“Hey buddy,” Eddie said. “You okay?”
The guy looked up, grinned. “If I can get this door unlocked I sure will be.”
“Don’t look like you’re in any condition to drive. Can we help you? Where you going?”
The guy straightened up, wavered, caught the car roof to maintain his balance. “Bartender said there was a motel just down the road.”
“There is,” Eddie said. “Pretty nice one. Why don’t we take you there?”
He seemed to consider that. “Can’t leave my car here.”
“No problem. My cousin’ll drive you there and I’ll follow along. That way you’ll have your car in the morning.”
“You’d do that?”
“Sure. We’d be obliged to.”
Seven-thirty in the morning found Sheriff Amos Dugan behind his desk, staring at the nervous young couple before him. Robbie Peters, seventeen, high school junior, football player, and Betty Jane Marks, a sophomore who played clarinet in the band.
“What can I do for you youngsters?” Dugan asked.
Robbie glanced at Betty Jane. “We saw something the other night.”
“Something like what?”
“It was last Saturday night. We’d gone to a movie over in Pine Valley. Then we...” again, he looked at Betty Jane.
“Just relax, son,” Dugan said. “Tell me what you came here to say.”
“We went parking for a while. Over in the cemetery.”
Dugan laughed. “Me and the missus used to do that when we was your age.”
That seemed to relax the couple.
“We like it because it’s quiet,” Robbie said.
Dugan nodded, laughed again. “It is that.”
Robbie smiled. “Anyway, you know it’s right next to the funeral home. Grace’s.” Dugan nodded so he continued. “We saw a car come up and park behind it.”
Dugan sat straight up. “Go ahead on.”
“Two guys went in the back. They had flashlights and seemed to be carrying stuff in and out for the better part of a half hour. Seemed odd.”
“Any idea what they was up to?”
Robbie shook his head. “We was too far away to see good. And we were afraid to leave. Didn’t want no one knowing we was there.” He glanced at Betty Jane again. “She missed her curfew ’cause we had to wait until they left.”
“And my daddy wasn’t happy,” she said.
Dugan nodded and smiled. “Parents can be that way.” He looked back at Robbie. “I take it you couldn’t identify these guys?”
“Like I said, we was a good piece away and it was dark.”
“Their car? What kind was it?”
Robbie smiled. “That I know. I like cars. It was a forty-nine Ford. Black.”
“And it had that brown stuff on the fender,” Betty Jane said.
“Primer?” Dugan asked.
“Yeah,” Robbie answered.
“If it was dark how come you could see that?”
“When they left, they circled around by the cemetery. They was only maybe fifty feet from us. I was afraid they’d see us but they didn’t. Anyway, we saw the fender then.”
After the kids left, Dugan picked up the phone and buzzed his secretary, out front at the reception desk. “Clarice, you know where Travis is?”
“Sure do. He’s standing right here, drinking coffee and looking like an idiot.”
Dugan loved Clarice. Her irreverent sense of humor kept him and Travis on their toes. “Well, send the idiot back here.”
Travis walked in. “What’s up?”
Dugan told him the story.
“I know that car,” Travis said. “Belongs to Eddie Whitt.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure he’s got a forty-nine Ford with a stove-in left front fender.”
Dugan nodded, then stood. “Maybe we should go have a talk with him.”
“You thinking Eddie stole Jerry’s body?”
“Looks that way.” Dugan shook his head. “Means he’s probably the one what dug up Wilbert Fleming, too.”
Eddie turned up Dr. Bells’ drive.
“I still think we should’ve talked to Antoine first.”
“Don’t you see his car? Up there by the barn?”
“Course I do. I just meant maybe we should’ve met him out at the usual place. Showing up here, Dr. Bell might not like it.”
“He will when he sees what we got.”
Eddie parked next to Antoine’s Chevy. One of the large double barn doors was cracked open a couple of feet so they stepped inside. Dr. Bell and Antoine stood by one of the tables, mixing a pot of liquid with a large wooden paddle. It smelled almost like stew. Almost.
“Morning,” Eddie said.
The two men whirled toward them, surprise on their faces.
“What the hell you doing here?” Antoine asked.
“Got a new one for you,” Eddie said.
Antoine walked toward them, the scowl on his face deepening. “Didn’t I tell you to never come here again? We got a place to do this. A private place.”
Eddie nodded, smiled. “This one’s so fresh I thought we’d get it to you right soon.”
Dr. Bell approached. “Please tell me you didn’t steal it from a funeral home again.”
“Nope. He’s just some guy. Passing through town.”
“What happened to him?” Bell asked.
“I think he choked on something.”
“What does that mean?”
Eddie laughed. “Let’s just say he had trouble breathing.”
Dugan and Travis scoured the town for Eddie’s car. A visit to his house and then a quick stop by his momma’s place turned up nothing. They then zig-zagged all over but saw no sign of the car. As they circled the county road on the edge of town, Dugan said, “Not sure where else to look.”
“What about there?” Travis said. He pointed up the hillside toward Dr. Bell’s mansion.
Dugan glanced that way. Eddie’s car sat near the barn behind and to the left of the house. “Good eyes.”
“Damn fine police work’s what it was.” Travis smiled.
“What the hell’s he doing at Dr. Bell’s place?”
“Don’t know. But that’s Antoine’s car up there, too.”
“Antoine Briscoe?”
“The one and only,” Travis said.
Antoine was no stranger to Dugan. He’d arrested him more than once. Drinking and fighting mostly.
“Interesting group of folks,” Dugan said.
“That’d be my assessment.”
Dugan slowed, turned up the drive. “Maybe we should go have ourselves a chat.”
He parked near the left front of the house, out of any sightline from the barn, and stepped out. He opened up the back door, grabbed his twelve-gauge LC Smith double-barreled shotgun. He cracked it open, saw the two 4–0 buckshot shells inside, and snapped it closed.
“You think you’ll need that?” Travis asked.
“Can’t hurt to have it.”
With the stranger’s body stretched out on the table, Dr. Bell cut away the clothing and began his examination. Head to foot. Eddie watched, wondering just what the hell he was doing. Bell seemed to focus on the dead guy’s neck. Finally, he straightened and looked at the cousins.
“This man didn’t choke. He was strangled.”
“So?” Eddie asked.
“So? That’s all you have to say?” Bell’s face reddened, his jaw pulsed.
“You wanted fresh ones. We got you one. And it ain’t even been embalmed or nothing.”
Eddie felt the heat from Bell’s glare.
“It’s one thing to dig up dead bodies, even steal them from funeral homes, but this? Are you two mentally defective?”
Antoine’s gun appeared, leveled at the cousins. Eddie took a step back, raising his hands.
“I was you, I’d put that gun down.”
The voice came from behind him. Eddie whirled around. Sheriff Dugan and his sidekick Travis Sutton stood in the doorway, Dugan’s double-barrel aimed at the group.