Disturbing the Dead (13 page)

Chapter Seventeen

“Let me handle him,” Tom warned Brandon as they approached the Watford house. “I need to question Bonnie before we jump all over Jack.”

“The son of a bitch,” Brandon muttered. His grip on the steering wheel tightened until his knuckles went white. “Trying to drag Holly off, like she hasn’t got a say in her own life.”

He swung the cruiser into the driveway and the tires slid on wet gravel before gaining traction. The Watfords lived up the road from Sarelda Turner, in a clapboard bungalow painted pearl gray. Smoke twisted from the brick chimney and danced in the wind before whirling away with the snow flurries. The most striking thing about the house, to Tom’s eyes, was the presence of immaculate white shutters at every window. Most people out this way didn’t bother with routine maintenance, much less decorative touches like shutters.

Watford opened the front door before Tom and Brandon reached it. “Hey. What can I do for you?”

Tom almost smiled at the mental image of Rachel bringing down this sturdy, barrel-chested guy. He’d give anything to have seen it. “We just need to ask you a few questions.”

“Yeah, sure.” Watford stepped out on the porch and spoke quietly. “My wife, she’s got bad nerves, and she’s havin’ a hard time dealin’ with all this. I’m takin’ time off so I can stay home and help her. Go easy, will you?” He stepped back to let them pass.

Bonnie stood by the fireplace, winding a dishtowel around her hands. She bobbed her head in answer to their greetings. “How’s your arm feelin’?”

“Better,” Tom said. “I appreciate y’all helping me out yesterday.”

The furniture in the small room was plain but looked new, and it might look that way forever if the clear plastic covers stayed on. Watford and his wife sat on the green sofa, Tom and Brandon took matching easy chairs facing the couple, and for a moment the only sound was the crinkle of plastic under everybody’s weight.

“I know you’ve probably expected the worst about Pauline all along,” Tom said to Bonnie, “but it must be a shock to have it confirmed.”

Up close, he saw that her husband hadn’t exaggerated her emotional state. She had the exhausted, puffy-faced look of someone who’d been crying off and on for days. Her eyelashes stuck together in wet clumps. “It’s been awful,” she answered in a near-whisper.

“I’m sure it has. Were you and Pauline very close?”

“Not after she got married.”

“We moved to Pittsburgh,” Watford said. “Lived up there for a few years, so we wasn’t even here for a long time. Her husband didn’t want nothin’ to do with Pauline’s family anyway. We never got invited for supper, if you know what I mean.”

“She was doin’ what she needed to,” Bonnie said, “so she could keep hold of what she had.”

“Her husband died six years before she disappeared,” Tom pointed out. “Didn’t his death change anything?”

Neither answered. Watford watched the fire in the grate, Bonnie studied the terrycloth dishtowel in her hands. Tom imagined they’d been envious of Pauline’s luck in snagging a McClure, and resentful because she lived in a mansion while they lived in the county’s poorest district. “Maybe she was afraid her family would ask her for money.”

Watford shot to his feet. “We never went beggin’ to her for money. I work for what I’ve got, always have.” When Tom didn’t respond, Watford seemed driven to fill the silence. “I had a good job in a steel mill in Pittsburgh, and ever since we come back here I’ve been deliverin’ furnace oil. I don’t ask nobody for nothin’.”

On the sofa, Bonnie had begun to weep. “I just wanted to see her now and then,” she murmured. “But Pauline treated me like poison.”

Watford sat down and gathered her into his arms. He threw a resentful look at Tom, clearly blaming him for the tears.

Tom waited for Bonnie to cry herself out. What was she mourning? A lost sister who wanted nothing to do with her, lost opportunities for a close family? When she was composed and had pulled away from her husband, Tom asked, “Why did you and your sister Jean go see Pauline the week she disappeared?”

“Mama wasn’t feelin’ too well,” Bonnie said, “and we were tryin’ to get Pauline to pay her a visit.”

“Did she?”

Bonnie shook her head and ran a thumb along a stripe in the dishtowel.

Maybe bluntness would prod these two into speaking more openly. “Pauline sounds like a selfish woman who didn’t care about anything but money and her big house.”

