Graveyard Fields Read online

Three minutes later Dale pulled his patrol car next to my Mercedes. I heard a few seconds of Ratt’s “Round and Round” before he killed the engine. It was almost ten o’clock. El Bacaratos had been closed for hours, and aside from our cars, the parking lot was empty. Dale opened the passenger side door and climbed into the Mercedes. The car tilted to one side under his weight.

  He gave me a tired look and said, “Okay, dumbass, what’s your hunch?”

  I let him have it with both barrels.

  “Daiquiri tells Diana about the gold, and Diana tells Cordell. Cordell figures it can’t be too difficult to steal a bar of gold from a hundred-pound man with a bum leg, so he goes up to Floppy’s garage, acting like he needs his car serviced to do some recon. But of course Floppy can’t keep his mouth shut, and he tells Cordell about the chest of gold his grandfather found and that your dad and Byrd stole it. Cordell doesn’t believe that part of the story and figures if there is more gold, it’s most likely still somewhere near Cold Mountain. So he and his friends Jeff and Becky, and maybe even Diana, start searching for it. But Cordell is the one who finds it, and he locks it away somewhere. That’s when the double-crossing starts. Cordell and Diana against Jeff and Becky, or maybe it was each against the other; who knows. Then one of them kills Cordell. But Cordell’s keys are nowhere to be found.”

  Dale put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Maybe you should start writin’ fiction.”

  “Listen, it makes perfect sense. Everyone was looking for the keys because they unlock the gold, wherever it is. Remember that night we went to the brewery and how Diana wasn’t very interested in us at the beginning? But then after Daiquiri tells her I found a set of keys belonging to someone who drives a red BMW 2002, Diana starts full on hitting on me. The only reason she invited herself up to the cabin was to look for the keys.”

  Dale unsnapped his shirt pocket and pulled out a tin of Copenhagen. He pinched a giant wad of the tobacco in his fingers and shoved it between his gums and cheek.

  “I knew she was way too hot for you.”

  I nodded.

  “So who do you think killed that couple?” Dale asked.

  I reminded him about Diana’s overprotective friends, the ones who had threatened me the night we stopped at Long Branch on our way to Cordell’s house.

  “That don’t make no sense. Whoever killed that hippie couple was probably the same person shot at you. Since Diana and them dudes were at Long Branch that night, then it couldn’t a been them. Unless they hauled ass up there right after we left the brewery.”

  “You said the ME couldn’t pinpoint the time of death. Jeff and Becky may have still been alive when I was snooping around Cordell’s and it was one of them who shot at me. Then Diana and her friends go up there later that night and kill them.”

  Dale rubbed his head.

  “It still don’t make no sense. If that hippie couple killed Cordell, why would they be at his house? They weren’t nothing there.”

  I shrugged.

  “I don’t know. Maybe Diana killed Cordell. Or her friend with the beard did it. So far he’s the only one that’s been seen with a gun. I don’t know if it was a nine-millimeter stuffed in his jeans. Fortunately, I didn’t get close to enough to find out. But we need to find Diana. She’s involved somehow. Either she’s guilty or she’s in danger.”

  Dale nodded.

  “I still don’t think those keys lead to any gold, but yeah, I’d like to ask her some questions.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments. When Dale reached for the door handle, I stopped him.

  “Hang on,” I said. “There’s something else I need to talk to you about.”

  “If it’s about gold, I don’t want to hear any more of that shit.”

  I shook my head. “It’s about Charleston.”

  * * *

  On that first night at the cabin, I’d told Dale the clean version of the storage unit incident. I left out the part about me beating Greg and the cases of drugs and cash. Now I told him the truth, including how I was growing more and more convinced that Perry was the person who’d shot me.

  “We need to tell Byrd about this situation,” Dale said.

  “I don’t trust Byrd.”

  Dale raised a finger. “You can trust Byrd. He’s a good man.”

  “I’m beginning to believe I can’t trust anyone. You’re about it these days.”

  Dale smiled.

  “Let’s find Diana,” I said. “Then we’ll decide what to do about Perry.”

