Dangerous Undertaking Read online

  Reverend Pace stepped from behind the casket. He laid his hand on my arm as he passed, signaling me to keep my temper in check. I felt Pace quiver and feared if anyone lost his temper, it would be he.

  “The Lord is already here,” said Pace. “He has been working through these good people to bring dignity and honor to this child.”

  “You preach words of damnation, old man.” He lifted the Bible above his head. “The Spirit has forsaken you and all the heathen who refuse to heed the commands of the Almighty.”

  Before Pace could reply, Fats McCauley spoke in a low rumble, the words erupting from deep inside his corpulent body. “Judge not lest ye yourself be judged. For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.” With the last syllable, his face froze. His eyes never wavered from Leroy Jackson as he silently challenged the man to dispute him.

  “Amen,” said Pace.

  Leroy Jackson looked away, unable to tolerate the weight of Fats McCauley’s soul-piercing scrutiny. Through the doorway came Luke Coleman. He moved past his neighbor and self-proclaimed preacher as he led his wife Harriet by the arm. The young mother had draped a remnant of black lace across her head. The brown hair was pulled into a bun, and her dark eyes darted beneath the drooping veil, painfully searching each face for reassurance that her son was not lost to her.

  She caught sight of the casket at the far end of the room. The profile of the child rose above the padded rim as if he lay suspended over a sea of white satin. Harriet Coleman drew back. Her legs crumpled. Luke tried to catch her, but she sank to the hardwood floor.

  “My boy,” she sobbed. “Why would God let him die? He didn’t need to die.” Her husband struggled to raise her to her feet. Pace took her other arm and together they managed to carry her to a folding chair that Wayne set up against the wall. The woman shut out all attempts to comfort her, only staring at the casket, her grief grown too deep for any physical expression.

  “Are you expecting others?” I asked Luke Coleman.

  “Some friends and neighbors. Leroy will say a few words before we all leave for Kentucky.”

  I nodded and patted the man on the arm. “I’ll be close by to be of assistance.” I gave a slight wave of my hand indicating we should withdraw. Fats McCauley was not watching for the signal. He was fascinated by the young mother and studied her as if she were the only person in the room.

  “Travis,” I whispered, then repeated more distinctly. There was no response.

  “Travis, let’s go,” said Pace.

  The big man nodded, but instead of following the Reverend, he crossed the room and knelt in front of Harriet Coleman, putting his bulk between her and the casket.

  “You have a beautiful little boy. Nobody will take that memory away from you. Believe me.”

  Harriet Coleman reached out and touched Fats McCauley on the cheek. She rubbed her fingers across his tears.

  “He is with Jesus, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. Yes, he is. And my Brenda is with Jesus too. Happy and whole in the shelter of His arms.” He took a deep breath, then whispered so low that the rest of us strained to catch the words. “Too cold. It was too cold.”

  Fats McCauley got to his feet, looked back at the boy and walked out of the room without another word.

  “I’m going to sit with Fats for a few minutes in the kitchen,” said Pace.

  I turned to Susan. “Would you mind helping me at the front door? Folks can put their coats in the hall closet.”

  About fifteen or twenty people came. Most were like the Colemans, poor, ill-clad, and terribly distraught by the tragedy. Like the Colemans and Leroy Jackson, they had migrated over from Kentucky. As the colony’s spiritual leader, Jackson dealt with the mourners more as tribe members than as a congregation.

  I was surprised at the one exception to this group of backwoods mountaineers. Fred Pryor, the Ridgemont Power and Electric executive, walked into the foyer wearing a tan cashmere overcoat.

  Accompanying him was a lean man with oily black hair and the dark stubble of a well-past-five-o’clock shadow. He wore a wrinkled gray suit and would have been almost presentable if not for the scuffed brown shoes. I figured him for late forties. He helped Pryor out of his coat while never taking his eyes off me. There was no chance I could mistake his expression as friendly. He was wary, like a dog protecting his turf.

  “Mr. Clayton,” said Pryor. “Sorry to meet again under such sad circumstances. And I gather there is still no word on Dallas Willard?”

