had threatened to say about Ruth—that was schoolyard bully stuff that no one who knew Ruth would believe. Ruth had told her mother that one of Marva Welsh’s relatives had been a victim of Jubal’s evil tongue. That was a frightening idea, for rumor and innuendo could do a colored family real harm. But as far as she knew, the Welshes didn’t have that kind of money. No, it had to involve someone who could pay. A really horrendous piece of information, something that would ruin a person’s life. Maybe even send him to prison.

  Her conversation with Ruth about the love between Wallace and his friend popped into her mind. Could Jubal have gotten the money from Wallace in exchange for silence about an illicit relationship between the two young men? After all, Randal and Wallace and Miz Beckie had all left town without warning that very night.

  But Jubal was seen alive at the Rusty Horseshoe after he got the money. And Randal and Wallace had come back to town after the storm. Not the action of killers on the run.

  Suppose that Jubal had shaken down Wallace and in the process discovered that blackmail was a lot more satisfying—and lucrative—than simple bullying. It was so easy to make them pay and run them out of town to boot. Why not capitalize on the rest of his cache of secrets?

  She conjured the scene in her mind. Jubal sitting in the dark at the Rusty Horseshoe, counting his immoral gains, making a plan to squeeze someone else. Someone who, as it turned out, was not so easily intimidated.

  Her finger moved on the map. From the roadhouse back to town, east. Or from the roadhouse northeast, to the crossroads. To Eichelberger’s, right in path of the storm.

  She heard Shaw and Charlie clattering and laughing as they came up the back porch steps and she swept the papers off the table with a mutter of self-reproach. Supper was going to be a makeshift meal tonight.

  Trenton Calder

  I went over to Scott’s as soon as I got back to town and told him what I had found out from Mr. Dills. He was real interested in Dan’s story about Jubal waving around a wad of money at the roadhouse that night, because his trouser pockets were empty when Gee Dub brought his body in on Monday night. Scott wondered where he had got hold of so much money, and what had happened to it. I pointed out that except for the pants, the wind had carried away every stitch of Jubal’s clothes, so folks around the area might be digging dollar bills out of the bushes for a long while to come.

  Then Scott’s eyebrows about crawled up to the top of his head when I got to the part about Hosea showing up at the roadhouse right after Jubal left.

  “And Dills told Hosea that Jubal had been there?”

  “That’s what Dills told me,” I said.

  “Well, then I figure you and me had better make another trip out to Beldons’ tomorrow and have a further word with Hosea.”

  That suited me. Then Hattie said I might as well stay for supper, which suited me even better.

  Spike, the only one of Scott and Hattie’s four boys who still lived at home, talked up a blue streak all the way through the meal, about how he’d been helping folks in town clean up their yards and mend their fences and outbuildings. He said that Mr. and Miz Ogle had lost all their guinea hens and that Jerome Reiger’s little dog had got crushed by a tree branch. Hattie told me about how her and all the church ladies had been gathering clothes and home-canned goods for them who had lost so much in the twister. She said that they had about run out of soap and candles and bedding at the mercantile, and she didn’t know when they’d be able to get more in.

  I related everything I had found out at the Tucker and Lukenbach farms, and Hattie peppered me with all kinds of questions about that little lost baby and John Lee Day’s broken leg. Scott hardly said a word. He was acting real quiet and occupied all evening and I knew he was working things out in his mind, but none of us questioned him about it. I knew he was tired and discomposed by all the destruction and misery of late.

  When I went to walk back to the hotel, though, he hollered at Hattie that he needed to stretch his legs. Then he grabbed his hat and followed me out of the house.

  We strolled down the street in silence for a spell, until we were almost to the turn off onto Main. “Trent, I wonder if you’d help me with something?” he asked, which surprised me. He never did usually ask, but just told me what he wanted me to do. Of course I would, I told him, which is when he commenced to telling me about the wound on Jubal Beldon’s horse. I listened, though I didn’t get the point and he didn’t bother to explain it to me. What he did say was, “I want you to come with me to the stable and help me figure something out.”

  So we walked on through
the hotel foyer and out into the back where the stable for the guests was. Old Brownie was munching away on his oats and didn’t look too happy when Scott backed him out of the stall and threw his saddle on. I just stood there and watched.

  Scott handed me the reins. “Go ahead and mount up.”

  I did. “Where am I going?” I asked.

