Roots of Murder

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Roots of Murder: A Novel of Suspense
© 2016 by R. Jean Reid.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

First e-book edition © 2016

E-book ISBN: 9780738749709

Book format by Teresa Pojar

Cover design by Lisa Novak

Cover image by iStockphoto.com/4672611/©spxChrome

Midnight Ink is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Reid, R. Jean, author.

Title: Roots of murder : a novel of suspense / R. Jean Reid.

Description: First Edition. | Woodbury, Minnesota : Midnight Ink, [2016]

Identifiers: LCCN 2016007448 (print) | LCCN 2016016637 (ebook) | ISBN

9780738748771 (paperback) | ISBN 9780738749709 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Murder—Fiction. | Drunk driving—Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery

fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3568.E3617 R66 2016 (print) | LCC PS3568.E3617 (ebook)

DDC 813/.54—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016007448

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To the Saints and
Sinners Sazerac Gang.
Your insanity keeps me sane.

prologue

November, 1963

Dunwood's knots were sloppy,
like the shirttail hanging out of his pants. Making no attempt to cover up what she was doing, Hattie Jacobs untied one, pulled the rope taut, and retied the knot. She could feel his eyes on her. He had said, “For you, a special deal—I give you a break on my usual charge.” Hattie understood him; she'd been married, now widowed, with four children as evidence she knew what to do with men. Dunwood had looked her up and down after he said it, even going so far as to lick his lips. Hattie had coolly replied, “I don't need any special deals, Mr. Dunwood. I just want a fair price to get my belongings to New Orleans.”

Hattie retied another knot. She then looped the rope in front of the wardrobe so it wouldn't shift. It was pressed against the couch where her kids would be for the long drive. Dunwood was supposed to help with the loading, but he had lazed his way through it, trying to flirt with the widow, and, when she ignored him, working his charms on Daisy, who at thirteen was both inexperienced in male attention and too well trained in being polite to her elders, so she giggled at his tired jokes.

Daniel, Jr., with anger still scowling his face, had pushed himself at a brutal pace, hauling and carrying, not waiting for Dunwood or Emmett to help with the heavier pieces, just dragging them himself. Emmett, two years younger than Daniel, had been the calm one, loading the truck carefully, putting the couch up against the cab. Rosa had stayed in the kitchen, methodically wrapping dishes in old newspaper and putting them in boxes, then labeling each box carefully. Daisy had flitted from task to task, distracted by Dunwood and her temperament.

Hattie had sold a lot of her things, but the truck was still full. It didn't seem much, though—one truckload for all the years she'd spend on this farm. She'd married Daniel when she was seventeen; this had been her life since then. All her children had been born here, in the back bedroom, the one closest to the well.

“You gonna ride up in the cab with me, Miss Hattie?” Dunwood asked with his lazy smile.

“I'm going to check the house one more time,” Hattie told him. She had checked it, Emmett had checked it, Daisy had checked it, carrying out the old doll she'd abandoned to the attic when she'd turned twelve; now she was holding it as if it would give her some of her childhood back.

Hattie briskly walked through the rooms, her mind in the present; one last check that everything was packed. There would be time for memories later, when the rooms weren't such a palpable presence of all that was held within them.

Hattie left the house.

Dunwood had climbed into the cab and was starting the motor.

Hattie made a decision. “Daniel, ride up front with us. Emmett, Daisy, and Rosa, y'all get in back.”

Emmett helped his sisters in, at twelve already becoming the man of the house. Rosa barely took his hand, scrambling in, probably bruising a place on her thigh as she did. She was ten and still enough of a tomboy not to take help from a brother. Daisy let Emmett carefully guide her. He even held her doll while she settled herself. Hattie couldn't remember any other time when the boys had touched the girls' toys, save for an occasional tease.

She abruptly turned from the sight of her youngest son carefully holding that doll. She couldn't, she wouldn't, cry. She motioned Daniel to get in first and briefly enjoyed the scowl that flitted across Dunwood's face as he realized he wasn't going to have Hattie all alone in the cab.

