Deadly Descent (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

They sat in a hostile circle around the table in the county commissioners’ room. Edgar held Fiona’s hand. Edgar. I recalled Judy’s saying how much she had liked this man, how much he had liked her. He glared at me steadily, his eyes dark globes of hate.

I looked at the circle: Fiona and Edgar, Margaret, William, and my Three Wise Men: Fritz Sprinkle, Bill Loft, and Silas Buchannan. I had given them this name because I could always count on them to bear gifts: wisdom, maturity, and compassion. They were generous and honorable.

Fritz, the chairman of the board was a retired magistrate judge. Tall, leggy as an old flamingo, he and the other two men stood when I walked into the room. The Hadleys and Margaret remained seated.

“Please,” I said quietly. “Do sit down. I certainly intend to.”

Bill Loft was the only one wearing a suit. He clearly did not want to be here. The weak, sick smile, or his soft, pudgy face signaled that he didn’t understand any of this. He wasn’t alone. Neither did I. Like most bankers, Bill preferred to conduct business behind closed doors with people he understood. And I knew whose side he would be on if push came to shove. The Hadleys. They banked at his bank. As prominent farmers, they were significant customers: used a lot of money, borrowed a lot, paid back a lot, saved a lot. Banks thrived on the circulation of money.

Silas Buchannon, a retired farmer, and a member of the Parish Council at Keith’s church, had sat in on a zillion church fights. He had William’s stern sense of duty. He wore blue-grey Dicky work clothes, which to him were considerably dressier than overalls. His wife cut his wiry grizzled hair, and it never looked quite the same from one time to the next. Today, it looked like an old bird nest perched on his long earnest head.

“What’s this all about?” I asked.

“How can you pretend you don’t know?” Fiona blurted. “Did you honestly think people wouldn’t find out?”

I froze. This clearly was something more serious than an objection to my new part-time job.

Fritz cleared his throat. “The Hadleys here say they have proof you took the Custer letter from the Historical Society and tried to sell it.”

I felt the blood seep from my face, pool in my feet. The veins in my arms were blue against my ashen skin. “That’s ridiculous. I’m a historian. Surely you all know I’m the last person who would do such a thing. Why would you think I had?”

“I got this phone call,” said Fiona, “from a curator for a museum in Santa Fe. He’d received a letter from a professor at the University of New Mexico saying you’d called offering to sell a letter in Custer’s own hand. The professor was inquiring about its value. The curator called me, wondering how you came by such a document.”

“A phone call? You’re trying to take my job on the basis of a phone call? This is incredible, Fiona. No one could possibly have my signature on anything, because I didn’t do anything.”

“There’s a fact here,” said Edgar.

We all looked at him. As is often the case with persons who seldom speak, when they do, everyone listens.

“The fact is, this letter is missing. No one can argue that. And it went missing on Lottie’s watch.”

“That’s half a fact, Edgar.”

Now we all looked at William, who had been silent until then.

“It may be a fact that the letter is missing, but I was on duty that afternoon, not Lottie.”

My line may be that I can take care of myself, kill my own snakes, but I looked at William like he was the United States Cavalry come riding over the hill. Who would have thought?

“No one has a key to the main courthouse door except for the janitor, the magistrate judge, the commissioners, and Priscilla Ramsey in case the extension people need in. Several of us have keys to the office, but just Margaret and Lottie have keys to the master file. The Custer letter was there when I locked up the office that evening.”

“You can’t know that,” Fiona snapped.

William shot her a look. “You questioning my memory or my integrity, lady? Old Mrs. Peabody came in just before I closed up. Needed names from some special school records. Margaret was down the hall at an extension meeting, so we fetched her to open the file. I noticed the Custer letter right off when she first opened the file drawer, because Lottie uses bright orange folders for important documents she’s going to copy for the State Historical Society. Damned interesting stuff.”

“William followed all the rules,” Margaret piped up. “It wouldn’t be a historical society if folks couldn’t read documents. He just had to have someone in there with him.”

“I think we all know I follow the rules, Margaret,” William said. “Like I was saying, I read what I could before Mrs. Peabody finished, and then Margaret locked everything away again.”

Silas cleared his throat. “Fiona, don’t you think it’s funny that a curator from New Mexico would call you and Edgar?”

A plain-spoken man, like William, he got right to the point.

“’Pears to me that if someone in New Mexico had suspicions, he would call the law. You and Edgar have an unlisted number. How would a feller from New Mexico know what it was?”

“Are you accusing me of lying?” Fiona asked.

