Laying Bones

Also by Reavis Z. Wortham

The Texas Red River Mysteries

The Rock Hole

Burrows

The Right Side of Wrong

Vengeance is Mine

Dark Places

Unraveled

Gold Dust

The Sonny Hawke Mysteries

Hawke’s Prey

Hawke’s War

Hawke’s Target

Hawke’s Fury

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Books. Change. Lives.

Copyright © 2021 by Reavis Z. Wortham

Cover and internal design © 2021 by Sourcebooks

Cover design by The BookDesigners

Cover images © Woofit/Shutterstock, eddyfish/Getty Images

Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Apart from well-known historical figures, any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks

P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

(630) 961-3900

sourcebooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wortham, Reavis Z., author.

Title: Laying bones / Reavis Z. Wortham.

Description: Naperville, Illinois : Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, [2021]

Identifiers: LCCN 2020018080 (print) Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction. | Suspense fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3623.O777 L39 2021 (print) | DDC 813/.6--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018080

Contents

Front Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Foreword

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Three

Chapter Sixty-Four

Chapter Sixty-Five

Chapter Sixty-Six

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Chapter Seventy

Chapter Seventy-One

Chapter Seventy-Two

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Back Cover

This one is for my first cousin, Roger Wade Armstrong (November 28, 1957–January 22, 2020), a lifelong friend, hunting and fishing partner, and the inspiration for Pepper in the Texas Red River Mystery series. It was Roger who gave me the idea for this novel, and I’m deeply sorry he never saw it. Hoss, your passing left a huge hole in our lives, and I miss your voice and that distinctive laugh.

Yesterday’s gone on down the river and you can’t get it back.

–Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

Foreword

This is a work of fiction inspired by a tragedy that occurred in Lamar County back in 1964. I took what I recalled as a child, mixed it with a few geographical possibilities, and wove this tale that I hope entertains, but is in no way an explanation or supposition for what happened that night. I use R. B.’s real name to honor my dad’s cousin and best friend. They shared adventures both in the river bottoms of their youth, and as part of the U.S. military’s occupation of Japan. Boy, there were some stories that came out of that experience.

Most of us think the Red River is the true border between much of Texas and Oklahoma, but if you carefully examine a detailed map, you’ll find the river has shifted through the decades, leaving slivers of orphan land in both states. To my knowledge, no one has ever tried to build on what usually amounts to sandbars, but as usual, I wondered what if and let the story take me away.

Chapter One

I rode against the passenger door in the front seat of my cousin’s midnight blue 1964 Comet, watching the headlights cut through the cold darkness. Curtis was five years older than me, with brown hair that swept down above one eye and curled over his collar. His girlfriend, Sheila, sat right up against him and, despite her dress, rode with her left foot tucked under her right thigh. Her poufy blond beehive doo had so much Aqua Net in it, I was afraid she’d knock Curtis out if she turned her head too fast.

He didn’t seem to mind that a knee was against the big steering wheel half the time, because Curtis drove with his hand resting inside the crook of her bare-nekked leg. Uncle Cody told me there was a big difference between naked and nekked.

Naked is when you’re doing something you’re supposed to, like taking a bath or jumping in the Rock Hole for a swim. Nekked is when you’re doing something you’re not supposed to, like Curtis with his hand cupping her thigh. Sheila was also what Miss Becky called blessed, which meant she had a set of ta-tas on her like I’d never seen on a young girl before. She wore her dresses cut low, and I tried not to look at the tops of her snow-white boobs in the dashboard lights.

My near twin cousin, Pepper, snuggled up with Mark in the back seat, making me the fifth wheel once again. I started to get in the back with them when we left the show, but Pepper jumped in after him and locked the doors. Ride up there in the front with them.

But there’s more room for the three of us in the back. You’re dang near gonna sit in his lap anyway.

"Yeah, but we want to be alone back here."

Mark had a strange look on his face, half grin, half embarrassed. I didn’t want to argue there on the street in front of the Plaza Theater, so I rode home up front.

