Unraveled Read online

  Unraveled

  A Red River Mystery

  Reavis Z. Wortham

  www.ReavisZWortham.com

  Poisoned Pen Press

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2016 by Reavis Z. Wortham

  First E-book Edition 2016

  ISBN: 9781464207129 ebook

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.

  Poisoned Pen Press

  6962 E. First Ave., Ste. 103

  Scottsdale, AZ 85251

  www.poisonedpenpress.com

  [email protected]

  Contents

  Unraveled

  Copyright

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  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

  Chapter Seventy-three

  Chapter Seventy-four

  Chapter Seventy-five

  Chapter Seventy-six

  Chapter Seventy-seven

  Chapter Seventy-eight

  Chapter Seventy-nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-one

  Chapter Eighty-two

  Chapter Eighty-three

  Chapter Eighty-four

  Chapter Eighty-five

  Chapter Eighty-six

  Chapter Eighty-seven

  More from this Author

  Contact Us

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to The Hunting Club, a loose, unofficial group of outdoorsmen I’ve camped, fished, and hunted with for the last thirty years. Thanks to the original core group—Larry Williams, Jerry Halpin, Dr. Gary Reeves, and Pat Chumley—for providing the fun, laughs, and inspiration that created the syndicated newspaper column, which morphed into the gang from Doreen’s 24 HR Eat Gas Now Café, and eventually provided the author’s voice that led to the Red River series.

  Acknowledgments

  Many people have supported my work by reading early manuscripts, offering suggestions, and spreading the word about my novels. Thanks to my mentor and good friend John Gilstrap (I’ll never be able to repay my debt), C.J. Box, Craig Johnson, Sandra Brannan, Jeffery Deaver, Joe Lansdale, T. Jefferson Parker, Michael Morris, Owen Laukkanen, and Jan Reid, to name only a few authors who have supported my work. The same goes for Sharon Reynolds, Mike Miller, and Steve Knagg (for reading the manuscripts). Ronda Wise is my go-to gal for all things medical. Things wouldn’t be the same around here without my English teacher daughter, Chelsea Hamilton, for offering academic insights and our youngest daughter, Megan Bidelman, for the jacket photo. Thanks also to my agent Anne Hawkins, and Poisoned Pen Press editors, Annette Rogers and Barbara Peters. You gals are great.

  All this rides on one foundation, the love of my life, my wife, Shana, who is always at my side (good luck in your new adventure)! You all offer more faith than I deserve.

  And thanks to you, the Readers out there who support my work. It is humbling.

  Frisco, Texas

  Chapter One

  Grandpa Ned always said our quiet little country community in northeast Texas was like a stock pond, calm and smooth on the surface so there’s not much to look at, but full of life and death down below.

  Center Springs wasn’t much to see back in 1968. I guess what you’d call the hub of our community was an unpainted domino hall squatting between two clapboard country stores at the intersection of Farm to Market Road 197 that ran east and west, and FM 906 that started there and crossed the Lamar County Dam.

  A skinny county oil road angled to the northwest behind the domino hall and past the Ordway place, a fine two-story house full of ghosts and bad memories.

  Mostly all you ever saw up at the stores were a few farmers loafing either on Uncle Neal’s porch, where we did most of our trading, or under the overhang at Oak Peterson’s competing store that carried the same staples, plus gas.

  Houses were scattered beside pastures full of fat cattle everywhere along Sanders Creek and the Red River bottoms. Those small scratch farms that survived the Great Depression and hung on tight to the land had been in the same families for generations.

  A lot of folks lived way back in the woods off dirt and gravel roads. Most waved when they saw you, except for a few old soreheads who turned away so they wouldn’t have to wave back.

  Since he was constable of Precinct 3, Grandpa got called out both night and day for more than you’d expect for such a small place. There were family fights, reports of whiskey stills, misunderstandings, cattle on the roads, fistfights, farm accidents, or car wrecks.

  Because of a cluster of cinderblock beer joints called Juarez across the river in Oklahoma not five miles away, drunks came weaving through our little community most every week.

  Most of the time Grandpa pulled ’em over and hauled ’em to jail in nearb
y Chisum, the county seat. But sometimes he came along to find cars all tore to pieces and bodies on the road, or in a ditch, or slammed into trees. The ones that made Grandpa the maddest was them that took other good folks with ’em.

