A Violent End at Blake Ranch (8 page)

She nods. “A five-year-old could be a full-time job. Do you have any idea where they get their money?”

“Someone told me that Adelaide came into some money, but I knew her mother, and she never had anything she didn't earn.”

“I don't know how you even begin looking for who killed that poor woman,” she says. “If someone in the family did it, they'll protect each other. Are there clues? I'm serious. How do you figure these things out?”

She tilts her head at me. Her face is serious and full of wonder, and I suddenly feel a pleasant sense of warmth that I haven't felt in a long time. She's so different from Jeanne, and Jeanne was the love of my life. But Ellen is a genuine, fine person. She's stood firm against her ex-husband; determined not to be bullied by him any longer, determined to be her own person. I admire her and I like her. And at this moment with her looking so intently at me, there's a little more than that. I'd like to put my arms around her while I tell her what she wants to know.

But I don't feel free to make a move yet. Our relationship has been full of little conflicts. Maybe I've been a little too forward in handling her ex-husband. Maybe she still loves him, despite what he's done. Or maybe she isn't attracted to me the same way I am to her.

“What are you thinking about?” she says. “You have the funniest look on your face.”

“It's a tough case,” I say, feeling my cheeks burn. “You asked how I plan to figure this out. There's no magic to it. It's a matter of paying attention to details and listening for inconsistencies. It'll take time.”

“Dinner's ready,” she says. “I hope you like this.”

At her announcement that dinner is ready, her hybrid terrier, Frazier, hops up from his bed, where he's been watching us and trots to the stove, looking expectant. “Frazier, how long is it going to take you to learn that you aren't going to get my dinner?” Ellen says.

The dog's ears prick up. “I think it's the word dinner he's responding to,” I say. Frazier turns his head to look at me.

“Oh, I know it. I'm getting to be like a maiden lady who talks to her animals.” We both laugh.

We sit at one end of her massive dining table. I find it touching that she has such a big house and a lot of furniture, as if she is holding out for some kind of future where she entertains and the house is full of laughter and friends, and maybe grandchildren at some point. Her two children have only partially forgiven her for leaving their father—she was determined not to tell them how abusive he was to her, though how they could fail to see it is beyond me. Jeanne and I never had children, but it strikes me sometimes that kids can be awfully selfish and unaware that their parents are people, too, deserving of love and a good life.

“This looks very good,” I say. There's a lot of brown rice involved and vegetables, with cheese. I taste it and tell her it's great.

Her whole face lights up when she smiles. She has dark-brown eyes and brown hair streaked with gray. “People think vegetarian food is boring,” she says. “I'm going to convince you that it can be really delicious.”

“I wouldn't be surprised,” I say. A little white lie.

Ellen is easy to talk to, and we spend the rest of the evening talking about art. I've told her how I gradually came to appreciate art through my wife, and now I explain how hard it was at first for me to get a handle on modern art. “But once I did, it really grabbed me.” I try to keep mention of Jeanne to a minimum. It feels like Jeanne belongs in another part of my life, and I don't want Ellen to have to confront my deceased wife every step of the way; the same way I don't want to have to have Seth Forester's name popping up every few minutes.

Ellen tells me that she loves teaching art. “It's amazing how many people enjoy it who never knew they had the least bit of talent.”

I know she means Loretta Singletary in particular. Loretta's son's family took her on a trip to Washington, DC. Having been dragged through several art museums by her daughter-in-law, she came back with a mind to try her hand at watercolors. The surprise was that she showed a gift for painting, including composition, which is what seems to stump a lot of beginners. Loretta insists that it's nothing more than a hobby she has found a passion for late in life. And she despises being compared to Grandma Moses.

“She asked me the other day if I would teach her how to do oil painting,” Ellen says.

“Are you going to do it? That's a whole different type of painting. You need ventilation and you have to be careful with it.” I don't know this from personal experience, but I remember talking to George Manning, the Houston gallery owner where Jeanne and I bought a lot of our art, and him telling us that these days artists know to be a lot more careful with oils.