We’d been to Chisum that Friday night to see Hellfighters, John Wayne’s new movie. Just out of the blue that afternoon, Curtis called to see if the three of us wanted to go to the show with him. I knew good and well he didn’t invite us out of the goodness of his heart. It was his way of getting his new girlfriend into Uncle Ned’s sights, hoping he and Miss Becky would approve. For some reason he needed them to say they liked Sheila.

There wasn’t much chance of that because she was a little on the wild side. She sure wasn’t hard to look at, but there was something about that gal that just wasn’t right. She seemed plastic somehow, all painted up with too much makeup, lipstick, and nail polish. I could tell Pepper liked what she saw, though, because she’d started to paint her own chewed-off fingernails, and even her toes.

Now, Pepper had no intention of being a girly-girl. She’s always been a rough-as-a-cob tomboy hippie and dressed like one from the time she was big enough to walk, but she’d been paying more and more attention to her looks. She’d wear makeup if she could get away with it, but Miss Becky’d have a rigor if anyone brought it up.

Instead, Pepper made do with feathers in her hair, one given to her by an Indian boy in New Mexico. She’d also talked about getting her ears pierced, but that was another round with both her mama, Aunt Ida Belle, and Miss Becky.

We chased our headlights through the dark and passed a fresh-killed armadillo on the shoulder. Curtis laughed. Did y’all know ever third armadillo is born full-growed and dead on the side of the road? I heard ’em called rats on the half shell.

He laughed, and it took me a minute to realize what he’d said was a joke.

Sheila turned up the volume on the radio. Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf roared out of the metal dash’s one speaker. Pepper grabbed the back seat and leaned forward. "I love that song! Turn it up and pull over! Pull over!"

Caught up in her excitement, Curtis whipped onto the two-lane’s shoulder, and Pepper jumped out in the cold air. Turn it up! She ran around into the headlights and started dancing like she had ants in her pants.

Ain’t she something? Mark slid out and joined her.

Curtis cranked his window down so they could hear the music, and Sheila turned it up even louder. Mark and Pepper danced like lunatics in the icy north wind while cars passed, honking their horns in fun. I stayed right where I was and adjusted the heater vent to keep warm. There was no way I was going to get out and dance on the side of the highway in the wintertime, and maybe get run over to be a Top-on-a-half-shell.

Come on! Curtis popped his door open and grabbed Sheila’s hand, dragging her out under the steering wheel. A car swerved to miss ’em, tires squalling. The driver honked loud and long. Neither of those dopes paid him any attention, and, before you knew it, they were dancing in the headlights too. I kept an eye through the rear glass, hoping the passing cars wouldn’t hit them or the Comet.

The song ended and they all jumped back in the car with cold radiating off their clothes. Doors slammed and Curtis stomped the foot-feed, throwing rocks from under the back tires. "That was a blast. Hey, now I’m in the mood for some fun. Let’s swing across to Juarez, and I’ll get some beer before I take y’all home. He glanced across Sheila’s good-sized blessings at me. Whadda ya say?"

Juarez was the name of the cluster of mean, cinderblock honky-tonks lining the two-lane on the Oklahoma side of the Red River. Seven joints were on the east side for easy access from Texas patrons. The roughest club of all was two miles farther north. Originally a poor man’s version of a rural country club, the TV Lounge had fallen onto hard times.

The only one not frequented by white patrons was a sad little joint called Patsy’s, a gathering place for local blacks who weren’t allowed to mix with anyone else, not even the Indians. Choctaws, Cherokees, and a few Chickasaw Indians had their own joint in the rough country ten miles to the west of Grant, but no Oklahoma lawman would go there on a bet. Fights, cuttings, and more than a few killings were handled by the Tribal Police, even though there was no true reservation in that area.

Why don’t you take us home first? I didn’t like the idea of waiting in the Comet. I’d heard stories about fights and killings over there in dirt lots and didn’t want any part of it, even though it was likely that Curtis would swing into the Sportsman for his beer.

