A Violent End at Blake Ranch (2 page)

“Mrs. Blake, Charlotte.” I take my hat off and nod to them. Adelaide turns away, weeping, and Charlotte puts her fist to her mouth.

I walk over next to Nonie Blake's body and say to the child, “Mind if I take a look?”

Charlotte says, “Trey, come over by me.”

“No, Mamma, I'm watching Aunt Nonie,” the child says.

The young man takes the child's hand. “Come on, Trey, let's go.”

He whines in complaint, but he lets himself be led away.

It's obvious that Nonie is dead, but I lean down to put my fingers on her artery nevertheless. I wonder how long she was in the water. It must have been several hours. Her skin is wrinkled and white. She's wearing a brightly flowered dress and slippers that don't look like the kind of thing you would wear to come outdoors unless it was only to step outside for a moment.

Physically, Nonie doesn't look like her mother and sister. They are both tall and slim, and she's only about 5'5', and although she's not heavy, she has more weight and shape to her. Her head is canted to one side. I reach over and center it, and then peer closer to be sure of what I'm seeing. I can say one thing. Nonie Blake didn't drown. The side of her head has been bashed in, crushing her cheek and jaw. Surely the family must have noticed this when she was pulled from the water, but Charlotte said she drowned.

Everybody is quiet while I am observing the body, as if they're hoping I can perform a miracle. I straighten back up and shake my head. “Ambulance will be here soon,” I say, although I realize that now I'm going to have to put off having the ambulance take her away until the Texas Rangers or the highway patrol get here.

I walk over to Adelaide. She has stopped crying, but her expression is stunned. She's in her midfifties. Her hair is tucked into a large gray bun. “Mrs. Blake, I'm so sorry,” I say. “Does anybody have any idea what happened?”

She sniffs. Her voice is strangled. “Can you ask Charlotte? I need to collect myself.”

“Of course. Why don't we move away from the pond?”

She takes a few steps back but can't take her eyes off her daughter's body.

I turn to Charlotte. Her face is pale. She's not a pretty woman, her face long and thin with a sallow complexion, and her eyes bulging slightly. But she has sleek brown hair and a trim figure. She's wearing a short-sleeved yellow blouse and white slacks.

“I don't know that we've met officially,” I say. “I'm Samuel Craddock.”

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” she says.

The man with her puts his hand out. “I'm Les Moffitt,” he says. “I'm a friend of the family.”

“And this is my brother, Matthew,” Charlotte says, indicating the young man still holding the five-year-old's hand. “We call him Skeeter. And that's my son, Trey.”

Trey slips his hand out of Skeeter's and runs back to the body. Charlotte has her eyes in his direction, but I don't think she really sees him.

Skeeter wipes his hand on his pants before he shakes mine. His hand is damp and surprisingly cool.

“Charlotte, can you tell me who found your sister's body?”

“That was Skeeter.” She reaches over and puts her arm around her brother's shoulders and pulls him to her.

He swipes dirt off his face with the back of his hand.

“Skeeter, why don't you tell me how you happened to find your sister,” I say.

“Everybody was in an uproar about Daddy. I came out here to the pond to get out of the house for a few minutes. When I got to the pond . . .” He stops for a minute and swallows. “I saw this shape and I thought it was a fawn that might have fallen in the water and drowned, so I went around the side to pull it out. When I got close, I saw . . . I saw the dress and I knew it couldn't be . . . you know what I mean.”

Adelaide moans. Charlotte is gnawing at her lip.

Charlotte's little boy suddenly jumps to his feet, runs to his mother's side, and grabs her hand. “Mamma, Mamma,” he says. “I saw Aunt Nonie move. You said she couldn't move anymore, but I saw her.”

Charlotte draws a sharp breath. “Les, could you take Trey inside?”

“I saw her! I did!”

She kneels down next to the boy. “Honey, it was some water settling in her body.”

The child looks back at Nonie, frowning, not wanting to believe this information. Charlotte takes his shoulders and moves him around to face her. “Trey-Trey, would you like Uncle Les to take you inside and give you a cookie?”

