The Homeplace: A Mystery (9 page)

*   *   *

Half a dozen teenage boys in Brandon Buffalos sweatsuits filed down the stairs past the sheriff and into the line for pancakes.

“Bus must be back.” Marty stopped the next forkful of pancakes before it reached his mouth.

Cheerleaders and another group of girls joined the boys. Marty matched names with the faces he recognized.

“I don’t see Dolly with them,” Mercy said.

“I don’t, either.” He set his plastic fork beside his plate and mopped his mouth with a napkin.

Above the noise in the basement a cell phone rang. The sheriff straightened, pulled his phone from his belt, and put it to his ear. The man’s lips pulled tight.

“Deputy Storm,” he called, “come with me.”

Marty caught up to the sheriff in the parking lot. He struggled into his jacket and licked sticky syrup from his fingers. “What’s goin’ on?” He jumped in the passenger seat of Kendall’s truck.

“I guess Coach wasn’t with the team in Limon.” Kendall turned the ignition and slipped the truck in gear. “When the bus got back, one of the boys went over to Coach’s house to tell him they won. No answer when he knocked. Got in somehow. Found Coach on floor.” The sheriff flipped on the flashing lights. “Says there’s blood everywhere. Ambulance should be there any minute.”

It took less than five minutes to get to Coach Porter’s little house. As they climbed out of Kendall’s truck, the sheriff jerked his thumb at a kid in a Brandon Buffalos sweatsuit on the front porch. “Recognize the kid?” Kendall asked Marty.

“Cameron Taylor. I went to school with his mother.” Marty fished his cell phone from his jacket pocket. “I saw his folks at the church. I’ll tell ’em to come over here.”

“Good idea. See what you can find out from the boy.” The sheriff tipped his head toward the house. “I’m goin’ inside.”

Marty said a few words into his phone and then sat down next to Cameron Taylor on Coach’s front steps. Teardrops clung to the soft mustache hairs along the teenager’s lip and sparkled in the pulse of the ambulance’s flashing lights. The boy who had made the winning basket four hours earlier rocked back and forth. Marty had seen folks at car accidents do the same thing. Like they hoped the motion would erase the terrible things they’d seen.

“I called the church.” Marty folded his hands. “Your daddy and mom are on their way over to get you. I talked to Grandma Titus. She’s sendin’ a plate of flapjacks with ’em.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“We’ll see.” He shouldn’t have said anything about the pancakes.

Cameron sucked in a breath. “Coach said if I could just make my free throws, he’d let me suit up with varsity on Thursday. I didn’t miss any today. Hit two with three seconds left. That’s why I came over here. I wanted him to know.” The boy’s voice broke, and he stared at the ground. A cry he didn’t want to let out escaped.

“Coach still leave that house key in an aspirin bottle under that rock by the corner of the house?” Marty tilted his head.

“Yeah,” Cameron whispered.

“He kept it there for Chase and me. Chase, mostly. A lot of nights we’d let ourselves in and watch games on TV. Coach’d come home, find us there, and cook up some hamburgers and watch the games with us.”

“Who’s gonna do that, now that he’s—” Cameron’s head fell forward and sobs flowed.

Cameron’s parents’ car pulled in next to the ambulance. His mother hurried around the car with her arms out. Cameron met her, and she held him close. Though Cameron was taller than she was, Marty knew that in that moment, he was her baby again.

Cameron’s father touched his boy’s shoulder and then stuffed his hands in his pockets. He walked over to Marty. “Know what happened here?”

“We’re thinkin’ Coach fell in the bathroom. Hit his head.” Marty looked over the man’s shoulder and watched Cameron get in the car. “It’s not pretty in there. A lot of blood. He’d been layin’ there most of the day.”

“Accident, huh?”

“That’s what it looks like. Could be a heart attack or somethin’ like that. We’ll get his body over to the coroner in Comanche Springs to tell us for sure.”

“Jimmy Riley gettin’ shot. Now this. It’s not right for a man to die alone. Those things shouldn’t happen in Brandon, you know that?” The boy’s father shifted from foot to foot.

“Yeah.” Marty licked the syrup from his lips. The sweet taste reminded him of better times. “But they do.”

“And bad comes in threes, deputy. Mark my words.”

