Authors: Sharyn McCrumb
“And where is Eileen?” Amanda asked crisply, her eyes on Michael.
He looked away, murmuring something unintelligible.
“Elizabeth, would you please go upstairs and knock on her door? Tell her that we are waiting.”
Elizabeth hurried from the dining room, hoping that Eileen had just overslept. If she had decided to prolong
her hysterics for another day, everyone’s nerves would start to go. She reached the upstairs hall. Eileen’s door was closed. Elizabeth tapped gently. “Eileen! Are you awake? It’s breakfast time!”
There was no sound from within.
Elizabeth tried the door. The handle turned easily, and she peeped inside. The bed was neatly made, and its occupant was not in the room. Elizabeth went back to the dining room and reported this to Amanda, who received the news in tight-lipped silence.
“I expect she’s out painting,” said Captain Grandfather. “When I got up at the sensible hour of seven”—he paused to glare at Geoffrey’s rumpled dressing gown—“I found a box of cereal and a used bowl on the table here. I expect she got an early start today.”
“She needs time to work on it,” mumbled Geoffrey sleepily. “Why not just leave her alone?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it!” snapped Amanda. “This is one of my little girl’s last family breakfasts as a—as a—”
“Chandler,” suggested her husband softly.
“Thank you, Robert. As a Chandler.” She turned to Dr. Shepherd with a careful smile. “Dr. Shepherd, you must think we have shocking manners! But I’m sure you know what a special time like this can do to the nerves of a sensitive girl like Eileen. But I do apologize for her.”
Shepherd murmured that he quite understood and went on eating his eggs.
“Charles,” Amanda continued, “go and fetch your sister, please. Or, perhaps Michael would like to have a few moments—”
Charles stood up quickly. “Now, Mother, you know she especially doesn’t want him to see the painting before it’s finished. I’ll go get her. Save me some toast.”
“Have you talked to her since last night?” Elizabeth whispered to Michael.
He shook his head. “I thought I’d just leave her alone,” he muttered.
Amanda interrupted them at this point to deliver a monologue on wedding rehearsal plans, and Carlsen
Shepherd began to talk quietly to Captain Grandfather, moving the silverware around in positions suspiciously resembling the armada of the previous evening’s game.
“Who won?” asked Dr. Chandler, indicating his coffee spoon, which had just been turned into a Turkish fleet.
“Well, I did,” said Shepherd, “but it was probably luck.”
Elizabeth wondered if Eileen had intentionally skipped the family gathering. She found herself staring at the dying stag in the painting, and wondering whose eyes they reminded her of.
“Dad! Captain Grandfather!” Charles appeared in the doorway, panting for breath. “Could you come down to the lake, please?”
The last thing Wesley Rountree wanted in his county was a murder. County sheriffs do not keep their elected positions by brilliantly solving cases the way cops do on TV. They keep them by staying on good terms with the majority of the voting populace; and if there was one thing that Wesley Rountree knew about murders, it was that they caused hard feelings, no matter what. A conviction cost you the votes of the killer’s family; an acquittal alienated the victim’s family. It was a no-win situation.
Whenever there was a murder in Rountree’s district, he always hoped that a migrant worker had gone berserk and committed the crime, but that was never the case. Marauding tramps were incredibly rare; jealous husbands and drunken good-old-boys were fatally common.
It wasn’t that Rountree condoned murder or wanted to see the perpetrator go unpunished. He faithfully brought to justice the local killers, regardless of personal consequences, but whenever a murder was reported to his office, his first reaction was invariably indignation that someone would be so inconsiderate of his feelings as to commit homicide in his county.
Aside from that, the job of sheriff suited Rountree just fine. He had lived all his life in the county, except
for college and a four-year stint as an M.P. with the air force in Thailand. After his discharge, he had spent a couple of years with the highway patrol, and then when old Sheriff Miller had a heart attack and died, Rountree went back home to Chandler Grove and was elected sheriff in an uncontested election.
Now, five years later, in his second term as sheriff, Rountree was beginning to think of the job as a permanent thing. At thirty-six, he was a stocky blond who fought his cowlick with a crew cut and his beer belly with diet cola. Outdoor work and pale skin had kept him perpetually red-faced and freckled. The consensus of opinion around Chandler Grove was that Wesley Rountree was “doing okay.” As a home-boy, he suited the community down to the ground; they wouldn’t have traded him for Sherlock Holmes.
