Cemetery Road Page 15

  He shrugged. “Fought to a draw. Got tired of beating up on each other. No girl’s worth killing each other over. Not even Jet.”

  I wasn’t sure of this. “No black eyes?”

  Paul chuckled. “You want to pop each other once apiece? To sell the story?”

  I thought about this. “Not really.”

  “Fuck it,” he said. “Let’s get back to the cars. I’ve got an ice chest in my backseat.”

  This bloodless accommodation couldn’t have been what he had in mind when he drove down from Oxford with his hands clenched on the wheel of his Corvette. But whatever rage he’d felt over Jet’s cleaving to me had subsided. Night was falling, and a cold wind blew off the river, making the long walk back to the clubhouse an unpleasant prospect. I asked Paul if he wanted to run it, but he just laughed. Three days later, he dropped out of college and joined the army. Everyone we knew was flabbergasted. When George H. W. Bush gave the go order for Desert Storm, Paul was sitting in Saudi Arabia, waiting for the balloon to go up.

  The honk of a horn startles me out of my reverie.

  I speed up and wave to the impatient driver behind me, surprised to find myself on the Little Trace and nearly to the turn for Buck’s house, which sits well back in the hardwood forest in rural Tenisaw County. I’ve driven out here so many times that I can do it on autopilot, even after an almost thirty-year gap.

  The narrow gravel road arrows away from the black asphalt and runs through tall trees wearing the fresh pale green of spring. Back in those trees, Quinn Ferris sits in a house with a bed that will never again hold the weight of the man who built it. Handcrafted guitars hang on its walls—and a mandolin and a mandocello and two dulcimers—that will never have another note pulled from them by Buck’s gifted fingers. All because he threatened to slow down the gravy train of the bastards who run Bienville like their personal fiefdom. I dread facing Quinn in her grief and anger, but what choice do I have? If the Poker Club killed her husband, it’s because nobody ever planted themselves in their path and said, “This far, but no farther.” Am I that guy? My father never set himself against them. But if my brother had lived, he would have. If only for that reason, I realize, I must do it.

  Chapter 15

  Quinn Ferris grew up in West Texas, and she looks more like a Westerner than a Southerner. She wears almost no makeup, even when I’ve seen her out at night, and she has the sun-parched look of a woman who spent much of her life exposed to a dry climate. Mississippi girls grow up in nearly 100 percent humidity, and they’re reared from infancy to baby their skin. They get softer as they get older. Quinn has grown leaner and harder with age. Her pale eyes have an avian intensity, her arms and hands a whipcord toughness. She makes me think of long hours riding pillion on a motorcycle, her sun-bleached hair flying behind her from beneath the helmet.

  Four days ago, when I met Buck at the Indian Village to interview him about his find, Quinn took care of the tourists who showed up, keeping watch for anyone who seemed more interested in her husband than the archaeological exhibits. Today she looks as though the shock of Buck’s death has burned through whatever reserves of fortitude she possessed. She’s standing at her stove, making tea with shaking hands. I’m sitting at their kitchen table, a Formica-topped relic from the 1950s. I ate at this table many times during high school and sat around it playing guitar with Buck deep into the night.

  “What does a private autopsy cost?” Quinn asks. “An outside autopsy?”

  “Three to five thousand. Unless you want a superstar pathologist.”

  She takes this in without comment.

  “You saw Buck’s body?” I ask.

  “The sheriff told me not to go to the hospital, but I went anyway. They weren’t going to let me see him. I made a ruckus. The security guard came. I think they were going to call the police, but an older doctor heard the noise and came. He made them let me in to see him. Dr. Kirby. Jack Kirby.”

  “He’s my father’s doctor. A great guy.”

  “Well, God bless him. But I saw the wound.”

  “I’m sorry, Quinn.”

  She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “You asked me about the break-in.”

  “It’s okay, take your time.”

