A Violent End at Blake Ranch (17 page)

“Let me put a hypothetical to you. Suppose when Charlotte called to tell you Nonie was back, you didn't feel that Charlotte was safe with Nonie here. Suppose you sneaked down here, lured Nonie out of the house, hit her over the head, threw her body in the tank, and hightailed it back to Denton.”

“I did no such thing. You don't have any evidence of that.”

“I don't have any evidence to the contrary either. So let's just agree that it's a working hypothesis along with a lot of others. If you want to provide evidence of your innocence, I'll be happy to listen to you.”

Charlotte is so shaken by my revelation that Nonie had been out of the hospital for ten years that I have to believe she knew nothing about it. We're in the living room, but neither of us is sitting down.

“Where had she been all this time? And why did she decide to come home now and lie and tell us she had just gotten out?”

“She didn't. It was your mamma who lied to you. She knew Nonie was out all those years.”

Her mouth falls open. “That can't be true.”

“Oh yes, it is. And Billy knew. It appears that you're the only one who was kept in the dark. You and Skeeter, of course. Nonie never mentioned anything like that to you? You were with her for an entire week and she never brought it up?”

“Never. Although . . .” She looks toward the window where the August light is streaming in and waves of dust dance in the air.

“What?”

“I wondered how she seemed to know so much about the world.”

“What do you mean?”

“I assumed that someone who had been in a mental institution for twenty years would be like somebody who had been in prison for all that time. That they wouldn't know little things, like . . . I don't know, how to dress. Her clothes seemed in style. She seemed comfortable in the world.” She walks to the window. Her voice trails away. Suddenly she wheels back toward me. “I know something that seemed odd. I was going to the grocery store and asked her if there was anything she particularly liked. She asked me to bring her a particular brand of cookies—LU raspberry cookies. At the time I thought it was strange that she knew about that kind of cookies. Would they have an expensive brand like that in a mental hospital? But I rationalized it by thinking if someone is in a really costly facility, maybe they were provided with high-quality food items.” She shrugs.

“Anything else?”

“I thought it was odd that she could navigate the bus schedule from Dallas to Bobtail and manage to get a ride to the house. I wondered why she had gotten a ride instead of calling us from the bus station. It seemed to me that she would be terrified.”

“But you didn't ask her about any of those things?”

“There are several things I wish I had asked her,” she mutters.

I tell her about the man who called to tell me he and his wife had given Nonie a ride. “The man told me that Nonie made some hints as if she were going to blackmail someone. She never mentioned anything like that to you?”

She shakes her head. “Why would she tell that to a perfect stranger and not to us?”

“My question exactly. I wondered if maybe she told your mamma more than she told you. Or, if you are being entirely honest with me?”

“What do you mean?”

“I had a talk with Les Moffitt. He told me that the family considered calling a lawyer before you called me after you found Nonie's body. And yet you pretended to me that you didn't realize Nonie had been murdered. How am I supposed to trust anything any of you say?”

She runs her hands over the top of her head. “Look, I admit it. We screwed up. Okay. I didn't know what to do. Les thought we ought to call a lawyer, but I thought if we hadn't done anything, we didn't need that.”

“But you thought maybe your father had done it.”

“No! I didn't think so. That was . . .”

“Adelaide.”

She sighs. “Do you blame her? He's really hard to deal with. She's at her wits' end.”

“Then why not put him in a facility?”

“You're going to have to ask her that.”

“I have something more to ask you. Did you ever feel afraid of Nonie?”

She struggles to find words “It was awkward at times. But I wasn't afraid of her. Mostly we kept out of each other's way. She didn't want to be around Trey, and . . .” She plays with the string of pearls at her throat. “Quite frankly, after what she did to me, I didn't much want her around him, either.”

“Did she ever apologize for what she did?”

“Ha! In that way, she hadn't changed one bit—Nonie was never one to apologize for anything.”

I ask Charlotte for permission to go upstairs and get the bottle of pills from the bathroom Nonie used when she was here, and she agrees readily.

On my way back to headquarters I get a call from Zeke Dibble. “Samuel, there's a woman here claiming to be a new officer. I . . .”

My heart sinks. I assumed that since Bill Odum knew about Maria Trevino, Zeke did, too.

“Zeke, I apologize. I got some information about the Blake case that I had to follow up on this morning and completely forgot to call you. Is she there now?”

“Yeah. Said you told her to drive all over town and she did and wants to know what she should do now.”

“Tell her I said she can have the afternoon off to go find a place to live. When she comes in tomorrow morning, I'll have a plan worked out.”

CHAPTER 16

“I'm glad you called. I've got some things to talk to you about,” Loretta says. She has a determined gleam in her eye that makes me uneasy.

“Okay. Shoot.” She has a place set for me in her kitchen and has made me a chicken salad sandwich. She makes the best chicken salad in the world, so I'm eager to get to it.

“No, you go first,” she says. “You called me.”

I tell her about Maria Trevino showing up and me not being ready for it.

She chuckles and gives me a knowing look.

“What are you so smug about?” I say.

