Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

“Who was that on the phone?” I asked after he hung up.

“Hugo Roberts, who else? What do you want?” he said.

“I called the FBI and a homicide cop in Houston. I thought they ought to know another associate of Earl Deitrich has shown up dead, this time while breaking into the house of a man Earl accuses of stealing from him.”

“You did that?”

“Sure.”

“Those dope transporters y’all went up against down in Coahuila? You ever take any of them prisoner?”

“Everybody kept the lines simple, Marvin. The winners got to see the sunrise.”

I thought he was going to make a point, but he didn’t. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, his chin propped on his fingers, and looked at me reflectively.

“We’re cutting a warrant for Kippy Jo Pickett’s arrest,” he said.

“What was that blowup with Hugo Roberts about?” I said.

“None of your business. But I’ll tell you this much. Kippy Jo had traces of Grimes’s blood on the tips of her left hand. I think she felt his face before she parked the second round in his other eye. Forget the blind-girl defense, Billy Bob.”

“You’re hiding something,” I said.

That evening my little friend Pete walked from his house through the back of my property to my back screen porch. He carried a huge straw basket that was loaded with fruit, chocolate wrapped in gold foil, and cellophane bags of cactus candy and Mexican pralines. The strap of a brand-new black fielder’s glove, with white leather thongs through the webbing, was buttoned around the basket’s handle.

“What you got there, bud?” I said, opening the screen door for him.

“Ms. Deitrich brung it by the house this afternoon. My mother told me to bring it over here and leave it. She says she ain’t letting no rich people look down on us.”

“I’m not following you.”

“She says Ms. Deitrich don’t care two cents about me. This has got something to do with y’all.” He hefted the basket onto the plank table and sat down on a bench and looked at his tennis shoes. The yellow cellophane and red ribbon that enclosed the basket were undisturbed. A greeting card hung halfway out of an envelope taped to the basket’s handle. It read:

Dear Pete, I don’t know if you remember me from church or not. But I know you’re a friend of Billy Bob’s and that he is very proud of you. Please accept this gift as a congratulations for your hard work at school and your fine performance with your baseball team.

Your friend,

Peggy Jean Deitrich

“I believe Ms. Deitrich has high regard for you, Pete,” I said.

“It don’t matter. I cain’t take none of this back home. My mother’ll throw it in the garbage.” His eyes lingered on the fielder’s glove, then he twisted his mouth into a button and looked into space, as though the glove meant nothing to him.

“You want to saddle up Beau?” I asked.

“No. I got to weed the garden. Things ain’t too good at the house right now.”

I nodded, then watched him walk past the chicken run and along the edge of the irrigation ditch, stopping to throw dirt clods at the water. Then he crossed the small wood bridge that spanned the ditch and climbed up the hill into the pine trees that concealed the dirt yard and clapboard house where he lived.

Peggy Jean sometimes did volunteer work in the evenings at the library. The sky was piled with rain clouds and the sun was a dying orange fire between two hills when I drove into town. The library was a one-story, peaked-roof building with the tall, domed windows that were characteristic of public buildings at the turn of the century. The lights were on inside the windows and the oak trees on the lawn were black-green with shadow.

Peggy Jean was behind the circulation desk, wearing a flower-print dress and horn-rimmed glasses. I set the candy and fruit basket on top of the desk. The library was almost deserted.

“Pete’s mom won’t accept this. He can’t keep the glove, either,” I said.

“Is she angry at the boy?”

“She’s a drunk. She’s angry all the time.”