“Not right off, no,” said Silas. “What I’m saying is, it seems funny someone from New Mexico would call you and Edgar. How would they know to do that? On the other hand, if I lived in this county and wanted to get Lottie in a heap of trouble, I would know you and Edgar were just the people to rile up.”

“Did you check anything out?” William asked, “before you called this meeting? Wasted all our time? We’re all folks who have real work to do.”

I looked at William and Silas. They liked me. They actually liked me. I was surprised at the look of outrage on William’s face. Silas’ words were harsh, but reasoned. When William spoke next, he didn’t bother to pretty up a thing.

“If either one of you had half a brain, you’d know Lottie wouldn’t do something that stupid. If she wanted to sell the Custer letter without someone finding out, I ‘spec she could have. She would have known how. Another thing is, she’s not exactly a pauper. Couldn’t have been that much money involved.”

“Probably tens of thousands of dollars,” Fiona said.

“Yep, probably was,” Silas said, “but William’s right. Lottie doesn’t need that money. Wouldn’t be near enough to risk ruining her reputation.”

“Lottie spends more money on the historical society than she takes out,” William said. “I know for a fact she’s brought into the office two computers, a laser printer, a fax, a Nikon digital camera, a photo copy stand, a microwave oven, a digital recorder, a copy machine, and a fancy two-line phone with an answering machine equipped with an extended recorder for taping oral histories. Mighty poor burglar, if you ask me.”

Fiona paled. “I’m not making this up,” she said. “You’re all looking at me like I’m making this up.”

The banker looked like he was going to throw up.

Edgar sat there like he had been struck by lightning. Like he was hearing truths he hadn’t considered before, but recognized when they were laid out as plain as day.

I finally risked a look at Fiona. She was pale, frightened. A woman who had been through a lot in the last couple of days. Something in her tone of voice convinced me she was telling the truth.

Truth is what I’m about. If she was telling the truth, I wanted everyone there to know it.

I did not like this woman, but for all I knew, she might be ill and right then she was being seen in the worst possible light.

We all knew she was mean as a snake. But historically, snakes have always had a lot to say.

“I think it’s time we left, Edgar.” Tears brimmed in her eyes as she rose to leave. “I never thought I would see the day when the people of this county would take the word of a rank stranger over a Rubidoux.”

“Wait, Fiona.” She turned those great tragic eyes toward me. “Please, answer a few questions for me. I would like to know more about that phone call.” She gave a proud little nod of assent, but she did not sit back down. “Was it a man or a woman?”

“A man,” she said.

“When?”

“Around six-thirty last evening.”

“What did the voice sound like?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

There are tricks to seizing control, and I know them all. I rose, walked to the head of the table where she had been sitting seconds ago, remained standing, above them all, fists braced on the table.

“Educated, uneducated, accent of any kind? High? Low? Pleasant? What can you remember?”

She moved to my previous place, was joined by a stunned Edgar. Obviously thinking hard, she automatically sat down. I was restoring her credibility through my questions. With any luck, she could save a little face.

“It was a grown-up voice,” she said slowly, “not a kid playing a prank. He didn’t have any accent at all.”

I smiled. Typical Kansas attitude. We’re the only ones who talk normally.

“I wish I had recorded the conversation, but I didn’t. At first I wasn’t paying much attention, then I was too shocked to do anything but listen. He wasn’t on the line very long. I started to ask him questions, but he said he had to go to a meeting.”

“Sometimes it helps to write everything down, Fiona. I would like you to do that for us right now. What you said, what he said. Everything.”

I pushed a legal pad toward her across the table.

“Just try to shut us out of your mind. Play like we’re not even in the room.”

She nodded and closed her eyes a second, picked up the pen and began to write. It took several minutes. I looked around at their faces. No matter who had started this fight, I had won.

“Thank you,” I said, when she finished. “Would you sign and date that, please, for the records here at the society.”

She picked up her pen again and did just that. I looked around at the men and Margaret, knowing Fiona’s willingness to sign meant something to these people. Same as a handshake on a deal did. Now they all knew Fiona and Edgar Hadley were not lying. Clearly, they knew I wasn’t either.

“If you don’t mind staying a bit longer, I’d like to read this to all the board members. In case we have questions.”

I flashed a brilliant smile at everyone. They had drawn a circle that shut me out. I had just drawn a larger circle that took them in. It was always the best policy if you intended to get anything done.

“Margaret, will you include my next words verbatim in the minutes?”

“Margaret, I’ll give you a copy, of course, so you can get everything right for the minutes. Does anyone have any questions they would like to ask Fiona?”

“Can’t think of any,” said Silas. “Can’t tell much of anything from that.”

