Authors: Sharyn McCrumb
“It was to be her wedding gift to Michael. And she wouldn’t show it to anybody. But we think it must have been a view of the lake, because she always went there to work.”
“Did Miss Chandler seem depressed to you in your talk with her last evening?”
She considered this. “No. Not if you mean suicidal. I think she was impatient to have the whole thing over with, but she really wanted to marry Michael.”
“Michael,” Rountree repeated. “Let’s talk about him awhile. I understand you had an interesting conversation with the prospective groom. What did he have to say?”
Elizabeth sighed in exasperation. “I guess he must have told you already, or you wouldn’t be asking. He said that he didn’t really want to go through with the wedding. I think he was terrified of feeling like that, but also very much afraid of hurting my cousin.”
“Did he tell her how he felt?”
“I don’t think so. He wasn’t planning to.”
“Then why did he tell you?”
Elizabeth thought for a moment. “I think because I was an outsider, too. Maybe he felt that I might understand.”
“And did anybody else listen in on this conversation?”
“No. At least, I don’t think so.”
“But if by some chance the bride had slipped downstairs and overheard all this, that might change her state of mind, don’t you reckon?”
“I guess it could have. I told him to be quiet about it, because he was certainly making me nervous by talking about it.”
“What was making you nervous? That he was transferring his affections to you?” asked Rountree casually.
“Of course not!” snapped Elizabeth. “I certainly didn’t want him!”
“Even for all that money?”
* * *
“Well, Clay, what do you think?” asked Rountree when they were alone. “Suicide, or accident—or something else?”
Clay Taylor shook his head. “This one’s too close to call,” he said, leafing through his notes. “I’ll believe anything the lab tells us this time. There’s evidence for almost anything. Suicide—she was a psychiatric patient, and her fiancé would have been glad to ditch her; murder—she was an heiress, or she would have been. Accident? Well, they do happen, even to people whose death would be convenient. I wouldn’t even bet you a Coke on this one, Wes.”
“Well, I would,” Rountree grumbled. “I’d bet a whole raft of Cokes on a nice little old homicide because her death was mighty damn convenient for a bunch of folks, and I didn’t see anybody genuinely grieved at losing her. Did you?”
The deputy looked startled. “Well …” he faltered. “Her mother?”
“Clay, we haven’t even seen Amanda Chandler yet,” Rountree reminded him. “And when we do, you look real carefully at her. And ask yourself if you’re seeing a mother grieving over a lost child or a property owner mad as fire because something belonging to her got taken.”
“I still think it might have been suicide,” said the deputy. “We still have a lot of people left to talk to, and we haven’t found anybody who saw her since last night.”
“Nobody admitting it, anyway. That’s the trouble with you, Clay. You always go around believing everything.”
“What do you believe, Wes?”
“I believe I need more to go on.” Rountree grinned. “And I believe I’ll have a cheeseburger at Brenner’s while I wait for the lab report. Let’s go tell all these people we’ll be back tomorrow, when we know something definite.”
Robert Chandler closed the door to his wife’s bedroom and went down the stairs to the library. Captain
Grandfather and Charles were sitting at the gate-leg table, dispiritedly pushing little fleets and armies around a map of the eastern hemisphere.
Captain Grandfather glanced up from the board. “How is she, Robert?”
Chandler sighed. “Asleep. Finally. I don’t want her disturbed.”
“It’s all right. Sheriff Rountree left a little while ago. Said they’d be back in the morning, and that they should have the lab report by then. I expect they’ll want to talk to us then—and to Amanda as well.”
“Where are Geoffrey and Elizabeth?”
“In the kitchen making sandwiches,” Charles replied.
“And our other—guests?”
“In their own rooms, I believe,” declared Captain Grandfather. “They didn’t seem to know what to say. Bit awkward all around. I for one am glad they’re not underfoot.”
“What do you think, Dad?” asked Charles.
The doctor shook his head. “I don’t know, Charles. I want to believe it was an accident, but I can’t think what she would have been doing in that boat.”
“Maybe she wanted another perspective for the painting,” Charles suggested.
“The painting! That’s another thing. I keep asking myself what’s become of the painting.”
“So do I,” said Captain Grandfather quietly. “So do I.”
“Charles, did you by any chance see the painting she was working on? When you went to the lake at dinner?”
