Graveyard Fields Read online

  Floppy looked closely at the bottle’s label, then took a long draw.

  “This tastes like pinecones,” he said. “Ain’t ya got no other beer?”

  “Tell me about the guy with the BMW,” I said again.

  Floppy rubbed his chin for a minute as if he were mulling over the meaning of life. It was the longest stretch of silence I’d ever experienced in his presence.

  “He came by the garage asking if I could do an oil change, and I said I could but that he’d be better off getting a full service because that would save him some money in the long run. He asked how long it’d take, and I said oh, about an hour and a half, and he said okay. Now, most people have somebody come pick ’em up when they have a service done, seeing how it takes so long, but he said he’d just wait around. That car was beat up real bad, had a big dent in the door. I told him I could try to get that out, but he wasn’t interested in that. So I changed the oil and such, checked all the fluids and the brake pads. I’m real thorough when I do a service.”

  “And that’s it?” I asked. It was a stupid question, because with Floppy I’d quickly learned that there was never a that’s it.

  “Well, the weird thing was, when I was all finished, I couldn’t find the man. He weren’t in the garage, and I didn’t see him out in the lot. Finally found him back behind my trailer. Now, I don’t like people messing around near my trailer, but he said he was just looking at my collection of stuff. I got a lot of interesting stuff back there, old furniture and appliances and whatnot. So I wasn’t too mad finding him back there. He paid me in cash, ’cause I don’t take credit cards. Now, I don’t have a credit card myself, ’cause did you know, when you use a credit card, all your information goes into a big computer, and—”

  “Stop!” I yelled.

  Floppy shivered and took another sip of beer.

  “Did you ever see that guy again?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah. He came by another time. Brought me a jug of beer. It was called Black Magic or something, tasted like this stuff. I didn’t much care for it, but I drank it anyways ’cause I don’t like to waste nothing. I use the jug to spit sunflower seed hulls in. Did you know sunflower seeds is real good for you? It’s true, they can lower your cholesterol. Now, I ain’t never had high cholesterol. Could be on account I eat so many sunflower seeds.”

  “When was this?” I asked.

  “Back about a week or so, I guess. He asked if I could replace the lock on his trunk. I didn’t have nothing that matched, but I took one of the door locks off an old Explorer that was sitting out front and made it work. See, I’m real handy with stuff like that; I can take just about anything off one vehicle and make it work on another.”

  I picked up the key ring and found a key with the word FORD embossed on the top. I hadn’t tried to open the BMW’s trunk with that key the morning Dale and I first found the car, because why would anyone think a Ford key would open a BMW trunk? Of course, that was before I met Floppy.

  “That man lived in Maggie Valley,” I said. “Your shop is, what, a good half hour from there? Seems like a long way to drive for an oil change.”

  “Now, I take that as an insult,” Floppy said. “I’m real good at what I do, and he probably heard about my reputation and such. Hey, did you know Maggie Valley was named after a real person? It’s true. Most people don’t know that; they think it’s just a made-up name. But Maggie was a real-life woman. Her daddy set up the first post office in that town, and then … hey, wait a minute, you said lived. You said that man lived in Maggie Valley. Did something happen to him?”

  I dropped the keys onto the table.

  “Yeah,” I said. “His name is Lester Cordell. And someone killed him.”

  Floppy jumped up. “Well, I be danged! I heard on my scanner they’d found a body up on the parkway. Was that him?”

  I nodded.

  “And I heard they found two more over at Maggie Valley. Was that at his place?”

  I nodded again.

  “Well, I be danged,” he said.

  * * *

  It took twenty minutes and another neck massage from Diana to get to the truth. Floppy had taken the keys from the sheriff’s department, just as Dale suspected. He’d lifted them from Barbara’s desk when she was in the restroom and put them in his jacket pocket and then forgotten about them. He’d really come up to the cabin to talk to me about my book, and when he found the door was locked, he’d remembered the keys and started cycling through them to see if one would fit the lock. One did, and he’d come inside and then gone through to the deck to wait for me.

  I believed Floppy’s story that he had come over just to talk to me. Since I’d been patient with him at his garage, he’d probably figured I would let him ramble on all afternoon. The poor guy was just looking for an ear to bend.

