walking stick.â
âYes?â
The trooper grimaced. âWell, sir. I got a nasty letter back from the lab boys. You see, that blood wasnât pure human.â
Lucas looked at him, the events of the day leaping into his brain, cloudy, but still real. âWhat do you mean, pure human?â
Kyle sighed. âThere was . . . well, hell, I donât know how to say this. It was blood. But the lab boysâlab peopleâI guess Iâd better get used to saying it, say there was . . . things in the blood they just couldnât quite identify. I didnât say that right.â
â Things? â
âWell, sir, that blood was old, the lab folks said. They said it was like somebody uncovered a bottle of blood that was kept uncontaminated for years and then mixed it up with old animal bloodâ
âYouâre serious!â
âYes, sir.â
âTrooper, I hit somebody out there in those woods. Or some thing . Whatever. I heard it scream in pain.â
âWell, I tell you this, Mr. Bowers. I surely hope whatever in the hell it was you hit is long gone from around here. âCause Iâd sure hate to meet that son of a bitch face to face.â
âWhat do you mean?â
âWell, sir, one smart-aleck down at the lab said the only type of creatures who might have had blood like was found on your stick have been extinct for about a million years.â
7
That night, lying in bed beside Tracy, Lucas told her what the state trooper had said. She was silent for several moments. Finally she sighed heavily.
âIs somebody playing some macabre joke on us, Lucas? â
âMacabre is right. But what do you mean? What would be the point of it?â
âPut that lawyerâs mind to work, Lucas. Who stands to gain if we leave here without selling this house?â
âIâve thought of that, Trace. I even brought a copy of the original will down here with me. Iâve gone over it very carefully. Itâs like I said before. With Ira declared dead, all her monies went toward the upkeep of this . . . elephant.â
The house seemed to sigh.
âDid you hear that?â Tracy asked.
âI sure heard something. Anyway, if my parents had lived to sell the houseâbut I donât think they would have had any better luck than weâve hadâthe monies would have been equally divided between the three of us: Mom, Dad, and me. There is no one else that stands to gain a thing by driving us out of here.â
âExcept for Lige.â
âHoney, I donât think that man has enough sense to pull off something of this scope. Not without a lot of help. His embezzlement efforts were textbook crude; no better than the average child could do. All that saved himâuntil we arrivedâwas that no one down in Atlanta questioned his receipts. And he really isnât in as much trouble as I want him to believe. The estate paid him X amount of dollars, with no direction as to where the monies were to go. Surprisingly sloppy. And, something else. He really hasnât squirreled away all that much money. Just about a thousand dollars a year; he says heâs been here twenty-five years, and heâs banked about twenty-five thousand dollars. He didnât drink or gamble it away. He told me face to face he put money back for his retirement.â
She turned in the bed to face her husband. âI donât trust him, Lucas.â
âOh, I donât either.â He told her about Jimâs warnings about Lucasâs window peeping. âI tried to pin him down about his past the other day and I never heard so many side-stepping replies and outright lies since I worked in the PDâs office. I finally gave up. I guess Iâm going to have to drive down and see this Mr. Garrett in Atlanta. Maybe he can fill in some blanks.â
âHave fun.â
* * *
âIâm sorry, Mr. Bowers,â the receptionist told him. âBut