Unbury Carol(54)

He saw nobody. Heard no more.

You’ve got to hide your lady.

People are coming for you.

They’ve already set out for your home.

Sleep still in his eyes, Dwight looked long at the bedroom doorway.

Then he moved quickly, toward the hall, the first floor, the cellar, and the first place he could think to hide her…



* * *



—

…“It’s most likely nothing, Cole,” Opal said, leaning back in his chair.

“But you think it might be?”

“Enough to ask you to come with me. Sure.”

The deputy rubbed his red eyes.

“Mister Evers, though? And Carol Evers? I just never would have guessed anything foul going on.”

“And don’t guess it now. We don’t know a thing. All we got is the idea of a mortician who might be hot he didn’t get the job to dress her.”

Cole nodded. “Sheesh, Opal, that would be an ugly reason to go tattling.”

“Have you seen uglier?”

“I suppose I have.”

“Yes you have.”

Opal rose now and glanced through the blinds of the window. But for a purpling sky, it was still dark yet; hardly a person could be seen on the street.

“When are we going to head out?” Cole asked, scratching his head.

“We’re gonna go right now.”

Cole nodded. He’d figured as much.

“Let me get my things, Sheriff.”

As Cole vanished, Opal looked to Deputy Kern, seated across the station at Opal’s wooden desk.

“We shouldn’t be gone long.”

“Sheriff, you really think Mister Evers might have done something?” Kern asked.

“I don’t think anything. And you and Deputy Cole better stop thinking I’m thinking something just because I’m thinking out loud.”

“Sure I will, Sheriff.”

Opal stepped to his desk, picked up a plate of steak and eggs, and shoveled some of it into his mouth. He held the plate out to Kern. “You eat yet?”

“No, Sheriff, I haven’t.”

“You want the rest of these?”

“No thank you, Sheriff, I surely don’t.”

“Well, you better eat something. I don’t want to come back in a few hours and find you’re off getting fed somewhere.”

“I’ll be here, Sheriff. You can count on that.”

“I can’t count on anything, Kern.”

Cole came back into the room, wearing a coat, his gun at his hip.

“I’m ready when you say, Sheriff.”

The deputy followed Opal out the door. The men mounted their horses and started toward the Evers home.

“It’s about half an hour’s ride,” Opal said. “And if you feel like talking any, try talking about something nice. I don’t want my mind all cluttered with your worrying and asking questions.”

“Sure thing, Sheriff. How about Marcy Reynolds? You hear she had her baby?”

“I sure did,” Opal answered, squinting into the purple-and-orange sunrise at the end of the road. “And that’s nice…little baby Lucy…seven pounds I heard. A good healthy baby…that’s nice…”





The two stood in the alley behind the tavern. The alley smelled of garbage. The sun was up and Dwight removed his coat, draping it over one arm. The day was far too warm, he felt; suffocating. He couldn’t shake the nightmare image of the stranger in the corner of his bedroom. A ghoul, perhaps. A crazed man. Way Dwight saw it, nobody’s ghost stories ought to be trusted when experienced upon waking. Whatever he saw, it couldn’t have been as bad as he thought it was.

Damn Manders! If only Carol was already buried, there’d be no better place to hide her. All this madcap anxiety would be behind him. His worrying about what Farrah Darrow knew—and now what this…stranger…knew—all of it would be put to rest. Beneath him. Buried. Instead, today Carol could wake, tonight she could wake. Right now, as he spoke with Lafayette, Carol could rise and walk straight to Sheriff Opal’s station armed with everything she’d heard in the coma.

Dwight wasn’t even sure of what he’d said in her presence and what he hadn’t.

Damn Manders! Shouldn’t a man, a grieving man, be permitted to bury his wife where and when he deemed fit? Hell’s heaven, Carol was dead!

But the stranger who woke him knew she wasn’t.

Someone knows, someone knows, someone knows…

Dwight needed to put out the fire in his blood.

“It’s a bad thing to get nervous in this business, Evers.”

“I don’t like not knowing is what it is,” Dwight said.

Lafayette eyeballed him. Her hair hung loose about her face, no longer in a ponytail, and Dwight thought she appeared unhinged. He wondered if everything looked unhinged to a frightened man.

“You can hire as many people as you like, Evers. You can hire everybody. But then everybody knows.”

A bluebird settled on a chicken-wire garbage box. It made a belching sound, as though it’d just eaten.

“You don’t expect me to believe that the men you work with are part of everybody, do you?”

“These men know people, Evers. They talk.”