Uncle Cody’d owned it for a good long while, but he finally sold the club before Christmas because he was sheriff of Lamar County. It was a stick in Grandpa’s eye that Uncle Cody even owned a beer joint in the first place, although he called himself a silent partner in the business, but Grandpa still wasn’t over his mad.

Pepper piped up in the back seat. "Sounds like a deal to me, as long as you let me have a sip."

The top of her dress pulled tight and straining the buttons, Sheila hung an elbow over the back of the seat. Honey, you’re not old enough to drink.

I tried not to look at the eighteen-year-old coming out of both the top and bottom of her clothes, with bare legs glowing and the possibility of her blessings popping out like dough from a busted can of biscuits. Instead, I stared straight ahead, listening to the bite of Pepper’s voice.

Neither are you, Sheila Cunningham, but I bet it won’t slow you down none. I just want one sip. I like that first bitter taste in my mouth.

I sat there studying on when Pepper might have tasted beer when Curtis turned east onto the last county road before we crossed the river bridge into Oklahoma. The eastbound two-lane led us into deeper darkness, and we drove downriver. Curtis mashed the dimmer switch with his foot and in the brighter beam we got a wider view of pastures and trees lining both sides of the road.

Hereford cows watched us pass from behind sagging bobwire fences. I’d never been on that side of Highway 271 and there wasn’t a dern thing that looked familiar. Where are we going?

To a new place I heard about. Curtis slowed, and I realized he was looking for a turnoff.

All the joints are on the Oklahoma side of the river, dummy.

He glanced up at Pepper in the rearview mirror and I wished he’d keep his eyes on the road. I’d heard about a feller who rolled his car off in a ditch over in Red River County and was pinned in his car for three days before anyone found him. He said he had nothing to eat but a box of Luden’s cough drops, and I didn’t want to die with that artificial cherry taste in my mouth.

Curtis tapped his brakes a couple of times and saw what he was looking for. There. That’s the turnoff. A single reflector on a bodark fence post was what he’d been looking for.

It was nothing but a bobwire gap, like every other gate in the county. I hated those cheap, aggravatin’ gates. I had to wrestle them out of the way whenever Grandpa Ned went to feed in the mornings. But this time, instead of being wired up tight against the gatepost like ours, it was thrown loose in the dead grass inside the pasture.

My heart beat ninety to nothing. We were heading through absolute darkness, down a pasture road leading to a glow on the river that felt dangerous as a rattlesnake. Mark didn’t like it any better’n I did.

He leaned forward in the seat. Curtis, you trying to find a bootlegger? We don’t want to be messin’ with nobody like that.

Naw, and what you don’t know is that we won’t be in Texas no more in about a minute.

What? Pepper popped up. There ain’t no bridges up in here.

"You’re right about that. But folks think the river is the border all the way to Louisiana, and the truth is that the Oklahoma line sometimes cuts off the river and through some of these pastures, just like the one we’re in. The river twisted out of its banks back in sixty-four, and left a little sliver of Oklahoma south of the river. Up there in a couple of hundred yards, we cross out of Texas. Their stupid laws in this county don’t apply here."

The dirt lane threaded through a thick stand of trees growing up on a fencerow and into a second pasture. Straight ahead was a single pole light over a building hanging halfway out over the river, thirteen feet down below.

A blue-and-yellow neon sign looking like a star in a George Jetson cartoon glowed high overhead. It read Starlite, and I couldn’t help but like it, because lines radiated out from the words, reminding me of Miss Becky’s atomic plates with blue stars.

It was funny. George Jones singing The Honky Tonk Downstairs came on at the exact same time. My head swam for a moment and I was afraid my Poisoned Gift was going to wake up.

Sometimes I get this feeling of déjà vu, and then my head goes to spinning and I have to lay down if I can. Usually when that happens, I’m out for only a couple of seconds before waking up feeling like I’d rested for days. Other times the feeling is stronger, and I have visions.

Moonlight sparkled off the Red River behind the joint. Our headlights reflected off dozens of cars parked in ragged lines. The building wasn’t like the dirty, toady joints I was used to seeing on the highway. The paint on the exterior was so fresh it looked wet. The word cultured popped into my mind, though in my opinion, the only culture we had in Lamar County was linen napkins at Reeve’s Family Restaurant in Chisum.