The boy sticks a finger in his mouth. “Two cookies.”

“Okay, two cookies. And you can watch TV.”

That seals the deal, and Les Moffitt leads the child away.

I turn back to Skeeter. “When you say everybody was in an uproar over your daddy, what do you mean?”

Skeeter looks at Charlotte. She says, “Daddy has had Parkinson's for several years and now he's got some dementia with it. He gets agitated sometimes.”

“I see. Skeeter, you pulled Nonie out of the water by yourself?”

“Yes sir.”

“When you got her out, did you happen to notice the wound at the side of her head?”

“What wound?” Charlotte's voice is high with tension.

Skeeter looks down at his feet, nodding slightly. “I thought maybe she had hit her head on a rock.” He looks up at me, his eyes as weary as an old man's. “But there's no rocks around the pond that I know of.”

All the air goes out of Charlotte. She closes her eyes and clenches her teeth.

I look to Adelaide to see how she has taken this news, but she's looking out over the pond as if she either didn't hear it or doesn't want to process it.

“Why don't you all go back to the house and I'll be there in a minute to talk to you,” I say.

Charlotte and Skeeter start to walk toward the house, but Adelaide stands her ground. I lock eyes with her, wondering if she has something in particular to say to me, but she looks away quickly and stares at the body. She clears her throat. “I'm going to stay here for a minute,” she says. “If that's all right.”

“That's fine. I have to make a couple of calls.”

“She's not going anywhere,” Adelaide says.

I walk a little distance away to put in a call to the Rangers and the highway patrol, telling them I'm going to need some help here and giving them directions.

When I walk back, Adelaide hasn't moved. With a sigh, she says, “She didn't have a chance to get back into life.”

“It's a shame,” I say.

I stand there with her a few minutes longer. I'm thinking that although Skeeter brought Nonie out of the water here, she may have gone in anywhere along the shoreline of the pond.

I hear vehicles crunching up the gravel driveway, more than one. When I hear doors slam, I say, “Mrs. Blake, it would be best if you go inside. I'll walk with you.”

“All right, then.” We head toward the house. She goes inside, and I walk over to talk to Bill Odum and the ambulance drivers, who arrived at the same time.

I tell the drivers that things aren't as straightforward as they seemed when I called them, and it'll be a while before they can take the body, so they may as well settle in.

Then I tell Bill Odum to come with me. “I want you to take a look,” I say.

At the pond, he crouches down to get a closer look. “Uh-oh,” he says, seeing the way the skull is damaged. “We're going to have to notify the state.”

“I already put in the calls.” I tell him I'm going to go back to the house to talk to the family, and I want him to walk around the pond and see if he can figure out where Nonie's body went in. “And keep a look out for a weapon. I don't know whether somebody hit her here at the pond and shoved her in, or if they might have done it somewhere else and dragged her body here. You know what to look for.”

I'm wishing we could put a sheet or something over the body, but the last time I did that, I caught hell from the coroner for interfering with the body temperature and making it harder for them to determine the time of death.

Odum looks out over the pond and shudders. “Snaky kind of place. I'm going back to the car to get me a tire iron to poke around with.” He doesn't move right away. “I went to school with Charlotte. I don't remember her very well, but I do remember my mamma was pretty shook up by what happened. She wanted to keep me out of school, but luckily Daddy convinced her that didn't make any sense. You don't suppose Charlotte did this, do you?”

“It's a little early for that kind of speculation.” I start toward the house, Odum walking beside me. “By the way, Doc Taggart's going to be here soon. Would you ask him to come to the house when he arrives?”

CHAPTER 2

Les Moffitt answers the Blakes' door. He is jowly, with pale-blue eyes and high color in his cheeks. His smile is a little uncertain, as if he's been left to his own devices and isn't sure what his place is. “Charlotte is upstairs putting her son down for a nap,” he says. “She asked me to hold the fort until she comes downstairs. This is a hell of a situation.”

“Where is Adelaide?”