  I shook my head. Pryor turned to his companion.

  “This is Odell Taylor. He is one of our foremen. I asked him to have the crew check the security gate at the head of the rail spur and walk the track.”

  I reached out to shake the man’s hand, but instead Taylor laid Pryor’s heavy coat across my forearm.

  “Nothin’,” he said. “We found nothin’ because that Willard knows better than to set foot on our property.”

  Pryor quickly touched the man’s wrist and interrupted him. “I know, Odell, but Mr. Clayton and the sheriff are just doing their best to pursue every possibility. All of us hope the poor demented man is found alive. The loss of the…the…”

  He faltered for a second, and Odell Taylor said, “Colemans’ son.”

  “Yes, the loss of the Colemans’ son is enough tragedy to deal with. We’d better go pay our respects.”

  Pryor eyed the visitation room as if studying the fairway before a golf shot. Then he and his “caddie” walked into the crowd. Susan took Pryor’s coat from me and whispered, “Who’s Mr. Personality and the Big Shot?”

  “The Big Shot is Fred Pryor, the guy Tommy Lee and I met at Broad Creek. Mr. Personality is his foreman. He’s helping his boss keep faces and names together. I’d just as soon he forget mine.”

  Susan and I stood at the doorway where we could be of assistance in case someone needed a restroom. Uncle Wayne stayed close to the young mother. She sat in her chair blankly staring ahead. People made short statements of condolence and then moved on to small circles of conversation.

  Fred Pryor spent about ten minutes making small talk with folks he recognized from the construction site, but whose jobs kept them nameless. As I expected, Taylor positioned himself beside Pryor and cued each first name so that the boss could say hello and agree how terrible a tragedy it was and what good friends they were to come.

  Then I saw Pryor look around the room and decide it was time for him to get to the purpose of his visit. He cleared his throat just loud enough to halt conversation around him. The silence rippled through the room as he walked over to the Colemans. He pulled a brown envelope from his inside pocket and handed it to Luke.

  “We hope this can help in your hour of need.”

  Everyone watched intently, recognizing the standard pay envelope of Ridgemont Power and Electric. Luke opened the unsealed flap. He studied the enclosure without removing it, and then passed it to his wife. “Thank you, Mr. Pryor,” he muttered, never lifting his eyes.

  Harriet removed the check and held it between her splintered fingernails. She looked over its edge to the body of her son. Tears flushed her eyes and the check shook uncontrollably.

  “A hundred dollars. A hundred dollars for the life of my Jimmy.” Her face twisted, and the check fluttered to the floor.

  The color rose in Fred Pryor’s cheeks. Those were not the words of gratitude he expected. The woman had humiliated him. I knew he wanted to snatch up the check and storm out.

  “It’s an hour of need. Need and understanding,” said Wayne. “We thank you for your thoughtfulness, Mr. Pryor.” My uncle stood behind the sobbing woman and turned his gentle smile on the whole room, diffusing the tension. Wayne’s sensitivity, like that of my father, was something you don’t learn in embalming school. It was something I found difficult to express.

  Fred Pryor pushed the bile back in his throat and managed to nod an acceptance of the compliment. Leroy Jackson knelt and picked up the check. As h
e raised it past Harriet Coleman, she reached out with the swiftness of a serpent, snared it from his hand and clutched it to her breast.

  I felt a body bump against me, and I slid aside as Fats McCauley squeezed between me and the doorjamb. He made no apology as he stood staring into the room, his heavy face moving side to side as he searched for someone.

  “Brenda,” he said. “I want to tell the mother about my Brenda.”

  Only the rustle of clothing broke the silence as people turned to see who had spoken. Odell Taylor stepped forward as if challenging Fats to intrude farther.

  A hand grabbed Fats firmly by the shoulder and pulled him back into the foyer. With strength beyond his physical appearance, Reverend Pace spun the obese man around.

  “Not tonight, Travis.” Pace put his face only inches away from the other man. “This is not the time. Right now we have to take care of the living.” Pace looked at Susan and me. “Would you take him home?”