Mark whistled low and long. This place is brand new.

You bet. Curtis’s voice was full of importance. This is the new, happenin’ place. It’s only been open a couple of months. He left the engine running. I’ll be right back. Y’all stay in here while I’m gone, and lock the doors.

Sheila slapped the lock button when he got out and adjusted the radio dial to clear the static out of the song. I got a glimpse in the crowded bar when Curtis went inside. I was nervous as a cat in a doghouse in that parking lot and like to have jumped out of my skin when Pepper’s arm pointed over my shoulder toward the front windshield.

There’s Uncle Neal. What’s he doing here?

Neal Box, the owner of our little country store in Center Springs, was threading his way through the cars and trucks with his skinny wife, Clarice. They both looked out of place, because the only time I ever saw them was in their store, or at funerals, but it was obvious they knew where they were going. Instead of going in the front, they followed a long wooden porch wrapping around the building and over the river. He knocked on a door near the back and it opened in a spill of light and a cloud of blue smoke.

Mark’s voice came from the back. He likes to shoot dice.

He had my attention. Uncle Neal don’t gamble.

Sure does. Miss Clarice always goes with him to make sure he don’t lose all their money. She just watches and drinks beer, but they used to go over to the Texoma Club when I was living over there with my aunt and her sorry-assed husband.

I had to study on that one for a minute. A brief image of her sipping beer through a paper straw popped into my head. How do you know that?

"Everybody knows on that side of the river. They just don’t talk about it in Center Springs. I’ll wager even Miss Becky knows, though she won’t never say nothin’ about it."

Cold air again flooded inside when Pepper yanked the door handle. I gotta see this.

Don’t. Sheila whipped around and grabbed at her arm with a look of sheer terror on her face. I saw who she was at that moment. Instead of a woman under all that makeup, her little girl’s expression told me the plastic I’d noticed was just a shell. She was a kid who wanted to be an adult.

Pepper didn’t give a hoot’n hell, though. In many ways, she was older and tougher than Sheila. She yanked her arm free. I want to see what’s going on in there.

Mark slid out behind her, his long black hair flowing like water to his shoulders. Because he was Choctaw, he was the only boy in our school with hair like that, though for the life of me I’ll never know why everyone tolerated it with him and nobody else. I’ll show you but stay in the shadows. We don’t want anybody to see us.

Mark was always afraid that he’d do something to mess up his new life living with us. We were brothers and buddies, and I knew the fear he carried, but he was crazy about Pepper for reasons I couldn’t begin to understand and followed her everywhere like a little puppy dog.

He took her hand, casting a wide arc outside of the glow from the neon sign and the light from fixtures set on the wraparound porch’s walls.

All of a sudden, I found myself following them, though I don’t remember getting out. It was one of those moments that change your life, and instinct told me something was going to happen.

We passed two dozen parked cars with frosted windshields that glittered like diamonds in the honky- tonk’s lights. One car with fogged windows was running, white smoke coming from the tailpipe. Inside I could see the glow of the radio in the dash, and muffled music. As we passed, a small woman’s hand in the back seat pressed against the glass, leaving a wet smear that ran with water. I caught a clear glimpse of a blond head, low against the door. Her face tilted upward, and I looked at her at the same time the Starlite sign briefly lit a young man’s face. For a moment my eyes met theirs before I looked away.

They laughed, and, embarrassed by what I’d seen, I hurried to catch up with the others. The club’s front door opened, and two men came outside, followed by Buck Owens’s voice singing that he had a tiger by the tail. They must’ve had one heck of a jukebox in there for the music to be so loud. The song cut off quick when the door closed behind them.

A brand-new 1969 Ford Galaxie was parked at the corner of the building. I caught up with Mark and Pepper behind the gold-colored sedan just as the side door opened again. It must have been hot inside, because a man in khakis and rolled-up shirtsleeves stood there, fanning the door to get some air.

