Stillborn Armadillos (John Lee Quarrels Book 1) (24 page)

Chapter 46

It had seemed so romantic back then. The most beautiful girl in the county, daughter of the richest family around, and the boy from the wrong side of the tracks, if Somerton would have had any railroad tracks. Over her parents' strong objections, or maybe because of them, John Lee and Ashleigh were inseparable during their senior year in high school. He was head over heels in love, as only a young man can be with a beautiful, passionate young woman like her. It didn't matter that he had no future, all they cared about was the moment. And many of those moments were spent in the back seat of his old Chevrolet.

A month before graduation he learned that she was pregnant. He didn't hear it from Ashleigh herself, who had suddenly become withdrawn and was avoiding him. He didn't know what he had done wrong and was frantic to try to make up for whatever it had been. The news had come to him from her best friend, Darcy Jackson. When confronted, standing in front of her locker one afternoon after the last class of the day, Ashleigh had admitted the truth and told him her parents had ordered her to stay away from him.

John Lee had immediately gone to her father and told him he planned to do the right thing. Yes, he knew they were young, but that didn't matter. They loved each other and they would make it work. They'd get married and he'd worked two jobs or whatever it took to support his wife and child.

Richard Somerton, known by everyone as Junior, a name he despised, had laughed in his face and called him white trash. "Get outta' my sight boy, before I shoot you. You think my daughter's going to spend her life with a mongrel like you?"

"I know this isn't the best way for things to start out, sir, but I love her. And I know she loves me!"

Ashleigh's father had walked across the polished hardwood floor of his den to one of the pair of matching big oak gun cabinets, opened one of the glass fronted double doors, and taken out one of the beautifully engraved Purdey side-by-side shotguns that he had custom-made by a company in England. "I'm not going to tell you again, you little bastard. Get out of my house and off my property. If you ever come near my daughter again I'm gonna blow you in half and nobody will do a damn thing about it. You hear me boy? Now git!"

John Lee wasn't going to give up that easy. He caught up with Ashleigh the next day at in the school cafeteria and begged her to run away with him to Georgia that weekend. "We can get married and be back here in time for class Monday morning. Nobody will know anything about it. You turn eighteen two weeks after graduation and then there's nothing your father can do to keep us apart."

She had laughed and said that was very noble of him, but he was putting way too much into the relationship. " Get real. It was fun, John Lee. But I don't plan to spend my life in a house trailer married to a good old boy, with half a dozen kids hanging onto my ankles."

"But I love you!"

"Well I don't love you. It was just good times, okay? That's all. Get over yourself."

He had begged, actually dropped down on his knees and begged, but she just looked at him without pity and turned and walked away, dismissing him like one would some insignificant life form far down on the evolution timeline.

Soon after, Ashleigh's mother had taken her to a private hospital in Miami, where she had gotten an abortion. A week after graduation she and her mother had taken off on a tour of Europe. Heartbroken, he had joined the Army, vowing never to return. But when his enlistment was up three years later, that's just what he had done. He had never known why, except that it was home.

By then John Lee's friendship with Troy had cooled, understandably, but he heard Ashleigh had gone off to some fancy college up in New England somewhere. There had been news once in a while, a piece in the newspaper when she married a lawyer from Savannah, another story a few years later about her coming back to Somerton County that did not mention the husband. By then John Lee didn't care, but he was never able to forget what might have been, or to forgive her.

***

"John Lee Quarrels. What the hell you doing here? Didn't I run you off years ago and tell you never to come back?"

Ashley's father was a big man with a shock of white hair and thick, bushy eyebrows that reminded John Lee of two albino caterpillars making their way across the top of his forehead.

"Now Daddy, that's no way to talk to our company."

"He ain't company, he's a mutt, just like he's always been."

The man was standing in the door of his den, the same den where they had had their last conversation, so many years ago.

"I need to talk to you, Mr. Somerton."

"I've got nothing to say to you. Get the hell out of here."

"This is official business."

"Whatever it is, you go back and tell D.W. Swindle to come talk to me himself, or else to send somebody else."

"I'm not leaving here until I talk to you. Now, we can do it here in front of your daughter and the help, or we can do it in your den. Makes no difference to me."

He stared at the deputy for a moment with a look on his face that showed exactly how little he thought of him or his badge.

"You always was a hell raiser, John Lee."

"Where's it going to be?"

He didn't like it, but he could tell by the look on John Lee's face that he wasn't going anywhere.

"Get the hell in here."

