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That was the opening I was waiting for.

“Where is Doug?”

He looked nervous, and started to look angry. He glanced down at the floor and his aspect changed, and he looked up and said, “Doug went missing about the time Addie did.”

I acted surprised. “Oh.” I waited in silence, but my gaze never left him.

He sighed. “Rumor was that he and Addie had something going. Then they disappeared at exactly the same time.”

“What do you think—was he involved with Addie?”

He became more agitated. “No way.”

“How do you know?”

“Just do, that’s all.”

“You’ve never heard from Doug?”

“No.”

“Didn’t you think that was strange?”

“Well, of course I thought it was strange,” he snapped. “But what was I going to do about it?”

He leaned back in the chair now. He crossed his right foot over on top of his left leg. He was about to shut down on me, and I didn’t want that to happen. I wanted to know what he was withholding.

“I’m sorry, Jimmy, I didn’t mean it to sound that way. I guess I was just surprised that you hadn’t heard from him.”

He sat forward in the chair and rubbed his hands together while looking down at his feet.

“It just upsets me is all.”

He shrugged. I wanted to ask him all my questions, get the answers and leave, but he would never give up the information that way. I had to play my game, and go slowly. It was nerve-wracking. I looked over at Leo, who had been watching him carefully the whole time. She nodded slightly as if to confirm that I should continue.

“Tell me more about Addie, Jimmy.”

He lightened up a little, and then said, “Well, she was real pretty when we were kids. I had a crush on her, but she was fourteen, so I knew I had to wait till she was old enough to date. I got called to ’Nam, so I enlisted with the marines. I went off to ’Nam and she was all I thought about. I dreamed about being able to come back home and see Addie.”

“What happened?”

“When I got home she was already dating a guy named Dody Waldrep. I thought they’d break up. I didn’t think he was right for her. I figured she’d figure that out, but she stuck with him. He never did deserve her.”

I wondered if Jimmy thought anyone deserved Addie Russell Waldrep.

“Is that why you’re so sure she wasn’t involved with your brother?”

He knitted his forehead and rubbed his hands together harder.

“I told you, I just know, that’s all.” He got up out of his chair. “Listen, I don’t feel like talking anymore. I got things to do before my gig tonight.”

We were being shuttled out. I hadn’t learned as much as I wanted, but I had learned what Jimmy Hughes didn’t want to talk about, and what he didn’t want to say might prove to be more interesting than anything he had said.

M
y son and his partner attended a lot of funerals. Serial killings get a lot of attention in the news, but the vast majority of killings are personal in nature, committed by someone the victim knew. Because of that, it’s likely that the murderer might show up at the funeral, or that someone’s absence from the funeral, or actions at the funeral, might be of note. Mike and Tommy routinely attended the funerals of the victims in their cases just so they could observe all the people who were and were not there. Such was the case with the funeral of Addie Waldrep.

Addie Waldrep had been missing for sixteen years. It was assumed that she had run off with Doug Hughes, who was thought to be her lover and who had also been missing for sixteen years. No one had ever heard from either one of them again. Now the question on all of our minds was who had killed her, and whether Doug himself had become a victim also. The list of suspects was just beginning to be developed, and at least for now even the missing Doug Hughes was on the list.

At the time of Addie’s disappearance, she and her husband, Dody, and their two daughters had been living in Viola, which is about an hour southeast of Austin. It was a small spot on one of those farm-to-market roads off of Highway 290. Viola was their hometown.

There had been rumors about Addie’s relationship with Doug. Doug had lived in Rock Hill just as Jimmy had told us. Doug ran what became his family’s farm. His father had died, Doug had bought the farm in Rock Hill, and he and his brother Vernon worked the farm together. His mother still lived there, and Vernon and his wife and family lived there, too.

One day Doug and Addie had simply disappeared. Now Addie had been found. No one had seen or heard from Doug since he disappeared with Addie.

Still, rumors or no, Maureen Russell and Doug’s mother, Gloria Hughes, never believed that their children were either having an affair or had run off together. Maureen made it clear to Mike and Tommy that she considered Dody Waldrep to be the prime suspect in the death of her daughter. The question was whether she based that on any real suspicion, or just on the fact that she despised Dody—and she made no bones about the fact that she did despise him.

Gloria Hughes had told Mike and Tommy that Doug had a girlfriend—a young girl named Lori Webster. Lori lived in Georgetown now, and the boys had gone to speak to her before the funeral, but I had not had time to get the details of that interview.

Addie’s funeral was in the nearby town of Giddings—a metropolis compared to Viola and Rock Hill. The burial would be in a little community cemetery in Viola where
Addie’s two daughters lived with Maureen Russell. It seemed that Dody had a drinking problem. So the girls had gone to live with their grandmother. Dody had moved to Manor, got himself a house out on an acre of land and a job in Austin working for a plumbing company. The girls rarely saw him. They didn’t even remember their mother.