  We got Fats’ raincoat from the closet. He draped it over his shoulders like a cape and followed us out the rear of the funeral home and into the steady drizzle. We drove to his furniture store in the old section of Main Street. Gainesboro’s small downtown had not yet been totally cannibalized by the shopping malls, but on this rainy Sunday night we encountered no one. The silence of the ghost town was invaded only by the whoosh of my tires on the wet pavement and the steady slap of the windshield wipers.

  We stopped in front of the brick two-story building with “McCauley’s Furniture” scripted across the plate glass window.

  “We still live upstairs,” he said softly. “Thank you.”

  He wedged himself out the curb-side door, and then he crossed in front of my headlights. I rolled down the window, wondering if he had left something at the funeral home.

  “Can we talk tomorrow?” he whispered. He glanced over at Susan and spoke even softer. “Private?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll come by.”

  He reached in with a damp hand and gently patted my bandaged shoulder. Then he turned and lumbered into the store like a black bear retreating to his den.

  “What was that all about?” asked Susan.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Something’s hurting him. Who’s Brenda?”

  Chapter 6

  On Monday the hunt for Dallas Willard was smaller in scale since most of the weekend volunteers held regular jobs and Tommy Lee had limited manpower. I planned to drop by the Sheriff’s Department early and lend a hand in whatever way I could. I hoped that Reverend Pace and I would be paired together again. With the odds growing that we might be looking for Dallas’ body, I preferred someone whose exuberance for the chase was not quite as overt as that displayed by Deputy Reece Hutchins. I’m sure Reece made a fine law officer, but most of my conversations with him during our search had revolved around his fantasies of how he would react to an ambush. Maybe he was just steadying his nerves, but he got on mine.

  I was also unsettled by Fats’ request to speak with me. Something was bothering him, and for some reason he wasn’t comfortable discussing it in front of Susan. It could have merely been his old-school notion that there are some topics men should only talk about with other men. He certainly had seemed shocked by the idea of Reverend Pace having a female colleague. I suspected the terrible tragedy of little Jimmy Coleman’s death lay beneath Fats’ anxiety, and I decided I should see him before meeting Tommy Lee.

  I had been six when Brenda McCauley was murdered. We had been in first grade together. A handyman who did odd jobs for Fats lured the trusting little girl into his car. Her body was found in a drainage ditch three days later. The killing cut our community to the quick. My classmates and I were sheltered from the grisly details, and only when I was much older did I learn she had been sodomized. The murderer died a week later in a shootout with police in north Georgia.

  Losing a classmate when you’re six makes a lasting impact. I couldn’t see Fats without thinking of the lively red-haired girl who had once sat in the desk beside me. If I still felt some pain, what pain must Fats McCauley have had to endure every day of his life? Surely it was unbearable. Fats’ wife left him on the first anniversary of their daughter’s death, unable to separate her husband from the anguish of their loss. I thought about my father and his fading memory and thought at times it could be a blessing.

  At ten till eight, most of the Main Street stores were still closed. Of course, P’s Barbershop bustled with the usual crowd of Monday morning gossips who clustered around the central kerosene heater, drinking coffee, watching haircuts, and telling tall tales. It was the place to learn who did what to whom over the weekend.

  McCauley’s Furniture was three stores down from the barbershop. I parked at the curb and peered into the dim store front, but I couldn’t see any activity. The “Drink Sundrop” open-for-business sign taped inside the front door announced Monday—Friday: eight-thirty to five. I guessed Fats would be up by now since the store should open in less than an hour.

  I jiggled the door latch and wasn’t surprised to find it locked. I banged on the window glass, but the anemic rattle did not sound as if it could be heard beyond the love seats and winged-back chairs visible in the morning sunlight.

  I noticed no cars were parked at the curb. Fats’ vehicle must have been kept in the rear alley. I cut through the walkway between McCauley’s Furniture and Larson’s Discount Drugs, dodging the boxes of trash set out by the druggist for Monday pickup. The furniture store had no exit along the side. At the rear, an old silver Buick sat snug against Fats’ loading dock door. On the far side was a service entrance with an electric buzzer to signal a delivery. I had expected that. I didn’t expect the broken windowpane above the doorknob. The sight of the jagged daggers of glass snapped me fully alert like no cup of coffee ever could.

