Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

“It was returned to the Deitrichs.”

“Yeah …” he began, but did not finish his sentence.

“The Deitrichs gave it to you?” I said.

“I’m fixing to be a rich man, boy. That’s all you need to know. Now, you do what I say about moving that casket.”

“You listen to me, Stump. A New Zealander, a man named Fletcher Grinnel, admitted killing Mr. Doolittle. He’ll go down for it. So will Earl Deitrich. You stay away from their house.”

“You worried about the woman? How long does it take you to figure it out, boy?”

I couldn’t sleep the rest of the night.

But in the morning I knew what I had to do. I called Earl Deitrich at his home.

“Jessie Stump’s back in the area. I think he aims to splatter your grits,” I said.

“What else is new?” Earl said.

“I think someone inside your house is helping him.”

“Judas Iscariot is in my midst? You’re telling me this because you’re a great guy? Okay, great guy, you’ve done your duty.”

“He has possession of Skyler Doolittle’s watch. How’d he come by it?”

I could hear him breathing in the silence.

“You’re telling me my wife is trying to have me killed? You’re a vicious, sick man,” he said.

I replaced the receiver gently in the telephon

e cradle. I couldn’t blame him for his feelings.

I ate lunch with Marvin Pomroy that day at the Mexican grocery across from the courthouse. Marvin listened while I talked, then was quiet a long time. He cleared his throat slightly and drank from his glass of lemonade. His face looked cool and serene and pink in the breeze from the wood-bladed fan overhead.

“Why did you call Deitrich first instead of me?” he asked.

“I gave Peggy Jean a preview of what their lives would be like for the next year. I believe I started her thinking about other options.”

He wiped his mouth with his napkin and picked up the check and added up the figures on it.

“You don’t have anything to say?” I asked.

“Yeah, maybe Earl Deitrich will finally do something good for a change. Like rid us of Jessie Stump,” Marvin replied.

But two hours later Marvin called me at the office, as I knew he would.

“Hugo’s going to send a couple of deputies back out to the Deitrich place. The next time you orchestrate a train wreck, don’t tell me about it,” he said, and hung up.

• • •

Jeff Deitrich cruised Val’s that night in his yellow convertible, alone, the top down. It was a beautiful fall night; the moon was big and yellow over the hills, the air cool, smelling of pine wood smoke and late-blooming flowers. The parking lot was filled, the hand-waxed surfaces of his friends’ sports cars and roll-bar Jeeps glowing under the electric lights. He drove up one aisle and down the other, scanning faces and groups of kids who talked with great animation between their parked cars. But no one seemed to look in Jeff’s direction, as though he were only a passerby, somehow not a player anymore.

He made a U-turn in the street and came through the main entrance again. Why was it that everyone looked younger? Most of these guys were high schoolers or people whom he had always regarded as barely worth noticing. Where were Chug and Warren and Hammie?

The only empty slot was at the far end of the lot, by a Dumpster that was overflowing in the weeds. He backed his convertible in so he could see everyone who drove by. It was just a matter of time before his old friends would be cruising by, gathering around his car, laughing at all this legal bullshit that a four-eyed fuck named Marvin Pomroy was trying to drop on his head.

Under his seat was a silver cigarette case that contained two tightly twisted joints of Jalisco gage, sprinkled with China White to give it legs.