Tom wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but he got silence and a total absence of visible reaction. He pushed it farther. “I’ve heard she slept with a lot of men, and her husband might not have been the real father of her daughter.”

They both winced. “Her new life meant too much to her,” Bonnie said. “She wouldn’t take a chance on losin’ it all by runnin’ around on her husband.” She paused and bit her lip. “But Pauline always did like the company of men better’n women, so I’m sure she had her men friends after her husband died.”

A ripple of apprehension ran through Tom. He forced himself to ask, “Do you know of anybody in particular she was involved with?”

“I couldn’t name any names.”

Her glance touched him briefly, and a glint of something in her eyes, at once mocking and pitying, turned him cold inside. Tom recalled the sly look Mrs. Turner had given him when she’d mentioned his father. These people knew about his father’s relationship with Pauline. The thought brought a sour taste to his throat.

He rose and took half a dozen steps to the fireplace, where he gave studious attention to the line of photos on the mantel. Four young men and a young woman. They looked like teenagers, and the photos appeared to be bland studio portraits made on picture day at school. “Are these your children?”

“Yeah,” Watford said. “When they was in high school.”

“I like to be reminded of when we had them all at home,” Bonnie said.

With a little laugh, Watford said, “She would’ve kept them babies if she could’ve.”

His teasing didn’t go down well with his wife, Tom noticed. Tears pooled in Bonnie’s eyes again and she dabbed at them with the dishtowel.

“Do they live around here?” Tom asked.

“No,” Watford said with a note of regret. “They’re all over the country. California, Wisconsin, Texas.”

“Were your sons living here when Pauline disappeared?”

Watford stiffened and his eyes turned wary. “No. They was grown up and gone by then. I hope you’re not thinkin’ one of them had somethin’ to do with—”

“I’m only trying to get everybody straight in my mind.” Tom did some quick calculations, based on what he’d read about Bonnie in the case notes. She’d been in her thirties when Pauline disappeared. If her sons were adults by then, she’d started having babies when she was sixteen or seventeen at the latest. A baby a year, probably. No wonder she looked so worn out. She’d probably been worn out by the time she was twenty.

He picked up the photo of their daughter as a teenager. Although heavy makeup coated her face like a mask, the Turner family resemblance was unmistakable in her features and the long black hair. She looked familiar in another way too, as if he’d known her or seen her in the past. They’d probably been in high school at the same time. “This is Amy? Where is she now?”

The couple exchanged glances. A moment passed before Watford answered Tom with a grudging, “South Carolina.”

“Where in South Carolina? I’d like to talk to her.”

“Listen,” Watford said. “We want to help, but we’re not tellin’ you how to get in touch with Amy. Not if you’re gonna talk to her the way you been talkin’ to us. Her husband’s in bad shape from a car wreck, and Amy’s run ragged lookin’ after him and the kids too, and tryin’ to get their insurance to pay up. We didn’t even tell her yet about Pauline bein’ found. She was real fond of Pauline. She don’t need you upsettin’ her when she’s got enough to worry about.”

Tom returned to his chair. “I’ve been told Amy visited Pauline right before Pauline disappeared,” Tom said. “Your daughter might have seen or heard something that’ll help in the investigation. I won’t know till I talk to her.”

Watford shook his head. “She’s never mentioned anything. She was confounded like the rest of us about what happened. You leave her alone.”

Bonnie touched her husband’s hand and said tentatively, “Maybe if we broke the news to her first—”

“That’s fine with me,” Tom said. “Let me know when she’s ready to talk to me.”

Bonnie nodded. Her husband’s stubborn expression didn’t change. Tom was betting on Watford to win the inevitable argument after he and Brandon left.

“Where is Holly’s mother now?” Tom asked Bonnie.

“Oh, I couldn’t tell you where Jeannie is. She moves around.”

“Why didn’t she take Holly with her when she left home?” Brandon asked. “What kind of a mother leaves her little kid for somebody else to raise?”