She looks amused. “Samuel, I'm an artist. You don't think I know that? You've never seen my studio here at my house. I had Gabe LoPresto convert part of the garage to a studio. I like to paint with oils, so it's well ventilated. I'm considering whether I want to give Loretta lessons out there. Why don't I take you to see it?”

Frazier follows us out to the backyard, as if he thinks he's the host, and stands guard while Ellen shows me her personal studio. One of the difficult things between us is that Ellen loves to paint, and her painting does nothing for me. I like a strong, dynamic type of art, and she likes to make art of animals and fantasy landscapes. Dreamy sorts of things. Not my taste at all. But she does know what she's doing, and I expect she can teach Loretta what she needs to know about oil painting.

CHAPTER 6

“Rodell, I could kill you,” I mutter, starting yet another stack of files. Killing him isn't an option, since he died a few months back, but that doesn't keep me from sending murderous thoughts in his direction. Rodell was the chief of police for several years, and not a particularly satisfactory one due to a significant drinking problem. When he was in his last stages of illness, he stopped drinking and came in to headquarters to help a couple of times a week. There at the end I discovered a man I could have liked, who had a sly sense of humor and a sharp mind. But he died before he could complete the filing he was trying to catch up on. I'm still fighting his so-called filing system.

It's the morning after my interview with Les Moffitt, and I'm looking for the file on Nonie Blake from twenty years ago. It's not often that I need to look into old cases, but I want to take a look at the file to brush up on details before I ask any more questions.

Hearing that she was trying to have a meeting with someone here in town, presumably about something that happened before she went away, makes me wonder what was going on with the girl before she attempted to kill her sister. Was she having trouble with someone in her life that, as a fourteen-year-old, she wasn't equipped to deal with? Did it have something to do with her attempt on her sister's life? I'll feel on more solid footing if I read the file.

While I search, I alphabetize the folders. I'm thinking of putting Zeke on the filing, but he's not a man who takes kindly to busy work, and I don't want to aggravate him. The town is doing better financially, but we still can't afford another full-time cop. Zeke is worth holding onto as long as he'll stay on.

Finally I run across a batch of files from the correct year and in that batch find the folder itself. It's fatter than I thought it might be, and I'm impressed that Rodell kept all this. Then I realize this wasn't when Rodell was chief—it was one of the four years that Ennis Whitehall held the job. He was a quiet man but, from the looks of it, efficient.

Just as I'm settling in to read, the phone rings, which is pretty much the way it always works. The man who is calling identifies himself as Floyd Curtis, a name I don't recognize.

“I live over here in Caldwell,” he says. “And I heard the news about that woman that was killed.”

“You're referring to Winona Blake?”

“That's what the local paper said her name was. I told my wife you might not want to know about this, but she said I ought to call anyway.” He talks in a slow and deliberate cadence, as if he's written his thoughts out.

“Why don't you try me out? It doesn't hurt for me to hear it.”

“All right, then here it is. My wife and I had occasion to go to Bobtail. This was about a week and a half ago. When we finished with our business, we were passing by the bus station and there was a young woman standing outside on the sidewalk, hitchhiking. She had a suitcase in her hand. Now I don't hold with picking up hitchhikers, but my wife said this was a woman and we couldn't leave her standing there, something might happen to her. My wife is a good Christian, and she believes in doing good deeds. So I stopped, and my wife asked the young woman where she was headed. She said she needed to get to Jarrett Creek, and I told her we'd be going right through there on our way home and we'd take her where she wanted to go.”

“I appreciate your calling,” I say. “You're filling in a gap for me. What can you tell me about your experience with her? What was she like?”