Hattie slid in beside her son. It would be a long ride in this slow truck, three or four hours depending on traffic. Hattie had been to New Orleans twice before, riding the highway along the beaches where she and her children couldn't swim, then into the swamp and bayous that separated Mississippi from Louisiana.

Dunwood let out the clutch and the truck pulled forward with a jerk. Hattie had intended to stare straight ahead, but in the last moment, she turned back to look at the place that had been her life for twenty years. The fields were a sleek and glossy green, the old oak spreading its majestic branches over the lawn as if embracing the land. The house was small, a faded white with green trim. In the center of the yard was the scorched place, a raw burn against the green grass.

Hattie turned her gaze ahead; she wouldn't look back a second time.

one

“Has the news picked
up since yesterday or would you be interested in old bones in the woods?”

It took Nell a moment to recognize her caller. “Kate?” she verified.

“Yeah, sorry, bad signal and low battery. I'm two miles past the Moss Road turnoff, out in the fringes of the state park.”

“What kind of bones?” Nell asked.

“Human. Been here a long time. Some hunter will finally come home.”

Nell glanced out her window. It was a beautiful day. A look at her desk revealed only mounds of paper. She quickly got directions from Kate, not wanting her battery to die.

Yesterday when she'd picked up Josh from his bicycle maintenance class, while waiting for him to organize his tools, Nell had chatted with Kate Ryan, who now ran the bike shop. Nell didn't know Kate very well; most of what she'd learned was secondhand from Josh, and then only what he thought was exciting, like Kate used to be a forest ranger and had once arrested someone in the backwoods, marching him out in a
four-hour
hike. Kate had moved here almost a year before to care for her Uncle Toby, who'd recently died from cancer. Until a few months ago he'd usually come to the shop with Kate, although at the end he had done little more than sit and watch as she ran everything.

We should be friends, Nell had thought, but their conversation was still mostly confined to idle chatter, the weather, the next bike class. They had each said, “I'm so sorry for your loss” but hadn't moved beyond that. Yesterday Nell had commented it was such a slow news week she was almost tempted to run a blank front page with the headline “Nothing Happened.”

Kate promised if anything interesting transpired, Nell would be the first to know. “Bones in the woods” did indeed qualify as interesting in a town like Pelican Bay.

Nell put on the old running shoes she kept in the office—Kate had warned her that she would have a
half-mile
walk in the woods—and then got her usual equipment: camera, notebook, and pens.

Neither of the paper's two cub reporters, Jacko or Carrie, was about. Lucky for them or Nell would have assigned them to look into dusty missing persons files to see if they could match likely names to the bones.

Just as Nell was at the door, Pam, the receptionist/secretary/whatever's needed, said to her, “There's a call for you.” The tone of Pam's voice told Nell this wasn't a call she wanted to take.

“Who is it?”

“Tanya Jones.”

“I'm not in,” Nell said shortly, almost adding, I'll never be in for that bitch. But she kept a thin veneer of professionalism and avoided cursing in front of her staff.

As the door slammed behind her, Nell realized anger had leaked into her actions. She strode across the town square, taking the long route to get to the parking lot, hoping the physical motion would calm her fury.

Tanya Jones was calling Nell to ask for mercy. Tanya's husband, Junior Jones, or J.J. to his drinking buddies, was the man who had made Nell a widow with two children. His truck had weaved into the wrong lane, over the speed limit. Thom and Nell had been on their way home.

Tanya was trying to keep J.J. from going to jail, and she seemed to think if she pleaded hard enough Nell would drop the charges. Nell had been barely polite the first time Tanya called, coolly cutting into Tanya's crying about losing her husband, her kids their father, the paycheck to pay for the diapers, to tell her that if her husband was really concerned about his kids he wouldn't have been driving blind drunk. With that Nell had softly put the phone down. But Tanya kept calling back, as if this was all she could think to do. Tanya hadn't the wit to see that not only was this not working, but saying “he was just having a little fun, only a few drinks and he makes one mistake, it's not like he was trying to kill anyone,” while an excuse to use with their friends, didn't appease the new widow.