  “It’s my cousin Dale’s house anyway,” Floppy said. “I didn’t break into your house; I entered my cousin’s house. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.”

  I pointed across the kitchen to the door where Floppy’s camouflage coat was hanging from the knob.

  “Can you think of any reason why one of those keys would fit that door?”

  “I don’t know,” Floppy said. “I was pretty surprised when one of them did. But then I thought maybe them keys belonged to you, since I saw you at the sheriff’s department that day.”

  “How long has Dale owned this house?” I asked.

  Floppy wiggled in his chair.

  “Well, technically, Dale doesn’t own it,” he said. “His daddy does. I think Junebug bought it off Sheriff Byrd about the time Dale got married. Why somebody’d marry that fat moron, I don’t know. I ain’t never been married, but I’ve come close a time or two. They was this one girl—”

  “So Sheriff Byrd used to own this house?” I asked.

  “Yep, he sure did. He used to rent it out to tourists and such, but then Junebug bought it off him, and Dale and Carla moved in. Have you ever seen Carla? She’s pretty as all get-out. Way too pretty for Dale. Looks like that girl that played in that movie—what was it called? The one about the woman lawyer that wore pink all the time. Now, I don’t go to movies much, since the theater in Waynesville closed down a few years ago. People say you can watch all kind of movies on your computer these days, but …”

  While Floppy rambled, I grabbed Diana’s arm and tilted my head toward the living room. When we were standing by the sliding glass door, I asked to borrow her phone.

  “Who are you going to call?” she asked.

  “I need to talk to Dale. While I call you go back and sit with Floppy. Make sure he doesn’t steal anything from the kitchen.”

  Diana squinted. “What are you going to tell Dale?”

  “I’m going to tell him to come get the keys. The last thing I need is for Byrd to find me and those keys in the same location. And I want to know if he has any idea why one of the keys on that ring opens this cabin.”

  Diana put her arms around my neck and stared into my eyes for a long moment. I was embarrassed for losing my temper in front of her, but Floppy had a way of pushing my buttons. Plus, I hadn’t taken a pill in hours. It was a miracle I hadn’t totally lost it and cracked Floppy’s skull.

  Diana must have read my mind. She kissed me on the cheek, then moved her mouth close to my ear.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered.

  Diana unlocked her phone and handed it to me. As she strolled back toward the kitchen, she turned and gave me a wink. I winked back, and this time it came naturally.

  Diana’s phone was identical to mine, a mini computer with more processing power than the control modules that helped land a man on the moon. I tapped the phone icon and entered Dale’s number. After six rings I was connected to his voice mail. I redialed and got the same result. I figured either Dale was busy or he didn’t answer calls from numbers he didn’t recognize. I pulled up the messages app, reentered his number, and typed It’s Davis. Call me at this number ASAP! I hoped that would get his attent
ion.

  While I waited for Dale to call, I stared at the phone display and pondered a thought. The angel whispered something about respecting a person’s privacy and establishing trust, but the devils screamed, Do it! Do it! I glanced toward the kitchen, then back at the phone. I hesitated for a moment, then began scrolling through Diana’s messages. Not the coolest move to make, but I wanted to know more about the woman I’d fallen for. She certainly knew more than enough about me.

  The most recent message, dated that afternoon, was from someone named Louis. The message read Thinking about you. Diana had not responded. I felt a ping of jealousy and made a mental note to somehow work the name Louis into conversation with Diana to see if it elicited a reaction.

  The next message was from Daiquiri, asking Diana to call the brewery about the upcoming payroll. There were a few back-and-forth exchanges between Diana and Daiquiri, but all seemed brewery related.

  I scrolled past a few other messages until I noticed that Diana had sent one to someone listed only as L.C. The message said Where are you? There was no response.

  Someone—it might even have been Perry—had once told me, “Coincidences mean you’re headed in the right direction.” I hadn’t understood what that meant at the time, and I wasn’t sure I understood it now. But Diana texting Where are you? to someone with the same initials as the man I’d spent the past few days looking for pointed me in a direction I didn’t like.