Standing in the funeral home next to my son and Tommy, I could see down the aisle to the family section. The two girls sat looking sad and confused next to Mrs. Russell. Mrs. Russell wept unceasingly for her daughter, wiping her eyes and nose. It seemed that everyone in the town was there, and after paying respects to Addie, each person filed past her mother and two children and gave their condolences. Mike informed me that Lori Webster was not there.

I smelled him before I saw him. The rank smell of nicotine was the first attack on my olfactory senses. Then the too-sweet smell of last night’s bourbon joined the wave of putrid odors that washed my way as he passed down the aisle. I looked to my right to see who this was as he passed by.

Michael nudged me slightly with his elbow. “Dody Waldrep,” he whispered.

I nodded.

In his wake, new odors assaulted me—now, the stale smell of unwashed hair mixed with the sourness of sweat. Dody looked about ten or fifteen years older than Mike had told me he was. He was thin and his skin was weathered and flushed from an obvious alcohol habit. He wore khaki workman’s trousers over his skinny legs, and a worn plaid shirt was stretched over his protruding beer gut and tucked into the waistband of his pants. Except for the gut, Dody
Waldrep was so thin and frail, that I imagine he’d have weighed a hundred forty pounds soaking wet. His thin, greasy hair was combed straight back from his ruddy face.

Dody didn’t appear terribly grief stricken, but considering that his wife had allegedly left him for someone else over sixteen years ago, grief isn’t what I would have expected. He had completely let himself go and he had abdicated the care of his children to his mother-in-law, but there was a kind of pathetic aspect to him, and I felt sorry for him in a way. I was surprised he showed up. He had the shakes and he was sweating. He didn’t look well, but then, a lot of alcoholics don’t look well, especially when they’re sober. It looked as though Dody Waldrep had sobered up for this. He started to sit with his daughters, but one look from his mother-in-law said it all, and he sat down in the row behind them.

I watched him throughout the service. He didn’t weep, but he looked upset. Mostly he just looked terribly depressed and beaten. I think for Dody it had been another reliving of an old shame. I wondered if a man who looked that lost could have committed such a crime. It was hard to tell just by watching him there. One thing I had learned for sure in all my years was not to jump to any conclusions until all the facts were in, or at least more facts than we currently had in this case.

Dody didn’t attend the graveside services. In fact, he disappeared in the crowd right after the funeral. At the cemetery, I noticed a woman weeping softly, and then talking for some time with Addie’s mother. I leaned over toward my son.

“Who’s the woman in navy talking to Addie’s mother?”

“That is Gloria Hughes, Doug Hughes’s mother.” He raised his eyebrows.

I returned the raised eyebrows with, “Really.”

Mike nodded. “She says she’s heard nothing from Doug in all these years. The brother, Vernon, confirms that.”

“That’s what Jimmy says also. What do you think?”

Mike shrugged. “I don’t know, Mom. I guess I believe Vernon and Mrs. Hughes, but Jimmy is odd. I’m not sure what’s up with him.’’

I nodded in agreement. I couldn’t decide if he had problems from the war or if it was something else.

“Mrs. Hughes got real upset and asked us what we thought the chances were that Doug might still be alive.”

“What’d you tell her?”

“The truth. That I don’t have any idea. That I have no evidence that Addie’s murder is connected to Doug and that I don’t know any more about it than that.”

The truth was, the thought that Doug might also be dead had occurred to us all. The alternative to that was that Doug had killed Addie. There was some outside chance that he and Addie had split up and that Addie’s fate had been completely unknown to him. If that were true, though, we all felt that Doug would have contacted his mother years ago. The fact that no one had ever heard from him again led us all to believe that he had either been killed with Addie, or had done the killing. I personally considered the former to be a better bet.

“Did you question Dody Waldrep yet?”

“Oh yeah,” Mike responded.

“So, what was your impression?”

“I don’t like him,” Tommy replied.

“That’s succinct,” I said.

“Aside from smelling really bad and being a total drunk, he’s also not particularly forthcoming with information,” Mike commented.

“Details, please,” I said.

“Every time we asked him about his wife and her alleged affair with Doug, he became hostile and then clammed up,” Tommy said.

“Yeah,” Mike added. “He started on this diatribe about how all that was in the past. She had left him for another man. She was gone and he didn’t care—like that. Then nothing more. We could try to sweat him out, but this guy is such a drunk, I don’t know whether he’s even coherent enough for this crime—and he’s not real bright either.”

“Unfortunately, this crime didn’t require a lot of brain cells,” Tommy said, “so that in and of itself won’t eliminate him from the suspect list.” Tommy continued, “He’s had a bunch of jobs in the last fourteen years since he moved to Manor from Viola. He’s borderline in the job he has now, which he’s only had for a month. He criticizes everybody and everything. He’s basically not a very pleasant or happy fellow.”

“His mother-in-law doesn’t like him, that’s for sure,” Mike commented.

“That’s not a reason to suspect a man,” I said.

“We know that, Mom, but the guy is a lush, he’s evasive and I get bad vibes from him.”

“And everybody is on our list of suspects right now,” Tommy added.