Marty held back. Paco had told him not to say anything about religion or superstitions or omens or any of what came out of folks when evil struck. Folks who had been hurt needed something to hang onto when nothing made sense. He looked back at Coach’s house and wished Paco had told him what to grab on to.

He watched the Taylors drive off. He called Deb’s cell phone and told her he would be late. One of the paramedics came out of the house and motioned for Marty. He followed her into the house. A late-night pro game played on the giant TV screen. Marty switched it off.

Sheriff Kendall stepped out of the bathroom and let the paramedic by. He looked at Marty. “Cameron say anythin’ more?”

“Just what he told you. He came over after the bus got back to tell Coach about the win. Saw the blood. Found him on the floor and called nine-one-one.”

“Did he say he went into the bathroom?”

“He saw the body and called. Why?”

“Put your gloves on, Marty. I just called the state. We got a crime scene here.” Sheriff Kendall’s jaw muscles worked. “I didn’t want the boy to hear this. But when we turned him over, Coach had a kitchen knife stuck in the middle of his chest.”

When Marty’s tongue touched the sticky place on his lips, the sweet turned bitter. He thought of Cameron’s father warning that bad comes in threes.

What would happen next?

CHAPTER TEN

All around the church basement, the whispers changed. Chase didn’t hear his name murmured after Marty and the sheriff left.

“Ambulance?” The question was spoken softly as flashing lights passed outside.

“Coach’s house,” a teenage girl at the next table whispered to her parents.

“There’s been an accident.” The church’s pastor took his coat and hurried up the stairs.

The warm pancakes turned to an icy lump in the pit of Chase’s stomach. Coach’s house? “I need to go see if I can help,” Chase told Mercy as he stood from the table.

“I’ll come with you.”

He took her hand and as she followed, the heels of Mercy’s cowboy boots clattered up the stairs behind him.

*   *   *

Birdie tilted her head at the clack of Mercy’s boot heels. She snuck a quick glance under the table at Deb’s boots.

How many other women in this church basement were wearing Tony Lama shit-kickers?

When she lifted her head, Mercy was gone and the same cadence of boots kicked across the cement floor. A woman with a baby on her hip walked to the table with the coffeepot.

Maybe that boot print in the parking lot didn’t mean anything.

Birdie looked at the basement stairs again.

But maybe?

“Deb, I better go with ’em.” Birdie swung the little boy in her lap to his mother. “I might be able to do somethin’.” She hustled from her place at the table.

Outside the door, Birdie saw Chase’s truck pull away. She crossed the parking lot to where the Dodge had sat, pulled a mini Maglite from her jacket pocket, and shined its beam at the dirt on the ground at the passenger side.

Crap.

Wind-skittered grains of dust fell one by one into the boot print. In a few minutes the impression would be blurred, but it was plain now. A chill ran up Birdie’s back.

What to do?

The state crime scene techs had laid a ruler next to the tracks she’d found in the field before they took pictures and poured the plaster of Paris for the molds. Birdie needed something to give an idea of the scale. She thought for a minute and then plucked her ballpoint pen from her uniform pocket and laid it next to the fading boot print. She snapped two pictures with her cell phone.

God, would it be good enough?

She stared down at the pictures in the glow of her phone. Not the best. But it was all she had. When she looked at the ground again, the breeze had rounded the sharp edges and the logo was blurred.

She was still shaking her head as she climbed into her truck and drove toward Coach’s.

Birdie parked her truck at the corner of the block, three houses down from Coach’s home. She sat for a minute to take in the scene on the street. Headlights from the ambulance bathed the front of the white frame house. Chase’s Dodge nosed in close to the sheriff’s truck, next to the ambulance.

It’s bad.
Birdie felt sick to her gut.

The two paramedics stood on the porch. One scribbled on a clipboard. No urgency. No one hurried. Worst of all, the flashing lights on the ambulance were off. There would be no lights-and-siren dash to the hospital in Hugo.

Marty came down the steps and went to Chase’s truck. Chase opened the door and stepped out. Marty shook his head. He half turned back toward the house. Birdie could see his mouth move as he talked.

Chase must have asked something. Marty shook his head. Chase’s shoulders drooped, and he leaned back against his truck.

Too late. Whatever had happened here, everyone was too late to help Coach.