  I thought about the photo I’d seen on the Long Branch Facebook page, the one with Diana standing next to a guy whose back was to the camera and with what might have been a set of keys dangling from his waist. At the time I hadn’t thought much of it; I’d noticed several guys with belt-clip key chains when Dale and I visited Long Branch for dinner. But now wasn’t then.

  I took a few steps toward the door leading to the kitchen and heard Floppy say, “Now, I don’t use deodorant myself, ’cause it’s full of aluminum, and aluminum can mess with your genes and make you grow tumors under your arms the size of softballs, and that’s just …”

  Deciding it was safe, I walked back to the sliding glass door and tapped the icon for Diana’s photos. I scrolled through the images, hoping not to see a picture of Cordell or a red BMW or anything that might plunge a knife through my heart.

  The longer I scrolled, the more foolish I felt. The photos were a scrapbook of Diana’s life, but not one of them suggested she had anything to do with Cordell or keys or buried treasure.

  I tapped the back arrow to get to the main menu of the photo’s app. From there I scrolled to the bottom of the screen and selected RECENTLY DELETED. There was only one photo displayed, and it sucked the air out of my lungs.

  The photo showed Diana sitting on the hood of a red BMW 2002. Sitting next to her was a man in a trucker hat pulled down over a nest of curly black hair. It could’ve been the same guy sitting next to her in the Facebook photo, but it was definitely the guy in the mug shot Dale had shown me. Lester Cordell. On the other side of Diana, Jeff leaned against the hood and flashed a sideways peace sign. I figured Becky had probably taken the photo. It was obviously taken at the house Cordell was renting from Byrd. In the background I could make out the restaurant where Dale and I had parked the night someone used me for target practice.

  I stared at the photo and realized that the woman I had bared my soul to, the woman I’d thought was going to be my savior, was completely full of shit. I should have known. I’d let the honeymoon phase blind my judgment, or at least what there was of it. I’d whitewashed the red flags. The biggest one being that a gorgeous, smart, successful woman had fallen for me.

  I was still staring at the photo when the phone suddenly vibrated in my palm.

  “Whose fucking phone is this?” Dale said when I answered.

  “It’s Diana’s.”

  “Damn, Davis. You already hittin’ that piece of plywood?”

  “I’m an idiot.”

  “Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Listen, I need you to come to the cabin right now.”

  Dale laughed. “Brother, do you know how busy I am? Byrd’s flippin’ his shit. Every deputy in this county is working overtime.”

  “I mean it, Dale. Get up here right now. I have something for you.”

  Dale huffed. “Unless you’ve got them keys and the person who killed them three hippies, I ain’t got no time for your shit.”

  I looked through the sliding glass door at Cold Mountain. Its peak was shrouded in a dark cloud.

  “I’ve definitely got one, and I might have the other.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Twenty minutes,” Dale finally said. “And if I get up there and you’re bullshitting me, you best be ready for a beating.”

  34

  When I walked back into the kitchen, Floppy was rambling about alien autopsies at Area 51 and Diana was tapping her fingers on the table like she was waiting on test results.

  “Floppy, shut up,” I said, handing Diana’s phone back to her.

  Diana stood up and put the phone in her pocket.

  “Baby, I should really get back to the brewery.”

  I stared down at the linoleum floor and shook my head.

  “Just hold tight, okay? Twenty minutes.”

  There was a long moment of silence, which, with Floppy present, was a near miracle.

  Finally Diana spoke. “Okay, sure,” she said. “But I need to use the restroom.”

  I sat down across from Floppy and jerked my head toward the bedroom door. I couldn’t look at Diana. I didn’t want to see her face. I didn’t even want to feel her presence.

  I could sense the anger beginning to vibrate inside me. The rubber band was getting taut. I was going to confront Diana; there was no question about that. But I was going to wait until Dale was present. I needed a witness and someone who would keep me calm.

  Diana came around behind me. She put both of her hands on my shoulders and leaned down and kissed my cheek.

  “I’ll be right back, baby,” she whispered.

  When Diana disappeared through the bedroom door, I stood up and grabbed the Walgreens bag off the counter. I popped three pills with my last swig of beer and put several more in the coin pocket of my jeans.