“No, Dad. I didn’t go get her for dinner. That was Alban. You’ll have to ask him if he saw what she was working on, but I doubt it. She wouldn’t let any of us see it. You know how secretive she was.”
“But she kept on painting by the lake,” mused Dr. Chandler. “So it must have been a lake scene. Now, why is the painting missing?”
“How can it be important?” asked Charles. “If she painted the lake, there’s no point in stealing the painting.
Anybody could look at the lake and see what Eileen saw.”
The telephone rang insistently. Dr. Chandler hurried from the room to answer it. Charles and Captain Grandfather turned their attention back to their game.
“Fleet: St. Petersburg to Norway,” Charles murmured. “Have you told Alban and Aunt Louisa yet?”
“Still not home last time I checked,” grunted Captain Grandfather.
Charles got up and peered through the curtains. “I see some more lights on. I think they must be back.” He settled back in his chair and studied the board. “You know, it seems strange that they don’t know yet. It’s as if Eileen is still alive in their minds, because they haven’t been told. I believe Hegel deals with that concept—”
“Well, Elizabeth or Geoffrey can tell them,” snapped the old man. “I’m not going to relive it in the telling. She was a sweet little girl, Eileen was. But she grew up so troubled. You couldn’t reach her. When you’d ask her anything, she’d shy away, as if it were an intrusion. Guess we should have insisted. Should have intruded. Maybe things would have been different. This family sets too damn much store on peace and quiet!”
“Sir?” Charles blinked.
“What’s wrong with making a few waves? Good storm clears the air, dammit!”
“Uh—it’s your move, Captain Grandfather.”
“Oh, put it away. I don’t want to play anymore.”
Charles stood up. “Well, then, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go upstairs and do some reading.”
Captain Grandfather waved him away impatiently. “You go on. I’ll put this away myself.”
He was still arranging the wooden blocks in the proper compartments when Dr. Chandler returned, closing the door behind him. “That was Wesley Rountree,” he said. “He’s got the lab results.” He sank down wearily on the sofa.
“So it was murder,” said Captain Grandfather.
“It was murder.”
* * *
Wesley Rountree rolled up his napkin and pitched it at the wastebasket beside Clay’s desk. “Bingo! You know, if I keep eating cheeseburgers from Brenner’s for dinner, pretty soon Mitch Cambridge’ll be doing an autopsy on me.”
Clay Taylor stopped typing, his two index fingers poised in midair. “If I were you, Wes, I’d worry about those diet drinks you’ve been having. No telling what’s in those artificial sweeteners.”
Rountree grunted. “Nobody lives forever, Clay. Sometimes I think I’m lucky to have made it this long. My mama was always after me to quit the highway patrol ’cause she was afraid I’d get killed in a highspeed chase, and now you’re trying to take my diet sodas away from me.” He shook his head. “Ain’t nothing safe.”
“Not even getting married,” said Clay.
“Lord, who ever told you that was safe? Oh! You mean the Chandler girl?”
“Is Cambridge sure about the results?”
“Now, you know Mitch Cambridge. If he wasn’t positive, you couldn’t get an answer out of him with a stick! The official cause of death, to which he will testify at the inquest, was the bite of a poisonous snake—”
“Water moccasin?”
“Yep, which bit her four times on her neck and upper back. He thinks she fell on the snake in the boat.” “And it wasn’t an accident?”
“No indeed. See, there’s also a subdural hematoma, which is what Mitch likes to call a bruise, on the back of her head. Skull was fractured due to a sharp blow to the”—he consulted a piece of paper on the desk in front of him—“to the occipital bone.”
“So somebody hit her on the head and threw her in the boat.”
“That’s about the size of it, Clay.”
Rountree scooted forward in his swivel chair, and began to root in the papers that littered the top of his desk. He had what Clay liked to call an archeological filing system: the papers nearest the top were the most recent. He generally managed to find what he was looking for, though. Eventually. Really important items,
such as warrants, were kept under the bronze sphinx paperweight at the top center of his desk. Rountree had inherited the desk along with his job from the late Sheriff Miller, who had kept both for thirty years. “I don’t want to change nothing except the calendar,” Rountree had vowed when the office became his. It gave him a sense of continuity with the past, as though Nelse Miller were still around somehow, backing him up.
“Have you seen the mail today?” Rountree asked, momentarily giving up the search.
“Doris always puts it on your desk,” said Clay, between taps at the typewriter.
