A Violent End at Blake Ranch (31 page)

“Maria, I have to apologize for rushing off yesterday without you.”

“You don't have to explain yourself to me,” she says. Huffy.

“That's right, but I want you to know it was nothing personal. Now, here's what I'd like you to do this morning.” I get up and pick up one of the boxes of files left behind by Rodell Skinner from when he was chief of police. “I want you to start going through these files and familiarize yourself with them, and then file them in the cabinets we've got here.”

She looks over at the cabinets with narrowed eyes. “I might have known it would come to this.”

“Come to what?”

“That I'd be nothing but a glorified secretary.”

“There are only three boxes left here. There were six to start with. Who do you think took care of that? It was me and Zeke and Bill Odum. You won't be putting in any time the rest of us haven't put in. And besides, looking through those reports will help you learn the nature of Jarrett Creek.”

She nods, but the set of her jaw is stubborn. “Can I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.”

“Did I do something wrong the other day when I went with you to the Blake ranch? Did I step out of line?”

“Of course not. You think that's why I didn't take you along yesterday?”

“I wondered.”

“Put it out of your mind.” I scratch my head, unsure how much to say. “The fact is, I'm not used to having enough manpower—and womanpower—to have the luxury of bringing somebody along on a case.”

“Okay, I get it.”

I sigh. From her tone I suspect that she might get it, but she doesn't want to show it. I don't blame her for being eager and ambitious. In fact, I admire her for it. But Jarrett Creek is a tough place to contain so much energy to succeed. There isn't that much to do in a small town. Maybe that's why they sent her here, to get her used to the idea that police work isn't an exciting endeavor every single day. Most days it's piddling work, accented with a little spice now and then.

She's not done with me. I see the speculation in her eyes. “I want to ask you something else.”

“Don't be afraid to ask anything, ever. You ought to know by now I'm not going to bite you.”

She nods. “I've been thinking about the weapon. Has anybody looked around the property? Somebody might have thrown it away, or even buried it.”

“I looked close to the house, but I haven't sent anyone to go farther out. It's a big property.”

“I know it's a long shot, but nothing came of the dredging. And somebody had plenty of time to take the weapon somewhere and bury it or throw it where they thought it wouldn't be found.”

“Or to take it to the lake and throw it in, or drive pretty much anywhere with it and throw it away,” I say.

She's watching me closely. “In the academy they told us that criminals are lazy, and that most of them aren't as smart as they think they are. I think it's worth a look around the property.”

“Can't hurt,” I say. “If you want to put off this filing and search for the weapon, it's all right with me. But don't get heat stroke. And look out for snakes.”

She flips her hand at me as if to say snakes don't worry her. She can't hide the sparkle in her eyes at the prospect of some real investigation.

“I'm going out to talk to the Blakes about having the coffin dug up and moved. You can follow me out there, and I'll tell them you'll be walking the property.”

She waits while I call the medical examiner's office and tell them that Susan Shelby's family wants the coffin dug up and transported to Tyler.

“Who's going to pay for all this?” T. J. says.

I'm an old hand at this bureaucratic nonsense. “Who do you think ought to pay?”

“The Blakes misidentified the corpse, so maybe it ought to fall to them.”

“I'll pass it by them and see what they say. They're already going to be out the money for the coffin. They got top of the line, and Susan Shelby's relatives are going to balk at the cost.”

“That's up to those folks. Let them hash it out.”

Now it falls to me to go back out to the Blake ranch and present them with a bill for retrieval and transportation of a coffin. I would feel sorry for them, except that they are the ones who claimed it was Nonie, even when they knew in their hearts it wasn't her.

“I suppose I see their point,” Adelaide says. “We should bear the expense of digging up the box and sending it to her family since we're the ones who made the mistake.”

We're sitting in the kitchen, and Adelaide is coaxing John to eat. “All of a sudden he's off his feed. I swear if it's not one thing, it's another.”

It looks to me like he's enjoying refusing the food because of the attention it earns him.

“I sure would like to know what Susan Shelby was doing here,” I say.

“So would I,” Adelaide says. “John, now if you don't want me to feed you like a baby, you need to eat.”

“Would you?” I say. “You mean you don't know why she was here? I think you might have some idea.”

At the tone of my voice she jerks her head to look at me. “What do you mean?”

“I've got a theory. Let me run it by you. I think Susan found out a family secret that you didn't want anybody to know—especially the law.”

She puts the spoon down. “I don't know what you're referring to.”

“Then let me clarify. I'm talking about money. The money you and John took to Les Moffitt to invest all those years ago wasn't a paltry sum. And I don't believe it was money that your mamma squirreled away. I think it's money your daddy got from robbing banks.”

She laughs, but it's a nervous sound. “Where did you get an idea like that? I don't understand why you don't believe that money came from my mamma. I told you she was frugal and worked hard and put money by. She said she didn't want me to ever have to worry about money the way she did.”

“Adelaide, I know what kind of work your mamma did, and there's no way she could have put enough money by for you and John to buy this ranch and raise a family of four and never have to work, much less pour it into investments. And I know John's family didn't have enough to account for that either.”

Adelaide is totally focused on me. John has picked up the spoon and started eating applesauce. “I don't care what you think you know. My mamma left me a little money, and I'm eternally grateful for it.”

Maybe she's telling the truth as she knows it. Maybe I'm wrong, and Lilah never told her where the money came from and she actually believed it was her mother's savings.