  Dale looked out the window and exhaled a putrid bouquet of tobacco.

  “Well, we ain’t doing it tonight. But you ain’t going back to the cabin. You’re staying with me and Daddy till this Perry shit’s fixed.”

  I was too tired to argue. I followed Dale to Junebug’s house and curled up in a recliner under a NASCAR-branded afghan. The sound of Junebug snoring shook the walls. I pulled a pill out from my coin pocket and swallowed it with spit. Before I drifted off, Dale’s snoring started to compete with Junebug’s. It sounded like an avalanche approaching. The metaphor was not lost on me.

  38

  When I woke up the next morning, Junebug was in his recliner watching a cooking show. I tried to shake off the cobwebs as some large woman on the screen pulled the gizzard out of a fresh turkey.

  “Where’s Dale?” I asked.

  Junebug grunted and jerked a thumb toward the kitchen. He then raised a Styrofoam cup to his lips. Coffee. I needed coffee. And a pill. And a beer chaser. And a plan on how to stay alive for the rest of the day, and thereafter.

  I watched the gizzard puller for a moment, then heard Junebug spit into the cup. I’d been awake all of two minutes, and my nausea was already in panic mode.

  It took several tries, but I finally worked up enough strength to kick down the recliner’s leg rest. When I walked into the kitchen, Dale was holding a box of cereal. The leprechaun on the side of the box looked like a child predator. In a way he was, I thought.

  Dale poured the cereal into a bowl large enough to soak his feet in. I looked around for coffee.

  “There’s Mountain Dew in the fridge, if you want it,” Dale said.

  I sat down at the table and watched him inhale a few hundred grams of sugar.

  “So what’s the plan?” I asked.

  “I gotta go down to the sheriff’s office for an hour or so. You stay here with Daddy. I’ll be back soon.”

  Dale finished his cereal, then raised the bowl and slurped the milk. When he wiped his mouth with his shirt sleeve, I shook my head.

  “Don’t start on me, Davis. I ain’t got no patience for your shit today.”

  * * *

  I followed Dale out to his patrol car and stood by as he wiggled in behind the wheel.

  “I’ll be back in a bit,” he said. “Now don’t you go nowhere. I don’t need you getting shot, ’cause I ain’t moving all your shit out of that cabin.”

  “Are we going to look for Diana?”

  Dale fiddled with some knobs on the dash, and “Screaming in the Night” by Krokus filled the driveway.

  “We’ll talk about that when I get back. You just sit tight. And stay away from my beer.”

  As soon as Dale was out of sight, I climbed into the Mercedes and headed toward the cabin.

  * * *

  It was too cold to sit on the deck, so I plopped down at the kitchen table and stared at my reflection in the screen of the laptop. I checked my email but found no response from Perry. My tiny glimmer of hope was becoming a microscopic glimmer of hope.

  I wondered when Perry would show up, and whether he’d arrive under the guise of a friend or just kick down the door and put a bullet in my skull. I didn’t have a gun. I was too scared to have one. A guy like me didn’t need an easy way out.

  I made some instant coffee, then opened the bottle of pills. I fished one out and held it between my thumb and index finger. I examined it as if it were a diamond. How could something so tiny be so comforting? And so debilitat
ing?

  As I stared at the pill, a strange thought occurred to me. What if I wasn’t numb? Even for just a little while? I’d gone without beer and pills for several hours yesterday, and nothing bad had happened. I hadn’t had a seizure or heart palpitations. And my anxiety hadn’t ratcheted up to the point where I wanted to drive my car off a cliff.

  I’d thought I needed someone like Diana to give me the motivation to stay straight. But what if the feeling of being straight was motivation enough?

  Two people I’d cared for and trusted had turned out to be liars, and one of them was probably coming to kill me. I couldn’t change those facts, but I could use chemicals to forget them. I could hide out in Dale’s living room and watch cooking shows and stock car races with Junebug until the authorities caught up with Perry and Diana. I could stay numb and stay safe.

