Behind the Bonehouse (14 page)

“Thank you, ma'am. I'd like that.”

The thick walls of her old stone house sheltered it from the heat, and her parlor was cool and dark. The cream-colored crewel-work drapes, half-pulled across the tall windows, softened the early sun. The mahogany framed Regency sofa and Georgian tables and chairs, fighting for space on the blue oriental that covered most of the heart pine floor, the gilded mirrors and Victorian portraits, filled the parlor with history and style, but made Earl feel cramped right off, like he was too big for the room.

“Sugar, Sheriff?”

He sat at one end of the brocade-covered sofa, wiping his hat on his sleeve before setting it down on the pale yellow silk, lying shiny and smooth on his left. “No, thank ya, ma'am, but I will take a piece a lemon since ya got it right there.”

She passed him the plate, then slipped a slice in her own tea, before she looked at Earl. “Having seen the mortuary van depart, and having seen Miz Wilkes drive away with her husband, I can only presume Mr. Seeger has passed away.” She sipped her English Breakfast tea from a blue-and-white Chinese porcelain cup, then set it carefully in its saucer, as she studied Earl over gold-framed glasses with sharp brown eyes.

“Yes, ma'am, he has. Did you know Mr. Seeger well?”

“I did not, no. We had what I can only describe as an adversarial relationship. He was a rude and vindictive person whom I chose to have little to do with.”

“What makes ya say he was vindictive?”

“Ah.” She smiled then, and swept a curl of thick white hair off the side of her forehead. “His cat has an unfortunate fondness for my gardens. She comes here to do her business, apparently preferring my double dug beds to the soil she finds at home.

“When I asked him, most politely, to discourage her behavior, he spoke to me in the crudest possible manner. Not long thereafter, he deposited a piece of decomposed fish under my camellias at four o'clock one morning, leading her behind him, of course, to forage here on her own.”

“Not what you'd call neighborly.”

“No, sir, it wasn't. I don't sleep particularly well, and I watched his entire performance from my bedroom window. I took him to task later that day, in what
I
considered a restrained tone, but the response I received was vituperative, and will not be repeated by me.”

“Sounds kinda mean-spirited.”

“The irony, of course, is that rotted fish is wonderful for the soil, though I doubt that he was aware of that fact.” Elinor Nevilleson smiled, a slow wry smile as she said, “Singularly peculiar, though, wouldn't you say?” before she set her cup and saucer on the mahogany tea table that must've been worth a small fortune.

“Did he have many visitors? Folks you might've noticed when you're workin' in your front yard?”

“No, sir, he didn't. His wife, who is a lovely woman, had several friends who stopped by frequently, but other than the Internal Revenue minion whom you've already encountered, I'm unaware of anyone else who chose to visit Mr. Seeger with any regularity.” She handed Earl a plate of tiny homemade orange cookies, and after he'd taken three, she set the plate on the table.

“There
was
one recent visitor, though whether his visit is of particular significance I, of course, can't say. A tall man, quite good looking. I noticed a tendency to limp a bit, when he walked to Mr. Seeger's door.”

“Did you see him well enough to describe him?”

“I did, yes. He had dark hair, and distinctively shaped eyebrows, and he made me think of … you may find this amusing, Sheriff. The sentimental fancy of an elderly spinster. He reminded me of Gregory Peck.”

“I'm real glad to hear that. Gives me a good clear picture. When did he visit Mr. Seeger?”

“Let me think … Yes. Today's the sixteenth. They finished running at Keeneland on the fourth, if I'm not mistaken. So I b'lieve it must've been Monday the sixth. I normally water my roses first thing in the morning on a Monday, and spray them as well when it's still cool, but I had an appointment with my physician that morning, and didn't tend to the roses until six o'clock that evening. I never water,
or
spray, during the heat of the day, and rarely water in the evening.”

“That's what the wife says too.”

“She's a plantswoman, is she?”

“She is. An outdoors woman, and real practical. Broke horses on her daddy's farm when she was just a little child.”

“She wasn't a Montgomery, was she? One of Clarence Montgomery's daughters?”