“I wonder what she's going to report back. That she walked into that office and it looks like cavemen live there?”

“It's not that bad. Just a little messy.”

“Samuel, have you ever taken one look around what you so grandly call headquarters? When is the last time you had somebody come in and clean?”

Uh-oh. We're on that one again. A few months back, Loretta announced that I needed a cleaning lady. I gave in and hired the woman. Two weeks later she quit, telling Loretta she couldn't work for a single man because I couldn't give her any instructions about the way I wanted things done. Loretta was pretty sure I had treated the woman badly, but I swore I hadn't. “I'd have to say it's been a while,” I say.

She snorts. “Never is more like it. And I'll bet before you know it, all three of you men will expect her to be tidying up around there. That poor woman is going to wonder whether she was hired to be a police officer or to be a maid.”

She's echoing what Ellen Forester said. “Since when did you get to be such a feminist?”

Her chin juts out. “I'm not one of those feminists. But I know how men act.”

“What should I do?”

“You could get Zeke Dibble to clean up. I'll bet he's handy with a broom. I imagine his wife sees to that.” She gives a gleeful chuckle.

“All right. I'll figure something out, but the woman officer is one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. She doesn't seem all that friendly, and I want to be sure the town ladies don't take against her.”

Her look is hard. “You mean because she's Mexican? We have plenty of Mexicans in town and nobody thinks much of it.”

“I mean because she's a lady cop.”

“You do get some ideas. If you watched a little more TV, you'd find out that half the programs are about lady police officers, so we're all used to it.”

“You may be used to it on TV, but I don't know whether you're ready for it in Jarrett Creek.”

“You want somebody to ask her to tea?”

“I don't know that tea is what I have in mind. But at least I'd like everybody to be friendly.”

“The same way we were supposed to welcome Nonie Blake?”

With these words, I know we're down to the meat of what Loretta wants to talk about. “That was different.”

“It sure was. People are getting riled up because you haven't caught the person that killed her. Folks are wondering if there's somebody dangerous on the loose that we ought to be careful of, and what the police department is doing about it.”

I would dismiss her notion out of hand, but the truth is I don't know who it is they should be worried about. “Listen, has there been speculation that you think I ought to hear?”

“Of course everybody thinks it was probably Charlotte. She has that little boy and she has to have worried with Nonie around him. If I was her, I'd be terrified that Nonie would strike again. It would only take one slip. . . .”

“If she was worried that Nonie would hurt her boy, don't you think it would make more sense to send her on her way than to kill her?”

Loretta ponders the question. “You're right. But where would Nonie go? She's been in an institution for twenty years. They may have thought she couldn't make it on her own.”

I hesitate, wondering whether to tell Loretta that Nonie wasn't actually in the institution for the past ten years. But I can't help thinking that if I don't know whether I should say something, it's probably better not to say it. I can always tell her later, but once I tell her I can't untell her. Better to change the subject.

“Let me ask you this. Have you heard anybody suggest that Nonie might have tried to blackmail anybody?”

“Blackmail them? What could she blackmail somebody about?”

“That's what I'm trying to find out. She hinted that she had information that somebody would pay her not to tell. That's blackmail, even if she didn't use that exact term.”

“Hinted to who?”

“I'm not going to go into the particulars. Take my word for it. And if you hear anything like that, I'd appreciate your passing it on to me.”

She finally takes a bite of her sandwich. Loretta loves to feed everyone else but has little interest in food herself. I've practically wolfed down my lunch, and she's barely touched hers. When she's finished with her nibbles, she dabs at her lips with a handkerchief. “The kids who knew her and are all grown up now say she was a sneak. That she was always snooping around trying to find out things about them. Cathy Langlois said Nonie was creepy. Is that what you mean?”

“Exactly what I mean.” I get up to leave. “But I better get on back.”

“Wait a minute. I had something to talk to you about, too.”

I sit back down. “What is it?”

“You remember somebody cut some of my roses?” Her expression is grim.

I nod.

“They took flowers from two more people. Jess Lowden and Mary Alice Murray.”

“Neither of them has any idea who did it?”

“How would they know? It happened in the night.”

“Loretta, you're in luck. This sounds like a job for Deputy Trevino to take care of.”

“Wait a minute. She doesn't know anybody here in town and won't know what to look for.”

“That's right. Never hurts to have fresh eyes.”

I still haven't heard back from Bruce Havranek, but this time I call him at work, and they put me right through to him.

“I didn't know you had called,” he says. “I've been busy and haven't listened to my messages. It's always somebody wanting me to buy something.” He's got a querulous voice that sounds like he uses it mostly for whining, like in his mind he's always the wronged party.

He grudgingly agrees that I can come by his place after he gets off work at 5 o'clock.

I phone the pharmacy in Tyler that issued the pills to Susan Shelby. They tell me she has a standing prescription and give me an address for her in Jacksonville, near Tyler, and a phone number. I call the number and get an answering machine. I don't leave a message. When I go to Rollingwood, I might go through Jacksonville and stop to find out more about her, like if she and Nonie Blake are one and the same person.