“Do you remember what time you called?”
“Sure. Right before the last bowl game came on at—what? Eight o’clock, maybe? It’s been twenty years. But it was before the bowl game.”
“He’s thinking about new plays for spring training; then four hours later he hangs himself?” What had happened in those four hours, to cause that drastic a change?
“Some people are good at hiding their feelings, I guess. He was divorced, unhappy; it happens.”
“I heard he and his ex-wife were trying to patch things up.”
“Yeah, I heard that, too, but things must not have been working out. I remember she came to his funeral, cried her eyes out. Pissed me off. Sorry, ma’am. If she cared that much about him, looks like she could have given the poor bastard some hope—sorry, ma’am.”
First Troy, now Max Browning. Why was everyone apologizing to her? Nikita wondered. She shifted restlessly, but a quick glance from Knox told her he’d explain later. She wondered when he’d started reading her mind—and when she’d started reading his.
“Anyway”—Max shook his head—“hell of a way to start out a new year.”
“Did you ever ask anyone else what the other things were that were put into the time capsule?”
“Had more important stories to cover. Coach’s suicide put it right out of my mind.”
“Did Coach Easley have any kin around here that you remember?” Knox leaned back, his entire attitude saying that he wasn’t in any hurry, had nothing urgent to do. Nikita had to lean back, too, or the sagging couch would have pitched her into his lap.
“Don’t think so. They moved here from Cincinnati when he was hired.”
“Were you good friends with him?”
“Good enough, I thought. If I needed a story, he’d always make time to sit down and talk to me. We weren’t drinking buddies, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Did he have a drinking buddy? Did he have a drinking problem?”
“He’d have an occasional beer, as I remember. Not a heavy drinker at all.”
“What about friends?”
“Well, let’s see. He was closest to the principal . . . What was his name?”
“Dale Chantrell.”
“That’s right. Dale Chantrell. Haven’t thought of him in a coon’s age. He moved on to a school near Louisville. He and his wife, Arah Jean—if you ever saw her, you’d know why I remember her name and not his—were good friends with Howard and Lynn. Lynn was Howard’s ex-wife.”
Mrs. Browning entered the cramped little office then with a silver platter laden with an insulated carafe of coffee, three cups and saucers, a little pitcher of cream, and a choice of sweeteners—one of which was real sugar. She set the platter on a stack of papers on Max’s desk. “Howard and Dale were good friends,” she said serenely. “Lynn hated Arah Jean’s guts.”
“Thank you,” Knox said, meaning the coffee. “Why did Mrs. Easley hate Mrs. Chantrell?”
“Like Max said, if you ever saw Arah Jean, you’d understand. She was one of those good-looking women who can’t help but flaunt it. Everything she wore was just a shade too tight, or too short, or too low-cut. Too much lipstick, too much mascara. That kind of woman.”
“Had plenty to flaunt, too,” Max said, and his wife smacked him on the arm. “Well, she did!”
“I never said she didn’t. I smacked you because, while I don’t expect you to go blind whenever a good-looking woman shoves a set of 38D knockers under your nose, I do expect you to act like you have,” Mrs. Browning said with considerable asperity.
Max grinned at his wife, clearly pleased she could still work up some jealousy on his account.
“Thirty-eight-D, huh?” asked Knox.
Because it seemed the thing to do, Nikita smacked his arm. Hard.
“That’ll teach you,” Max chortled, laughing at Knox’s surprised expression. Mrs. Browning was smiling as she left.
“I’m just glad it was my arm and not my jaw,” Knox said. “Do you think there was anything”—he rocked his right hand back and forth—“going on between Coach Easley and Arah Jean?”
“Naw, she was like that with everything in britches. Nothing personal. I doubt Arah Jean cheated; she was too smart for that. And Lynn wasn’t the type of woman to put up with something like that going on right under her nose; she’d have taken a horse whip to both of them. They were polite to each other because Howard and Dale were such good friends, but polite is all they were.”
“Do you know where Lynn lives now?”
“Can’t say as I do. Haven’t seen or heard of her since the funeral. Now, if you could find Dale Chantrell, he might could tell you. Or maybe Edie Proctor.”
“Edie Proctor,” Knox said. “She was school superintendent back then.”
“That’s right. She’s the one who hired Howard for the job. The board of education should still have his application somewhere, though if it’s like all those other old paper records, they’re boxed up in a basement somewhere. His application would probably list next of kin, but that would be Lynn, and you already know that.” Max paused. “So. You gonna tell me why you’re so interested in Howard Easley, after all these years?”
“It’s part of our investigation into Taylor Allen’s murder,” Knox said smoothly. “I can’t go into details; you know that. It’s just a thread I’m pulling on.”
“Uh-huh,” said Max. “In other words, you’re not saying. Okay, I understand. But when you figure out what’s going on, I get the story. You better not call anyone else.”
“It’s a deal. By the way, do you know if Howard had any hobbies?”
“He was a football coach; he didn’t have time for hobbies.”
“Model airplanes,” said Mrs. Browning as she breezed past the open door.
