SAFELY BURIED Chapter 23: Bad Mood

With the dawn of another rotten day I got up again and made a pot of coffee. I tried to stretch the kinks out of my back, and I yawned so hard it hurt my jaw. I felt like going to Swifty for a dozen Krispy Kremes, but with my luck a team of burglars would come through the window and clean out the apartment.

Shit.

What else could I say?

Shit shit shit shit shit.

I turned on the TV. A woman was wailing out of control because a tornado had blown her house away last night. I turned it off. I didn’t want to hear about other people’s problems. They might force me to downgrade my own.

I went to the bathroom to take a shower, momentarily forgetting that the shower curtain was covering the front window. I filled the tub instead. The bottom felt gritty. When was the last time I had scrubbed it? The Garths’ bathtub looked cleaner than mine. Still, after soaking for twenty minutes, I felt slightly better—until I looked at myself in the mirror.

The beard I was growing wasn’t much of a beard. I just looked like I needed a shave. My raked cheek still had a greenish-purple hue that the whiskers did not hide. My eyes seemed to have sunk deeper into my face. Out of habit, I wanted to shave, but I was afraid the razor would slice open the stringy scabs. I needed a haircut too.

To take my eyes off the face, I looked at the rest of me. I had lost more weight. My belly hardly bulged anymore. I wasn’t eating as much as I used to. I must be under 175. Not bad for a guy who was almost six-one. If I kept it up, I’d soon be underweight. It wasn’t the best body in the world, but it wasn’t the worst either. Sexy pectorals, if I did say so myself. Knees not too knobby. Earnest face, but less intense than before . . . less sensitive . . . tougher. . . .

I shouldn’t have looked at my face again. The awareness of change came with a sense of loss and regret.

I ate some cereal and had some more coffee. Then I brushed my teeth and left for work.

On the way I debated whether to file a complaint against Chuck Martin and have him arrested. No doubt he’d deny breaking in to my apartment and throwing the rock through the window. There was no sign of a break-in, so he could say I let him in for a talk, and then he got sick because he’d had one too many beers. I even began to feel bad for punching the old drunk in the gut, until I reminded myself of what he had done to Paula. That’s what I wanted to send him to jail for, not for breaking in to my apartment. And it wouldn’t do me any good if the stupid fight was reported in the paper. What the hell, let it go.

In the stack of mail on my desk was a 9x12 manila envelope addressed in elegant calligraphy. Inside was a handwritten note in the same ornate handwriting, along with a Xeroxed copy of a clipping from an old newspaper. The note said, “We used to live up there in beautiful Meridian County. Saw where Walter Boofey was mentioned a couple of times in The Gleaner. We still take the paper after many years away. Thought you might be interested in the enclosed.” The name of Walter A. Boofey was circled in green in the newspaper story. The article had been published six years ago in the Rockville Palladium-Advertiser, a small weekly in southeastern Kentucky.

The eight-inch story reported that a special state-police task force had discovered a marijuana crop being cultivated in a field owned by Mr. and Mrs. Boofey. “Mr. Boofey said he did not know the marijuana had been planted on their farm,” the article stated, then went on to explain that if police could show that a landowner used his property to grow marijuana, the land could be confiscated. Additional penalties included a minimum five-year prison term under federal law if one hundred or more plants were being grown and a maximum five-year term under state law for more than five plants.

I sat back, rocking slowly and staring at the green blur of leaves that surrounded the courthouse. The story was strikingly similar to the one that Chuck Martin had told me about the marijuana he had taken out of Blind Horse Hollow eleven years ago, when Esther Dubbs owned the land. Was it just a coincidence, or had Boofey planted both crops?

I got the phone number for the Palladium-Advertiser out of the Kentucky Press Association directory and called the paper. A woman whose voice sounded like Minnie Mouse buzzed me through to the editor and publisher. His name was Wendell Matthews, and he had a slow, affable drawl. He called to someone to bring him the bound volume from 2004. I gave him the date and page number from the top of my clipping.

“Oh yeah, here it is,” Matthews said. “That Boofey fella. It says he lived near Harrodsburg. Let’s see what else I can find. . . . Seems to me . . .”