In a small rural county, where everybody knows everybody else, law enforcement is a personal matter. The voters wanted a father image, and one of the cleverest moves of Rountree’s life had been perceiving that need and filling it.
He remembered the time that Floyd Rogers had been shot in the parking lot of Brenner’s Cafe. There wasn’t much of a mystery about it. Half a dozen people had seen Wayne Smith’s red pickup leaving the scene of the crime.
It was pretty common knowledge that Smith had been fooling around with Pearl Rogers. “The boyfriend shot the husband?” asked Rountree when they called him. “It’s supposed to be the other way around. Don’t he watch television?”
Rogers was in critical condition in the county hospital, and Smith had to be brought in before some of the Rogers kinfolk decided to handle it themselves. Wyatt Earp might have organized a posse; Wesley Rountree preferred to use the telephone. He picked up the phone and dialed the number of Wayne Smith’s farm.
After six rings, the fugitive himself answered.
“Hello, Wayne? This is Wesley Rountree. How you doing? That calf of yours going to make it? Glad to hear
it. Listen, Wayne … we have a little problem here. I understand you shot Floyd Rogers a little while ago. What? Well, he told me himself, as a matter of fact. He was still conscious when the rescue squad got there. Say what? Dead? No, but he’s laid up pretty bad in county hospital. I think he’ll pull through, though. And Pearl, she’s about to run us all crazy. Seems to think there’s gonna be a shoot-out or some such foolishness. What, Wayne? Well, you’ve sobered up some now, haven’t you? I thought you had. Listen, we need to have a talk about all this, Wayne. You need to come on down here so we can get this straightened out. No, you don’t have to do that. I’ll come out and get you in the county car. You just wait there, okay? Maybe you could put a few things in a canvas bag; we might have to keep you here. Your razor, change of underwear, things like that. Then you just go out on the porch and wait, okay? Right. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Stay calm, Wayne. Bye, now.”
Case closed. Floyd Rogers had pulled through all right, and Bryce had got Wayne Smith off with two years’ probation. Rountree hadn’t lost either of their votes.
When the call came in about the death at the Chandler place, Rountree took down the particulars with a heavy heart. “Please, Lord,” he muttered. “Let it be an accident, or all hell’s going to break loose!”
“What’s that, Wes?” asked his deputy.
Rountree looked sourly at Clay Taylor, with the law enforcement degree from the community college, and the rimless glasses, and the peculiar idea that a cop was a social worker.
“I think we got us a homicide,” he grunted. “Chandler place.”
Clay Taylor whistled softly. Cases involving the county gentry were rare. Occasional reports of trespassers or petty larcenies, that was about it. “The old man?” he asked.
“No. The daughter. They found her in a boat on the lake. Cause of death undetermined. We better get out there.”
“Right, Wes. Want me to call the coroner?”
“Oh, Taylor, you asshole! Dr. Chandler
is
the coroner! What the hell you think I’m worried about? The damned coroner is a damned
suspect
!”
In a time of crisis, did people really never suspect what had happened, or did they show surprise because it was expected of them? When Charles appeared in the doorway asking them to come down to the lake, Elizabeth’s mind framed the thought that Eileen was dead. Drowned in the lake, perhaps—images of Geoffrey’s description of Eileen as a
Vogue
Ophelia flashed in her mind—or slumped down before her easel dead from heart failure. Still, if anyone had asked her later, she would have insisted that she had no idea what had happened to upset Charles. Perhaps she would even have believed it herself, because when people appeared upset, she always did imagine the worst, and she was almost always wrong. Almost always—but not this time.
Orders from Dr. Chandler and Captain Grandfather for the rest of the family to remain in the house were ignored. Indeed, Amanda led the group, while the others trailed at a respectful distance, murmuring among themselves.
Charles was talking in quiet, worried tones to his father. “I don’t
know
. I can’t find her,” Elizabeth heard him say. “But I’m pretty sure something is wrong.”
Elizabeth relaxed. False alarm, she thought. Another Chandler dramatization. Eileen will come wandering out of the woods with a handful of daisies and profess to wonder what all the fuss is about. And everyone will make a fuss over her, and call it “wedding nerves.” It was becoming very annoying.
When they reached the lake, there was still no sign of Eileen.
As if echoing Elizabeth’s thoughts, Geoffrey walked into the woods, calling for Eileen to come out. Amanda strode purposefully toward the easel, which was set up a few feet from the water’s edge. There was no canvas on it.
“Robert!” she called. “The painting is gone!”
“Maybe she took it to show to someone,” Elizabeth suggested.
