Bonita Faye Read online

  That Tuesday after I talked to Patsy, Libby and Baron showed up at the house early in the afternoon. I was outside deadheading the roses when they drove up.

  Libby seemed nervous.

  I tossed some dead roses into a paper sack on the ground and asked, “What’s up?”

  “Baron and I…we…Bonita Faye, we’re…”

  “What Libby is trying to say, Mrs. Adams, is that Libby and I are planning to get married and we hope you’ll be happy for us.”

  Libby was looking up at Baron with a dazed and besotted look on her face, but Baron was looking right at me with a dare in his eyes.

  THIRTY-SIX

  I sent Baron Falkenberry a postcard in a plain white envelope. It was a picture of the Heavener Runestone and the typed message read, “Meet me here Saturday at 6:30.”

  I didn’t sign it.

  It took some doing, but I got Libby invited to Fayetteville for a stayover on Saturday night with friends of Elly’s. They were eager to see Libby, but she didn’t want to go. She finally agreed just to shut me up.

  I got to the park about five. There just wasn’t any way around it. If I was going to walk down into that valley with my arthritis kickin’ up like it was, I would have to have plenty of time for the hike.

  Parking my car around the curve from the park office, as far away as I could and still be able to walk back to it, I took off down the steps to the bottom of the gorge that held the runestone. The park closed at five and I passed a few tourists comin’ out along the path. I had checked license plates and knew they’d be long gone on their way out of state before Baron met me at the stone.

  I blessed the park service as I held on to the strong railing that led to the bottom. The descent was even more difficult than I had remembered it, but with sitting on the benches along the way and even once on the steps, I made it in about forty-five minutes. I was breathing hard, my heart was beating fast and I could feel the ache in my knees, but all-in-all I felt right proud of myself. As long as I didn’t dwell on the return trip.

  I even began to enjoy the fall leaves as I sat on the stone retaining wall by the brown wood building that now protected the Heavener landmark. The reds, yellows and purples of the changing foliage was brilliant against the gray of the canyon and the green of the cedar trees. By six o’clock, I was alone and imagining what the Vikings would of thought of if they returned to their hidden valley. I was enjoying this fantasy, listening to the wind murmur in the trees and watching the shadows get longer, when I decided that I could probably see more of the leaves if I climbed up on the higher cliff above the runestone.

  There was a path up to it, even steps, but no railings to hold on to. And I fell once. It took me almost ten minutes to catch my breath after that, but I finally reached the top. My heart was pumping out of my body and my head hurt so bad, I was dizzy.

  But I was right. The view from the higher ledge was spectacular. Standing at the edge, I could see the runestone’s protective shelter below me about fifty feet and a small rushing waterfall over to my left. I moved away from the unprotected edge of the bluff, but where I could still keep an eye on the lower path, and just stood there and let the Valley of the Vikings wash over me.

  The air was turning cooler as the sun descended behind the mountain and the birds were singing last-minute songs, fluttering from branch to branch, before nesting down for the night. I could smell the damp earth and the decay that had already begun in the fallen leaves. Though I was still gasping a little, my heart slowed down and I felt relaxed and peaceful.

  Down below me I saw Baron Falkenberry reach the runestone plateau. He entered the tunnel-like building at one end and immediately came out the other side. I remember thinking that I bet he didn’t even glance at the massive stone with its secret message as he passed by it.

  He stood with his hands in his pocket and looked around, but not up.

  “Yoo hoo. Baron. I’m up here.”

  It only took him about two minutes to bound up the steps I had labored up for over thirty. He was wearing blue jeans, a red Polo pullover jersey and an aviator’s brown leather jacket. Out in the open, even in the fading light, I could see that Baron was beginning to look a little long in the tooth, a little too old to be who he wanted to be.

  “It is you. I thought it was you,” he said when he reached the top, huffin’ only a little bit.

  “I thought you might,” I answered.

  “Well, let’s get right to it, old woman. You want me to stay away from Libby, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “But, why up here…or down here…on Poteau Mountain?” He made a sweeping gesture with his arm.

  “Oh, I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But as you said, let’s get right to it, Baron. Are you going to leave Libby alone?”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “How much?” I asked.

  “How much you offering?”

  I was right in feeling all along that part of Baron Falkenberry’s interest with Elly had included a private game with me.

  “Fifty thousand.”

  He laughed.

  “One hundred thousand and that’s it, Baron.”

  “Dear old Bonita Faye. You’ve got it all wrong. That’s only the beginning.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I want the whole million.”

  “Million? What million?” My heart was starting to race again and my speech came out in gasps.

  “The million my granddaddy said you have in your bank account from your love affair with that Frenchman in Paris.”

  Claude?

  “That was business,” I protested.

  “Yeah, and I know what kind of business it was, too. My granddaddy used to say you were hot stuff when you were young. You and your fancy airs and your no-account husband. My granddaddy said he always thought you had killed Burnett up on Cavanal Hill, but you sweet talked yourself out of it with Deputy Adams. And they went and found a dead man…an innocent dead man to blame for it and you got off scott free. Well, now, sister, it’s time to pay the piper.”

