Deadly Descent (2 page)

“I didn’t marry him for his money.”

“He’s still a dirt farmer, Lottie.”

“He’s an educated man. A veterinarian.”

“So? Why doesn’t he practice? Contribute something.”

I’d had enough sense to shut up. Keith’s main income was from wheat and cattle. He wrote occasional medical and economic pieces for veterinary trade magazines and he
did
have a very informal practice, along the lines of helping thy neighbor.

Truth was Keith couldn’t stand high-strung women with yapping little dogs.

Josie owned a miniature shih tzu. On our farmstead we had two real dogs. Totally non-neurotic border collies.

Josie would have been surprised at the net worth of my dirt farmer.

Chapter Three

I passed through the mud room into our kitchen/family room. I had designed the light golden oak cabinets. A number of the doors bore stained glass insets. In winter, the floor-to-ceiling fireplace dominating the north wall warmed the facing tan leather sofa and flanking chairs. Ample reading lamps invited curling up with a book.

The woodwork gleamed. It would even pass Elizabeth’s inspection, though the credit went to hired help. Keith’s oldest daughter doesn’t hold with women who don’t do all their own work.

There was a note from Keith on the island saying he had been called over to the Arley farm to look at a cow. I threw myself into a final orgy of housewifely fussing.

Then I called Zelda St. John. The second quick scan of her story had sent Fiona into a tailspin, not the first read. Perhaps she knew the reason, and would tell me during our rewrite session.

There was no answer.

I had hoped Elizabeth would not be the first to arrive, but her little yellow Volkswagen came buzzing up the drive. Single, one year older, and five inches taller than I, she could whip me verbally with one tongue tied behind her back.

I pulled myself together and flung open the front door.

“Hello,” I called cheerily. “Did you have a good trip? Can I help you carry things in?”

I felt a step-mother’s awkwardness in extending the hospitality of a home that had always been hers. I wished she could understand it was still. Keeping my maiden name was my only move that met with her approval.

Elizabeth is a “poverty lawyer” in Denver. She works out of a wretched little storefront with like-minded zealots. She dresses like Cinderella before the fairy godmother hit. I think she’s affected as hell.

“I can manage. Where’s Dad?”

“Out doctoring. He’s on his way home by now I hope.”

“Good.” She breezed past me carrying two suitcases. Fierce, Junoesque, she is a dazzling beauty with short wheat-colored hair. She returned from her room, flipped her cell open and scowled at me. I shrugged. Our spotty service is not my fault.

“So. What have you been up to?” Elizabeth is quite decent to me as long I keep the focus on her work.

We were catching up when Bettina, Keith’s youngest, came through the door with a diaper bag flung over her shoulder. She was followed by her husband, Jimmy, and their two sons. She is a hospital administrator in Denver and Jimmy Silverthorne owns a construction company.

I knelt and held out my arms, which were instantly filled with puppy warm little boys. No tip-toeing around or feeling my way with our grandsons. They were mine. I was their Grandma Lottie. I had been right here in this house before and since they were born. Four-year-old Joshua’s and two-year-old Kent’s thatches of black hair and light brown eyes echoed their father’s American Indian ancestry. No one would connect their petite mother’s fine-boned features and wide hazel eyes with this sturdy pair.

“Can I have a cookie, Grandma Lottie?” asked Josh.

“Yes,” I said. “Lots and lots.” Happily, I hugged them tightly until they squirmed in protest.

“Hello, hello, greetings and all that. Hi, Mom.” I laughed as always at the “Mom,” as little Bettina wrapped me in a warm hug. She whisked her youngest son off to the bathroom. She’s the only one of Keith’s children who is real time, real world. The others are more theoretical. While we’re having grand discussions, Bettina is cleaning up messes and turning down the flames under smoldering pans on the stove.

Keith came through the door.

“Grandpa’s here,” called Josh.

Josh and Kent ran at their grandfather like linemen. I looked into Keith’s eyes, which glinted with tears. I heard the horn, and my stomache tightened.

Keith opened the door. Josie’s black Mercedes sparkled like the devil’s horns under the yard light. She came up the walk, carrying Tosca, her little shih-tzu, and her violin case.

I saw Elizabeth’s disbelieving face as she looked at the pampered little dog. I groaned and closed my eyes for an instant, knowing the price of Tosca’s haircuts. But Josie was my sister, my twin, my best friend. I hugged her inside and made introductions. Elizabeth could just go to hell.

Josie had not, would not, come to the wedding.

My step-daughters looked at her, then at me, eyes narrowing in feminine evaluation. Josie’s hair is blue-black, as mine had once been. We both touch up, but I frost a bit to supplement my premature tinsel-silver and she goes the other direction. But then, I’m always trying to look like I’m old enough to be married to my husband.

Josh and Kent rushed over to pet Tosca. Josie tensed. Tosca shrank even further in her arms.

“Boys, stop!” Jimmy called sharply.

“You should ask Josie’s permission,” Bettina said.

“No, they should ask the dog’s permission,” Jimmy said. He folded his tall lean body down to Tosca’s level and peered at her. “Don’t like strangers, do you girl? Me neither. My kind of dog.”