It reminded me of when we had to go to the storm cellar. The women and kids always lined the bench seats along both sides of the hole in the ground that smelled like raw earth. The men sat on the wooden steps, opening and closing the door both for ventilation from the coal oil lamps that gave us light, and to keep an eye on the storm itself.

I figured they needed air in the same way, because enough smoke boiled out of that side door that it looked like the honky-tonk was on fire.

Bigger than I thought, the room built out over the steep riverbank took up the back quarter of the building. Despite the cold, a handful of young people sat in the shadows on the back railing, their feet hanging out over the water far below. One of them glanced around and I recognized Gus Davis in the light. Even though he was a senior, he didn’t come to school very much. Beside him with his arm around Gus’s shoulder was a kid I didn’t know.

I wondered what Gus got out of hanging around out back, but one of the others sitting on the railing tilted a bottle, and I realized they were likely close to the same age and had talked someone into buying them beer.

Inside, cigarette smoke hung low over a long, strange-looking table lit by a colorful billiard light. A crowd of men gathered around and there was a lot of jostling for a minute before everyone leaned forward. The crowd hollered and they backed away.

Boxes and crates were stacked head-high against the walls, but even though it looked like a storeroom, the folks in there were having a high old time, laughing and yelling. Rough tables and chairs were full of people with drinks in front of them.

More happy yelling came through the door in a wave, along with a couple of groans. In the far corner Miss Clarice sat at a tall table with another woman who was poured into a candy-apple-red dress. They were surrounded by cases of beer and boxes with labels of W.L. Weller, Jim Beam, and J&B Scotch.

Two men, one in khakis and the other wearing slacks, stepped back from the table. Heads together, they talked. The one wearing slacks nodded and split and spoke to the man holding the door open. Both of them looked back toward the long table, and Slacks smoothed his slick-backed hair as he stepped outside to light a cigarette.

He had a big nose, undershot chin, and ears like the open doors on a Buick. The word Italian filled my mind, along with a flash like light glinting off polished metal. It was my Poisoned Gift, but it only lasted a second and was gone.

Hot damn! A familiar voice drifted out the door, and one of the men at the table stepped back. Cousin R. B. Parker laughed and slapped a blond man on the shoulder. R. B.’s hand was full of bills and he whooped. I’m hot tonight! Shut that damned door before these dice cool off.

The last thing I saw before the door closed were those two men exchanging glances and then Slacks slapped the Italian in khakis on the shoulder and they slipped back inside.

We just looked into hell. Pepper’s words were startling.

Mark took her hand. We’ve seen enough, too. Let’s go.

We followed the same route back to the car, and Curtis was already behind the wheel and mad as an old wet hen. I told y’all to stay in here. You kids don’t have no business running around in these parking lots.

I told them to stay, but they wouldn’t listen. Sheila’s expression was dark, and I knew she was scared.

Pepper flipped him the bird and got inside. Chill, pill. You weren’t too worried about bringing kids here in the first place, so screw you.

Doors slammed, and I kicked a six-pack of beer sitting in the floorboard. Curtis started the engine and pulled out of the lot. Damn. I don’t know what woulda happened if y’all’d got caught or hurt. Don’t never do nothing like that again. Sheila, crack me one of them beers and let’s get out of here.

The joint’s front door opened just as Curtis shifted into gear. A crowd of men boiled outside, following two rawboned guys who looked like they were so mad they could spit nails.

One had a jean jacket on and wore a felt hat. The other’n was bareheaded and in his shirtsleeves. Hat stopped and Bare Head planted a foot and whirled around, throwing a roundhouse fist that looked to be as slow as molasses.

It must have been faster than it looked because Bare Head’s fist nearly took Hat’s head off his shoulders. I’d have gone down like a poleaxed steer, but he just rocked back. They tangled like two cur dogs as the crowd of onlookers closed in and blocked everything from sight.

As if he saw such a thing every day, Curtis steered away from the fight, and Sheila used a church key to lever two holes in the top of a Schlitz. She handed it to Curtis, and he took a swallow before holding it over his shoulder. Here you go, Pepper. Have that sip.