He pauses, as if gathering his thoughts. “Well, sir, she was an unusual type person. My wife asked her who her people were and what brought her to town. She said she was the daughter of the Blakes out north of Jarrett Creek, and that she had been gone for a while and was coming home. But then my wife asked her where she'd been when she was away, and that was the wrong question. She got snippy. She said nobody needed to poke into her business. My wife apologized and said she hadn't intended to pry, that she was only being friendly. But the woman stayed kind of surly after that. Kept grumbling that people ought to mind their own business. Kind of talking to herself, like.”

“Doesn't sound like she was appreciative of the help you gave her by giving her a ride.”

“No, she wasn't. I didn't pay much attention myself, but my wife said she didn't even thank us. Not that we did it for thanks. We store up good works that our Father in heaven will appreciate in due time. But it did seem like she was lacking in manners. Hold on a minute. My wife wants to tell you something.”

I hear him say, “Don't go on and on. He'll be busy.”

“Hello?”

“Yes ma'am. I appreciate you and your husband calling. What is it you want to add?”

“It's a silly thing, but I remember thinking at the time that she was asking for trouble. So when the paper said she was killed . . . what?” I hear her husband whispering to her. “Oh, okay. My husband says I ought to let you go.”

“I'd like to hear what you were going to tell me.”

“It wasn't important.”

“Mrs. Curtis, you never know when something is going to be important.”

“All right. What happened was, the girl told us she knew a thing or two about some people's business, and that people would pay good money for her to keep her mouth shut. I thought to myself, ‘Young lady, you are asking for big trouble.'”

“Did she mention anything specific?”

“No, like I said, she was hinting around. I don't mind telling you, it made me nervous. I don't hold with people talking behind people's backs. I never heard anybody talk like that before except on TV. I was glad when we saw the last of her. I guess she did get herself into trouble.”

If Nonie followed through with trying to blackmail somebody, it looks like the family might be off the hook. I wonder who Nonie was referring to, and how she found out incriminating information about them. I'm hoping that in the police file there's some mention of people she might have had problems with—something to lead me to figure out who she was talking about.

Ennis Whitehall's report was never typed up, but he wrote it out in small, neat handwriting that squares with the kind of man I remember him being—precise and unflappable.

“I was called out to the Blake household by Adelaide Blake, who said her son Billy had just saved her younger daughter Charlotte from being hanged by her older sister. Upon arrival, I found Charlotte (eight years of age), traumatized, with rope burns around her neck. The family physician, Doctor Taggart, had been called in and he arrived shortly after I did. I talked to the son, Billy Blake, twelve years old. He seems like a boy with some sense.

“He described coming into the backyard near their stock tank to find his older sister, Winona (they call her Nonie), fourteen years of age, looking up at a tree limb. There he saw his younger sister standing on a chair with a rope around her neck. The rope was slung over the tree branch. For a minute he thought they were fooling around, but then he heard Nonie tell Charlotte to jump off the chair—and Charlotte did it.

“Billy said the only thing that saved Charlotte from breaking her neck is that when she jumped she held onto the rope. The girl didn't weigh much, so I believe he's correct. The boy said to me that he never moved so fast in his life. He said Charlotte wasn't that far off the ground, so he was able to grab her legs and take the pressure off her neck. He told Nonie to bring over the chair so he could stand on it and get Charlotte out of the noose, but he said Nonie was screaming at him to let Charlotte go. She tried to push him away so he couldn't hold onto Charlotte, but he kicked her and she ran off. He hollered until his daddy came out to see what the commotion was, and together they managed to get the girl down. Doctor Taggart confirmed that the girl would likely have died a very painful death by strangulation had the boy not saved her. Charlotte wouldn't have been strong enough to hold onto the rope for long.

“I tried to interview Nonie, but she was in a wild state and said she did what she did and it's nobody's business, and she wouldn't talk to me. Taggart tried to calm her and eventually gave her a sedative. I spoke with Adelaide and John Blake, and they divulged to me that Nonie had become increasingly difficult to handle, and they agreed to have her evaluated by a psychiatrist. It's a bad business.”