Chapter 31 – What Peewee Pelletier
Found
Earlier that morning a man named
Pewee Pelletier drove his pickup truck through a gap in the tall privet hedge
in front of White Oaks. A discrete metal sign, white letters on a forest green
background, declared it to be the service entrance to the estate.
The truck’s tires
crunched on the gravel roadbed as Pewee drove past the kitchen wing, past the
greenhouses and the water cascade, water burbling over its stone steps, and
down beyond the old slave graveyard. He parked beside the white granite
mausoleum. TRAPNELL was carved in stern block letters in the triangular
pediment above the door.
It’s only seven-fifteen and already it’s hot
as a crotch, Peewee thought, squinting at the white disc that was the sun,
blazing mercilessly above the tangle of trees marking the beginning of the
swamp. He wanted to finish the day’s work early and go fishing. He’d sweep out
the mausoleum and get it looking shipshape for Blanton Trapnell’s big sendoff.
Then he’d swing by Holy Redeemer and White Knoll cemeteries and cut the grass
before knocking off for the day. With any luck he’d be on the lake in his bass
boat by noon, along with a cold six-pack and a container of minnows from
Buzzy’s. Perhaps he’d get Gordon Buzzy to sell him a bottle of Old Rocking
Chair. He bit into the egg salad sandwich his wife had made for him.
Chewing egg salad
on white bread liberally smeared with mayonnaise he looked at the mausoleum and
snorted in contempt. The damn thing probably cost more than his house. Rich people, he thought resentfully. At
least rich people died, just like everybody else. Blanton Trapnell wouldn’t be
driving his Rolls-Royce through town anymore, not deigning to wave at Pewee
when Peewee drove past going the other way in his truck.
Peewee always
waved when he encountered other drivers. It was the neighborly thing to do, but
Blanton Trapnell thought he was too good to acknowledge people like Peewee who
weren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Blanton Trapnell wasn’t
neighborly. Now he was dead and good riddance. Let’s see what Saint Peter would
have to say about his lack of neighborliness when he showed up at the Pearly
Gates. Peewee bit into the dill pickle his wife had packed along with the
sandwich. Pickle juice ran down through the beard stubble on his chin as he
smiled, thinking of Old Man Trapnell being denied admission to Heaven and
instead being cast, shrieking, into a lake of fire.
He crumpled the
pieces of wax paper the sandwich and the pickle had been wrapped in and stuck
them in the hip pocket of his green Carhartt work pants. Then he took the key
hanging from a cardboard tag marked ‘Trapnell’ that Chapman had given him and
went to unlock the door.
Leaving the bronze
door open to let it air out inside, Peewee got a push broom and a pry bar out
of the truck. He carried them into the cool interior of the mausoleum and
sniffed cautiously. It smelled musty, like closed-up spaces always did. He also
detected the unmistakable stink of decomposition.
The decomp odor
wasn’t coming from any of the corpses in the crypts. Those were embalmed and
would be as dry as old leather. It was something freshly dead, most likely a
possum or a raccoon that had crawled through the ventilation shaft on the roof.
Pewee figured he’d find whatever it was lying in the shadows, paws-up. He drew
on a pair of rubber work gloves and patted the black plastic trash bag tucked
in his belt. Ms. Possum or Mr. Raccoon would be going into the bag. He just
hoped they weren’t too gooshy.
A stained glass window in the rear wall threw
splashes of red, blue and green over the stone floor. The window’s subject was
utterly inexplicable to Peewee: not Jesus or some saint but three naked men
being attacked by huge snakes. Peewee stared at it, trying to recall which
Bible story it could have come from. There were several involving animals.
There was Daniel in the lions’ den, and Jonah and the whale, and one about a
talking donkey that got pissed off when its owner kept hitting it with a stick,
but he couldn’t think of anything involving snakes, other than the Garden of
Eden thing.
“Rich people,” he
muttered shaking his head.
He leaned the
broom against the wall inside the door. He’d sweep the floor before he locked
up.
The double crypt
where Blanton Trapnell’s coffin would go was on the left wall, down near the
snake window. Trapnell’s second wife was in there and he would be going in
beside her. The late Mrs. Trapnell had been a terror. Peewee wouldn’t want to
wait for the last trumpet to blow while lying beside a bitch like Deirdre
Trapnell. Fortunately he wouldn’t have to. He’d be buried out at Holy Redeemer
with his wife and his mama and daddy and the rest of his family. The Trapnells
could keep their old mausoleum with its bizarre naked-men-and-snakes window,
thank you very much.
Pewee intended to
use the pry bar to remove the granite slab known in the funeral trade as a
shutter from the front of the double crypt. The shutter was inscribed with
Blanton’s name and date of birth, as well as his wife’s name and her dates of
birth and death. A stonecutter would add Blanton’s final date and it would go
back in place and be sealed, after his bronze casket went in.
The casket was a
model called the Chancellor made by the Batesville Casket Company. It cost
$25,000. It had a variety of high-end features, including a rounded glass seal,
bronze swing-bar handles, fully adjustable inner bed with head and foot velvet
pillows and matching velvet blanket and a hidden locking mechanism.
Blanton’s purchase
of the most expensive casket among those on display in Chapman’s showroom had
been a red letter day for Lycott and Joelle Chapman and their two children. The
family celebrated by taking a trip to Jekyll Island, where they’d gone to a
water park.
Peewee walked down
the center aisle, pausing to kick at a drift of leaves that must have blown in
under the door. As he kicked at the leaves, scattering them, his work boot came
in contact with something unyielding. He looked down to see what it was and
found it was a foot, clad in a narrow, polished black shoe.
The pry bar hit
the stone floor with a clatter as Peewee turned tail and ran.
Black
Willows is the sequel to White Oaks, the first in the Trapnell Thriller series.
When I wrote the conclusion to White Oaks, the story of the free-wheeling
Trapnell family, lords of the manor of the small town of Cobbs, Georgia, I
didn’t intend to write a sequel. However, I started to miss the family whose
bizarre adventures it chronicled. The Trapnell siblings – glamorous,
self-indulgent Aimee; lazy, good-natured Trainor; troubled Benjamin and clever
Marsh – kept calling to me, demanding that I continue documenting their
journey. Black Willows picks up where White Oaks left off, with the siblings
richer than ever and presented with new challenges to overcome. It’s a funny,
frivolous, wild ride, part farce, part thriller
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