A Violent End at Blake Ranch (16 page)

Since it was Adelaide who told me that the facility called to say that they were releasing Nonie, she's obviously lying. Why? What could be gained by pretending that Nonie was still in the facility all those years? Surely she would have known that in the course of my investigation I would call Rollingwood to check up on Nonie's stay there.

As I'm mulling this over, a car drives up and parks in front, and a stocky Hispanic woman gets out. She pauses and looks the building up and down. All of a sudden I realize who she has to be. I was thinking the new hire would be coming later in the week and that I'd have a chance to talk to Sheriff Hedges and get more details. Why hasn't anybody sent me an official notification?

I glance over at the fax machine and see a yellow light blinking. It's out of paper, which explains that part of it, although not to my satisfaction. Anyway, it's too late. The new officer is at the door, and I don't even know her name.

I get up and put a smile on my face. Lord, what a time for her to show up!

“Morning,” I say. “I bet I know who you are.”

“Maria Trevino, reporting for duty, sir,” she says, which surprises the heck out of me. I'm not used to that kind of formality. Her voice is tight. I can't figure out if her expression is angry or terrified. Her skin is the color of a pecan shell. She wears her black hair cropped short, and the only makeup she appears to be wearing is bright-red lipstick that contrasts with the somber clothing she's wearing—black pants and a gray short-sleeved shirt.

“Welcome Deputy Trevino. And you can dispense with the need to call me sir. ‘Chief' will do fine.” I follow her glance around the room. She has dark, intense eyes, and they aren't particularly friendly. “Uh, I guess you can see that I wasn't expecting you quite this early in the week.”

“Sheriff Hedges said he faxed you the information Friday afternoon.” Her eyes pin me like a bug under a microscope.

“That's right. Unfortunately, it looks like the machine was allowed to run out of paper and I didn't notice it.”

She looks over at the machine and then cuts her eyes back to me. “What should I do? You want me to come back later?”

“No. We'll just . . . if you'll help me, I'll take these boxes off this desk and we can get you set up. But first, let me feed some paper into the fax machine.” I don't remember when I've felt so flustered. Not a good way to start off our working relationship.

I get the fax machine set to spew out more paper, and sure enough the letter from Sheriff Hedges is there, the overly formal language obviously put together by the state agency that is funding the minority program. Behind the letter comes a hiring report on Maria Trevino's background and qualifications. Then there are several pages taken directly from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement regarding minority hiring.

Hedges's letter explains that the state of Texas is paying for the salary and uniforms of the officers hired under the program. It also gives an e-mail address of the person to contact in case of problems. The whole time I'm reading the letter and qualifications, the fresh information I've gotten from Rollingwood is simmering in the back of my mind, and I have to force myself to concentrate.

I look up to find Trevino watching me. “Says here you're from Houston. How's it going to be for you being in such a small town?”

“We didn't have any choice where we were sent. I'll make it work.”

“Do you have a place to live?”

“Not yet. I'm staying at a motel in Bobtail for a few days.” Every time she responds, it reminds me of when I was in the military. They required snappy replies that gave only the answer to the question. Nothing more.

“Why don't we make that your first order of business? There are a couple of apartments in town. I don't know if they have vacancies. If they don't—”

She puts up her hand to stop me. “I appreciate the help, but I'll take care of that on my off time.”

“The thing is . . .” I hesitate because I don't want to tell her I don't really have anything for her to do. It seems inhospitable, not to mention unprofessional. I don't want her to feel like I'm being dismissive. “I'll level with you. Something has come up that I need to deal with right away and I don't have time to sit down with you at the moment. What I'd like you to do is familiarize yourself with the town. Drive around. Go up to the lake and explore the back roads. Familiarize yourself. You can use one of the squad cars.”

Her face goes blank. I don't have a clue what she's thinking. “I'll use my own car, if that's okay.”

“If that's what you want. Write down your mileage, so you get paid for it. Let's meet back here at, say, two o'clock this afternoon. If you want lunch, Town Café has good food. Tell Lurleen, the waitress, to put it on my tab.”

“Do you have a map of town?”

I can't help smiling. “No map. It's a pretty small place. I don't think you'll have any trouble making your way back here. The railroad tracks border us on the east and the lake on the west.”

She doesn't smile back.

“Let me make a call.” I call Marietta Bryant at the real estate office down the street. She says her office has a hand-drawn map. It's with the greatest relief that I send Maria Trevino on her way. As soon as she's out the door I wonder if I should have had Zeke or Bill Odum come in and show her around.

Before I leave for the Blakes' place I call Loretta and tell her there's something I need to discuss with her. I agree to stop by her house for lunch and she says she'll have a sandwich for me. I need to tell her about Maria Trevino and ask her to make sure Maria gets a welcome from the town.

On the way out to the ranch, questions crowd in on me. Why did Adelaide pretend that Nonie had come straight home from Rollingwood? Did anyone actually call pretending to be from Rollingwood, or did Adelaide make that up? Most pressing of all, where has Nonie been the last ten years, and why did she come back now?

CHAPTER 15

When I tell Adelaide Blake that the director of Rollingwood said Nonie hadn't lived there in ten years and demand to know why she told me that Nonie had just gotten out of the mental institution, she's still as a stone. We're sitting in a room I haven't been in before, a TV room off the kitchen. It's small and a lot more inviting than the formal living room. If I expected her to reply, I was mistaken.

“So you knew she'd been out for several years,” I say. “Why did you lie about it?”

She licks her lips, and when she speaks her voice is almost a whisper. “I should have told you, I realize that. I was just trying to make it less complicated.”

“Less complicated? Telling me all that stuff about Nonie's medication and her taking a bus here from Rollingwood? Telling Charlotte that? How was that less complicated?”

