Tumbleweeds (48 page)

“A tragedy that Coach Turner now practices what he preached against. He’s got everything—money, a beautiful house, a garage of fine cars.”

“Except the things that must matter to him,” Deke said. He looked at his watch. Fifteen until five. He’d stop by Bennie’s and talk to Cathy Benson. If anyone could tell him about Trey and John’s behavior the week of the district game, it would be Cathy. After that, he’d go by Melissa’s and look for the name of the home economics teacher.

“Is it true you’re buying Mabel Church’s house?” Bobby asked as Deke got to his feet.

“Trey and I made the deal at noon today. News travels fast.”

“Thank Melissa for it, Sheriff. She’s made no secret of you and Mrs. Tyson buying the house and meeting with Trey. I thought I saw TD in town today around lunchtime. He didn’t see me. Was it something he said to trigger your interest in the week of that district play-off game?”

Deke grabbed at the opportunity to pacify the coach’s curiosity. “Something like that,” he lied. “Melissa is tasked with writing a journal of her senior year for posterity.”

Bobby smiled understandingly. “Like a time capsule,” he said, walking Deke to his car. “TD Hall and John Caldwell. They were quite a team. John could have had a shot at the pros, if you ask me. Did you ever figure him for the priesthood?”

“Not right out of high school,” Deke said, having an idea why John had fixed on his avocation so soon. “Maybe later, but not at eighteen.” He tipped his Stetson. “Much obliged, Coach.”

Deke headed toward town with his heart still heavy. If he brought down Trey Don Hall, he’d also destroy John Caldwell, a man who’d spent his life trying to atone for a mistake he’d made as a teenager. Trey had gone on to riches and glory and probably never looked back on what he had done, but John had taken his burden with him on
a path of poverty and chastity and obedience to God. Deke had no doubt that when he got to the bottom of this he’d find that John had gone along that fateful November afternoon to minimize the cruelty, maybe even prevent it. He’d bet his bottom dollar that Trey had decided on autoerotic asphyxia as the cause of death when John, a Catholic, had refused to go along with suicide as a cover-up of what had happened.

Was restoring Donny’s good name to his parents worth annihilating John Caldwell’s? The county had given him the status of a virtual saint, and justly so. Father John’s exposure and possible arrest for obstruction of justice would have far-reaching and devastating effects to the Church, not to mention the Harbisons. He hated to think what they would feel when they learned the man they loved like a son had participated in their boy’s death and the cover-up of how he died. The scandal would drive the most decent man Deke had ever known from the parish, maybe the priesthood, and the life he’d lived, the good he’d done, would be seen as a lie.

Did he, at this late date, with everybody’s lives in place, the past almost forgotten, have the right to dig out and expose the truth at the expense of the destruction it would cause?

It was not for him to pose such questions. He believed the truth was always better than a lie no matter who it hurt, what damage it caused. The truth did not destroy; it built. And he was first and foremost a cop. The pursuit of justice ran in his blood, pumped his heart, even if he no longer wore a badge. And he was also a father. He would want his son to rest in peace cleared of shame. His honor would be worth the cost of the truth. Father John would have to accept his fate.

However, before he shared his allegations with the current sheriff sitting in the chair he once occupied, he’d better make damn sure of his evidence. Destroying the river to snare a couple of badgers would be a sorry trade. In town, he stopped by Bennie’s to speak to Cathy but was told she’d left early and would probably not be back. He got
the impression from Bebe that a problem had come up at home. Deke had an idea of the name of the problem. Disappointed, he returned to his car and telephoned Paula on his cell, thankful that she wasn’t home and he could leave word on the answering machine that he was back in Kersey and would be spending the night at their daughter’s. He planned to attend six o’clock mass at St. Matthew’s. He had an idea where he could get a sample of Father John’s fingerprints.