  Or I could be proactive. Someone had once told me it was amazing how much a person could accomplish in a day and how little a person could accomplish in a year. On this particular day I could solve three murders, find a fortune’s worth of gold, have a senior detective arrested for attempted murder, discover the truth about a beautiful brewery owner, and enact my revenge on the guy who’d keyed my car.

  I squeezed my thumbnail against the score in the pill. It split in two, and I swallowed one piece. Baby steps.

  * * *

  At half past ten I heard the squawk from Dale’s patrol car. A couple of minutes later he was sitting at my kitchen table drinking what he said was the worst cup of coffee he’d ever tasted.

  “It’s instant,” I said.

  “It’s instant shit is what it is. Why don’t you get one of them fucking pod things?”

  “Do you really want to talk about coffee?”

  Dale pushed his mug aside. “I knew you’d come back here, you dumb fuck. You’re lucky that Perry man wasn’t here waiting for you.”

  “I’d rather be lucky than smart.”

  “So far you ain’t much of either.”

  Dale stood up, poured his coffee into the sink, then went out the door without saying a word. He returned a minute later carrying a bottle of Mountain Dew.

  “Listen to me, Davis,” he said, when he’d sat back down. “Floppy is full of shit almost constantly. And him having a bar of gold, if it is real gold, don’t convince me that there’s a bunch more of it hidden somewhere.”

  “It convinced some other people.”

  Dale nodded. “Now that I do believe. I also believe Diana does have something do with Cordell and that hippie couple.”

  “Hipster. Not hippie.”

  “Would you shut the fuck up and listen to me?”

  I raised my hands in surrender.

  “Byrd’s working with the authorities down in Florida, trying to get some intel on Cordell. He was busted down there a few times on petty shit, but petty shit can lead to big shit. He’s got Avery County on it too. They’re askin’ around about that hippie couple.” Dale jerked his head. “Fuck you, hipster couple.”

  “Did you tell Byrd about Diana taking off with the keys?”

  “No. And I’ll tell you why. And if you ever repeat it, I’ll snap your neck and drink every ounce of your beer. If Byrd knows Floppy had them keys, he’ll bring him in, and I don’t want that. Floppy’s a pain in my ass, but he’s kin, and I don’t want him in no trouble. And if Byrd knows you had them keys and didn’t call him first, he’ll pull your ass, and it won’t matter much what I say.”

  I couldn’t help but grin. “You’re a big softy.”

  Dale jumped up and pointed a finger at my face. “I wouldn’t think twice about puttin’ your head through that window. Now listen to me, Davis. Byrd’s got a habit of seeing one thing and nothing else. I don’t want that one thing to be you or Floppy, ’cause I’m tied to both of you’ns, as much as I hate to admit it. So me and you can go find Diana and get some answers. And if she’s involved with this shit, then I’ll take it to Byrd and you and Floppy can stay out of it.”

  I stood up and spread my arms.

  Dale backed up against the sink. “There ain’t no romance happenin’ here.”

  “Just a little hug?” I said. “It might help us bond.”

  “Stop fucking around. Let’s go to Diana’s. See if she’s there.”

  “I’ve got a better idea. Let’s go to Daiquiri’s.”

  Dale relaxed. “Now that’s an idea I can get behind. Get it? Behind. In front of. On top of. To the side …”

  * * *

  In the patrol car, Dale called Long Branch to see if Diana was there. She wasn’t. He then radioed the department for Daiquiri’s address, which turned out to be in Clyde, a small town about ten minutes east of Waynesville. It was the same town where Dale had shot and killed a man during a drug raid. When we drove by a dilapidated apartment complex, Dale pointed.

  “That’s where it happened,” he said. “Dumb sumbitch came out on that stoop right there, gun at his side. I tell you something, Davis, I thought I was going to die that day. He raised that gun and started screaming, and I put one in his belly and one in his chest. Dead ’fore he hit the ground. Boy was only nineteen years old.”

  “How do you feel about it?”

  “That’s what the shrink asked me. And I’ll tell you the same thing I told her—I ain’t lost no sleep over it. It was either going to be that boy or me. And I made the right decision.”

