The Cottoncrest Curse: A Novel

Chapter 93

301 Chapter 93 “We’ve got to do it, Doc.” Raifer and Dr. Cailleteau were sitting in Dr. Cailleteau’s parlor in front of a low fire. The twilight outside was giving way to the cloudy dark of the October evening. The funeral had been a long one. Mona Brady and the children had wept loudly from before the start of the service at the Baptist church until after the body had been put in the graveyard behind the church and they had been led away by the preacher. The Knights had been there, filling up the pews and swearing to get revenge. On coloreds. On Jews. On Catholics. On everyone they hated. It didn’t matter to the Knights who was really responsible—the coloreds and the Jews and the Catholics all deserved whatever was coming to them. The rest of the sharecroppers had been there as well as a smattering of folks from town. At the back of the church Jimmy Joe had taken a seat in the last row, away from everyone else. It appeared to Raifer that, when Tee Ray’s coffin was lowered into the grave, a strange and bitter smile momentarily had passed over the blacksmith’s features. Raifer reached out and poured himself another shot of bourbon and passed the bottle to Dr. Cailleteau. “If we don’t, it will only hurt the family even more. They’ve suffered. Let them have their peace. Let them move into Cottoncrest next week believing that Tee Ray died in the pursuit of a Jew and a thief.” “But not a murderer.” “You know that’s the way it’s got to be, Doc. There can’t be a killer of the Colonel Judge if he was the one who killed Rebecca and then turned the gun on himself. And there can’t be a murderer if the bullet 302 that the Colonel Judge used to shoot himself was found deep in Rebecca ’s back in a place under her dress we hadn’t examined when Bucky was with us.” Raifer reached into his pocket and pulled out the mashed metal bullet he had dug out of the floorboards at the landing on the second floor of Cottoncrest. Raifer tossed it on the table. “Raifer, you know what Bucky is going to say, don’t you? That he had it right all along. He’s going to be acting out that scene of the Colonel Judge and Rebecca until he’s eighty years old.” “Doc, just write up the death certificates as Rebecca being killed by the Colonel Judge and the Colonel Judge then committing suicide lying across her back. I’ve already taken care of the LeMat that was in the Colonel Judge’s hand. It will never be found. Let Bucky do all the talking he wants. By the time he’s finished, everyone in Parteblanc will believe that the Cottoncrest curse got the Colonel Judge. And who knows, maybe that place really is cursed.” ...