T
rey opened his eyes and blinked rapidly to orient himself. It had been a while since he’d awakened in a strange bedroom, and never one where his first view was of a crucifix on the wall.
John’s room.
Black despair washed over him. He remembered that John had gone to see Cathy and now she hated him with all the passion with which she’d once loved him. He swung his feet to the floor, risking the dizziness and nausea from sudden movement caused by his disease. It was five o’clock. He’d been asleep over three hours. Good. He didn’t have as long to wait before his confab with the Harbisons. In the bathroom he urged a trickle of urine, threw water over his face, and washed the rancid taste from his mouth. He avoided looking into the mirror, certain of what he would find. “Be sure your sins will find you out,” his aunt had warned him many times, and he knew he’d see every one etched in the haggard, sick face of his reflection.

He went out into the hall to fetch his carry-on from the car, his medication-leached stomach reacting appreciatively to a savory smell wafting from the kitchen up the stairs. A small girl skipped past him, apparently answering a call to supper. He glanced into the dining room on his way to the front door and saw a group of youngsters
around a long table. A teenage girl was distributing pot pies from a sideboard, one of the inmates, obviously.

He’d parked the BMW in front of one of the hitching posts still in existence in front of the house. A white blossom from a tree at the gate had caught in his windshield wiper, and he carefully freed and examined it. A little miracle of nature right here in his hand, he thought, fluffy and sweet smelling, perfectly wrought, like Cathy. An unexpected peace stole over him. Why had he never noticed things like this when they might have made a difference?

He slipped the blossom into the shirt pocket containing Deke’s check and obeyed an impulse to follow a brick path round to the back, an improvement since he was last here. Somebody had taken care with the mortar and design, a first-class job, probably a landscaper’s charity write-off. John was good at getting people to do the right thing. The barn where they’d strung up the son of this house still looked the same, though, and the quiet peace he’d captured a moment ago chilled like a sudden change in the weather. He set his luggage by the house and walked on past the barn and down another path that ran alongside a small orchard and huge vegetable garden soaking up the afternoon sun—all well tended—and came to a dead end at a layout of pens and outbuildings that housed animals and equipment. He heard sawing in one of the sheds.

Lou Harbison looked up from his work over a sawhorse when he saw Trey in the doorway and turned off the power of an ancient Black & Decker timber buster. “Howdy,” he said, pushing up his safety goggles, straightening his back. “Anything I can do for you?”

“No, I’m only looking around at all you’ve got going out here—the garden and orchard, the stock. You guys still keep chickens?”

“There’s a coop the other side of the barn. You remember that?” Lou’s face turned pinkish—surprised pleasure, Trey interpreted, that after all his high-style living he’d remember a simple thing like his
wife’s chickens. Lou Harbison seemed a gentler sort than his wife, less scarred, but there was the same kind of something missing in him as in Betty Harbison.

“I sure do,” Trey said. “Best eggs I ever ate. My aunt used to make pancakes with them. They’d turn out yellow as corn.”

“That’s because our chickens ate corn—no additives or hormones.”

“Makes a difference—eggs not doctored with that added stuff.”

“Sure enough.”

Lou stood with the Black & Decker still in his hand, his expression politely wondering if Trey had more to say. He thought it time to move on. “Well,” he said, “you’ve got a good thing here, Mr. Harbison.”

“We’ve got Father John to thank for that.”

“Is that so?”

“The place wouldn’t be much without him. Betty and me… we wouldn’t, either.”

He spoke softly, with no hint of menace, but there was a mixed warning and plea behind his words.
Don’t mess with John… please.

Trey agreed with a nod and left the shed.

Betty Harbison came out on the back stoop as he drew near the house, her eyes sharp and suspicious. She must have seen him through the kitchen window, the one her son had spotted them through that fateful day. “I see you’re up,” she said.