“Did he ever beat his wife?” I asked.

“We thought of that, Mom, and we asked around. The answer, even from his mother-in-law, was no.”

“That’s right. He was a real jerk to her, but no physical abuse.”

“Sounds like you two have your work cut out for you,” I said.

“Story of our lives,” Tommy said, smiling.

“So, what’s next, guys?”

“The standard stuff. I’d like to locate Doug Hughes, one way or the other,” Tommy said. “Do a little more legwork on Dody Waldrep and Jimmy Hughes. Collect some more facts about the very unusual Lori Webster, and then see what shakes out of all that.”

“Which reminds me, tell me about Lori Webster.”

Gloria Hughes insisted that the rumors about Doug and Addie were just that. Yet the rumors persisted because of the attention Doug had paid to Addie and the fact he had been seen at the Waldrep home many times when Dody was not there. Vernon said that Doug had felt sorry for Addie because her husband was “a real heel.” Still, it did seem odd that Doug would spend so much time maintaining a friendship with a married woman.

Mike and Tommy had followed up and gone to Georgetown, to talk with Lori. Lori had left town and moved about thirty miles away to Georgetown after Doug disappeared. In Mike and Tommy’s book, Lori’s move right after Doug’s disappearance was unusual. That seemed to them like the actions of a guilty person. Mrs. Hughes told them that Lori had been “distraught” over Doug’s disappearance and all the rumors about he and Addie, and that was why she left, but the boys didn’t like it.

Lori had never married, and she had a job in a local department store in Georgetown, working as a customer service and credit clerk. Tommy and Mike had located her place of work in Georgetown from Gloria Hughes. Lori’s family members still lived in Rock Hill and Viola, but had not seen Lori since she left sixteen years ago. She had not been back to visit any of them—another strange fact.

When they arrived at the store, Mike and Tommy had been shown back to the customer service office where Lori worked.

“They set us up in this little back room there,” Tommy said, “and she came in and sat down with us.”

“She was nervous and kneaded her hands and looked down at her feet a lot,” Mike said.

“I broke the news to her, about finding Addie’s remains in Austin. She was stunned, man, almost catatonic, never looked directly at either me or Mike.”

“Yeah, then she burst into tears, which escalated into sobs. It was a strange reaction.”

“When she collected herself a little, she says to me, ‘Doug was found with her?’”

My eyes widened at Tommy, and he nodded his head.

“I know, I thought it was a strange way to word it, too. So I say, ‘No, ma’am, we have not found Doug Hughes.’”

“Yeah, so she’s sniffling and wiping her nose and her eyes, but she’s focused on the wall to the right of her. Real weird.”

Mike said that they proceeded to ask the woman all about her relationship with Doug. The rumors about he and Addie disturbed her, but she was sure that they were just rumors, and that his only interest in Addie was as a friend, just as his mother had said. Lori said when he disappeared, she was humiliated, hurt and unable to bear the gossip another moment, so she packed up and moved to Georgetown.

“That was the extent of what she told you?”

“Yeah,” Tommy said. “And I know she’s holding something back, because she doesn’t look you in the eye when she talks, you know?”

“She’s an odd one,” Mike said. “She’s off-kilter somehow—looking up at the wall when she talked, giving abbreviated answers to all of our questions, so that we had to pry every detail out of her.”

“She has some really strange mannerisms,” Tommy said. “Her eyes darted all over that wall, but she never looked at us. Other than her initial hysterical sobbing, her responses were all cool—disconnected. She had nervous movements, closed her eyes when she was talking to us…”

“Yeah, and the only other time she showed any emotion,” Mike said, “was when she was talking about Addie. Then she became agitated and angry.”

“She said Addie’s name with jealousy attached to it,” Tommy told me.

“A woman can shoot another woman in the head, dig a hole and bury her,” Mike said.

“And a woman can dig up bones and rebury them,” Tommy added.

“Do you think she could have killed them both?” I asked.

“Toni, I’ve seen everything in homicides, and I’ve seen women commit some pretty gruesome murders.”

“Yeah, Mom, what about that wacko nurse who killed all those kids that time?”

“Okay. Point taken. If the woman is weird enough, anything is possible.”

Then I told them both about the conversation I’d had with Leo about the crime. I told them everything she had told me.

“I even asked Leo if the killer could be a woman,” I said.

“What’d she say?” Tommy asked.

“She said the killer could definitely be a woman, but that the stats say it’s more likely to be a man.”

“The things that Leo said could fit any of our suspects,” Mike said.

“Yeah, I agree,” Tommy said.

“The truth is here somewhere,” I said.

After the graveside service in Viola, Mike and Tommy headed back to Austin. I stopped in at the local café for some lunch. Notice I said
the
local café, because one was all they had. Viola was so small, there wasn’t even a Dairy Queen. The café was called the Main Street Café. Its proprietor was a sturdy-looking woman by the name of Doris. I knew her name was Doris because it was sewn onto the left breast pocket of the apron she wore.