The Ranger - Ace Atkins [37]
“I like him fine. He just is too friendly when he should be doing work.”
“Maybe he talked to the Bullard girl. Or heard something.”
Lillie shrugged, pulling the hair back from her eyes only to find them covered again. Everything down in the valley was gray and lifeless, mud up to their ankles. Wind cut through the pines, making sounds like an approaching train.
“Hamp’s coat suits you,” she said, smiling, sort of absent and loose, looking down into the valley. “He’d be proud you have it.”
They spotted Tuttle loading wood into an old pickup just as they turned off the main road to town and toward his ranch house. He tossed a couple more sticks into the back of the truck and walked toward Lillie’s Jeep, a teenage boy behind him continuing the work, Quinn figuring the boy was his son. Tuttle was in his mid-forties, stick thin but with an enormous belly that pulled at his flannel shirt’s buttons. He walked slow, waving to Lillie, wiping his hands with a bandanna and greeting Quinn with a nice handshake, talking for a good bit about how sorry he was to hear about his uncle. Quinn thanked him, with Lillie following: “Chuck, we got a few questions for you about that fire that killed that family in June.”
Tuttle’s boy continued to throw the wood onto the back of the truck, the steady rhythm of it sounding like a drumbeat. Tuttle reached for his thick glasses, breathed on them, and cleaned them a bit with the bandanna and then blew his nose with it. “I can pull that report for you,” he said, smiling at Lillie. “Can it wait till the morning?”
“We’ve seen it,” Lillie said. Quinn stood beside her, watching Tuttle, Tuttle smiling back. The wind came down through the hills and across his back, rattling their jackets and pant legs.
There was slow traffic passing the house, so close to town.
“My mother-in-law used up all her wood last week,” Tuttle said. “Waited till tonight to call me and say she was cold. Now, how come it took her so long to let me know? I’d just settled down to watch the ball game and now I’m gonna be loading wood.”
“Just a couple things,” Lillie said. “Did you talk to the girl, Jill Bullard?”
“Don’t recall,” Tuttle said. “She the girl that got free of it?”
Lillie nodded. “There was a man who lived, too.”
“Got burned up real good. Think he died down in Jackson.”
“I saw the Bullard girl mentioned in your report, but the address showed the same trailer. Did you take her statement?”
“There wasn’t much to this thing, Lillie,” Tuttle said. “One of them left a skillet on the stove and started a grease fire. One of the men who died come in about one in the morning to fix some eggs. That’s all I know.”
Lillie nodded and looked to Quinn.
“I saw you at the memorial service,” Tuttle said. “How’s your momma?”
“Fine.” Quinn nodded.
“Didn’t see her there.”
“She didn’t go,” Quinn said. “Mr. Tuttle, you think there could’ve been more to this fire?”
“No,” Tuttle said. “There wasn’t evidence of arson, if that’s what you mean. Like I said, it was pretty clear to me.”
“Reason we’re asking,” Lillie said, “it seemed pretty important to Sheriff Beckett. He’d kept the files separate from his office work. I think he’d really been studying on it.”
Tuttle nodded and yelled for his son, who’d sat down on the rear bumper of the truck. “Be there in a minute.”
Quinn shifted his weight.
“Your uncle took this one pretty hard,” Tuttle said. “Two children got burned up. He talked with me a lot about it. He blamed the parents for squatting up there in the hills like that, no electricity, cooking on an open flame. I think he just had a hard time not being able to make a bit of sense of it.”
Tuttle’s truck started, his boy behind the wheel, slowly turning and heading down the short drive. The truck idled by them, Tuttle offering his hand to Quinn. “You think this could’ve been what was worrying him so?”
Quinn nodded. “Looks like it.”
“But you don’t recall anything more about Jill Bullard?” Lillie asked.
“Only met her once and that was the day of the fire. I made some notes, and she left. I never saw her before or since. She