Knox turned to look at her. “Model airplanes?”
“That’s right,” Max answered, “I remember now. He built them in his garage. He built little motors for them, and radio-signal controls. Damndest thing you ever saw, back then. He’d get out in the field behind his house and fly those little airplanes. Crashed a few of them, too. What spare time he had, he was always fiddling with those things. He and some buddy he went to college with had this ongoing thing, to see what all they could come up with.”
“What happened to his stuff when he died? Did Lynn get it?”
“Now, that I don’t remember. The house stood empty for a while; then someone moved into it, lived there for a couple of years. It was empty off and on for about ten years; then finally it got in such bad shape no one would live there. It’s about fallen in now, yard all grown up around it. You can barely tell there’s a house there, the trees and bushes are so thick around it.”
“Do you remember the address?”
“Not exactly. It was out on Beeson Road, past Turner Crossroads. About four miles down, on the left.”
As they walked down the sidewalk toward the car, Nikita said, “Do we talk to Edie Proctor next?”
“I’m afraid so. She’s here in town, so we might as well. Then we’ll hunt up where Coach Easley lived. I know the general location; we’ll just have to look for the place.”
“You think something might still be there?”
“Probably not, but you never know. People leave all sorts of crap behind in a house when they move.”
“Whoever packed up his things should have cleaned out the house.”
“We won’t know until we look. There might be an attic space, or a partial basement.”
And Knox wouldn’t rest until he’d checked it out. Even when logic told him there wouldn’t be anything left, he still had to see for himself.
Mrs. Edie Proctor was reluctant to open the door to them, even when Knox showed her his badge. She scowled at them through a latched screen door. “How do I know that badge is real?”
“You can call the sheriff’s department and ask,” he said without any hint of impatience.
“Humph,” she said, staying where she was. From
what Nikita could tell through the screen, Mrs. Proctor’s mouth was drawn down in a permanent frown.
“What is it you want to ask?” she finally said. She didn’t open the screen door, but she didn’t close the wooden one, either. Cool air poured out of the house, evaporating the light film of sweat on their skin. The day promised to be another hot one.
“It’s about Coach Howard Easley. He committed suicide twenty years ago—”
“I know how he died,” she snapped. “What’s that got to do with anything now?”
“You hired him, didn’t you?”
“He was qualified.”
“Yes, ma’am, he was. He had a masters degree in physics from Cal Tech. Any idea why he settled for coaching football at a little high school in eastern Kentucky?”
“I didn’t ask.”
That line of questioning was unproductive, Nikita thought. Knox must have thought so, too, because he smoothly changed course. “I’d like to see his application, if you know where it is after all these years.”
“I didn’t keep papers like that here at my house. I don’t know why you’re bothering me with all this. If you want to know something, go to the board of education. Likely all those old papers are still there in the basement.”
Then she did shut the wooden door, leaving them standing on the sidewalk. Knox scratched his jaw. “That went well, don’t you think?”
“Reasonably. We still have all our parts. Do we go to the board of education now?”
“Let me make a phone call first. It’s summer; there may not be anyone there.”
He had a phone book in his car and he quickly located the number. Thirty seconds later he ended the call. “Summer hours are eight to twelve, Monday through Thursday. No one’s there at all today.”
“You could call the present superintendent.”
He tried that, and ended the call without speaking. “Another answering machine. Okay, that’s a dead end for right now. Let’s go see what we can find at Coach Easley’s house.”
29
Coach Easley’s old home was a dilapidated hull, badly overgrown with bushes and saplings; one side of the house had collapsed, and vines had overrun the wreckage, making it impossible to tell anything about what the rooms might have been or even where it was safe to step.
There wasn’t a yard anymore, just a more level place for the weeds and bushes to grow. The garage was to the rear of the house, and what had been the driveway was choked with waist-high weeds, honeysuckle vines, and rambling blackberry bushes. “Chigger city,” Knox announced when they got out of the car to see exactly what they were facing. “And this is definitely snake territory; lots of hiding places for them.”
“I’m a city girl; I don’t know what chiggers are.”
“Tiny bastards that burrow into your skin and itch like a son of a bitch.”
That sounded nasty. “The things I do in the line of duty,” she muttered.
Knox removed his jacket and laid it on the seat, then opened the trunk and took out his boots. Today he had on athletic shoes, the same as she did. “Here,” he said. “You put on the boots.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “How would I walk in them? How would I even keep them on? You wear them; you’ll have to be the point man, because you’re big enough to fight this jungle.” His chivalry touched her, because he was genuinely worried about her lack of protection and was willing to give up his boots to her.
To her relief he didn’t argue, probably because he saw she was right about him having to be the point man. From a box in the trunk he took a green can and tossed it to her. “Spray that on every inch of bare skin. It’s insect repellent. Spray your clothes, too.”