  “Nowhere. Just sit there.” Scott came up on my left side and stood there for the longest time peering at my leg like he had never seen one before. He put his left index finger on the middle of my thigh and the right one on Brownie’s flank just behind the saddle skirt, like he was measuring.

  I was pretty bewildered by then. “All right, Scott, what are you doing?”

  He let out a big breath and stepped back before he looked up at me. “I reckon I know what happened to Jubal Beldon,” he said.

  Scott Tucker

  Trent looked down on Scott with pricked ears as Scott theorized about Jubal Beldon’s demise. “Jubal had a stab wound in his left thigh, Trent. Now, considering how busted up he was, it just makes sense to figure that the puncture came from some flying debris. But Mr. Lee told me it was a neat wound with clean edges, an inch wide, and whatever made it sliced the big blood vessel in the thigh. He’d of bled to death within a couple of minutes. No way to prove it was a knife that cut him, though. Except that his horse had an identical wound on the hip; clean edges, about an inch wide.” He put his hands on his hips and started wandering around the stable, thinking aloud as he walked. “I figure Jubal was on horseback, just like you are, maybe talking to somebody standing on the ground. And that somebody plunged a blade into his thigh…”

  Without warning, Scott ran at Trent and whacked him in the thigh with his fist. Trent yelped, and the horse, startled, shied away. Scott looked satisfied. “…and then he tried to stab him again, but the horse shied and he ended up stabbing the horse instead. So I reckon that if Jubal hadn’t of died of the broken neck he got when his horse reared and throwed him on his head, he’d of died of a knife wound in the leg.” He looked up at Trent, who was patting Brownie’s neck to calm him down.

  “It makes sense,” Trent admitted. “The thing is, though, that how Jubal died is one thing and who made him die is another.”

  Scott agreed. “I’d give a bunch to know who he was going to see that night. ’Cause whoever it was is my main suspect. After what you told him about Hosea showing up at the Rusty Horseshoe, I have a picture in my mind of the two brothers meeting on a dark road late Sunday night. So early tomorrow morning we’re riding back to the Beldon farm.”

  Mildrey Beldon

  When Scott and his deputy arrived at the Beldon place, only Mildrey was in the house, so Scott took the opportunity to let her know what was happening before they sought out Hosea. She had planned to go into Boynton and claim Jubal’s body for burial that day, but Scott told her that under the circumstances, she would do well to wait a day or so. All the other boys were out causing trouble somewhere, so Scott, Trent, and Mildrey were the only three occupying her warm, fragrant kitchen. Lovelle was in the parlor, playing with her doll. Mildrey served her guests coffee and biscuits, but as soon as she sat down Scott dispensed with the pleasantries and got right to the nib of the matter.

  “Miz Beldon,” he said, “I have some disturbing news. I know how it was that your son died.”

  Mildrey didn’t seem surprised. It was more like she was exasperated that her dead boy was still causing her trouble. “You know how he was murdered?”

  “I believe I have figured out the malicious act that led to his death, yes, ma’am. But whether it was meant to be murder is another question. So I have to ask you again to think back on the last time you saw Jubal alive. Think hard, now. Do you have any idea where he was going that Sunday night or who he was planning to see? Even a guess would help.”

  She shrugged before she answered. Scott noted that she didn’t bother to ask about the manner of Jubal’s murder. “I don’t, Sheriff. I’m sorry. Like I told you before, all them boys come and go as they please and don’t feel the need to tell me about it.”

  Now it was Scott’s turn to look exasperated. “Tell me everything that happened on Sunday as best as you can remember it. I don’t care if you think it’s important or not.”

  Mildrey sat back in her chair and thought about it for a while before she began. It started out like a usual Sunday, she said. She told Scott about fixing breakfast and cleaning it up, then getting herself and Lovelle prettied up for church. She hunted around for Jubal and talked him into ferrying her and Lovelle into town. Same thing every week, she sighed. He usually grumbled at the bother. But he always ended up driving them there, dropping them off, then coming back to pick them up. She told them every picayune detail of the church service and the picnic and how nice everybody was to her. Scott could tell that Trent was becoming impatient with Mildrey’s endless recitation, but the sheriff let her ramble. He figured that she had little enough opportunity to reminisce about something in her life that was actually pleasant. He sat quietly, sipping coffee and listening as though every word was of grave consequence.