They had gone there together because it was late, and rainy. Neither said it, but Nell was a better driver, less distracted than Thom. Nor did they say it wouldn't do for her, a woman, to go alone. At times she fought those assumptions, but not that night. She preferred being with Thom than alone. A moonshine bust in the far, rural part of the county. The sheriff had called, offered to let them—Thom—take pictures if they hurried.

It had been late, after midnight, by the time they headed home on the dark, winding road, a tangle of trees guarding either side.

J.J. came careening around a curve, far over the line, slamming his heavier truck into their car, spinning it into the trees on the side of the road. Thom, in the passenger seat, was trapped between metal and jagged branches, solid wood. Nell remembered a sudden moment of terror, the scream of metal, her scream for Thom and the answering silence until she slid into a fog of pain and shock.

She woke in the hospital. In the cacophony of machines, people talking, TVs blaring, there was another silence. No one would answer her questions about Thom until the
far-too
-young police officer came and stood in her doorway. Even he didn't need to speak; his presence gave the news.

The sheriff had suggested Nell not view the body, they could do identification from dental records. She had ignored him and left the hospital for the morgue. The horrific image stayed with her, but she had to know, had to see Thom one final time. Looking at his battered and bruised corpse told Nell he was gone, never coming home.

J.J., in his much bigger and heavier truck, had stumbled away from the wreck. He tried to hide, pulling the license plate off the back, but he left the registration in the glove box. His black truck had a Confederate flag and a
skull-and
-crossbones on the back window, and that starred X cross and leering skull were jarring enough details for Nell to remember despite her bruised daze. They had picked him up half an hour later with blood still dripping out of his nose. He claimed the .2 alcohol level was from chugging bourbon since the accident “for medicinal purposes.” He also claimed he hadn't seen another car, that his truck had blown a tire and skidded off the road. Then he “remembered” the other car, but swore the other people had been fine, talked to him and everything.

Nell talked to no one in the minutes after the accident, only screamed into the silence. She remembered nothing human until waking in the hospital, only the huge truck with its skull face. The last time Thom had talked to anyone had been in those few moments before … before it all dissolved into terror.

Tomorrow would be a month. The days were fragile. A phone call would shatter the calm she willed for herself—and walled around herself. The widow had to go on, care for her two children, run the paper Thom's grandfather had founded.

Get in your car and drive to the woods, Nell told herself; look at some old bones and a
long-ago
tragedy. That was what she did, thankful that Kate gave directions like a woman, descriptions instead of numbers. “Turn left where Moss Road crosses the highway, there's an old abandoned store there; follow Moss Road, keep a
look-out
for a lot with two ugly trailers on it.”

Nell found herself bumping down a dirt road. Kate's directions here had been to stay on this road long enough “to get the car good and dusty, then look for an uprooted oak tree. Park around there and look for the purple bandanna tied to a tree to mark the trail. Follow the trail until you run into me and the bones. You should see my bike pulled to the side about fifteen feet in.”

The oak tree was as promised, one limb protruding halfway into the road. After parking her car safely past the oak, and Doc Davies' car, Nell got out, just as the good doctor came puffing down the trail. Doc was the coroner, a genial general practitioner, who seemed to prefer the dead to dealing with managed health care. He was in his late sixties, with a round body and round face, eyes circled by round glasses and his head circled by a ring of white hair so sparse it did nothing to alleviate the roundness of his skull. Nell had met him on numerous social occasions; he liked to be out and about with a good glass of bourbon and a big, fat—dare she think—round cigar.

“Hello, Doctor Davies,” Nell called out.

“Oh? Nell?” He squinted through his round glasses at her. “None of this Doctor Davies stuff. Call me David.”

David Davies. Either his mother had a sharp sense of irony or a lack of imagination; Nell wasn't sure which.

“Even old, clearly dead bones require paperwork,” he said conversationally as he leaned against his car.

“So what do you do with old bones in the woods?” Nell asked him.

“You dig them up, try to identify them, and then bury them again.” He paused to catch his breath, his face now red from the hike. “I'm leaving the messy digging to Kate. She knows a lot more about old bones than I do.” The coroner may have had many redeeming qualities, but the only one Nell came into contact with was his cheerful willingness to admit what he didn't know.