  As she makes the tea, she gives me a straightforward account. She’d gone to the Ruhlmann Funeral Home and spent a frustrating half hour on the phone with the sheriff, trying to learn when her husband’s body might be returned to her after the autopsy. The sheriff was evasive and made no promises. Then she learned from the funeral director that the autopsy was going to be performed at the local hospital. After finally getting in to see Buck’s body, and then recovering herself, she arrived home to find her front door standing open, cold air streaming through the screen door into the yard. Two steps inside, she realized that the house had been trashed. While she waited for a deputy to show up, she spent forty-five minutes “picking the place up.” After seeing her husband’s body so profoundly insulted, she couldn’t abide having her house in disarray.

  The deputy who responded to her call pushed Quinn into a state of fury. No matter what she told him, he insisted that the break-in had been carried out by “crackheads looking for something to sell.” In his estimation (and obviously that of his boss), Buck’s “drowning” had been a regrettable accident, but one that had nothing to do with a simple B&E near the county line, twenty miles away. Quinn pointed out that the offenders had taken great pains to go through her husband’s papers; they’d even fanned through every book in his library, as though searching for something specific. “Addicts hoping y’all keep cash stashed in your books,” the deputy declared, “like some country people do.” I told Quinn I’d expected nothing better.

  “You’re right about Lafitte’s Den,” she says, fanning our cups with the flat of her hand. “Buck wouldn’t have gone out there, not even if they were handing out free barbecue. If he did go, it wouldn’t be to dig.”

  “Could he have gone there to meet somebody?”

  “I don’t think so. I think the killer caught Buck digging out at the mill site, and that was it.” She brings our cups to the table and sets hers opposite me, but remains standing. “I can’t believe they’d kill him over a few bones. Why not just warn him off? Threaten him? Tell him how far they were willing to go if he didn’t back off.”

  “They knew Buck wasn’t the type to be cowed by any of that.”

  “You think the killer knew him?”

  “This is a small town. And Buck was one of its most colorful characters. I know you think the Poker Club is behind this, but I talked to Paul Matheson about that. He said the Poker Club would have bought Buck off, not killed him.”

  “Buck couldn’t be bought!” she snaps. “You know that, Marshall.”

  I let the silence drag. “If the offer was big enough, Buck might have worried that you’d press him to take it. I’m talking about real money, Quinn. Five hundred grand. Maybe even a million. What would you have said if they’d offered him that?”

  This gets her attention. “I’m not sure. We’ve scraped by for most of our lives. I hope he would have told me. Given me some input. But I can’t be sure.”

  “It really doesn’t matter now. Hard evidence is the only thing that can help us.”

  Quinn shakes her head helplessly. “They hate him now. All those people he did so much for at one time or another . . . they stopped caring about him. They all wished he’d just disappear. They won’t care that he’s dead. They’ll be glad. All because of that goddamned paper mill.” Her lips curl in disgust. “Have you talked to Jet about the Poker Club?”

  “I’m talking to her at three o’clock,” I reply. “But nobody else needs to know that.”

  “How does that work, Marshall? Her husband’s father is one of the richest members of the Poker Club, yet she’s fought their corruption for years.”

  “I’m not sure it works, actually. I think their marriage is pretty strained.”

  She nods as if this only makes sen
se. “She’s a firecracker, that girl.” Quinn finally pulls out her chair and sits, her eyes settling on mine with what feels like maternal concern. “You still have feelings for Jet.”

  I force myself to hold eye contact. “I probably always will. First love and all that.”

  A wistful smile touches Quinn’s mouth. “Buck used to think you two would end up together.”

  “But not you?”

  She shrugs. “Jet’s special, no question. But she had issues. From her father leaving like that.”

  “And I didn’t?”

  “Different issues.” Quinn reaches out and touches my hand. “You’re not thinking you might still wind up with her?”

  Am I that easy to read? “What makes you ask that?”

  “Your eyes still change when her name comes up. Your voice goes up a half-step in pitch.”

