Cowboy Sing Me Home (31 page)

“You mean besides the couple with the
black Pomeranian at the end of the row, who never speak to each other?”

He looked toward the end of the row, where
an older man sat at a picnic table reading a newspaper. “Them?”

Dusty nodded.  “He sits outside all day. 
She comes and goes with the dog.  They never speak.  They don’t even look at
each other.”

“Retirement must not be going according to
plan.”

“It looks pretty much like your average
trailer park.  A few families, some middle-aged retirees.  You looking for
anything in particular?”

He sighed and tightened his grip on her,
grateful to have her to hang on to.  When the thought intruded that he wasn’t
going to have her there much longer, he pushed it aside.  “I don’t know what
exactly I’m looking for.  Just suspicious things.”

She stepped back and he let her go. 
“Sorry, can’t help you there.”

“When I picked up your tire at Johnny’s,
he said he’d had a bunch of flats with nails and wood screws in them lately. 
I’m going to do down to the Hammond’s and take a look around.  You want to come
with me?”

“The Hammond’s is the place at the bottom
of the hill with all the kids, right?”

“That’s right.”

“The ones who put clothes on a dead tree
stump.”

“The one and only.”

She thought a minute.  “What the heck.  I
have time to play Nancy Drew this morning.”

He drove slowly along the shoulder of the
road to the bottom of the hill, scanning the road and passing the Hammond’s
house by a few hundred yards, then circled back and did the same on the other
lane.  “I didn’t see anything in the road.”

“Me either.”

“I don’t know what I’m looking for, so
that kind of hinders my detective abilities,” Luke said as he pulled into the
Hammond’s drive.

Nate Hammond had his head under the hood
of a four-dour sedan when Luke and Dusty got out of the pickup.  He raised it
and gave them a wave.

“Hey Luke.  How’s the leg?”

“Hurts,” Luke said.  “Nate, this is
Dusty.  Dusty, Nate.”

“I know who she is,” Nate said with a grin
and a nod to Dusty.  He laid the wrench in his hand on the engine. “Me and
Julie came out to the dance last week, and we’re going again tomorrow night. 
You put on a real good show.  It’s nice to meet you.”

Dusty returned the greeting, and Luke
said, “If I had a brother who was a mechanic, it’d be his head under the hood,
and not mine.”

“That joker actually expects me to pay him
to work on my cars.”

“He’s never heard of nepotism?”

“Apparently not.  What brings you two down
here?”

“I was wondering if you had any problems
with running over nails on the highway out here.”

Nate shook his head.  “Not me, but I know
Freddie Mack ran over one last week, just down the road a ways.  And Jolena
Marcus had another one yesterday.  But I ain’t had no problems.” 

Two boys came up and started climbing on
the fenders of the sedan.  “Your mama sees you climbing on her car, she’s gonna
skin you both.”  He cocked his head at Luke.  “You suspecting vandals or
something?”

“I’m not sure what I suspect.  We’ve had
an awful lot of people here lately with nails in their tires, all on the same
stretch of road.  I just made a pass by down there and didn’t see anything.” 
Luke felt foolish, like a boy scout on a child’s mystery, while the big boys
were out solving the real crimes.  “Missing one coincidence has already gotten
me shot. I don’t want to fall for another one.”

“What’s vandals, Daddy?” one of the boys
asked.

“That’s when folks go around tearing up
stuff.  Like spray painting fences and turning over garbage cans.”

“Oh.”  The two boys looked at each other.

Luke looked at Dusty, and she bit her lip
to hide a grin.

“Is vandals illegal?” the other boy asked.

“Highly,” Nate said.  “Texas prisons are
overrun with vandals.  Why? You ain’t done nothing Mr. Tanner’s going to have
to haul you in for, have you?”

Both books shook their heads so hard their
eyes twitched.

“Good,” Nate said solemnly.  “I’d hate to
have to lose you two.  You’re some of the best kids I got.”

“I’m gonna go in now,” the bigger boy
said.
            “Me too.”