Not for a long time, but thanks for the presumption
, he was tempted to reply, but she didn’t seem in the mood for jokes. “I thought I’d take a stroll around the fine place you have here,” he said. “It’s such a great afternoon”—
and the last I’ll ever see in the Panhandle
. As usual when he thought such thoughts, terror broke through the calm surface of his acceptance of his coming death.

Her stiff expression relaxed slightly. “We think so. Father said you threw up your lunch and I’m to get a cup of chicken broth into you. Come on inside, and I’ll see to it.” She held the screen door
open for him, her determined stance and set mouth brooking no argument.

Reluctantly he entered her lair, catching sight of Donny’s framed photograph beside a vase spilling with flowers from the trees next to the gate.

“Could your stomach handle a chicken pot pie?” Betty asked. “You look like you could use something a little more substantial than broth. And there’s Jell-O, too, made with peaches from our orchard.”

“Break my arm,” Trey said.

That goosed a faint smile from her. “You’ll have to wait a few minutes until I get the kids off who are going to mass.”

“Will happily do,” Trey said.

Left alone, he strolled to the back screened door. It was from here that Donny had shot out after them like a charging bantam rooster. He had been a ballsy little bugger. All these years, Trey had not forgotten that.

He saw Lou go by the house to get behind the wheel of an old van used for transporting the children of Harbison House. Outside in the hall and down the stairs came a scramble of footsteps and voices heading toward the front door. When Betty returned to the kitchen, he asked, “Did you ever get a new rolling pin?”

Her brow line vaulted. “Why, yes. Long ago. Right after the one I had disappeared. How did you know it was missing?”

“I guess I remembered my aunt saying something about it.” He flashed his disarming smile. “The mention of pie made me recall it.”

He chose a seat with his back to the photograph and ate as much as his shrunken stomach would allow, sneaking a few bites to the dog that had taken an expectant position by his chair. There was still a lot of activity in the house, and Trey was generally ignored while Betty oversaw after-supper duties and activities from her command post in the kitchen. She was in her element, ordering the children around in a motherly way, but he could see John’s influence in their manners and
attitudes. “What would Father John say?” Betty remonstrated more than once when the dish drying got out of hand and a squabble broke out over which TV program to watch.

He folded his napkin and picked up his plates to take them to the sink. It was warm and cozy on this floor. The time of confession was several hours away, and he’d just as soon be lying in an ICU unit rather than wait upstairs in John’s room for them to pass. “The pie and Jell-O were delicious, Mrs. Harbison. I’ve never eaten any better. Mind if I take a tour of the house?”

“Go ahead.”

Right outside the kitchen was a long hallway, its walls lined with pictures of John and the children of Harbison House caught in moments of fun and play, success and achievement. Betty, drying her hands on her apron, stole beside him as he studied them.

“These are just a few taken over the years,” she explained. “You won’t find any of those glad-handed certificates like the kind the Rotary Club awards for exceptional community service or pictures of Father John posing with big shots displayed here. He’s received dozens over the years, but they’re stored in the attic.”

“That’s John, all right,” Trey said with a wry chuckle. His study in California was a virtual ego den filled with commemorations of his success.

“He’s a wonderful man. I don’t know what folks around here would do without him.” A warning glint had come into her eye, more pointed than her husband’s. “The children worship him, and he’s like a son to my husband and me. You remember that we lost a son….”

“I remember,” Trey said.

Her gaze was rock steady behind her spectacles.
Damn!
What did the Harbisons suspect he’d come to do—defrock Father John? Pinned to the wall by her stiletto stare, he drew an abrupt breath.
Oh, Jesus
… A horrifying possibility had just occurred to him. John’s voice
echoed in the sick caverns of his brain.
“Your part, yes. Mine still weighs heavily.”

He must have lost color in his face. He thought he may have wobbled, for Betty gripped his arm. “What is it? Are you going to be sick again?”

“I need to sit down,” he said, “—in there.” He pointed to the fairly quiet place of the living room.

“Should I bring you some water?”

Trey pressed his temples. “No, I just need a place to think.”