House on Diablo Road: Resurrection Day (The McCann Family Saga Book 3) (13 page)

Katie tried to remove from her mind that ungodly swishing sound, and for a moment she could allow him to rationalize it away. She became wrapped in her husband’s love for her. If only that love would bring an end to her sudden, unexpected fear.

“
I don’t think you have the complete picture, Mr. McCann. I track down
criminals—
desperadoes with big bounties on their heads, not a decades old skeleton that’s most likely scattered to kingdom come. Where’s the sport in that? No sir. I don’t think I can help you.”

From across Jesse’s desk the big bounty hunter scowled, deepening the furrows in a face like tanned leather. He had said all he had to say. So he crammed his single feathered fedora over his long sun-bleached locks and heaved three hundred pounds from the chair. Jesse looked up in awe at all six feet, five inches of him.

Snake Eye Higgins was a man of notoriety. At forty-five years of age, his arms were muscle bound, and his legs were bowed from years of riding across Texas, on a horse that now had been replaced by a 1921 Ford truck .The man had left his mark in a trail of dust as far south as Brownsville and as far north as Amarillo. Snake Eye was corn cob rough and as aggressive a man as Jesse had ever met. And that’s what made him good .

Jesse jabbed a thumb at his own chest .“
I
pay the bounty, Higgins. The only difference in hunting a man’s remains is how you handle it. Let the initial search be for the man who hid the body fifty seven years ago...if he still lives. I’ll pay above your usual bounty, as long as it’s a halfway reasonable fee.”

Higgins turned back at the door to study Jesse with cold cobra eyes. “All that for a gol-durned
skeleton
? Save your money. It’s long past the time for solving your uncle’s murder. Good Lord, man. That happened before we were born.”

“
If I am to find the truth, it may come from other means, and I’m biding my time. Right now, it has more to do with my wife’s grandmother—a spiritual woman in a primitive sense, especially since her stroke. It seemed to have opened up some sort of sealed corridor in her
mind. You see, she’s Caddoan, and well….”

Snake Eye looked as if a bright light had come on in a dark closet. “Ah, the ancient mound builders. Say no more. I was married to a Cherokee woman once. I admired her dignity greatly, even when she was seeking visions. They’re much the same, these woodland tribes. They're noble people, but they have strict rules about burying the dead on sanctified ground. They believe the souls of the unburied drift back to the last place they lived, because they don’t know they're dead. You don’t believe in that, do you?”

“
It doesn’t matter what
I
believe. Granny believes it. She’s terrified that unsettled spirits have brought evil into the house where my daughter and her new husband live.”

“
And where is that?”

“
At the end of Diablo Road.”

Given that answer, Snake Eye frowned and twirled one end of his mustache. “I heard of the place.”

”
The bottom line is, we want Cyrus to have a
proper Christian burial
to ease Granny 's torment. It does seem as if a spell has come over my family. Calvin seems unaffected...maybe because he is not blood related to Jerod and Granny Minna.”

“
Got any ideas where to start?”

“
Only one person knows where the body was hidden and why. You’ll need to find him...if he still lives. His name is Louis Monet. He would be in his seventies by now. You can try to talk to Buck Hennessy about where he and his family went when they escaped. I don't know that he’ll tell you. It’s the one thing he won’t tell
me
. He’s a stubborn old coot when it comes to his promises, but I have to respect that.“

“
What makes you think Monet himself wasn’t involved in the killing? Seems like I overheard that from old-timer domino players outside the courthouse. They have a firmer grip on the past than the present at that age.”

“
Oh no. Monet was
not
part of the freedom uprising. He didn’t have a
reason
to rebel or to kill Cyrus McCann. Cyrus had already given him his freedom, even before the Emancipation. Buck believes it was the Night Riders, led by a man named Jonathan Bonney.”

“When does a vigilante group force a field hand to take a freshly lynched man off the rope and then dispose of the body? My experience has been that they like to show off their executions. It goes with the mindset.”

“
If you figure that out, let me know,”Jesse replied.

Snake Eye dropped down into the chair and placed his hat on his lap. “Okay, Mr. McCann. You have my attention. Let’s see if we can agree on money.”

Tobi was on his way to his father’s office at that very moment. He was on a mission. He had been having nightmares in which an immense faceless form rose from the depths of Blue Hole, parting the deep pure waters until it towered above him as he stood at the bank. Inhuman sounds emanated from the creature, but it came down to one word:
justice.
Tobi would then duck under the covers and stay awake as long as he could. He would sometimes lie that way until morning light.

The guilt of keeping the secret from his parents had become heavy, and he knew, regardless of his promise, that he should tell the truth. Otherwise, the dreams would continue. After bolstering his courage, he decided to go to see his father at the mill and be done with it. He would take whatever discipline Jesse administered for being in a forbidden place and whatever revenge Cal carried out as well.