They watched the boys stir up dust as they
beat it into the house. 

“Damn it,” Nate said with a sigh.

“You shouldn’t have said that about me
hauling them in. They’re going to be too scared now to give us the story.”  He
laughed.  “You ready to go in and put the squeeze on them?”

“Heck no.  They need a little time to
panic and reflect on the error of their ways.  Let their imaginations terrify
them for a while.  Come on, I’ve got some cold Cokes hidden in the fridge out
in the barn.”

They stood in the shade of the barn and
drank their Cokes while Nate told Dusty different scrapes Luke had gotten into
when they were kids, all of which Luke insisted were highly exaggerated.  When
they’d finished, Nate said, “That ought to be long enough.  If I know Billy
Dale, he’s already got a little hobo knapsack packed and is ready to run away
and ride the rails.  We’ll lean on Jimmy Wayne first.  He’ll cave and rat on
his brother.”

It turned out they didn’t have to lean on
anybody.  As soon as Nate opened the boys’ bedroom door and gave them the old
as time you’re-in-for-it-now look, Jimmy Wayne, from his position on the top
bunk of their bunk beds, pointed at his brother and said, “It was his idea. 
All I did was right down the distances.”

“You fink,” Billy Dale said.  He dropped
the backpack he was stuffing and slumped on the bottom bunk.

Nate pulled up a chair at the boys’ desk
for Dusty, and he sat on the desk while Luke crossed his arms and leaned on the
doorjamb.  “Okay boys, let’s have it.”

“It wasn’t vandals,” Billy Dale insisted. 
“At least, it wasn’t supposed to be.  I was just doing an experiment.”

“What kind of bone-headed experiment are
you doing, going around giving people flat tires?”

“I just wanted to see what would make a
tire go flat the fastest.”  Billy Dale’s lip trembled.

“Well?  Did you answer this crucial,
burning question?”

“Wood screw,” Billy Dale said miserably.

“Ten penny nails don’t do hardly nothing,”
Jimmy Wayne piped up from his lofty position.  “Thelma Carson drove around with
on for almost a full week before hers went flat.”

Luke had to bite the inside of his check
hard to keep from laughing out loud.  He didn’t dare look at Dusty.

“How do you know all this?”

“We checked with Uncle Johnny to see who
was bringing in flats to be fixed.”

“And how many people have you done this
to?”

Billy Dale looked at Jimmy Wayne, and a
silent question passed between them.  Then Billy Dale reached under the bed and
pulled out a spiral notebook.  He counted silently, then lifted his head and
said, “Twelve.  But we ain’t heard from Betty Wells yet.  She’s got that kind
of tire that seals itself, though, I think.”

Nate took a deep breath and leaned back in
his chair, his hands on his thighs.  “Why in the world would you do this kind
of experiment?”

“Because I was bored.  Mama said to get
out of the house and quit watching so much television.”

“Billy Dale, you caused those folks a lot
of inconvenience.  They had to stop by the side of the highway and change a
flat in the heat.  What if one of them was on the way to something important,
and you made them late?  What if some old man got out there and had a heart
attack in the heat?”

“That one guy almost did,” Jimmy Wayne
said.   “He was jumping around and cussing like you ain’t never heard.”

“Which guy?” Nate asked.

“The one that shot Mr. Tanner.”

Luke’s blood went cold.  Had Derek Broeker
been near these boys?  “What did he look like?”

Jimmy Wayne wrinkled his nose.  “You know
what he looks like, you arrested him.  He had dark hair and that funny little
beard thing, and his pants were all wrinkled like he found ‘em on the bottom of
the closet floor.”

Luke breathed again.  That wasn’t Broeker,
that was just Kenny. 

“You should have seen him when he saw you
coming.”  Jimmy Wayne scooted to the edge of the bed, his eyes wide.  “He
screamed like a girl.  And he ran like a girl, too.”