Tom was startled by Brandon’s vehemence, but intrigued by the reaction it provoked in Bonnie. Her tears spilled over again and drenched her cheeks. “A bad mother, that’s what kind.” She pressed a hand to her mouth to hold back sobs.

“Honey, come on now.” Watford patted her shoulder and threw a baleful look at Brandon and Tom. “Holly’s been better off with her grandma. Jeannie would’ve dragged her all over creation.”

“Jean left before the Sheriff’s Department had a chance to question her about Pauline’s disappearance,” Tom said. “Was she running away from the police?”

Bonnie blotted her tear-streaked face with the dishtowel. “What are you accusin’ my little sister of?”

Tom doubted Jean Turner had killed Pauline and the nameless victim—this didn’t look like a female crime to him, and he didn’t see how a small woman could have carried two bodies to the mountaintop—but she might have been involved somehow. Especially if her lover, Shackleford, had done the killing. “We’re looking at every possibility.”

“It oughta be clear enough by now that Rudy O’Dell done it,” Watford said. “He damned near killed you too, didn’t he?”

“O’Dell’s a suspect,” Tom said, “but he’s not the only one. How well do you know him?”

Watford gave a sneering laugh. “A hell of a lot better’n I want to. He’s a sneaky little bastard. I caught him outside here one night, lookin’ in the window at Bonnie. He, uh—” Watford cleared his throat. “He had his pants down, if you know what I mean.”

Bonnie averted her face, her cheeks flaming.

Evidently O’Dell wasn’t a hermit after all. “When was this?” Tom asked.

“Late last summer.”

“Did you report it?”

Watford shook his head. “Naw. I hauled his ass out to the road and told him if I caught him on my property again, I’d put a bullet in him.”

He would shoot O’Dell for peeking in a window and masturbating, but hadn’t acted on his belief that O’Dell murdered Pauline? “Did he ever do anything, say anything to make you think he killed Pauline?”

“He was wild about her,” Bonnie said. “He went around tellin’ people she loved him and she was gonna ask him to come live with her. It was pure craziness. Pauline never would’ve…you know…with somebody like him.”

Watford nodded. “We figure he went too far with her, and she put him in his place, and he went over the edge.”

That made sense to Tom. O’Dell’s attack on him and Brandon reinforced the appearance of guilt. But where did Shackleford fit in? Tom’s instincts were screaming that the man was in this up to his neck. “You don’t think Troy Shackleford could have done it?”

“She wasn’t robbed,” Watford said. “Troy don’t do nothin’ except for money.”

“Rudy O’Dell killed my sister,” Bonnie said. “You got to find him and put him behind bars. I’m afraid he’s gonna go after little Holly, ’cause she looks so much like Pauline. He’s already been botherin’ her.”

“What?” Brandon said. He was on the edge of his seat. “What’s he been doing to Holly?”

“Snoopin’,” Watford said. “I went by my mother-in-law’s house a couple weeks back, and I spotted him in the trees across the road. He had his old binoculars, and he was watchin’ Holly. She was playin’ with the dogs in the front yard. He claimed he was lookin’ at birds, but he was watchin’ Holly.”

“Son of a bitch,” Brandon muttered. He scrubbed his palms on his pants legs.

Tom made a mental note to have another talk with Brandon about Holly. “Then it’s a good thing Holly’s moved. O’Dell won’t be able to find her. Unless somebody tells him where she is. And by the way, I don’t want you causing another uproar at the animal hospital.”

Watford jumped up and stalked over to the fireplace. He poked at the logs, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney, but his gaze slid back toward Tom as if he were trying to gauge how much Tom knew. Watford seemed the kind of man who wouldn’t forgive a woman for getting the better of him in a physical contest and couldn’t stand having other men know about it.

“Are we clear?” Tom asked.

Watford coughed. “I think she—the vet, I guess she was—made too much of it. I wasn’t doin’ nothin’ except tellin’ Holly her grandma wanted her back home.”

“Holly wants to stay where she is.”

Watford stabbed a log with the poker and the wood popped and blazed. “The girl’s got obligations to her family.”

Suddenly Brandon was on his feet and in the man’s face. “She’s got a right to live her own life, and you don’t have anything to say about it.”