“I was afraid of that,” sighed Rountree.
He pawed through another stack of papers and pulled out a small bundle of letters bound by a red rubber band. “This must be it,” he muttered, flipping through them. “Hardware store sale, light bill, something from the community college.” He opened the yellow circular and scanned it briefly. “Seems they’re advertising their courses for this fall.”
“Yeah, I got one at home,” said Clay. “They must’ve put me on their mailing list, since I took their scuba diving course.”
“How would you like to take another one?” asked Rountree. “I see one in here that would be mighty useful for a deputy.”
“Oh, the judo course? I’ve been thinking about it.”
“No. That isn’t the one I had in mind,” said Rountree, running his finger down the page. “It’s this one, B-14: Beginning Shorthand.”
Taylor gave him a sour look and went back to typing.
“Well, admit it. You do more note-taking than fighting,” Rountree persisted.
“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” said Clay.
“It’s useful, all the same. Is that what you’re typing up now?”
“The notes on the Chandler case, yeah. I thought you might want to see them.”
“That’s the honest truth,” sighed Wesley. “These people not being what I’m used to is sure throwing me off my stride. You take our average cases now. When Vance
Wainwright gets drunk and disorderly, where’s he gonna go?”
“To his ex-wife’s trailer,” said Taylor promptly.
“Right. And when the statue of the pioneer is missing from the high school lawn, where do we look?”
“All over the grounds of Milton’s Forge High.”
“Right.” Rountree chuckled. “Remember the time we found him on the fifty-yard line? But this case is in a class by itself.”
“Looks like it’s going to take a while,” mused Clay.
“That reminds me,” said Wesley, lifting the telephone and extracting the phone book, which he kept underneath it for quick location. “You and I are going to be tied up and out of the office for most of the day tomorrow, so I’d better call Doris and tell her we need her here to keep the office open.”
“On Saturday?” Clay whistled. “Don’t hold the phone too close to your ear.”
“And I’ll call Hill-Bear Melkerson, while I’m at it,” said Rountree, ignoring Taylor’s last remark. “He can take the car out on patrol while you and I are conducting this investigation.” He was dialing the number as he talked. “Hello, let me speak to Hill-Bear. This is Sheriff Rountree calling,” he said into the phone.
When people heard the name Hill-Bear Melkerson, they usually expected to meet an American Indian, but this was not the case. Hill-Bear, a squat and solid Anglo-Saxon, had picked up the name in his French class at Chandler Grove High. He had previously been known by his given name, which was Hilbert. For seventeen years he had endured life as Hilbert, occasionally squashing adolescent comedians who teased him about it, but in high school French all that changed. On the first day, the teacher had assigned everyone French names: John became Jean and Mary, Marie. When she came to Hilbert, the teacher informed him that his name was already French, but that in class it would be pronounced “Hill-Bear.” Hilbert Melkerson had been so delighted with the sound of this sobriquet that he had insisted on being called that ever since. By that time,
he was a 230-pound tackle on the Chandler Grove varsity squad, so he got his way. Hill-Bear he became.
“Hill-Bear, is that you?” Rountree cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder, while he scribbled on a notepad in front of him. “I’m fine; how ’bout yourself? That’s good. Listen, Hill-Bear, we’re gonna need you to work tomorrow if that don’t interfere with your plans too much. Oh, just regular patrol in the squad car. Doris will be here in the office, keeping an eye on things. No, I won’t be off. Fishing? I wish I was. No, I’m afraid something pretty serious has happened out at the Chandler place and Clay and I will be investigating. No, it wasn’t a break-in. Listen, Hill-Bear, I don’t want to be talking about this on the phone. When I see you tomorrow morning, I’ll fill you in. Okay. Around eight. All right. ’Bye now.”
“He’s coming in?” asked Clay.
“Oh, yeah. He’ll be here at eight.” Rountree flipped through the card file on a metal stand beside the phone. “Hill-Bear’s a good old boy. You can always count on him.”
Hill-Bear Melkerson was not a full-time employee of the sheriff’s department as Taylor was. He worked for Rountree part-time on an as-needed basis, when he wasn’t on his regular job at the paper mill in Milton’s Forge. He usually handled the parking at Chandler High football games or at the county fair, and filled in for Rountree or Taylor on their days off. He was good for New Year’s Eve road patrols, too. No one was ever drunk enough to argue with Hill-Bear.