“I know, I know. I didn't know what to say.”

“Why not tell the truth? Suppose you tell me the truth now? What really happened?”

“It happened almost the way I told it. Nonie called here a week or so ago and said she wanted to come home. And she did take a bus. I didn't make that up.”

“You knew ten years ago that she was out and you hadn't tried to contact her all those years?”

“No.” She lifts her chin in defiance. “I told you why. I didn't want anything to do with her after what she did.”

“Then why did you let her come home now?”

Adelaide is wringing her hands. “She said she had some things she wanted to talk to me about. She wouldn't take no for an answer.”

“What was it she wanted to talk to you about?”

“I don't know. We never got around to that. I was afraid to ask too many questions.” She fixes frightened eyes on me.

“Afraid of what?”

“I left her there for all those years and was afraid she was going to be mad. You don't know what she was like. She had a way of threatening you, even when she was little.”

“Did she threaten you?”

Adelaide's face is flushed. “No, I don't mean that. I mean she . . . oh, I don't know what I mean.”

“You acted like she was back here to stay. Was that what she intended?”

“She didn't say. But you mentioned that she didn't have many things with her, and I noticed that, too. I assumed she was here for a short time. I just wanted to get her visit over with.”

Adelaide baffles me. My own mamma didn't like to face reality, but I don't think even she would have ignored the strange circumstances of Nonie's homecoming that Adelaide seems to have shied away from.

“Adelaide, what were you afraid of? Were you scared she was here to get revenge for you sending her off to Rollingwood? Did you think she would hurt you? Kill you?”

“Oh, no.” She waves her hands back and forth. “Nothing like that. It's that I didn't want her to get all worked up. I thought if I kept things calm, she'd get around to telling me what she wanted, and then she'd be on her way.”

“And you have no idea what that was?”

“No, I don't.”

“She didn't try to blackmail you?”

“No, of course not. How would she know anything to blackmail me about anyway? She's been gone for twenty years.”

I don't believe Adelaide. She has told so many lies that I can't imagine how she even keeps the stories straight in her own head. There's something going on here that Adelaide will do anything to keep secret, no matter how many lies she has to tell. The question is, how am I going to uncover the secret if she continues to stonewall me?

I stand up. “I'd like to talk to your son Billy. Is he around?”

She tells me Billy is outside in the barn. “Although I don't know what you think you're going to get out of him.”

I find Billy in the barn looking over the old tractor. He's in a scruffy T-shirt and jeans, and sweat is beaded on his brow. He's looking exasperated. “Why the hell did they let this thing sit here all these years?” he asks.

“Going to be hard to get rid of,” I say.

He grunts and focuses his glare on me. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“I want to ask you a couple of things. Did you ever go visit your sister in Rollingwood?”

“No. Mamma said I was too young to—”

I interrupt him. “I mean after you were out on your own.”

“No, I didn't.” His look is guarded. There's something he's not telling me. He folds his arms and leans against the tractor.

“It turns out that she left the facility ten years ago. Were you aware of that?”

His hesitation is so slight I might not have noticed it had I not expected it. “No.”

“Have you talked to Nonie in the past ten years? I'd appreciate the truth.”

He looks down the empty stretch of the barn, and I can tell he's trying to decide whether to come clean. “Okay, yes, I did talk to Nonie, and I knew she was out.”

“That's progress. When was this?”

“It's been a while. Maybe a year after she got out.”

“So you would have been what, twenty-one, twenty-two?”

“That's right. So what?”

“How did she know where to get hold of you?”

He cocks an eyebrow. “She saw a poster that had my name on it advertising a rodeo that was coming to town. First time I had made the big time.”

“Where was this?”

“Up in Denton.”

“That's where she was living?”

“I didn't ask her, because I told her straight out that I wanted nothing to do with her. I didn't want to talk to her at all. She begged to know how Mamma was, and I told her everybody was fine, no thanks to her.”

“Did she ask about Charlotte?”

“I didn't give her a chance. I told her she had hurt the family enough, and to stay away.”

“Why do you think she called you and not anybody else in the family?”

“You'd have to ask her that.”

“Did you tell anybody that you'd talked to her?”

“I did not.” He straightens, and his look is poisonous. “What would be the point? It would hurt Mamma and stir up Charlotte. Charlotte was always talking goodie-two-shoes talk, like she wanted to bring Nonie home. It would have been a mess. I figured it was better if I didn't bring it up that she'd gotten out.”

“Seems like if you were worried about their safety, you would have let them know she was out.”

For the first time he looks troubled. “I guess I didn't see it that way. As it turned out, it didn't matter.”

“Something I intended to ask you, do you know anybody by the name of Susan Shelby?”

“No. Who is she?”

“There was a container of pills upstairs with her name on it, and your mamma said you might know who it belonged to.”

“Never heard of her.”

It occurs to me that maybe Nonie was using another name. Maybe she didn't want anybody to find out about her past.

“Is Charlotte home?” If Nonie got in touch with Billy after she got out of Rollingwood and he brushed her off, it's within the realm of possibility that she also called Charlotte.

“Why do you want to bother Charlotte again? She's told you everything she knows.” Billy's stance is aggressive. “We can't drop everything and have a little chit-chat every time the mood strikes you.”

“Son, you don't seem to fully appreciate that someone was murdered right here on this property. Somebody that everybody here was acquainted with, saw every day, and had a troubled history with. I can appreciate that your feelings for Nonie were less than cordial, but it's my job to find out who killed her and bring them to justice. I'm sorry if that's an inconvenience, but you're just going to have to put up with it.”

Billy's face has gotten redder as he listens to me, and his fists have clenched up tight. “None of us killed her. And I think you ought to leave Charlotte alone. She suffered enough.”