Unaware that his father was conducting business, Tobi rushed into the mill office before he changed his mind. “Daddy, I need to talk to you alone,
please
?”

“
Where are your manners,Tobias? Say hello to Mr. Higgins.”

“
Hello,” Tobi mumbled.

“
Is this an emergency?” asked Jesse.

“
No sir.”

“
In that case, can you sit in the waiting room until I’m finished with business?”

Tobi felt a rush of relief that he could delay the talk just a little while longer. Mr. Gumption was taking a swift dive off a crumbling cliff of resolve.

“On second thought, that’s okay, Daddy. I changed my mind. It was just some silly kid stuff.”

Jesse smiled indulgently. “Did you ride out on Shadow?”

“
Yes sir.”

“Did
you tell your mother where you were going?”

“
Yes sir.”

“
I’ll be home for supper, and then if you decide you want to talk, you’ll have my full attention. Is that a deal?”

Tobi nodded and glanced at Snake Eye who was again twisting the ends of his handlebar mustache, as he studied the boy through narrowed eyes—just as he scrutinized every human being, consciously or unconsciously. It felt, to the guilt-ridden Tobi, as if the man had bored a hole into his brain to see that he was just a snot-nose little liar. Tobi was more than ready to hop back on Shadow and head for home.

Afterward
, the men settled on an amount, and the search was to begin the next day. “Have Buck Hennessy meet me at the Gentleman's Literary Club tomorrow at three. You're familiar with the speakeasy above the bookstore?”

“I've heard of it, but
I doubt that Buck even knows about that place, much less has the password.”

Snake Eye chuckled. “Oh, he knows.”

One never knew about the old reprobate.

Annie fluttered about the kitchen, flying from one task to the next, distancing her mind from the front porch chat between her husband and her youngest child. She busied herself clearing Granny’s tray, the food from which ended up as hog swill, causing her to worry even more. Still, at the moment, her focus was on Tobi who was now out of her protective reach and disclosing God knows what to his father.

When had she lost herself within that plush velvet cage of home and family? Where was the independent young woman she had once been? The New Year was approaching: 1922, a time when women were just beginning to control their destinies, as she had done long before it was fashionable. Now that a woman’s pathway was opening, Annie had retreated into a world of anonymity.

Not always, but sometimes, she missed the families at Boggy Slough and the logging camps, where children ran ragged and barefoot and came up with gashes and wounds that needed her care. There in the bog she had treated water moccasin bites and malaria, and rickets. She had been valuable, a woman of worth to the community. Even Tobias didn't seem to need his mama as much any more.

Jesse was often tied up with the mills; production had skyrocketed as trams loaded with tons of raw timber snaked their way out of the forest in record numbers. Her husband’s responsibility had doubled, and she was often alone.

She had fallen gently into a sweet, deep crater of domestic life and had awakened one day at its bottom, cozy and comfortable. Still, at times, as in that evening, she missed the feel of hard leather reins in her hands, the jostle of the old wagon rumbling over the rough roads. She missed sudden summer downpours and the breathless race against the rain to tend to someone in need of her care. She had become addicted to a rush of adrenaline that once coursed through her veins like a rich fine brandy.

She even missed the work at the hotel dining room when she had waited tables as a young woman. She missed the innocent camaraderie of the lumberjacks and railroad men who come in to rave over her biscuits and sawmill gravy and share latest gossip. Yet now the Excelsior Hotel had become a book store downstairs and the Gentleman's Literary Club upstairs—a speakeasy, of all things. Everything in Morgans Bluff had changed with the coming of the twenties and Prohibition. Yet she herself had become mired in the sameness of her everyday life.

At least she had successfully raised their daughter. Katie was in New Orleans on her honeymoon with a husband of equal status, one who doted on her and was, no doubt, indulging her every whim. Annie knew Jesse and Minna were unhappy about the marriage to a Bonney and the move into that strange old house. Yet on her daughter’s wedding day, Annie had become enchanted with the place. But she could not be sure why. After the euphoria had evaporated, a small question buzzed about in her head like a persistent mosquito:
What if Minna was onto something...something about the house and maybe even the man.

Her reverie ended with the slamming of the screen door and Jesse’s calm but authoritative voice. “Tell your mama where you and your brother went on Founders’ Day.”

Tobi peered up at Annie through long dark lashes. “Well, it’s like this...we got lost chasing a rabbit, and we walked for a real long way until we came to an old rickety house. A lady asked us in to rest, and she told us the best way to get back.”

“
What lady?”Annie asked.

“She wouldn’t tell us her name, but she showed us a picture from a long time ago, and in the picture was Mr. Hennessy and some people who picked cotton at that place on Diablo Road. Mr. Hennessy was real young and had both legs!”

“
Is there more you need to tell us,” Jesse asked.

Tobi turned and looked at Cal who jumped into action, pushed Tobi to the floor and held him down. Tobi was trying his best to get a punch in, but Cal had him pinned. “Shut your mouth, you little liar!”