  “Really? Well. We went through a lot together. What matters today is that if we try to halt construction of the mill to search for evidence, it’ll be Jet who files the papers.”

  Quinn knows I’m trying to change the subject. Graciously, she allows me this. “I know who to call at the state level,” she says, “if that’s the way you want to go.”

  “Does Archives and History have the stroke to override pressure from the governor? Even national pressure?”

  “In theory? Sure. William Winter fought off serious pressure during the casino boom. In reality, I don’t know. That’s why Buck went back looking for bones.”

  I take a long sip of my tea, which has already started to cool. “Why did he risk going last night, if he knew there were guards posted?”

  “No, no. He went in to dig because there weren’t any guards. He called and told me that.”

  This is new information. “What?”

  “He drove out and parked well south of the site, then walked up the riverbank. The whole way he watched for lights. He didn’t see a single guard.”

  “That doesn’t mean there weren’t any. They could have been using night vision.”

  “To guard a small-town paper mill site?”

  “With so much money at stake, it’s possible. Quinn, why didn’t you report Buck missing when he didn’t come home last night?”

  She closes her eyes with obvious pain. “Because I knew he was trespassing, and he would stay out there all night if he could. I also knew he’d cache any finds somewhere other than here, to protect me. That would take time. I’ve cursed myself a thousand times for not saying to hell with it and calling the police. Buck might still be alive—”

  “No,” I tell her. “The local police and sheriff’s department wouldn’t have been a source of aid for Buck. Not at the industrial park.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “Do you know if Buck was in contact with anyone outside the city? Other archaeologists? Academics? The government?”

  She shrugs again. “You know Buck. He was always talking to friends around the country. I don’t know how much he told them about this specific find. He was so excited, but also secretive about it. I think he saw this as his legacy, the great work of his life. By the way, the sheriff told me they didn’t find Buck’s cell phone. So I don’t know who he might have called.”

  “If they found his phone, they wouldn’t have entered it into evidence. Do you know whether Buck dug up anything else at the site? You said he would be caching his finds somewhere other than here. Why?”

  Quinn studies me as though making some difficult judgment. “Buck got pretty paranoid over the past four weeks, especially the last two. One night he decided to move some stuff, so it wouldn’t be lost if our house happened to catch fire or something. We own a small rental house. He’s worked there most nights for the past week.”

  Before I can even ask, Quinn reaches into the pocket of her jeans and takes out a brass key. “This will get you in, if you want to look.”

  “Address?”

  “Three-two-five Dogwood. There’s a renter there, but he’s an old friend of Buck’s. Jim’s gone a lot, but I’ll let him know you’re coming, just in case. Buck’s stuff is in a back bedroom. Should be easy to find. He worked at a drafting table.”

  “Got it,” I say, getting up and taking the key from her.

  “Don’t go yet,” she says, reaching out and touching my arm. “Let’s step into Buck’s workshop.”

  We walk out to the garage Buck enclosed after his lutherie work outgrew the extra bedroom where he’d begun it a decade before. It smells of glue and sealer and freshly sawn wood. Some of Buck’s finest instruments hang from pegs on the walls. A padded worktable with a sheet of rare Brazilian rosewood still on it dominates the center of the room. Against one wall stands a heating unit and some electric blankets used for bending wood, while the remainder of the space is filled by barrels, stands, and shelves containing wood, tools, fret wire, electric pickups, and machine heads. I can’t stand in this room and believe Buck is dead.

  “You feel it?” Quinn asks, opening her hands like someone trying to catch raindrops. “His spirit is still in here.”

  Another person saying this might sound like some new-age flake. Not Quinn Ferris, who’s practical to a fault. “I do feel it. I feel him.”

  “I hope it lasts. But I feel like he’s hovering here, trying to say goodbye.”

  Less than twelve hours ago the man who built the guitars in this room was still walking the earth. Unable to fill the void his loss has opened in me, I turn and pull Quinn to me. She hesitates at first, then relents and lets me crush her in my arms. Her chest heaves a couple of times, but she doesn’t sob. After half a minute, she pulls back and wipes her eyes. Then she goes to a drawer and takes out a dark leather bag, which she carries over to me.