  I carefully reached for the inside latch, and swung the door open with my knee, leaving my good arm free should the intruder be waiting in the shadows. A floorboard creaked as I stepped across the threshold. It was the only sound other than my own breathing. I waited for my eyes to adjust. In the gloom, a packing crate became visible in the corner by the stairway to the second floor. Its lid had been pried off for a preliminary inspection of its contents. A crowbar dangled from the splintered edge where the nails had been ripped from the wood. I grabbed the flat end and balanced the cool iron in my hand. A swift swing would turn it into a lethal weapon, capable of breaking an arm or skull.

  From the rear of the store, I could clearly see the silhouettes of furniture cluttered against the daylight of the front windows. The cash register at the counter appeared undisturbed. Perhaps the burglar, if he had indeed gotten inside, had fled before getting a chance to rifle the cash drawer. I decided to announce my presence in case an alarmed Fats McCauley was upstairs loading a shotgun.

  “Mr. McCauley! Mr. McCauley, it’s Barry Clayton.” I kept the crowbar by my side and climbed the stairs, calling out with every step. I pushed open the door to the apartment and heard the sound of running water. Then I felt the wetness soak through my shoes. I crossed the small living room toward the hallway. My footsteps squished in the puddles that collected in the depressions of the hardwood floor. I found a wall switch and the overhead light illuminated the short corridor. Water flowed under the door at the end of the hall, its pink tinge offering an ominous explanation of why no one answered.

  I slowly pushed the door open. In the dim light, I saw a shapeless mass quivering above the porcelain rim of the tub. I needed a few seconds to comprehend that I was staring at what once had been a human being.

  The remains of Fats’ head lay against the spigot, bobbing in its generated turbulence and floating just above the surface, while the rest of his body filled the tub. His flaccid mass was not round but layered in folds where the fat creased back on itself. The buoyant flesh rippled in macabre vibrations as the water swirled around the corpse and flowed over the tub’s edge onto the floor.

  “Oh, hell,” I muttered. I s
aw the thick splotches of blood, hair, flesh, and brains splattered against the tile wall from the soap dish to the ceiling. A single discharged shotgun shell lay in the dry wash basin to my right. It was a number one buck Remington twelve gauge, the same kind of shell I saw ricochet off Martha Willard’s casket.

  “Don’t disturb anything,” ordered Tommy Lee. “I’ll be right there.”

  I started to remind him I had worked in a police department, but I decided I’d probably say the same thing to anyone standing smack in the middle of a murder scene. I set the phone receiver back on the cradle, careful to hold it where I would not smudge any prints. There was nothing I could do for Fats. I took the few remaining minutes before the coming onslaught of law enforcement officials and media hounds to indulge my old police curiosity about the crime scene.

  The writing desk in his bedroom was tidy. I had used the black rotary-dial phone I found squared in the back right corner. The goose-necked lamp was on the left. A plain white message pad lay in the center of the desk. Several sheets had been torn off leaving a red-gummed rim of adhesive binding sticking a quarter inch above the top sheet. Nothing was written on the pad, although I noticed an imprint from the previous notation—“Barry Clayton weather.”

  Just to the side of the desk was a wire-mesh waste basket, its bottom covered with wadded note sheets. I wondered if the one bearing my name was among them. On the floor next to the waste basket lay a retractable ballpoint pen with “McCauley’s Furniture” gilded on the blue plastic barrel. The tip was clicked in position for writing.

  Everything else in the sparsely furnished room seemed in order. The clothes I had seen Fats wearing yesterday were piled in the desk chair. The single bed was made, but the spread had been neatly folded back from the pillow. A closed black Bible rested on the crisp white pillowcase.

  I returned to the hall and opened the door across from Fats’ bedroom. Inside, it was as dark as if night had suddenly fallen on that half of the apartment. I fumbled along the wall until I found the face plate through my handkerchief. I flipped up the stubby switch.