“Let me go at this a different way. You've had a long time to speculate. Do you have any idea why Nonie wanted to . . .” I look at John. He's got his head cocked like an owl watching me. “Why she tried to hurt Charlotte?”

Adelaide is shaking. “Why would you ask me that? What good can come of it?”

“Have you talked to Nonie since you found out she's alive?”

All of a sudden John says, “Where is Nonie?”

“John, she's living in Jacksonville.”

“Why doesn't she come home?” John says.

“Because, that's why.” Adelaide gathers up John's dishes and takes them to the sink. The dishes clatter as she sets them down hard. She wheels around, hands dripping. “Why didn't she call me when she first got out? Why would she live up there all this time and never call me?”

“Maybe she was waiting for you to make the first move.”

“That's ridiculous! I didn't know where she was, did I?”

“We could call her,” John says. “Maybe she'll come for a visit.”

“He's right,” I say. “Maybe you should give her a call.” It can't hurt to stir things up between them. Maybe rattling a few cages will open up this case for me.

CHAPTER 30

Back at headquarters I look up Les Moffitt's phone number and give him a call. He isn't answering his phone, so I leave a message for him to call me. I want to check on something he said last time I talked to him. At the time, it didn't seem important, but it might fit into the way I'm seeing things now.

My cell phone rings. It's Trevino. “I found something.”

A half hour later I locate Trevino a good way back on the property, out of sight of the house and barn. She has pushed aside some bushes, and we're staring down at a tire iron almost hidden by bushes, with what looks like dried blood on one end of it.

“How'd you spot this?”

She shows me a hefty stick. “I didn't want to poke my hands in where a snake might strike, so I used this to push aside the bushes. And there it was.”

I gather it up into the bag I've brought. “I don't know that this is going to do us much good. Probably can't lift a fingerprint off this even if whoever did it didn't wear gloves.”

Maria smiles. Her usually morose face is gleeful. “This might help.” She points close by to a little pile of sticks and dead brush formed into a circle. Inside the circle is a dried-up cow patty. I get up closer to it, and sure enough there's an imprint of a shoe in it.

“In the dark, whoever threw that tire iron away didn't see where they were stepping.”

“Damn good work,” I say. “We're going to have to be really careful moving the earth with the print. That's sandy soil on top.”

“If we bring the kit out here, I can take an imprint where it lies.”

“You know how to do that?”

“I sure do. I'm good at it.”

“Tell you what. The kit's in the trunk. I'll stay here while you go get it.”

She practically gallops away, pleased with herself. I don't blame her. She has followed basic procedures that she learned in the police academy, while I was too busy depending on the psychology of the people involved. And she's made a success of it. I remember her remark that at the academy they made fun of old geezers like me for thinking they can solve things by knowing people in the town. I thought she could learn a thing or two from me, and now I'm finding I might be prodded to learn something myself.

It takes a while, but she gets a good imprint and finds another one in a patch of soft sand a few feet away.

“It's a small print,” she says. “It must have been a woman who did this.”

I agree, and the two most obvious women are Adelaide and Charlotte. But it could be that I've missed the mark with the money angle and my original line is right, that Nonie knew someone's weak spot, and she and Susan cooked up the idea of blackmailing whoever it was.

I stop by the house on my way back to the squad car to talk to Adelaide. “I need to know your and Charlotte's shoe size.”

“Our shoe size? Mine is eight wide and I think Charlotte's is the same. No, that's not right. She wears an eight and a half. I know that because she and Billy wear the same size.”

“They what?”

“Billy has always been embarrassed because his feet are so small.”

“How about Skeeter's shoe size?” I say.

“He's got feet like his daddy. They wear something like a size eleven.”

On the way back to headquarters I tell Maria the shoe sizes, including Billy's.

“Uh-oh,” she says.

We're getting out of the car when I get a call from Les Moffitt. “Sorry, I've been out with a client. What did you need?”

I ask him to hold on while I go into the office. Maria hurries in ahead of me to free Frazier, who greets her joyfully. She tells me she's going to take him out for a walk around the block.

I get back with Moffitt and say, “You told me the Blakes brought money in to invest around twenty years ago. Can you give me the exact date?”

“I sure can. After you asked me, I looked it up. This coming October it will be twenty years ago exactly that John called me.”

Early October, shortly before Nonie Blake tried to kill her sister. Has to be more than a coincidence. Very likely she somehow found out about the money, and Charlotte did too. And Nonie was afraid that Charlotte would inadvertently spill the beans to somebody. It chills me that Nonie thought the best way around it was to hang her sister. Doc Taggart said he knew something wasn't right with Nonie when she was a youngster, and he's right.

I call Nonie's number again, and there's still no answer. Probably working late. I consider calling her at Walmart, but on second thought I think it's going to be better if I show up in person to question her—seriously this time. She and Susan Shelby cooked up something between them. Whether it was a blackmail scheme about the Blake money or someone's indiscretion, I'm going to find out. That means another trip to Jacksonville tomorrow, and I intend to take Maria Trevino with me.

It's late afternoon, too late for Trevino to search out matches on the shoe prints. She measures the print and is a little disgruntled to find out the shoes were probably smaller than size eight. She'll get imprint comparisons to find out the possible types of shoes we're looking for. It won't be enough to arrest someone, but it will be good corroborating evidence.