Quickly she read the instructions, sprayed herself, then tossed the can back to him for him to do the same. While he was putting on his boots and getting other items out of the trunk, she clipped her holster to her waistband and slipped the pen laser into her pocket; she might need it, wading into that jungle. In a pinch she supposed she could use the laser to clear a tree out of the way, but then there would be the danger of setting everything on fire, plus the laser didn’t have an inexhaustible power source. She didn’t want to use it if she didn’t have to. She wouldn’t hesitate, however, to blast a snake.
When Knox closed the trunk, she saw that he carried a slim, round stick in one hand and a hatchet in the other. “Sawed-off broomstick,” he said, seeing her looking at the stick. “Great for poking into places where you don’t want to stick your hand.”
Then he waded into the wild tangle of overgrowth. He used the stick to poke the ground in front of him, and the hatchet to hack away at bushes so thick he couldn’t push through them. Briars snagged at their clothing, bit through cloth; untangling themselves took time, but the only other option was to just jerk free, which left painful scratches. Within a minute they were both sweating in the humid heat and had covered about half the distance to the garage.
“Damn, what I wouldn’t give for a rain shower to cool things off,” he muttered. He paused to eye the sky, which seemed to have a yellowish tint to the blue. “Might get one this afternoon, from the looks of that sky.”
“What makes you say so?” she asked. Nikita was always annoyed by people who would look at a perfectly sunny sky and announce that rain was on the way. Unless one lived in a desert region, rain was always on the way, sooner or later. She couldn’t see anything unusual about the sky; it wasn’t as clear as it had been, but there were no dark clouds, either.
“The feel of the air. It’s too humid, which is thunderstorm-making. And the yellowish color is the leading edge of a front.”
That she understood; his comment was based on science, rather than folklore. Not that folklore wasn’t often right, but she was more comfortable with facts.
Their chances of finding something of value were small, but if anything remained from twenty years before, it would probably be in the garage. The house was far more likely to have been cleaned out before each occupancy, as whatever bits and pieces left behind would be swept up and put in the trash. A garage was different, the receptacle of things people no longer wanted but didn’t want to get rid of, either. She supposed it was sheer stubbornness that made them try at all, that and that Knox evidently couldn’t leave any stone unturned or any condemned property unexplored.
They disturbed swarms of gnats and mosquitoes, a field mouse ran across her shoe and nearly gave her a heart attack, and when they finally reached what remained of the garage, she took one good look at it and shook her head. “That’s a death trap. I’m not going in there.”
What remained of the rickety walls swayed at the slightest touch. There were huge holes in the Swiss-cheese roof; evidently an entire flock of birds lived inside, because they noisily vacated when Knox experimentally shook the frame.
“I don’t want you in there,” he said absently. “It’s dangerous enough with just one person moving things around. But I think I’ll cut some saplings to brace the walls, just in case.”
“If those walls are so rickety that a couple of sticks will make a difference, then no one in his right mind will go in. Right mind is the operative phrase, of course.”
He gave her a quick grin.”You just have to look at this as an adventure.”
“You look at it as an adventure. I’ll look at it as dangerous and idiotic.”
“Everyone has a role in life.” As he spoke he grabbed a sapling and bent over, hacking away until he severed it close to the bottom. Another few quick strokes trimmed away the limbs and the willowy top. He was left with about seven feet of fairly sturdy, green wood. He found several more saplings that he judged strong enough, and chopped them down, too.
Realizing she wasn’t going to stop him with an application of common sense, Nikita set herself to helping him. The saplings he’d cut were surprisingly heavy, which made her feel better because it meant they were stronger than she’d thought. She helped him drag them over to the garage, and stood ready to jam one against the wal
l if it showed signs of falling on him while he wedged the first one into place.
Finding a non-rotten place on the wall was the trick; even an iron railing wouldn’t do any good if the end punched right through the wood. The outer framework was stable enough, and he put the first brace there.
While he was searching for a place to put the second brace, Nikita stepped back and studied the structure. It was big enough to house one vehicle, and there was no sign there had ever been doors that could be closed. It was essentially a large, three-sided shed, with some storage space added onto the right side. The storage space was an afterthought; even with the years of neglect, she could see that the wood on the right side was in better shape, as if it was newer.
She took the broomstick and worked her way around to the right, poking and prodding to dislodge any reptile bush-dwellers. From the front, it looked as if the overgrowth had completely swallowed that side of the building, hiding any openings that might exist. Once she moved to the side, though, she could plainly see where a door had been. There wasn’t one there now, just the black hole of an entrance.
“There’s a doorway over here,” she called. “Looks like a storage space.”
Knox appeared beside her, wiping the sweat from his dirty face. “Newer, too,” he said, noticing the same thing she’d noticed. “This may be where he worked on his model planes. Stay here—”
“My ass,” she replied equably. “I won’t go in that other side, but this part doesn’t look as suicidal.”
“That’s my girl.” He grabbed her and gave her a quick, warm kiss that wasn’t enough for either of them. She fisted her hand in his T-shirt and drew him back, holding him for a more leisurely, deeper effort. He dropped the hatchet and clamped both hands on her ass, lifting her up and against the hard swell of his penis.
“God,” he said, abruptly dropping her back on her heels. “We can’t do this now, and we especially can’t do it here.”