  I stood with my hand on my heart, willing it to slow down.

  Baron went on, “I had forgotten about you, forgotten my dead granddaddy’s old stories until Libby came to town. I figured you’d feel some guilt about her and want to rescue her from someone as wicked as me. That was all there was to it at first. Then she told me about the bells her mama had heard up on that hill the night your husband was killed.” He grinned a wicked grin and bent his face down toward mine. “Bet I’m the only one left alive in Poteau that remembers that Billy Roy Burnett used to call you ‘Belle’ when you’d strut your stuff for him in your black Paris nightgown. Yes, ma’am, my granddaddy used to tell me some awful interesting stories about you. I especially liked the one where you ruined his bank by taking your whore money and moving it to Fort Smith. Lady, you might have fooled that supposedly smart detective husband of yours, but you didn’t fool my grandpa, and, lady, guess what? You don’t fool me either!”

  Baron was spitting a little as he jabbered his hate-filled narrative and for the first time I felt a personal fear. He was so close to me, towering over me. I tried to translate his words, his fears, his anger. What? The Judge? The money? Revenge? That was what I had felt when Baron had hugged Libby tight to him and smiled at me. Smiled at me with his full lips, but not with his treacherous eyes.

  I’d been standing on that slab of rock for almost an hour. If I didn’t sit down soon, I’d faint. I had double vision in my eyes and I could feel the blood trickling down from where I’d gashed my knee when I’d fallen.

  “I’d just about given up on you, Bonita Faye. Thought I’d be stuck with that girl. Then I thought that if I started roughing her up a bit…started talking about marriage, you’d take the bait. And I was right and here’s the proof.” He took the white envelope out
of his breast pocket and held it in front of me. I could see the postcard inside.

  I snatched it away from him.

  “That’s all right, you old bitch. You keep your little ol’ postcard. It’s all over for you.” He turned and stared out into the park below us, both hands on his hips and a satisfied smile on his face like he had just bought the whole valley, runestone and all.

  He said, “I’ll take the million and I think I’ll take the girl, too.”

  I don’t know where a tired, fat old woman got the energy to do it, but I had the strength of ten strong men when I reached out both hands and pushed Baron Falkenberry off that bluff.

  The shove almost propelled me off the side with him. I didn’t really care, but at the last second, my momentum stopped and I crashed heavily onto the stone platform at the same time Baron struck the ground below.

  There was no one about to hear his scream or the sound of him hitting the jutting rocks. When I crawled over and peered over the edge I could see him lying face up in an unnatural sprawl, his head half submerged in the fast current from the waterfall. He wasn’t moving. I couldn’t tell if he was dead or not, but I knew that if I climbed down to find out that I’d die from a heart attack right beside him.

  You didn’t have to climb to the ledge I was on by the steps. They was only there if you wanted to visit the runestone first. You could also get back to the main path by a smoother, slightly graded incline that went around the valley. That’s the way I chose to get out of the park when I could finally get to my feet. The adrenaline I’d felt when I shoved Baron was gone and I hurt in every bone in my body. It took me nearly two hours of stumbling and falling in the dark, clinging to mossy rocks and resting on cold flagstone steps, before I reached my car in the parking lot.

  It was deserted ‘cept for a red BMW parked near the top of the steps.

  I was so tired I almost couldn’t get my car door open. When I did, I just sat there.

  My mind was a blank. My brain refused to work.

  When it finally did, it was on the lowest level of man: self-preservation. With hands that were shaky, dirty and bleeding, I turned the key in the ignition. I had to use my hand to maneuver my foot so that it reached the pedal. With a leg that was so stiff that I wasn’t sure it was there below the knee, I stepped on the gas. I drove home.

  The rest of the evening was a blur. Sometimes Harmon was besides me, but most of the time I was alone.

  I remember taking a hot bath, clipping my broken fingernails and bandaging my swollen knee. I remember sitting, shivering in my warm red robe, at the kitchen table drinking a cup of hot tea laced with brandy.

  And I remember my last thoughts of that day as I dropped onto the bed—before I fell into a dreamless sleep—“Murder, like childbearing, should be left to the young.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  I had worn an old polyester pantsuit up to Poteau Mountain to meet Baron Falkenberry. It was one of several that I had bought when they were in their heyday and I had thought they would be just the thing for my trips to Europe. The pantsuits had turned out to be hot, smelly and uncomfortable, but I had brought them back home, washed them and hung them in the storage closet.

  Sunday morning, I chose a powder blue one. With its wide pants leg, it was all I could get over the thick bandage on my swollen knee. Saturday’s black pantsuit lay torn and crumpled behind the hot water closet in the hall.

  I missed church, but at ten to twelve I entered the Black Angus Cafe for Sunday lunch, leaning heavily on one of Harmon’s old canes. The waitress went through the buffet for me, calling out the selections. She brought the filled plate to my table near the front door.

