The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga #2) - James Lee Burke Page 0,130

and the parking area. The driver of the sedan crawled up the opposite embankment, his shoes digging for purchase in the dirt, his fedora gone, exposing his tight gray haircut. He grabbed a tree root and pulled himself onto flat ground, then got to his feet, his suit and dress shirt streaked with mud. He was a huge man, his cheeks swollen like a chipmunk’s, his neck ringed with fat. He stood still, as though making a decision, then disappeared into the cedar and persimmon trees, sticks and dead limbs breaking in his path.

Loren jumped down from the bus and ran to my heap. He piled into the backseat. “What are you waiting for?”

I couldn’t move. Neither could Valerie.

“Fire it up,” he said. “Time to boogie.”

Valerie shook my arm. “He’s right. Let’s go, Aaron. Snap out of it.”

I wasn’t thinking about the damage he had just done to the church bus, or the chaos in the parking area, or that Loren might soon be on his way to jail. He had said the word I couldn’t remember, the key to the lockbox, the detail I had missed, one that had lain in plain sight and would expose the blood-bespattered world of regicide and guilt and ambition in which Grady Harrelson lived.

Chapter

33

WE WENT TO a northside drive-in and parked in the shadows, away from the glow of the neon and the lighted dining area inside. Loren kept looking out the back window. “Y’all stay here. I’m going to use the pay phone and get my brother to pick me up. This stuff will die down in a couple of days.”

“Die down?” I said.

“This is how it will go. The car I smacked is probably hot. The guy driving it wasn’t hurt and doesn’t want to talk to cops. The cops couldn’t care less about the guy or the car. I’ll square the bus damage with the preacher who gave me the job. I probably won’t be driving the bus anymore. End of story.”

“It’s that simple?” I said.

“I’ll get lost for a few days,” he said.

“You said ‘boogie’ back there.”

“What about it?” he asked.

I looked at Valerie. “You told me Grady gave you his Tommy Dorsey records because his father didn’t want jazz or Negro music in his house.”

“That’s right.”

“He gave you ‘Tommy Dorsey’s Boogie-Woogie’ and ‘Marie’?”

She nodded.

“When did he give them to you?” I asked.

“On the afternoon his father was killed.”

“Those were the only records he had with him?”

“No, he had a stack of them. He said he got them from some Mexicans.”

“Did he have another boogie-woogie record?”

She looked out the car window at the shadows and the strips of neon wrapped around the restaurant. “He had an Albert Ammons record.”

“What was the title?”

“ ‘Boogie Woogie Stomp,’ ” she replied. “He loved that recording.”

I shuddered. “That was the song playing in the Harrelson house when somebody blew Mr. Harrelson apart.”

She stared at me. “He went from my house and killed his father, then went out on the sailboat?”

“That’s what it sounds like,” I said.

“Y’all are surprised by this?” Loren said. He got out of the car and leaned on the roof. “Let me make a suggestion. Don’t let Harrelson know you’re on to him. Don’t tell the cops, either.”

“Why not?” Valerie said.

“You think they’re on our side? Even your old man knows better than that.”

“Merton Jenks is on the square,” I said.

Loren looked at the dining room window and at the people eating inside. “That’s why I like you, Aaron. When the whole world is a cinder, you’ll still be a believer. You kill me.”

I watched him walk away. “You know what that guy could do if he went to school?”

Valerie squeezed the back of my neck and laid her head on my shoulder.

“Did you hear me?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied. She pulled herself closer to me and held my hand and rubbed the top of her head against my cheek.

“Why the silence?” I asked.

“You believe. Others don’t. Loren knows that. You don’t. That’s why I love you.”

She said nothing else until Loren returned from making his call.

WHEN I WENT HOME, the house was dark except for the desk lamp in my father’s office. I unlocked the front door and walked through the living room and past my parents’ bedroom and into my father’s office. He was sleeping with his head on his arms. A cigarette had burned to ash and collapsed in the tray. His uncapped fountain pen and an empty coffee cup sat by the edge of his manuscript. I picked