“She gave me a call. Thought I might be interested in the story,” Nell said, to give him a chance to grab a few more breaths. Something else to learn about Kate—how she knew enough about recovering skeletons for Doctor Davies to let her do it. This was the kind of story the
Pelican Bay Crier
did well. Not just the name of the person, but who was he? How long was he lost? What happened to his family after he hadn't come home? Or if those questions had no answers, what happened to bones discovered in the woods? How many died similar lonely deaths?

“It's good to see you up and about,” Doc said.

Nell took that to mean the bruises had faded. Her stitches were out, the cut on her eyebrow now just a thin red line. “It's a beautiful day,” she answered.

“I'm so sorry about Thom. What a horrible loss for you and all of us.” His words were practiced, easy. He had said them over and over again through the years.

Nell felt a flare of anger at his adept sympathy.

Then David Davies exhibited another redeeming quality—he seemed to notice. “It's a beautiful day to be in the woods. Unless you're a cigar man like myself and prefer slippers to hiking boots.” He took a labored breath to illustrate his point.

Just as quickly, Nell felt ashamed. Don't be angry at the people who are trying to be kind, be angry at those who aren't. “I just had to get out. Too much paperwork at the office and it's supposed to rain tomorrow.”

“A good choice, dear.” With that, Doc Davies heaved himself into his car, a round Volkswagen. Maybe that was another redeeming quality, Nell thought as she watched him drive off—a man who matched his car.

She found the purple bandanna hanging from a sapling pine tree. It was good to be out of the office. Too many memories hung in those rooms. Dolan Ferguson, the paper's business manager, had tactfully suggested Nell change her office around. He hadn't said the words “
move Thom's desk”
—the desk that used to be Thom's—“
out, rearrange the space so it doesn't look as if it's waiting for him to return
.” They shared—had shared—the office, her desk on one side and his on the other, facing each other with a space between wide enough for people to come in and talk. Or be caught in the crossfire, as Thom said. Maybe it wasn't just for her, Nell suddenly thought, awareness breaking the numbness of grief. Dolan had started working for Thom's father, had seen the boy grow into the man and into the
Editor-in
-Chief. Jacko and Carrie were the newest staff members and even they had been there for close to a year. They were probably wondering what the Widow McGraw would do. Could she run the paper by herself? Sell it to outsiders?

Nell had stayed away for a whole week with Thom's death and funeral, keeping her bruised face—and the guilt on it that she'd survived
with only those bruises, a mild concussion, and some stitches—hid
den. The next week she had come in to take care of the most necessary things, then found she needed the routine, and last week she'd come back full time. But she hadn't thought beyond the next day, the next week. Brushing a spider web out of her face, Nell realized that she would have to start thinking about the future; was this what she wanted for herself, to be running a paper in a small city on the Gulf of Mexico?

Thom should have been the one to survive. One of her first groggy memories was seeing the implacable fury on her
mother-in
-law's face as she stood at the foot of Nell's bed. She never said, never even hinted with words, but it was there. Two sons lost—one gone at an early age, drowned in a tide his
eight-year
-old body was not strong enough to fight. Now Thom, the one grown to manhood, and all she had left was her quisling
daughter-in
-law. A
half-century
of Southern politeness couldn't keep her rage completely hidden.

“I don't have to decide today,” she said out loud. “Tomorrow … some tomorrow.” But for today, the paper was here and would be her life. “At least I have something to put on the front page.”

The path was muddy from the recent rains, although the day was brilliant with sunshine. Nell felt a faint stirring of excitement, of being on a story, the feeling that had caused her to choose journalism. Nell McGraw, intrepid girl reporter, bushwhacking through the forest in search of ancient bones. Mixed in with the excitement was also a faint stirring of relief—in the past month, she'd begun to think she would never feel anything again except alternating grief and fury.

One of the muddy patches revealed a recent mark of a boot print, assuring Nell that she had indeed turned at the right purple bandanna. The next sign of humanity was the sound of someone whistling. If I was alone in the woods with a skeleton, I'd whistle, Nell thought. Something to keep me company besides bleached bones.