  As I ate, I looked around the Angus. The old red and black carpet was gone as was the leather and chrome stools around the counter. In fact, the counter was gone. And like everywhere else in America, the Angus’s new colors were shades of blue and mauve.

  “Howdy, Bonita Faye. We missed you this morning.”

  “Howdy, Claudia Jean. Bubba. I couldn’t make it today. My arthritis is acting up again.”

  The church couples filed by my table as they headed for the buffet. I howdy’d all of them and watched their faces as they ate.

  These were good people, my neighbors. And if they chose to sit in mauve chairs and eat somebody else’s cooking at Sunday noon, maybe it was just a sign that Poteau, Oklahoma, wasn’t so far behind the rest of the country after all. Still, I thought, these were the woman who twenty—even ten—years ago woulda been calling their families in to eat their Sunday fried chicken on their own polished dining room tables.

  Finally, the one I’d been waiting for showed up.

  R.J. went to the back and poured himself his own cup of coffee before sitting down across from me.

  “Bad news, Bonita Faye.”

  I didn’t say nothing, just put a concerned look on my face.

  “Baron Falkenberry fell off a cliff up on Poteau Mountain yesterday.”

  “No, you don’t say, R.J.”

  “Yep, he won’t be bothering Libby no more.”

  “Hurt bad, is he?”

  “Worse than hurt. He’s dead.”

  “Land’s sake, R.J. Is that why you have on your uniform on a Sunday morning? You investigating his death?”

  R.J. poured extra sugar into his cup.

  “Well, yes and no,” he said mysteriously.

  “I don’t follow you, R.J.”

  “I’ve been up all night, Bonita Faye. Working on something that involved Baron Falkenberry all right, but not his death. We didn’t find out about that until about two hours ago when the park opened. It’s a shame he died when he did.”

  “Why’s that?”

  He pulled out a white legal paper from his back pocket. It was creased where he’d sat on it. “This is a warrant for Falkenberry’s arrest.” He threw it on the table. “Guess I won’t need it now.”

  “Arrest for what?”

  “We raided his place last night. Up near Panama? Found eight different marijuana patches up on that ranch of his. The high-quality kind that would bring top dollar. And every one of them was booby-trapped, too.”

  “No.”

  “And that’s not all. He had an airstrip…for light planes…in one of his back pastures. One of the state helicopters spotted it from the air a couple of weeks ago. That’s when we stepped up our investigation. We think there was also some cocaine dealing going on. And worse.”

  “Worse than cocaine?”

  “Yep. The dogs went crazy out around one of the sheds in Falkenberry’s woods. We started digging…those dogs are trained to find drugs…and we uncovered some bones…human skeletons, Bonita Faye.”

  “Lordy, R.J.”

  “There’s some people from Harmon’s old crime lab in Oklahoma City up there right now trying to figure out how many and who they are.”

  “Well, what do you think of that?”

  “But, that isn’t what I came in here to see you about, Bonita Faye. I’m afraid I’ve got to ask you some questions.”

  Well, didn’t I know it. And here I thought I could get by with another murder. Like Billy Roy’s, it was just a little one and I only killed every forty years or so. I figured I’d be dead by the next time the urge hit me.

  I had to wait for R.J. to get himself another cup of coffee. And he stopped by the buffet and picked up a piece of pecan pie. I began to feel a little better. A man can’t sit and eat pecan pie while’s he’s arresting you for murder, can he?

  “Bonita Faye, someone saw your car up at the Heavener State Park yesterday.”

  “That’s right, R.J.”

  “May I ask what you were doing up there?”

  “Looking at the fall leaves. You know they turn first down in that ravine, R.J.”

  “What time were you there?”

  “What time did they see
my car?”

  “About 5:15. The park attendant recognized it when she left for the day.” He’d eaten his pie in three bites.

  “Well, then, that’s about the time I was there. I just got the urge late in the day to see the fall leaves and you know, R.J., how much Harmon loved that park. I just found myself there and if they say it was 5:15 then I guess I was there at 5:15.”

  “Did you see Falkenberry drive up?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Did you see anybody suspicious?”

  “Just some late tourists. They always look suspicious to me.”

  We laughed.

  “How’s your arthritis?” His nod indicated Harmon’s cane leaning against my chair.

  “Not good. As a matter of fact, it’s particularly bad today.”

  “You ought not to go around looking at leaves on your own, Bonita Faye. You know I’ll take you any time you say.”

  He made like he was fixing to go.

  “Wait a minute, R.J. How do they think Baron died? You didn’t tell me. Do they think it was an accident?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Those drug people are rough and he coulda been killed in a drug deal that went sour. Or he coulda heard that we were after him and just plain jumped. After all, he’s probably better off dead than where we were going to send him. The Oklahoma City people will look into it, but my guess is that unless somebody confesses, we’ll never know.”

  He got up and nodded at me and then at the manager at the counter. Oklahoma state troopers never have to pay for their pie and coffee at the Black Angus. He was pushing out the front door when I called him back.

  “R.J., I reckon Libby must be home from Fayetteville by now. Would you stop by and tell her about Baron?”