  It was a car wreck only a few weeks after Reverend King had been laid to rest that tangled Grandpa Ned up in what folks started calling the Lamar County Accident.

  Oh, and I’m Top Parker, and this is how we wound up in the middle of all that trouble.…

  Chapter Two

  The scruffy man slipped out of the house in his stocking feet. The eastern sky would soon brighten, but he’d be long gone by then. He’d stood in the shadows for a long time, watching the sleeping couple tangled in the damp sheets and listening to their soft breathing. He sat on the edge of the porch as if he owned the place, pulled on his shoes, and walked in the open until he reached the woods, not caring that he left a trail in the wet grass. It might make it more fun if they noticed.

  ***

  The Motorola mounted under the Plymouth’s dash squawked. Deputy Anna Sloan’s soft voice cut through the static. “Ned, you there?”

  The slender deputy was on desk duty, working dispatch after nearly dying from a gunshot wound early in the fall. It always startled Ned to hear Deputy Sloan on the radio instead of Martha Wells. Martha had worked the day shift on dispatch for thirty years.

  Without taking his eyes off the road, Constable Ned Parker leaned over and turned the volume up to drown out the stock report coming through the dash radio. His grandkids in the back seat sat forward to hear. Fifteen-year-old cousins Top and Pepper were so similar in appearance that strangers thought they were twins, though Top was unusually short for his age.

  Ned plucked the microphone off the bracket. “Right ’chere.”

  “There’s been a bad wreck on the Lake Lamar Dam. Somebody missed the curve and went off the backside.”

  “Oh, my God!” In the passenger seat, Ned’s Choctaw wife, Miss Becky, covered her mouth and closed her eyes, saying a quick prayer for those in the car.

  Ned stomped the foot-feed and the Plymouth Fury’s big engine roared. They were on Highway 271 and had to loop through Powderly to come in from the east side. “I’m on the way, and don’t you try to come out here. You ain’t healed up enough yet.”

  “I won’t.”

  Miss Becky patted the big purse in her lap, as if that would emphasize her words. “Drive careful, Ned. Don’t forget them kids in the back.”

  Top frowned in exasperation. “I’m not afraid of going fast.”

  Ned ignored the boy’s comment as warm, humid air blowing through the open window threatened to snatch the hat off his head. “I knew somebody’d go off that dam, but I didn’t think it would happen so quick.”

  “They got reflectors there.” Top’s near-twin Pepper could never sit back and not be a part of any adult conversation. She held her long brown hair in the slipstream, adjusting the headband with one hand and holding an eagle feather in place. An Indian boy gave it to her in New Mexico and she wore it attached to a headband almost all the time.

  “It don’t make no difference. That curve sneaks up on you if y’ain’t payin’ no attention to it.”

  She wouldn’t quit. “You expected somebody to drown, first.”

  The Lake Lamar Dam wasn’t a year old, and the lake itself not quite full. Ned nearly worried himself sick from the time he heard they were going to build it only a mile from his house. His baby brother drowned when they were kids, and Ned never got over his fear of water. It was the thirty-degree bend near the midpoint of the dam that scared him the most, because he was always afraid someone would miss the shallow angle.

  “Y’all hush.” He keyed the mike as he made a U-turn on the highway. “John. You get that?”

  Deputy John Washington’s rich, deep voice cut through the static. The huge, almost mythical black deputy was always at Ned’s side. “On the way, Mr. Ned.”

  The familiar voice of Sheriff Cody Parker came through. “This is Cody, Ned. I’m almost to Deport. It’ll take me a while to finish up and get back there.”

  “All right, then.” Ned slowed to make the left hand turn onto the winding road lined with pine and hardwood trees. Talking softly to himself, he alternately slowed and accelerated, depending on the whim of the two-lane. The lake broke into view. When they passed the recently constructed overlook point cut into the woods, he saw two pickups parked several yards away from the curve at the midpoint in the mile-long dam.

  A knot of locals stood in the middle of the road, making no effort to do anything but stare downward off the backside toward the spillway.

  That’s when Ned knew it was bad.

  Chapter Three

  Grandpa braked to a stop about twenty yards from the ragged hole in the guardrail. Several posts were sheared off at the ground, and the mangled rails bent outward over the steep drop. He angled the car to block both lanes and yanked the door handle. “Y’all stay here.”

  Miss Becky folded both hands on top of the purse in her lap. “My stars.”