“She's checking on John. She'll be down soon, too. Why don't we go on in the living room?”

I'm struck by the contrast between the starkness of the house's exterior and the sumptuous living room. A plump sofa and armchairs in rich colors are grouped around a massive fireplace. Elegant side tables in some kind of antique European style—French? Italian?—hold all manner of expensive-looking knickknacks. The walls are covered with art in the same style, elegant scenes of boats in harbors and quaint villages and pastoral paintings. Knowing something about art, I note a couple of fine bird watercolors and a large oil painting that could be an Onderdonk. Not my taste, but a handsome representative of his landscape paintings. I don't know that I've ever been in a home around here that displayed such splendor.

I can't help wondering how they keep things intact with a five-year-old in the house. But then I see that one large corner of the room is given over to a play area—an elaborate train set is the centerpiece, with boxes of plastic building blocks and toys shoved up against the wall. There's an entire bookcase filled with children's books.

Moffitt seems at home in the setting and gestures for me to take one of the armchairs. I sink into its plush cushions and think how nice it might be to get something like this chair in my house. I can imagine Loretta's reaction if she showed up one day and I was taking my ease in it.

“Can I get you a soft drink or a cup of coffee?” He looks anxious, as if he feels like he ought to ask but hopes I won't request anything he can't lay his hands on easily.

“Thank you, but I'm fine.”

When Moffitt sits down, I say, “What's your connection with the Blakes?”

“Uh, I . . . well, that is, I'm a friend of the family.” He nods again. “You know, good friends. I've known the family a long time.”

“You live around here?”

“Over in Bryan.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“I'm an investment counselor. That's how I met the Blakes. I help them with their investments.”

You don't hear much about people in Jarrett Creek needing the services of an investment counselor. Most people are more the type to let what money they have collect interest in a savings account. It's another way in which the Blakes set themselves apart.

“Were you here when Skeeter found Nonie's body?”

“No, I happened to get here right after they called you. I was going to take Adelaide out for an early dinner.”

“Not John?”

He frowns. “You're not aware of the situation with John?”

“I heard he has some dementia. It's gone too far for him to go out with you and Adelaide?”

“That's right. Matter of fact, that's what Adelaide and I were going to discuss, whether or not it's time to have him sign over a power of attorney to her.”

“I see. So when Skeeter said things were in an uproar . . .”

“John gets a little agitated. He . . . uh . . . needs a lot of care.” He narrows his eyes and speaks almost in a whisper. “If you ask me, he'd be better off in a facility somewhere so he could get away from . . .”

“Here you are,” Charlotte is smiling, but her eyes are tight as she zeroes in on Moffitt.

He leaps to his feet. “Did you get Trey to sleep?”

“Not yet. Skeeter's reading him a story. Soon as he goes to sleep, Skeeter will come down.” She's still standing and turns to me. “Did Les offer you something to drink?”

I tell her he did. “Is your mamma coming down soon? I'll need to talk to her, too.”

Charlotte frowns. “Trey riled Daddy up with his noise, and she has to get him settled down. It might be hard for her to join us right away.”

With Charlotte here, Moffitt edges toward the door. “If you don't need me, I think I'll be on my way.” He hands me his business card. “This is where you can reach me if I can help with anything. Charlotte, tell your mamma I'll call her in a day or two to reschedule.”

Charlotte sits down on the sofa, tucking her feet together primly. “Now what were you telling Skeeter—something about a head wound?”

“Charlotte, did you get a close look at Nonie's body?”

She shakes her head. “Makes me queasy just thinking about it. I don't know how Skeeter could stand to . . . to touch her, much less pull her onto the shore.”

“It looks like Nonie was attacked before she went into the water. It'll be up to the medical examiner to find out if she died before or after she went in, but the blow she sustained to her head was substantial.”

“That means . . .” She shivers, although it's warm.

“It means somebody killed her. I don't know an easier way to say it.”

“That's absolutely crazy. Who could have . . .” She manages a wan smile. “I guess that's the question, isn't it. Who?”