Nothing much had changed in the den. The same huge desk, the cigar store Indian standing in the corner, the trophy bucks hanging on the wall, the Frederic Remington prints, the same gun cabinets with their expensive rifles and shotguns.

Somerton sat down behind his desk, leaving John Lee standing there.

"Say what you came to say and get out of here."

"Do you know anything about those skeletons we found out on Turpentine Highway?"

"Just what I read in the newspaper. Why?"

John Lee took out the brass disc and showed it to him. "Have you ever seen one of these before?"

"Yeah, I know what it is. Troy told me about it. Why are you nosing around in our business, anyway?"

"Because three men got killed out there. Because someone's been shooting at deputies and because one of those deputies is dead."

"First of all, whoever killed those niggers a long time ago is probably dead by now. And whoever it was, there's no way to prove they had anything to do with Somerton Lumber. That little piece of junk could've come from anywhere. Even if one of them had it on them, that don't mean nothing except they were on the run, which was against the law back then. As for someone shooting at deputies, that don't have a damn thing to do with those bones. Probably some kind of crazy person. Now, I'm sorry that your friend got killed, but it has nothing to do with me or my family. But I will say, as far as I'm concerned, the wrong one took that bullet in the head."

"What about this?"

John Lee opened up a copy of the newspaper story about the standoff on Turpentine Road so long ago. Somerton looked at it and flipped it back across his desk dismissively.

"What about it?"

"That's your father, right?"

"So what? What's that got to do with anything?"

"Why was he out there waving a gun around trying to stop those guys working on the road way back then?"

"How the hell do I know? It says here he was mad because they were taking part of our property. My Daddy never was one to bend over and take it in the ass. None of us Somertons are. We stand up for ourselves. When someone pushes us, it don't matter who, we push right back. And we don't stop pushin' 'til we win. You need to think about that when you come here throwin' your weight around."

"I want to talk to him."

"Daddy? Forget it, he's 88 years old and probably don't remember nothing about those days."

"Don't let age fool you," John Lee said. "I was just talking to a man who's older than him the other day, and he remembers a lot."

"What are you getting at? What are you trying to prove, coming out here like this?"

"I think some of your thugs are the ones who killed those people way back then. And I plan to prove it."

"My thugs? Christ, man, that happened years before I was born."

"Maybe not your thugs, but they worked for Somerton Lumber."

"I don't have any idea what happened to those men, and neither do you. Now, you haul your ass back to town and don't you dare come out here again! You remember when I pointed a shotgun at you last time you were here? Well, I've still got it, and I meant what I said that day. I see you around here again I'm gonna blow you in half!"

"Are you threatening a deputy?"

"No, I'm threatening a piece of shit who don't know his place in the world and never did. If you think I'm impressed by that god damned tin badge of yours, you're only fooling yourself. Now get on outta here! I mean it!"

John Lee was almost hoping the man would try to point a shotgun at him again. But he knew that those feelings were based more on the past than the present.

"I want to talk to your father," he repeated.

"Then you go get yourself a warrant and you show up back here with a whole bunch of backup. Because I promise you right now, you're going to need it."

Chapter 47

"Do ya' sit up at night thinkin' of ways to make my life more difficult? Do you know that Junior Somerton was on the phone to me two minutes after you pulled out of his driveway yesterday?"

"That doesn't surprise me, D.W. But I'm telling you, he knows something about those skeletons we found."

"Everybody knows something about them! Hell, it was on the news for three or four days in a row!"

John Lee noted that his father-in-law's language was drifting back towards the norm. He wasn't sure if it was because of the stress from the things that had taken place in recent weeks, or if his short lived religious experience was wearing off now that it seemed like he wasn't going to keel over from another heart attack anytime soon.

"I really need to talk to the old man."

"Richard Senior? You stay away from there, John Lee! I mean it."

"Are you telling me to drop an investigation into a triple murder because you don't want to offend the Somerton family? Because if that's what you're saying, D.W., I'll turn in my resignation right now."

"When did you get so damn dedicated? There was a time when all you wanted to do was put in your time, drive fast with lights and sirens on, and go home at the end of the day."

"There was a time when I had something to go home to."

The sheriff averted his eyes and shook his head, and his tone of voice became subdued. "I wish it was different between you and Emily. I really do. Me and her mama, we've talked to her 'til we're blue in the face but it don't do no good at all."

"I know the feeling."

"For what it's worth, it ain't you, John Lee. I know that."

"It is what it is," he said.

D.W. spat a brown stream of juice into the spittoon, then sighed.

"When did life get so darned complicated?"