Amanda ignored her.
If the painting is gone, Eileen must be all right, Elizabeth decided. She knew we’d come looking for her, and she wanted to make sure that we didn’t see it.
Captain Grandfather caught Charles by the arm and pointed to the lake. “What’s that doing out there?”
In the middle of the lake, barely afloat, was a half-rotted rowboat. Abandoned years ago, it had stayed pushed up into the reeds at the edge of the lake. A blue fiberglass speedboat had taken its place at the old boathouse on the western shore of the lake; but now the old punt had left its mooring in the marsh and had somehow managed to stay afloat long enough to reach mid-lake.
“We’ll get the other boat,” said Robert Chandler quietly.
He and Charles walked toward the boathouse, ignoring Amanda’s demands to know the meaning of all this and the murmured offers of assistance from Shepherd and Satisky.
“But if she’s in the boat, she’s all right,” Elizabeth said aloud. “You can’t drown in a boat.”
“Why are they wasting their time?” Satisky demanded. “You can see that there’s nobody in it.”
Dr. Shepherd gave a slight cough. “Nobody in it—sitting up.”
The implications of this remark left them all speechless. They watched in silence as Dr. Chandler and Charles untied the speedboat, and pulled the rope to start the motor. Minutes later they had maneuvered their craft within reach of the old rowboat. They pulled the derelict alongside their own boat, and Dr. Chandler leaned over to look inside.
“They’ve found her,” said Captain Grandfather.
They began to walk slowly toward the boathouse, arriving at the small pier at the same time the boats did. Dr. Chandler waved them away as if he were warding
off a blow, but they had only to look down into the sodden rowboat to see what had been found.
“Shall I get your medical bag, sir?” asked Shepherd.
Chandler hesitated, and then nodded. He had nearly said that it was useless, but the formality must be upheld, as it was in every case. Shepherd ran for the house.
Geoffrey had come out of the woods when the speedboat motor had started up, and he joined them on the pier, elbowing his way past Elizabeth and Satisky to look into the boat.
Eileen Chandler lay sprawled at the bottom of the boat as if she had fallen on her back, with her legs apart and one arm flung back over her head. An inch of water in the bottom of the boat lapped at the edges of her painting smock and turned her hair into limp dark weeds floating gently around her shoulders. Her face was calm. Except for the pallor and the plastic look of her skin, she might have been asleep. Her eyes were closed, and her lips slightly parted, as if she might at any moment yawn and stretch. But she was very still—too still to be breathing.
No one had spoken. Amanda Chandler was clinging to Captain Grandfather as though she were afraid of falling into the water. Dr. Chandler and Charles had turned away and were securing the boats, tying one to each of the end pilings. Without wanting to, Elizabeth turned to look at Michael Satisky. He was staring open-mouthed at the lifeless form below them, oblivious to the others beside him. Finally he knelt jerkily on the pier, and leaning toward Eileen’s still body, he croaked: “She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace.”
And Geoffrey started to laugh.
Wesley Rountree swung his white Datsun around the curve, and glared at the two houses just coming into view.
“That’s a doozy, isn’t it?” he remarked with a snort.
Clay Taylor grunted without glancing up from his well-worn copy of
Anatomy of a Revolution
. The castle was a familiar sight to everyone in the county by now; hardly worth getting upset over anymore. Even in a
khaki uniform Clay managed to look counter-establishment. His brown curly hair was a briar patch, and his face, behind small wire-rimmed glasses, wore a perpetually mild expression. His friends, who ran pottery shops or worked in social services programs with low-income people, always expressed surprise upon learning Taylor’s occupation. He himself considered it just another way of working with the poor, and he did what he could to keep peace all the way around. When he spent his own money to buy groceries for migrant workers between jobs, he always said that he was “preventing shoplifting,” and he joked that he was really trying to save himself some work. He had little sympathy for speeding tourists or middle-class teenage vandals, but the crimes of the real poor always struck him as symptoms of an even larger crime, of which they were only victims. He wouldn’t knowingly permit an offender to get away, but he did his best in “preventive measures,” such as keeping in close touch with the migrant workers or arranging for his friends in social services to help the needy before they became truly desperate. Apparently, his efforts to deter crime were appreciated by those who had been determined to commit them: in the last two years the county burglary rate had decreased by 5 percent, while that of the neighboring county had risen accordingly. He considered it a tribute, of sorts; although if anyone had asked, he would have insisted that it was pure coincidence, which it might have been.