I could hear pages turning.

“Yeahhhh,” he said, stretching the word, “here’s another item. This ran a few weeks later. He was lucky. He got to stay out of jail and keep his land. The grand jury refused to indict him. That’s hard to believe.” He laughed cynically. “It must’ve been our prosecutor’s fault. A good prosecutor can get a grand jury to do whatever he wants.”

“Maybe a member of the jury was bought off,” I said.

“Maybe. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Do you know if Boofey had any other arrests?”

“Not offhand. There’s nothing in this article about it. I think I’d remember anything that happened since then.”

“Do you believe what he said about the marijuana? Do you think he planted the crop?”

He chuckled softly. “What do you think? Sure he knew. That’s my opinion. What they do is, these growers, they plant little patches, fifty to a hundred plants, all over the place. Maybe the police’ll find some of them. Maybe some won’t grow. But plenty of them will. It’s a major crop for us.”

Relaxed, chatty, he lectured on the local marijuana industry for another five minutes. He said growers often plant the weed in the Daniel Boone National Forest. That way, if the plants are found, no one’s land can be confiscated. He said crops were starting to come in right now—the harvest ran from late August into October. “There’s lots of money out there,” he said. “The big money comes from outside, not here. Local businessmen don’t care where it comes from. Most folks in these parts can’t afford the stuff, not when it sells for hundreds of dollars an ounce. They grow it to sell. Nowadays the drug of choice around here is meth. It’s cheap and easy to make.”

“Here too,” I said.

“What got you interested in Boofey?” he asked me.

I figured I owed him more than a thirty-second sound bite, so I said, “A couple named Wayne and Cheryl Garth were found murdered in an old farmhouse they were renting from him. The police think drugs were involved, but they don’t have much to go on. All they found in the house was a small amount of marijuana. Boofey bought the land in 2001. That was a couple years after the sheriff’s department found a good-sized crop of marijuana growing in a cornfield near the house.”

“Do they think Boofey’s the murderer?”

“No, not from what they’ve told me.”

“I doubt if he would’ve left the bodies in the house if he killed ’em. It would just draw attention to himself. But on the other hand, maybe he figured if he left the bodies, it would deflect suspicion because you wouldn’t expect the killer to do that—not when he owned the house they were killed in.”

“I went around in circles on that too,” I said. “On balance, though, I think if Boofey killed them, it would have made more sense to get rid of the bodies. He could have dumped them anywhere.” With a laugh I cracked, “Like maybe down your way—the Daniel Boone National Forest. They might never have been found if he had dumped them there.”

“Right. People are always dumping bodies in the forest. Most of them come from Indiana.” The Indiana-Kentucky war was still on. “Well, let me know what happens, Phil.”

“You bet. I’ll send you some articles too.”

“Good. Nice talkin’ to you.”

I hung up and leaned back. I stretched and yawned so hard my arms nearly came out of their sockets and my ears made the ocean sound you hear when you listen to a seashell. I hadn’t slept all night. How was I going to make it through the day? To stay awake I went to the lounge for a cup of coffee and drank it while I walked around.

Next, I called my landlord to report the smashed window. All I told him was someone had chucked a rock through it in the middle of the night. “Occupational hazard,” I said. He was not thrilled. He said he’d try to take care of it as soon as he could. He owned Tri-County Building Supply, so I didn’t think he’d have to try very hard. I asked if his insurance would pay for it, and he muttered something about his deductible.

“I guess you don’t know who done it,” he said.

“I was in bed.” No doubt he’d raise my rent.

I called Lieutenant Bakery and got the usual message to leave a message. I told about the clipping I had received in the mail and said, “It’s another indication that Boofey was involved with marijuana. He was charged with growing it, but not indicted.” I said I would fax him the clipping.

Then I called Edna Mae’s number again. Still no answer.

Where was she? And where was Paula?

Maybe they were back here in Meridian County. Maybe they were involved with Walter Boofey in the drug trade and had joined him in Kentucky. Or maybe Chuck Martin had caught up with them and they were dead. . . .

Except for the news from Kentucky, it was a rotten day.