Luke frowned.  Kenny hadn’t run.  He’d
been nervous and fidgety and about to trip over his own feet, but he hadn’t
run, not until the night he escaped from jail.  Had the boys seen him after
that?

“When did he run?”

“Right when he saw you coming over the
hill.  When he screamed.”

Luke shook his head.  “He didn’t run.  He
was there when I pulled up.”

“He did
too
.”  Jimmy Wayne’s lower
lip stuck out and he slid off the bed and took the notebook from Billy Dale.
“See, it says right here.”  His grubby finger found a line in the notebook,
written in pencil in crooked block letters.  “See, it says, ‘subject saw the
Deputy come over the hill, then he screamed like a girl, then he ran like a
girl up to Henry and stuck something in his vest, then he ran like a girl back
to his car, then he stood there acting like he had to pee real bad.’”  Jimmy Wayne
cast a quick look at Dusty.  “I had forgot about that last part,” he said
quietly.

“Henry?”  Luke was starting to get a
headache.  “Oh, the tree stump.”

“Yeah, he ran over to him and then ran
back to the car.  He tripped on the way back and Billy Dale started laughing at
him.  I thought he was gonna hear us.”

Luke looked at the ceiling.  “Was he
hiding something in the tree stump?”

“Oh yeah.”  Billy Dale’s head bobbed.  “He
hid something in his vest.”

“What?”

The boy shrugged. “Nothing worth messing with. 
Just a flash drive that don’t work.  It won’t open in the laptop or in the
computer in the den.”

“Where is it?” Nate asked before Luke had
a chance to.

            “Is it in the den?” Billy Dale looked at
Jimmy Wayne.  Jimmy Wayne nodded.

            The group sat staring at each other until
Nate threw up his hands. “Well?  Go get it!”

            The boys bumped into each other in their
scramble to get out the door.  Nate groaned and rubbed his forehead.  “You want
a couple of kids?”

            Nate took the drive when Billy Dale
brought it back, and handed it to Luke.  Luke studied it, but couldn’t tell
anything except it was, in fact, a drive that plugged into a USB port on a
computer.

            “Okay, tell me how it went again,” Luke
said.

            “Are you gonna haul us in?” Jimmy Wayne
asked.  He thrust his chin out, but after a second his lower lip started to
tremble again.

            Luke rubbed his chin as if in thought. 
“Well, it’s regarded as normal operating procedure to offer a lesser sentence
if a suspect is willing to cooperate with an investigation.  And if the suspect
does truly regret his actions and can prove he is willing to cease his criminal
behavior.”

            “Huh?” both boys said.

            “If you answer all his questions, and
promise not to put any more nails in the road, he’ll probably just call it
even,” Dusty said.

            “Oh.  Okay.”

            Luke had the boys talk him through it
again. When they were through, he said, “And no one else was with him?”

            The boys shook their heads.

            “Have you seen anyone else down there you
don’t know, any other strange men?”

            “By Henry?  Yeah, there was another guy. 
And old guy, about y’all’s age,” Jimmy Wayne said. “He was looking at Henry,
too.  He cussed, too.  He had black hair and it looks like Grampa’s, all
slicked back.  We didn’t give him a flat, though.  He just stopped to look at Henry,
I guess.”

            “That sounds like Wayne.  He was looking
at Henry?  Did he go up to him, or just look?”

            “Oh, he went up to him.  He was tearing up
his vest that Mama made.  I told him to get his hands off.”

            “You talked to him?” all three adults said
at once.

            “He was tearing up Henry’s suit!  You know
how mad Mama gets when people mess with Henry’s clothes.”

            Nate groaned.  “This just keeps getting
better.  Okay, Billy Dale, what did you say to him?”

            “I just told him to get his hands off
Henry.  I knew he was looking for that thing, and I was gonna give it to him. 
Except he called me an ignorant hillbilly.  So I decided to keep it.”

            “Did you tell him you had it?”

            Billy Dale grinned and shook his head. 
“He asked me if I had seen it, and I told him I was too ignorant to know.  Then
I ran off.”