"Well, those that go to church might say it was back when Eve took a bite of that apple. I don't know, D.W. Emily keeps telling me to give her more time, and I keep asking her how long she needs."

"I love my daughter," the sheriff said, "love both of 'em, even though I don't approve of a lot of what they do. But I'm goin' to tell you this, John Lee. Not as your father-in-law, but man to man. Both those girls are jerkin' you around like a puppet on a string. Sooner or later you're gonna have to cut the strings from both of them and get on with your life."

"I'm not ready to give up on Emily yet. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning I think I am, but by the next day I'm right back where I started."

"And what about Beth Ann? How long do ya' think that's goin' to go on?"

"I don't know. Look, D.W., I appreciate you trying to help, but with all due respect..."

Before he could continue, Sheila Sharp barged into the sheriff's office without knocking. Both men looked at her, startled. "Somebody just found a dead body out by Copperhead Creek. Looks like it was a hit-and-run!"

***

John Lee's stomach sank when he pulled up behind Danny Ray's patrol car a quarter-mile past the bridge and saw the mangled remains of the old three wheeled bicycle. He walked up to where the other deputy stood on the shoulder. Down in the ditch was the broken body of Mister Donald. The old man was halfway on his side, eyes opened as if staring at him. John Lee knew that he was dead, but it felt like the accusing eyes were blaming him for getting the old gentleman involved in something that had kept him from dying in his sleep like a man his age deserved to do.

"A couple of kids on dirt bikes found him and went home and told their dad," Danny Ray said. "He come down here to see for himself, then called it in. No skid marks on the pavement, it's like whoever hit him did it on purpose."

"Son of a bitch!"

John Lee crawled down the steep embankment and squatted beside the body. Mister Donald had laid there a long time. He was sure he had been run down the night before when he finished fishing and started for his old mobile home not far away. Blood had trickled from the old man's mouth and nose and crusted on the side of his face. John Lee brushed away the flies that were hovering over him. He heard sirens coming from off in the distance, the noise growing louder. He felt like telling the ambulance crew to slow down, that there was nobody here left to save. Instead he took the old man's stiff hand and said, "I'm sorry, Mister Donald. I'm am so damn sorry!"

***

Mister Donald had been more than a janitor, he had been an institution at Somerton High School. Generations of students had known and admired the crusty old man who greeted them all by name every day and never hesitated to offer a friendly word of advice, whether it was to a lovestruck boy (don't let the little head do the thinkin' for the big one, son) or a girl who might be tempted to trade her virtue for a class ring (ain't nobody goin' to buy a cow when the milk is free, missy).

Over three hundred of those students came to his funeral, filling the bleachers on one side of the small high school gymnasium. James Nelson, the superintendent of schools, gave the eulogy, reminding those in attendance that while Mister Donald was gone, his legacy would live on inside all of them who had been touched by the humble, hard-working man who had bridged racial barriers and social status to become a friend to all.

"Whether you were a student, a member of the faculty, a school administrator like myself, or a parent, we were all equal in Mister Donald's eyes. He never cared who you were or what your name was, he cared about
what
you were. He cared about the kind of human being you were. And I believe all of us are better human beings for having known him."

The overhead lights dimmed while teachers and former students went to the podium and shared their memories of Mister Donald. As they spoke, a projector showed yearbook pictures from over the years on a large screen. One was of the janitor posing jauntily with his mop and bucket, a big smile on his face. Another showed the captain of the football team presenting him with the game ball from a homecoming victory long ago. There were other pictures, candid shots of Mister Donald and students taken by members of the school photography club and yearbook staff who were now grown up and had children of their own, and in some cases grandchildren, attending Somerton's schools.

Watching the slideshow and thinking about the old times and Mister Donald, an image flashed on the screen and suddenly John Lee felt his skin began to prickle. He had heard the term about one's "blood running cold" but had never experienced it until that moment.

Feeling his body stiffen in the seat beside her, Maddy turned to him. "Are you okay?"

He couldn't reply, barely managed to nod his head.

She looked at him with concern. "What is it?"

Again, he didn't reply. The last of the speakers was finishing, the lights were turned back up, and the pallbearers came forward to carry the casket outside to where a hearse was waiting to take Mister Donald for his last ride.

By the time they made their way through the crowd the doors of the hearse had closed and it was pulling out of the parking lot, followed by a long line of cars, all headed toward the cemetery.

"What is it, John Lee? You look like you saw a ghost or something?"

"No," he said, shaking his head. "Not a ghost. I saw a killer."