Sheriff Kendall and the pastor from the Methodist church stood by a tangle of rosebushes that crowded the chain-link fence that divided Coach’s yard from his neighbor’s. A white-haired woman with a little dog in her arms looked up from her side of the fence at the two men. Suddenly, she raised her hand and pointed toward Chase’s truck. Kendall’s head bobbed up and down as he spoke to her. Then the sheriff turned and walked toward Chase.

Birdie pulled up on her truck’s door handle.

Don’t want to miss this.

*   *   *

“Tell me what happened, Marty.” Chase looked at his friend’s face, wanting everything he had just been told to be a lie.

“I can’t say anythin’ more.” Marty turned away. His eyes sank into dark shadows from the glare of the truck’s headlights. “I said too much already.”

“Marty, you got to tell me. What happened in there?” Chase demanded.

“We’re not sure. Let us do our work. I’ll tell you what I can later. I promise.”

“You just told me Coach is dead, and you want me to leave?” Chase felt his voice rise.

“Take Mercy and get out of here, Chase.”

Dry leaves scattered away from Kendall’s footsteps, and the wind chased them down the sidewalk. “Ford, I need to talk to you.” The sheriff stepped between Marty and Chase. “Neighbor lady just told me she saw a truck that looks a lot like yours parked in front of Coach’s house this afternoon.”

Chase’s mouth went dry.

“She also said,” Kendall continued, “that she saw somebody peerin’ in the windows and actin’ like they was trying to get into the house. That you?” The thread of the shiny scar beside his left eye pulled tight.

“What are you askin’, Kendall?” Chase held the lawman’s stare.

“Was it you?” Kendall eyes tightened to cruel slits.

“Yeah.” Muscles coiled rattlesnake tight in Chase’s neck, and his hands balled into fists. “I stopped by to see my friend. The door was locked, and the TV was on. Coach always left the TV on.”

“Chase didn’t kill Coach,” Marty blurted out. “No reason to think that, Sheriff.”

Marty’s words hit Chase in the belly like a sucker punch. He fought for his breath until words seeped out. “Killed? Are you sayin’ he was murdered?”

Kendall never blinked. “Ford, I want you to give your statement to Marty. I want to know why you were here and when. Go back to wherever you’re staying, and don’t even think of leavin’ my county without askin’ me first.” He turned to walk away. When the sheriff saw Mercy in Chase’s truck, he tipped his hat.

*   *   *

Mercy climbed from Chase’s truck to the street. She struggled into her jacket and crossed her arms under her breasts at the chill of the night. On the other side of the truck Chase was talking to Marty. The deputy had a pocket-sized notebook in one hand and a pen in the other. Chase’s hands made fists, and it seemed every word he said to Marty caused him pain.

She walked down the sidewalk to the gate in the chain-link fence that surrounded Coach’s house. Something terrible had happened inside, she knew it.

Sheriff Kendall talked with the two paramedics on the porch. He took his ringing cell phone from his jacket pocket and held it to his ear. She’d worn the tight jeans, and he never turned to look her way.

*   *   *

Birdie hurried up to where Chase and Marty stood.

“You heard the sheriff, Chase.” Marty touched the back of his hand to his mouth. “Look, I’m off tomorrow. But what with all that’s happened, they’ll probably need me. If they don’t, I’ll come out to the ranch and find you. Just go on now. There’s nothin’ anyone can do here.”

Chase looked down the street. He nodded his head. “Birdie, can you see to it Mercy gets home?”

“Count on it, Chase,” she told him.

When he nodded again, Birdie bit her tongue to keep from gasping at the color of his face. Even in the light from the headlights, it was ghostly white. As pale as it had been on the day she had told him his mother had died.

He got into the Dodge and started the engine. Then he slumped forward until his forehead rested on the steering wheel.

“Should we do somethin’?” Birdie asked Marty.

“Just wait.”

They both watched the truck. In a moment Chase sat up, slipped the pickup into gear, and backed into the street.

“Coach’s dead, huh?” Birdie’s tongue touched her dry lips.

“Somebody killed him.”

Birdie had known it was bad.
Killed?
Not this bad. “Think it has anythin’ to do with Jimmy Riley?”

“Lord only knows.”

Birdie followed Marty up onto the porch with the paramedics and Sheriff Kendall. From the way he was talking she knew the sheriff was on the phone with the state police. The white car she’d seen that morning pulled in behind the ambulance. It was the coroner’s car.