Old Wounds by Vicki Lane Page B

hospital and her mama—that’s my mamaw—has to stay with her most all the time, so she done tole Bib to look after me. Weren’t no need—I kin do fer myself, long as there’s some food in the trailer. I kin fix macaroni and cheese out of a box and I kin cook frozen pizza. But Bib said we was goin’ campin’.”
    Calven squirmed on the bench. “Funny kind of campin’, you ask me. We been stayin’ at that great huge house just over the ridge. I never seen so many rooms as that place has but Bib fixed us a place in the basement. There’s some says that house is haunted; my mamaw done told me folks has seen the ghost of a little girl over there. Bib says there ain’t no ghostes. And we ain’t seen none neither. But when Bib goes off like he does now and again, I tell you, I git out of that house fast as I can.”
    The boy cut his eyes at Elizabeth with an air of sly amusement. “Bib had done told me to keep a lookout while he was gone t’other day. I seen you come over the ridge, down that same little trail ol’ Molly and Yoursa follows. Seen you walkin’ around like you was in a dream, talkin’ to yourself and lookin’ at stuff. I thought maybe you was a crazy woman.”
    He sniggered. “Not too crazy, though. You took off like one thing when you heard ol’ Bib a-comin’. I like to bust out laughin’ when I seen you haulin’ ass up through them briars.”
    Elizabeth studied the boy. Phillip had called her on Thursday with a carefully worded suggestion that she abandon any further exploration of Mullmore for the time being. He had taken pains not to appear to be telling her what to do, saying only that the sheriff thought that some questionable characters could be using the abandoned house for some undefined but probably nefarious activities. And now here was one of them, eating ice cream in her kitchen. “Calven, why are you and…Bib camping out over there, anyway?”
    The child shrugged. “You got me. I asked Bib and he tole me weren’t none of my business.” He leaned toward them and confided, “I reckon he might be lookin’ fer something. He’s goin’ through all them empty rooms, a-tappin’ at the walls and floors. And he got him one of them detectors; been walkin’ up and down, inside and out with it.”
    “Mum, didn’t Dessie tell us that there was a place there before the Mullins built that…that mansion? A real old farmhouse? I know sometimes people used to bury their money for safekeeping. Maybe that’s—”
    “That there whole cove used to belong to my mama’s people.” Calven spoke with a certain pride, a deposed prince, reduced to rags but not without dignity. “They was some of the first that come into this country and they held that place fer nigh on two hundred years afore them Mullins bought ’em out. Mama tole me that my papaw’s daddy was one of the richest men in the whole county.”
    “Calven, I still want to know why you were in my house—in my
refrigerator
—in the middle of the night. And I need to know where you
should
be.”
    “I done
tole
you. I run off. Bib come back right after you hightailed it outta there t’other day. I didn’t say nothing to him about you bein’ there ’cause…’cause you weren’t doin’ no harm but I didn’t know Bib’d see it that way. And, son, I tell you what’s the truth: you don’t want Bib takin’ against you. So when he asked had I seen anything, I tole him no.
    “But then that night, me and him was asleep in the basement and we heard someone comin’. We got out just in time and was hidin’ up in this place Bib fixed. We seen it was the sheriff and some deputies and we heard them talkin’ about some woman had been over there that very day. Bib lay there a-listen’ and I knowed he was goin’ to whale the tar out of me fer not keepin’ watch. So, when the sheriff and them left, Bib tole me to head back over the mountain to the trailer and he’d see me there and I’d git what I had comin’.
    “Well,