“I can,” I said. “I can tell a lot, and I have a friend who is a linguist at Kansas University that can probably tell us a lot more. The use of ma’am is definitely southern, likely from Texas. Few adult males out here address women as
ma’am.
The phrase ‘I’m due
for
a meeting’ instead of choosing other words, like I’m due
at
a meeting, that’s pure midwest, Kansas to boot. I doubt those are the words they use in New Mexico.”

They looked at me like I was Moses descending from the Mount with mysterious tablets.

“Any questions? If not, I’m sure the Hadleys would like to get on their way. There’s no need to keep any of you here any longer.”

William shot them a look, and reached for his fedora.

“After Margaret has all this written down, I want it notarized, then I’m going to make a copy of it for our files and take this right over to Sam Abbot. As you all know, we reported the theft of the Custer letters immediately.”

Stunned and stiffly silent, the Hadleys did not look at Margaret or the three men. The radiator clanked and the overheated room smelled of dry dust.

“Edgar, Fiona, despite this turning out a lot differently than you had in mind, I know you were just trying to do your duty. I want you to know there’s no hard feelings.”

Finally, my voice quavered. Until now it had been firm and fearless. “Please know you have the sympathy of everyone here on the loss of your niece. Good day, all.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Margaret would be back down when she finished the minutes, and I didn’t want to talk to her or anyone else. I hoisted the box of Judy’s belongings, paused in the doorway and glanced around the room. I would take the box to Max after the funeral.

One big jolt of memorabilia seemed marginally kinder than trickling back in with stuff I’d overlooked.

Jolted, I saw the letter laying on the stack of mail on Margaret’s desk. I set Judy’s box down in the corridor, and picked it up. For the first time the postmark was in this state, and from a town seven counties away.

Dead? Who could this person possibly mean but Judy? Saliva drained from my mouth. My hands trembled. I had thought these strange letters were from an unhappy, disturbed person, not a murderer. Nevertheless, I’d started a special folder and all the letters were in it along with the envelopes. I willed myself to stay calm, remove that file, put the new letter inside, say all the right things to anyone I met on the way outside, and drive right to Sam’s office at a normal speed.

***

Sam slowly re-read the letters he’d trivialized before and looked at my office log. He reached for his pipe, coaxed it to life.

“You okay, Lottie?”

“No. If I was in any way responsible for the death of Judy St. John, I won’t be able to live with myself.”

“No one is responsible for the minds of crazy people, lady. And there’s still a chance this person might be messing with you. Exploiting Judy’s death to get to you.”

“Doesn’t hold water, much as I would like to believe someone is just out to torment me.”

“How’s that?”

“No one’s supposed to know officially until the coroner gives his report today that it was murder.” I gazed at a slipping wanted poster dangling from his bulletin board. Needing to restore order wherever I could, I rose and pinned it back on straight. “Fiona spread the word around that it was suicide, and all my fault. I know Judy was murdered, you know it, but it’s not common knowledge.”

“Official don’t mean diddley squat. There’s plenty of people who knew different when they saw FBI agents at St. Johns. Word gets around fast, and like I told you, this wasn’t the most intelligent crime I’ve ever seen.”

“Even so, Sam. For someone to have time to write and send a letter overnight? They had to know.”

“By God, now.” He rubbed his nose, then held the bowl of his pipe as he listened.

“Josie’s wondered all along if my pen pal wasn’t living right here in this county. Now I’m convinced they were using a mail drop to cover up that fact, but they would have had time to drive to Stanton yesterday and send this letter to arrive in today’s mail.”

“I’ll turn all the letters over to the KBI today,” he said. “Jim Gilderhaus will have an opinion. Count on it. Tell your sister about these right away. She might have some special insight.”

I winced. Josie’s “special insight” was that my move to Western Kansas had been a waste of a first class brain in the first place.

“I hope we’re not putting you in harm’s way. Bet Keith’s thrilled with all this. I can’t even offer you police protection,” he said bitterly.

“Sam, I
am
the police. Remember?”

He puffed his pipe and looked at me with a sour smile.

***

That evening, I waited for Keith to come home, dreading telling him my work as an historian had taken a darker turn than my job as a deputy.

I met him at the door.

“You look like hell, Lottie. What’s wrong?”

“I’ve been accused of stealing the Custer letter.”

Stunned into silence, he took off his denim work jacket walked into the mud room and hung it on a peg, thinking, thinking, before he spoke. “For god’s sake, why? That would ruin your life’s work. Your reputation. What have you done to anyone?”

“Nothing. And there’s worse. Those anonymous letters I told you about might be from the SOB who murdered Judy.”