  “What did you just take?” Floppy asked.

  I grabbed a fresh beer out of the fridge and sat down.

  “What else can you tell me about Cordell?” I said.

  “I hope it wasn’t OxyContin, because that stuff’s poison,” Floppy said. “You know, I had a buddy got hooked on OxyContin, and he ended up shooting himself in his living room with his own shotgun. Pulled the trigger with his big toe is what they said. Splattered his face all over one of them big flat-screen TVs. They confiscated that TV, said it was evidence, but I don’t see how something like that could be evidence. I think one of them boys down at the sheriff’s department just wanted themselves a new TV.”

  I thought for a second about the giant TV perched atop the whiskey barrel in Junebug’s living room.

  “I don’t have a TV myself; ain’t nothing worth watching these days nohow. Now, when I was a kid, I liked that Hogan’s Heroes program. Did you ever watch that? Did you know that man who played Hogan was murdered and it’s still unsolved? Somebody ought to investigate that. You know, them Hollywood types are all into orgies and whatnot, so it probably had something to do with that. I was invited to an orgy one time, but I didn’t go ’cause I didn’t want to be in a room with a bunch of naked dudes.”

  I was hoping the pills would kick in soon—otherwise my vision of tossing Floppy off the deck might turn into reality. “Stop talking,” I yelled. “Just shut up for a second and listen to me. This is important. I need you to focus. What else can you tell me about Cordell?”

  Floppy thought for a moment.

  “Well, he was real interested in Cold Mountain and the history of the area and such. He knew about that old plane crash, and I told him about my granddaddy finding that gold and how it was s
tolen from him. He asked me about how much my granddaddy found and where exactly he found it. Said he was an amateur treasure hunter and thought it would be fun to go look for any gold my granddaddy didn’t find. I told him he’s wasting his time. Granddaddy found all that gold, then Junebug and Byrd went and took it from him. They was just boys when they did it, but they never have fessed up to it. Granddaddy told me all about it ’fore he passed.”

  As Floppy talked, I felt the pills beginning to work their magic. It was like sinking into a warm bath. I shouldn’t have taken three; one would have been enough. The numbness was enveloping me, and I was having a hard time focusing on Floppy. The timing was bad, because for once I actually wanted to hear what he had to say.

  “Hold on,” I mumbled. “How do you know your grandfather found all the gold? If there was gold on that plane when it crashed, it would have been scattered all across the mountain.”

  Floppy shook his head. “No sir. Granddaddy told me those Army men pushed the gold out of that plane before it crashed. It was in a reinforced steel trunk, bolted up tight with big padlocks.”

  “But they didn’t know they were about to crash,” I said. “The weather was bad and they didn’t see the mountain. They had no warning.”

  “I know that. Granddaddy figured they’d already planned to get rid of that gold. Why do you think they ain’t no record of any gold being on that plane? Them men stole it when they was overseas fighting the war. Most people don’t know it, but American soldiers looted a lot of stuff during World War II. I mean, the Germans and the Russians and Japanese did more, but Americans took a fair amount of stuff too. So Granddaddy figured them men on the plane stole that gold from the Nazis and then hid it till they could find a way to get it far away from any Army base. So when they was assigned to fly that plane from Michigan to Florida, they decided to push that trunk out over the middle of nowhere. Somewhere nobody’d come across it. Then they’d come back sometime later and collect it. But they crashed and died, so that plan didn’t work out too well.

  “Anyways, Granddaddy found that gold between Graveyard Fields and Black Balsam. He’s up there with his coon dogs hunting and sees that steel trunk laying there just as pretty as you please. He didn’t have nary an idea what was in it, but he didn’t care. He figured he could use the trunk for something. But it was heavy as all get-out. He went back home and rounded up Junebug and Byrd to help him pull it down out of the woods. Said it took them most of one day to get that trunk down off the mountain and loaded up onto his flatbed Ford. When they got back to Granddaddy’s house, he fired up his acetylene torch and cut through the locks. Opened that box up and nearly had a heart attack right then and there. Did you know acetylene burns higher than almost all other fuels? That’s why it cuts so well. Now, I have a real good acetylene setup. I can cut through just about anything. There was this one time …”