“No, ma'am. But I know just who you mean.”

“Well. In any event. I was spraying my roses with nicotine, when a blue sedan drove into Mr. Seeger's drive. The tall man I described earlier sat in his car for a bit, as though he were trying to reach a decision. Or steeling himself, perhaps, for a rather unpleasant task. He eventually got out, and rang the bell.

“It elicited no response, however, and he returned to his car and sat behind the wheel for several minutes more. I found it rather odd, you see, for Mr. Seeger was very much at home. His car was parked in the drive. He chose not to answer the door.”

“That's interestin', ain't it?”

“Still, the young man walked to the door once again carrying a paper in his hand. He knocked on the doorframe, and when there was no response, he opened the screen and tucked the paper into the frame, closing the screen to secure it. He then drove off the way he'd come, heading east toward Main.”

“You make a real fine witness, ma'am. Your eye for detail is exceptional, it really and truly is.”

“Thank you. I'd hoped to become a novelist, and deliberately honed what observational faculties I possessed. As fortune would have it, that ambition went unfulfilled. That, as well as others.” She smiled softly, to herself more than Earl, and sipped again at her tea. “I taught English in a secondary school for forty-eight years, and found it thoroughly rewarding.”

“You said he was a young man. How old would you say he was?”

“In his late thirties, or perhaps his early forties. Both seem very young to me, Sheriff. I shall celebrate my eighty-third birthday on the twenty-ninth of this coming month.”

“Was that the only time you saw this man at Carl's home?”

“No. No, there was another visit in the fall. That was a bit unusual as well. It was the day after Thanksgiving. I remember because I was removing the Indian corn from my front door. I always remove it the day after Thanksgiving, as my mother did before me, in preparation for Christmas.”

“So what was odd about the visit?”

“That same blue Dodge … did I mention that it was a Dodge? My younger brother has one very much like it. In any event, it pulled into the drive in the afternoon, and the driver, who was clearly a dark-haired male, but whom I was unable to see particularly clearly, sat in the car without getting out. He turned off the ignition when he first arrived, and yet, suddenly, and very unexpectedly, he started the engine again and drove off toward the center of Versailles without once approaching the house.”

“Does seem kinda odd, don't it?”

“I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation.”

“Yes, ma'am. I 'spect there is.”

“If I'm not being too inquisitive, Sheriff, how did Mr. Seeger die? He was my neighbor after all, and I would regard the revelation of anything which might affect my safety here as a single woman a courtesy on your part. Or was it perhaps suicide? He did seem to have become even more irascible after his wife departed.”

“We don't know how he died for sure. And we have to look into every possibility, as I reckon you'd expect.”

“Of course. Yes. I do see that. Of course.” She was looking at him contemplatively, intelligence in her cool brown eyes, a slight smile on her dry looking lips, her head cocked slightly away from him. “I knew your oldest sister, you know. Carrie was three years behind me at Centre College, both of us on scholarships.”

“I commend you and Carrie, I surely do. It was a hard row to hoe for a woman, getting an education, when you two was young.”

“The path was strewn with obstacles, yes, if I may so express it. Still, the benefits of confronting adversity are not to be undervalued. You may think that the inherited furnishings in this room suggest a privileged background, but that would be an erroneous conclusion. My family suffered severe deprivation in years past, as did so many others of my acquaintance, before and during the Depression. And you? Were you able to attend college, Sheriff?”

“No, ma'am. I went into the military before I took up law enforcement.”

“I've always maintained that formal education can be overemphasized. Wide-ranging curiosity. A dedication to excellence. Respect for the unvarnished truth. Those are what matter most in the final analysis. Though whether one can maintain the last, and continue to be elected by the populace we have today remains to be seen.”

“It ain't easy, that's for sure. I feel called to law enforcement, but I don't take to politics. Never have. And I cain't say I'm lookin' forward to fightin' this comin' election.”

“The electorate
can
be terribly fickle. And the news sources we have today seem very much taken with sensationalism.”