“My God. I wish you’d never…”

“Become a deputy? It’s my work at the historical society that’s bringing this on.”

“Two murders. Now this.” He smacked a fist into the palm of his hand, and stared out the window at our leafless cottonwoods before he came over and pulled me close. “I feel helpless,” he whispered.

“We
are
helpless. Both of us. But the FBI will take a look at the letters. Sam thinks there’s a chance someone is just pushing my buttons.”

“Thinks or wishes?”

“Hopes.” I lifted my face for a kiss. “I want to stay home with you tonight, but I need to call on Max. Take him some food.”

“He’s back at the house? Already?”

“Yes. The FBI processed and released the house yesterday, because we’ve already turned it inside out looking for that letter, and we know Judy was strangled right outside the barn with the same rope used to hang her.”

“Poor old Max.”

“Come with me? I’m done in. Between the anonymous letters and the Hadleys trying to throw me to the wolves over the Custer theft, I can hardly think.”

“You on duty?”

“Nope. Couldn’t, wouldn’t ask you if I was.”

“Good. Then I get to hover. I don’t want you out of my sight.”

***

There were cars parked the length of the lane. Inez Wilson opened the door. Lanky, bird bright, she motioned me inside.

“How’s he doing?”

“Just terrible,” she said. “Terrible. He won’t eat a thing. Won’t talk to anyone.”

“Let me try.”

It was as though there was nothing left of Maxwell. He was a skinny old shell that just happened to breathe because his lungs made him.

On the table were enough cakes, casseroles, salads, and pies to feed an army. I leaned over and kissed his old withered cheek. His eyes clouded with tears. The vacant look in his eyes told me he might as well have been on a desert island.

“Max, would you like me to pick out clothes for the service?”

He nodded and I went upstairs and started through the clothes in Judy’s closet. Her bedroom appeared to be unchanged since she’d graduated from high school. The décor was too young, too frilly. She probably didn’t have either the time or the money to replace things since she’d moved back.

When Mendoza removed the contents of Judy’s little cedar hope chest, piece by piece, she’d admired the embroidered pillowcases.

I settled on a soft coral two piece dress, turned off the light and started down the stairs. I paused and looked back, hoping Judy’s letter would somehow glow in the dark. Although Brian had given his mother an alibi for Zelda’s death, Judy had been adamant the letter proved Fiona was the kil ler. Proof that was gone now. I knew Fiona hadn’t murdered Judy, but I could not be sure she wasn’t responsible in some way for Zelda’s death.

***

Brian gave the eulogy at the funeral. It was sweet. Poignant. Just right. With a few well-chosen words he captured his cousin’s wistful personality. He told of Judy’s love of nature, their walks along the creek bank, her fascination with dragon flies.

As I listened to him speak, watched his face, I noticed how much better he looked. His eyes were clear, and his hands steady as he held his note cards. He was the epitome of honesty and sincerity. The all-American boy. The entire Hadley family had developed deception into an art form.

I scoffed as I watched. Visine does wonders for the eyes. Perhaps a touch of the hair of the dog to stop the trembling hands. His massive will could keep him together long enough to make a good speech.

At the burial afterward, when they were lowering Judy into the grave, Max looked like he wanted to pitch himself on top the coffin. The funeral was enormous. I clung to Keith’s arm as if my feet would give way if I didn’t. It was a terrible day, a terrible time for us all. I was bitter that those who would not have given this girl the time of day in real life felt compelled to attend her funeral and feign the deepest mourning.

My own grief was genuine. I didn’t know it was possible to feel so desolated over the death of a woman I had known such a short length of time.

Despite my show of bravado at the board meeting, I had not slept well for the last three nights. In the daytime, my startle reflex was on overdrive. All someone had to do was walk up behind me, and I either jumped or dropped something.

Yet the service strengthened my anger. Two murders had been committed in my county. Two. Right under our noses. Two murders, and I was getting letters from the person who very well could have committed them.

I looked around at the sea of faces. Many with black glasses. Cousins to old-time veils. Historically, worn so Death couldn’t see you, wouldn’t seek you out.

Fiona wept uncontrollably. For show and for the record, of course. She had just watched the biggest threat to her son’s career put six feet under. Yet, I remembered her fury the day we had found Judy. On that day I knew she had cared about her niece as much as she could care about anyone she couldn’t use.

Fiona didn’t have access to the noble emotions that inspired poetry. Her deepest most heartfelt feelings were reserved for herself, but in her own crippled way, I knew she had either cared about Judy more than she had known, or she was deeply frightened.

As was I.