  “It’s too hot to sit in here.” Pepper rolled her window down and we watched Grandpa join the two men I recognized as Uncle Neal Box and Jimmy Dale Warner. I believe it was the first time I’d ever seen Uncle Neal out of his store, and for some reason he didn’t look as big as he did behind the counter.

  Pepper was right, the humidity hung heavy over the bottoms. The men milling on the road already had sweat stains under their arms and it was barely nine in the morning.

  “I need some air.” In two seconds Pepper was out of the car with me right after.

  “You kids don’t get underfoot! Stay close to the car and don’t be looking over there.” Miss Becky closed her eyes again and I figured she was praying. She spent a lot of time doing that, especially for Pepper.

  “Yes ma’am!” I called over my shoulder, because I knew my dumb girl cousin wouldn’t answer.

  Grandpa was talking to Uncle Neal when we came up behind him, trying to stay out of his sight as long as possible. “Either of y’all been down there?”

  “My knees won’t let me.” Uncle Neal ran his hand through wavy white hair that stood straight up. I almost laughed at the thought of the big, soft, barrel-shaped man huffing and puffing down and back up the steep slope.

  Miss Becky’s eyes were still closed, so I peeked over the guardrail and saw what was left of a red car not far from the spillway at the bottom of the earth dam. It looked like it had been through the wringer because every square inch was scraped or dented. The hood and a fender lay in the dirt halfway down a long swipe through the dew that showed the car’s path. A set of tracks angled down in the soft ground where someone had already worked their way down to the car.

  Jimmy Dale shook his head at Grandpa’s question. I knew him from the store, but he lived on Bodark Creek, not far from Telephone. “I did. There’s a woman inside, and a man’s body under the car. I think he was throwed out right there at the end and the car rolled over on him.”

  Grandpa blew his lips out like he did when he was thinking. Sometimes he talked to himself, but there were enough men so he didn’t have to. “I don’t recognize the car, what there is left of it.”

  Uncle Neal rattled the change in his pants pocket. “Well, it’s a Pontiac Bonneville convertible and it belongs to Maggie Mayfield.”

  “She’s that high yeller gal from Slate Shoals.”

  “She is.”

  “Wonder what she was doing out this way?”

  “That’s the other piece of the puzzle. It’s Frank Clay under the car.”

  Grandpa studied the car, both hands in his pockets. “Mayor Frank Clay?”

  “Yep.”

  “Oh, hell. That ain’t no puzzle. It’s a problem.”

  Jimmy Dale pulled at his ear. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know if you rem
ember, you were probably too young, but the Mayfields and Clays got crossways during the war right after Pearl Harbor. Before it was over, more than half a dozen people were dead, some on both sides. I like to never got all that sorted out, and wouldn’t have done it if Old Man Mayfield hadn’t died of a heart attack one day while he was drawing water from their well.

  “Somebody would have said he was murdered, if his wife and a couple of kids weren’t right there in the yard when he dropped the water bucket and fell over dead as a doornail. He’s the one kept it going for so long, and things settled down a few months later. Now here they are all tangled up again.”

  “Maybe nothing’ll happen.” Jimmy Dale stared across the lake. “Do you reckon?”

  Grandpa grunted. It was answer enough.

  “Nobody else in the car?”

  Jimmy Dale looked like he was more interested in the lake itself than the mangled car on the other side of the dam. “Nope. Her and Frank was the only two.”

  Grandpa followed his gaze and studied the calm water like the answers were floating out there on the surface. Drowning trees with shimmering green leaves fringed the edges. “She’s separated from her old man. I heard she was living with her daddy-in-law, Hollis Mayfield, instead of her mama’s people.”

  “I don’t know nothing about what niggers do.”

  “Well, Jimmy Dale, her mama’s white, so I reckon you ought not call her that.”

  “Don’t matter. Her daddy’s black as…”

  “So’s John Washington, but that don’t make him any less a man.” He jerked a thumb toward me and Pepper. “Them’s my grandkids, so watch what you call people.”

  It was a shock to realize he knew we were there, even though he still had his back to us and we’d moved side to side like two of The Three Stooges to stay behind him. I always figured he had eyes in the back of his bald head, and he sure proved it to me that time.

  Jimmy Dale wouldn’t leave it alone. “Why? She didn’t have no business riding around with Frank Clay. They’re married to different people.”

  “She might have give him a ride.” Grandpa rubbed the back of his sweaty neck. “I do that all the time with Mrs. Peters.”