“True. 'Course, I reckon they always was subject to pressure, and pro'bly prejudice too. But thank you for your help. I'll send a deputy to take your statement later on today.”

“One other thing, Sheriff, not that it may mean anything. I did see what I took to be that same Dodge last night as it passed my house on its way into town.”

“Was it coming from Carl's?”

“I didn't see it in the driveway. It was closer to the center of town when I looked up. I can't say for certain that it was the same car, but it looked to be the same model, and the driver was definitely male.”

“Thank you, ma'am. You've been a big help. You didn't happen to get the license number? You've noticed a whole lot I wouldn't've expected.”

“I do remember that the number plate of the car in the drive on those earlier occasions contained my mother's initials, the letters E and A, together in that order. As to the rest I couldn't say.”

Earl Peabody parked his big Ford Sedan in the circle in front of Jo and Alan's house, just behind Alan's Dodge. He studied the license plate, and made a note on the pad in his shirt pocket, then picked up his satchel and opened the car door. Emmy was there, wagging her whole body, and he stopped to rub behind her ears before he climbed out of his car in his perfectly creased tan uniform.

It'd turned out to be a gorgeous day, cooler than normal, somewhere in the middle-eighties, the sky a shining porcelain blue, the clouds high and huge and blinding-white, blowing soft out of the west. He stood there, and stared at the sky, and the green rolling land spread out around him on that high ridge the old house rode, edged by hardwoods and horse fencing.

He slammed the white door with the Sheriff's shield decal stuck in the center of it, and sighed as he glanced at the round blue light sticking to the roof with a magnet. He'd tried to get an official car into the departmental budget, so he didn't have to use his own car every day of his life, but with everything else they'd needed—one new deputy, two new typewriters, one of the new Xerox machines, plus a brand spanking new teletype—he'd lost the car in the shuffle.

He turned then and started toward the house, and saw Jo on the porch steps. “Hey, Jo. I didn't see ya there. How's the baby doin'?”

She'd opened the white front double doors and been standing there, tall and thin, waiting for Earl to stop staring into space. She smiled at him, and kept herself from laughing, as she propped Ross against her left shoulder. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her indigo eyes were smiling too, when she said, “Ross is doing fine. I have a question for you, though.”

“Shoot.”

“How come Toss, and folks who've known you a long time, call you Stump?”

He laughed and smoothed his windblown hair, then pushed his glasses up his large bony nose. “Shucks, Jo, it started-up in high school. Goes back to when this teacher nobody cared for much, 'cause he was kinda sharp and critical, he asked me a question one day when I wasn't payin' attention. He said, ‘Come on, Earl, don't sit there like a stump. Try to answer the question.' Everybody thought that was real funny, and since I was near a foot taller than him, and he looked like a stump in comparison, it made it funnier too. So is Alan home, is he?”

“Yep. Come on in. He's getting you both some iced tea. I can make you a sandwich if you'd like.”

“That's mighty kind, but I already had my lunch. We can talk while Alan eats his.”

They'd sat down under the back arbor, and Alan said, “So what's up with you?”, then took a bite of his chicken salad sandwich with his eyes on Earl's big broad face with its carefully neutral expression. “Why'd you ask me to meet you here on my lunch hour?”

“I figured it'd be easier than talking at Equine. I got called over to Carl Seeger's this morning by Esther Wilkes, the maid who worked for him one day a week. She found him dead in his bed first thing this mornin'.”

“What?” Alan set the sandwich on his plate and stared hard at Earl. “What did he die of?”

“Don't rightly know.”

“He was definitely a chain smoker. That couldn't have done him much good.”

“There was a half-empty vial of somethin' on the table beside his bed, and a puncture wound in his left arm, and a syringe there, lyin' on the floor. One of them new plastic types you can throw away. You know if he was right handed?”

Alan stared out across the lawn, as though he were picturing Carl, before he said, “I think so. But I can't say for sure.”

“Looks like he died early evening of yesterday, though I don't know that for certain. Wasn't earlier than that, and I don't think a whole lot later, based on what the medical examiner said after seein' him at the house.”