Page 68 of Evil Bones
Inspecting, then flicking something I didn’t want to imagine, Skinny yanked his mobile from his belt and, employing the same digit he’d used to mine the aural intruder, jabbed at the screen. After eyeballing the address proposed in response, he programmed the vehicle’s navigation system.
Directions were delivered by what sounded like a chirpy robot. Slidell gunned the engine, and we set off.
“You plan to tell me whose next of kin we’re about to assault?” I asked, a bit testy.
“Eleanor Godric.”
“The lady stolen from her grave?”
“Eeyuh.”
“Why?”
“You got a reason why not?”
I didn’t.
Slidell explained that Eleanor Godric had only one living relative, a grandnephew named Harvard Boynton. Boynton, an unemployed art teacher, had lived on the outskirts of South Gastonia for the past two decades.
WAZE navigated us west on I-85 and south on HWY 321, then, after several miles, onto a two-lane cutting through cornfields that looked wilted from the relentless late-summer heat. Eventually, he rolled to a stop by a shingle-roofed wooden sign identifying the entrance to Brook Mountain Mobile Home Park. Looking around, I saw no sign of either of the natural phenomena described in the name.
Boynton’s trailer was one of those silver affairs that look like sausages with the corners squared off. A spindly pine struggled to shade it. A Chevy pickup, probably new in the eighties, sat on a nearby patch of gravel.
Hand-painted in scrolly black-and-green lettering on the jerry-rigged enclosure surrounding the trailer’s wheels were the wordsWarning: Redneck in Residence. A set of homemade wooden stairs connected a tiny landing with the ground.
Before Slidell and I were out of the SUV, the trailer’s door opened, and a man stepped onto the stoop. He wasn’t what I expected, given the message scrawled on the base of his home.
Standing about my height, the man exhibited a body mass that couldn’t have exceeded mine. His skin was pale and seriously freckled, his ginger hair drawn into a meager bun atop his head.
His outfit was hard to describe. Or explain. Neon-yellow long-sleeved tee. Baggy beige cargo shorts held up by blue-and-orange silkfleur-de-lis suspenders. Striped green-and-red knee socks. Birkenstocks.
“Whatever you’re peddling, I don’t want it.”
“Are you Harvard Boynton?” Slidell demanded, his gruffness probably triggered by distaste for the man’s attire.
“I’mwarningyou,” Mr. Suspenders said, with an attempt at bravado that didn’t really land. “Leave now or I’ll call the police.”
“It’s your lucky day.” Slidell flashed his badge. “We are the police.”
Mr. Suspenders scurried down the treads, Birkenstocks slapping at his colorful heels. “Let me see that.”
Slidell extended his arm. Yanked the shield back when the man attempted to take it.
“Are you Harvard Boynton?” Slidell repeated.
“Maybe.” With a sullen tilt of his head that threatened the integrity of the topknot.
“You got an Aunt Eleanor?”
“I did. She died.”
“Auntie leave you a bundle so’s you could buy this little palace?” Slidell cocked his chin at the mobile home.
“Eleanor didn’t leave me a dime. What’s this all about? Why are you here?”
Slidell ignored Boynton’s questions. “Harvard. That’s an odd name. Your mama have aspirations for you? Something that didn’t involve trailer parks?”
Boynton said nothing.