  “I want you to have these,” she says.

  “Buck’s chisels? These were his prize tools.”

  “And he’d want you to have them. I want you to take a guitar, too. I’m going to have to sell the rest, but I want you to take one. Any one you want.”

  “Quinn—”

  “Don’t argue with me.”

  I look around the workshop, my gaze moving across the instruments. They’re so different from one another. Buck loved to learn about new woods, and he did that by working with them. In this small space I see macassar ebony, East Indian rosewood, American swamp ash, koa, quilted maple, bird’s-eye maple, figured sapele, Sitka spruce, pau ferro. The variation in design shapes equals the selection of woods. Buck built parlor guitars, concert models, dreadnoughts—

  “I know which one you want,” Quinn says. “Take it down.”

  She’s talking about Buck’s personal guitar, a baritone acoustic fashioned out of one-of-a-kind padauk, a reddish wood so rare it was harvested after a monsoon laid a whole stand low on the Andaman islands in the Bay of Bengal. Set into the ebony fret board is a beautiful b.f. logo in mother-of-pearl.

  “I can’t take that, Quinn. That guitar’s worth more than any two of the others. Ten thousand, at least.”

  “I’ll sleep better knowing you have it.”

  “Let me pay you for it.”

  “Don’t insult me. I’ll get the case.”

  While she retrieves the hard-shell case from another room, I take down the baritone, put it on my knee, and pick out a haunting fingerstyle instrumental that Buck wrote when I was in high school.

  “That’s why it’s your guitar,” she says. “Nobody else even knows that song. Just you and me.”

  The notes of Buck’s song hang almost visibly in the air of his workshop, then die to make way for those that follow. When I finish playing, and the room is silent again, Quinn helps me pack the guitar into the case. After a last look around the shop, she walks me to the front door. The baritone is heavy, but it feels right in my hand, and the chisels in my other hand help balance the weight.

  As we face each other across the threshold, Quinn says, “It’s wrong to kill a man for trying to do what’s right. The past matters, you know? Even if people don’t realize it. You’d think Sou
therners would get that.”

  “Mississippians are pretty selective about what they like to remember.”

  She laughs bitterly. “You say ‘they’ like you’re not one of them.”

  “I left a long time ago, Quinn.”

  “Most people from here, that doesn’t make any difference.”

  “It did to me.”

  “Promise me you’ll find out who killed him?”

  I look back into her expectant eyes. Moments like this one have consequences. “I will. I won’t rest until I do.”

  “And then what?”

  I turn up my palms. “Get justice.”

  “What does that look like, you think?”

  “I can’t bring him back, Quinn.”

  She tries to force a smile, but the result is an awful grimace. She reaches out and squeezes my shoulder. “Watch your back, okay? These fuckers are serious.”

  “I know. You, too.”

  She gives me a light kiss on the cheek, then turns away.

  As I walk toward the Flex, the screen door slaps shut behind me, the main door closes, and I hear the bolt shoot home. Quinn doesn’t stand around waiting to smile and wave as I drive off, which is the Southern way. She feels more allegiance to her dead husband than to pointless folkways. Yet the guitar in my hand tells me she’s already begun the necessary process of letting him go. She will treasure Buck’s memory and avenge him if she can, but Quinn is a survivor.

  And life is for the living.

  I’m back on the Little Trace, headed west, when the coroner calls my cell phone. The dozen shades of green in the thick canopy give me the feeling of driving through a rain forest. I take the call on the Flex’s Bluetooth system.

  “Hey, Byron. Thanks for getting back to me. What can you tell me?”

  The coroner’s deep bass voice rattles the door speakers. “I only got a minute. And I feel a little funny about this.”

  “I imagine you’re feeling some pressure down there. Certain influential people want this to go down as an accident?”