  Scott and Trent had both been at the picnic and had witnessed the altercation between Jubal and Wallace MacKenzie, such as it was, so that tale didn’t surprise them. Mildrey told them that Jubal brought her and Lovelle home at maybe four or five o’clock. “When we got back he grabbed Caleb by the collar and made him take the buggy to the barn. Then him and Hosea argued a while out in the barnyard, and after a while he saddled up his roan and lit out again before supper.”

  “What did Jubal and Hosea argue about?” Scott asked.

  “I didn’t pay no mind, but I think it was the usual scrape about how Hosea didn’t want to do something Jubal told him to. Them two argue all the time. There wasn’t anything unusual about it, Sheriff.”

  She stopped talking then, but Scott said, “Is that all that happened that day?”

  Mildrey shrugged again. “That’s the last I ever saw Jubal. I fixed supper like I always do. Hezikiah, Hosea, and Caleb showed up to eat it. Zadok and Ephraim went fishing so they didn’t. They came home later with a mess of catfish for me to clean. Right about dark that MacKenzie boy and his friend drove by looking for Jubal. But he wasn’t here so they talked to Hosea a minute and left. Right after that Hosea went off somewhere. I heard him come back into the house sometime in the middle of the night.”

  The minute she mentioned “that MacKenzie boy” Scott jerked up straight in his chair so fast that his coffee slopped out of his cup and all over his hand. “Wallace MacKenzie came by here that night?”

  He asked the question a little too loudly and Mildrey’s eyes widened. “Yes, sir, him and that dark-haired boy who was with him at the picnic. They were driving Miz MacKenzie’s yellow-topped shay. But like I said, Jubal was gone already so they only stayed but a minute.”

  Scott was thinking, Why in the name of all that’s holy didn’t you mention this in the first place, woman? But he didn’t say it. He said, “What did they want with Jubal?”

  Mildrey looked nervous, now. “I don’t know. Once I told them Jubal wasn’t to home and I didn’t know where he went, they drove up to the barn to talk to Hosea. I saw them head out back toward town not ten minutes after that.”

  “And you didn’t ask Hosea what it was all about?”

  “Well, like I said, Hosea saddled up and took off not long after that and I didn’t see him again until the next morning. By that time I had forgot the whole thing. I’m sorry I don’t know no more, Mr. Tucker. Do you think the MacKenzie lad killed Jubal?”

  Scott took a breath before he answered. It was no use to get aggravated at the poor woman. She had trouble enough. “I don’t know, Miz Beldon, but because of the way Jubal died, my conjecture is that he met somebody on the road that night. Until you told me about MacKenzie, I had no idea that he was anywhere around here that night. Now, how long after Jubal l
eft did MacKenzie show up here?”

  “It was a quite a while. Two, three hours?”

  “And how long after that before Hosea left?”

  “Not long. I saw him ride by the house maybe a quarter hour later.”

  Scott stood up. So did Trent and Mildrey, ready to hop to it if Scott said “jump.” Scott was suddenly afire with purpose and neither one of them thought it wise to cross him. “Where is Hosea now?” he demanded. “I got to talk to him.”

  “Last I saw him he was heading up the hill toward the barn,” she said.

  Scott slammed his hat on. “Come on, Trent. Miz Beldon, don’t go anywhere till we come back.”

  “I don’t aim to, Sheriff,” she assured him.

  Trenton Calder

  Hosea saw us coming from a long way off, but he didn’t bestir himself to come down the hill to meet us. Instead he sat down on an upturned barrel and commenced to whittling on a stick. We had to get pretty close before I could see that he was carving out one of them little whistles.

  Scott put his hands on his hips when Hosea didn’t even look up after we stopped in front of him. I could tell that Scott was put out. He never did hold with rude behavior. “Hosea,” he said. Hosea shook the shavings off his little whistle and looked up at Scott from under his hat brim. His expression wasn’t friendly.

  “What do you want, Sheriff?”

  “I come about your brother.”

  “Which one?

  “You know which one. We’re here because I have a notion that Jubal met with aggression on the road the night he died.”

  “That so? Well, it wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “I been talking to your ma and she tells me that Wallace MacKenzie come by here looking for Jubal a couple of hours after he left here on Sunday evening.”

  Hosea looked interested in the implications of that question. “Yes, he did, him and that friend of his. He asked me where Jubal went off to, and I told him I didn’t know, just like I told you.”