  We drove in silence for a few minutes, looking for Daiquiri’s house. When we pulled in the driveway, Dale killed the engine and turned to me.

  “I see that boy’s face sometimes when my head hits the pillow. I see him standing there with that gun pointed at me and that crazy-ass look on his face. I kill him every time. Same two shots. Then I go to sleep. But I tell you one thing, once you know you can kill a man and not regret it, that’s a stone that don’t never roll away.”

  * * *

  We walked up a path to the front door, and Dale pushed the doorbell button. A few seconds later a dark-haired woman in a white tank top opened the door with a frown. It was hard not to notice the small bear paw tattooed on her right breast.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  “Hey there, Tanya. I’m Dale Johnson. We met before. You used to date my cousin Floppy.”

  “Yeah, I used to rub him down real good.”

  Dale stammered, then looked at me.

  “Tanya, my name’s Davis. We’re looking for Daiquiri.”

  Tanya turned her head into the house and yelled Daiquiri’s name. She somehow stretched it into four syllables.

  A minute later Dale’s dream woman was standing at the door next to Tanya. She was wearing a black Metallica T-shirt with the collar cut into a low V, revealing milky-white cleavage that looked like a baby’s butt.

  Daiquiri smirked at Dale. “You stalking me?”

  Dale stood frozen. I figured the sight of four enormous breasts was frying his circuits.

  “We’re looking for Diana,” I said. “It’s important we talk to her.”

  Daiquiri stared at me suspiciously. “You seem to always be looking for someone,” she said.

  “Have you heard from her? She’s not at the brewery today. And she doesn’t seem to be at her house.”

  Daiquiri shook her head. “Sorry, can’t help you.”

  Fuck it, I thought. Might as well lay it all out.

  “We’re here about the gold,” I said. “We know Floppy showed you the bar of gold he has at his trailer.”

  Tanya laughed. “That gold ain’t real.”

  “I think it is real,” I said. “And I think Diana might be in trouble because of it.”

  Daiquiri crossed her arms over her chest, causing the top of her cleavage to brush her chin. “That ain’t real gold,” she said. “He told us it was just a piece of metal he’d painted.”

  “Did you ever mention it to Diana?” I asked.

  Daiquiri tried to read me for a moment. “Yeah, I told her. Tanya called one night and said Floppy’d just shown her a brick of gold
that was worth about twenty thousand dollars. I was at work and told Diana about it; I thought it was pretty cool. But the next night when Tanya and me went up to Floppy’s, he said it was fake.”

  I glanced over at Dale. He still looked like he’d been tasered.

  “Listen, Daiquiri, this is serious,” I said. “Three people are dead. And we think Diana may be in danger. We really need to find her.”

  Tanya and Daiquiri glanced at each other.

  Tanya spoke first. “He’s in uniform and y’all are in a patrol car, so I have to believe this is official. Is that right?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  Tanya pointed at Dale’s face. “I want to hear it from him.”

  Dale nodded.

  Tanya took a deep breath and looked at Daiquiri.

  “Don’t, Tanya,” Daiquiri said. “They’re full of shit. There’s no gold.”

  Tanya looked down at the welcome mat, the words HOWDY Y’ALL written into the plastic grass. She let out a sigh, then looked back at me.

  “I clean Diana’s house once a week,” she said. “There’s a service door around back with a number lock. The code is zero-zero-six-nine. That’ll get you in.”

  Daiquiri stared daggers at Tanya.

  “If she’s in danger, then they need to find her,” Tanya said.

  Daiquiri shoved Tanya’s shoulder, then slammed the door closed. I snapped my fingers in front of Dale’s face.

  “You are useless when tits are involved.”

  * * *

  Diana’s house was located on Country Club Drive in a golf course community in Waynesville. The house was a typical McMansion, a mix of architectural styles that didn’t really match. It was the kind of house you lived in if you wanted people to think you were rich but you really weren’t. Or were rich but didn’t have any taste.

  We stopped in front of the house. The driveway was empty. I asked Dale to park a little farther down the road. If Diana wasn’t home, I didn’t want her to come back and see a patrol car.