Josie laughed, but there was no mistaking her appreciation for his diplomacy.

“I
am
sorry,” she said to the boys. “Perhaps later, when we’ve been here awhile.”

I took Josie’s fine woolen cape and whisked it off to the clothes closet. I wished I’d told her to wear jeans. Her black cherry turtleneck and exquisitely tailored grey pants were just too perfect. Like Tosca.

Relationships change among a group the instant another person walks into the room. There’s usually an accommodation as subtle as water enfolding a rock thrown into a pond.
After
the ripples settle down. But after Josie came in, we could not get back to normal. I did not think it was her fault. She was on her best behavior. She swore she didn’t mind the drive across Kansas. She was properly cheery, bearing gifts. It’s just that Keith’s family was tight knit. They did not open up easily to outsiders.

My meal was too heavy for Josie. By Western Kansas meat-eating standards, she hardly touched a thing. Keith’s dark home brew brought tears to her eyes. We did dishes and started to tune up our instruments. We always tuned to the piano. Elizabeth played a wicked rag-time and it’s the one instrument that can’t be re-adjusted. Bettina’s dobro was off key and it took a number of tries before she got it right. Josie settled on the sofa, Tosca on her lap.

It was eight o’clock. I went to the kitchen and tried to call Zelda St. John again, but there was still no answer. I left another message on her answering machine.

“Must you keep popping in and out?” Elizabeth snapped.

“Yes, I do. I have to make a call. It’s important.” I kept my voice polite, but pointedly looked at her holstered phone. She flushed. “On our landline. Cell service is spotty at best out here. Not enough towers, and then they are vulnerable to storms.”

Josie frowned, looked at Elizabeth hard, then turned her attention toward my husband.

Keith was too tall, too wide, and took up more than his rightful share of space. Territorial and watchful, he had the alertness of an old range bull. His neck looked like a guillotine would bounce right off it, but his nails were buffed to a gentleman’s sheen. I hoped Josie would notice.

He looked at her in his troubling, sharp-eyed way.

“Do you like bluegrass, Josie?”

Trapped, wanting to please, she looked at me expectantly, but I would not help her. This was a chance for Keith and his children to see my Josie as I knew her. Vulnerable, in the raw. She never lied about music. It was the way she had survived our childhood. She never allowed anything to touch her music. Her first husband had tried.

“No, I’ve never liked Country/Western.”

“It’s not the same,” Keith said.

Suddenly overwhelmed with the anxiety of wanting all these people to just love each other, I fled to call Zelda again.

Josie had given the right answer, I thought, as I redialed. People who fake affection for Country/Western or Bluegrass are painfully obvious to those of us who love it.

No answer. Again I left a message and went back into the living room. Jimmy, who did not play an instrument, sprawled on the floor watching his sons struggle with Lincoln Logs.

Keith launched into June Apple. Josie raised her eyebrows as I picked up my guitar. We played for a half hour.

“Bedtime, boys,” Jimmy said. “Pick up your toys and say your goodnights.”

Bettina rose to help with their bedtime routine, but Jimmy smiled and waved her back.

“Go ahead and enjoy yourself.”

Exhausted from the trip, Josh and Kent sniggered through a volley of hugs and goodnights, then cheerfully followed their father up the stairs.

“Would you like to join in, Josie?” Keith asked.

“I don’t know any of your songs.”

“Then play what you like. We’ll listen.”

“Lottie? Will you help?”

“My piano is a little rusty since I’ve switched to guitar, but I’ll try to keep up.”

Josie smiled and went to her case, and lovingly pulled her violin from the red velvet. We played a haunting old Hungarian rhapsody. We Czechs are good at this kind of music. We have a natural affinity for tragedy.

Then whisper soft behind us came the eerie overtones of a second violin. Josie looked at Keith, amused, then was clearly annoyed at his intrusion.

“Your choice, lady,” Keith said.

“Mozart’s violin concerto number four in D major,” she said sweetly.

I winced at her ploy. The song is very difficult. If he did not know the music he couldn’t possibly play by intuition, but I was too out of practice to accompany her decently.

“I can’t Josie. It’s been too long.” I lowered the lid over the keys.

“It doesn’t sound right, played alone,” she said.

“No it doesn’t,” Keith said. “I’ll help you out. I need to make a little switch here. Need a gut-strung. Can’t play that with steel strings. It’s been a while,” he said quietly. “Too long maybe.”

He walked over to one of the long ceiling-to-floor cabinets built into the wall of the room, opened one of the tiers of double doors. Josie gasped when she saw that it housed a whole collection of musical instruments. He carefully withdrew another violin, began to tune it to hers.

“So what it this? Dueling banjos?” muttered Elizabeth.

Keith shrugged. “Maybe.” His eyes glittered.

Josie played the first movement, Keith filling in when he could.

“Beautiful,” said Keith softly when she had finished.

“Your turn,” she said.

“Same piece, second movement.
Andante cantabile
.”

Josie sat motionless as she listened to him play. Her face reflected the humiliation of having deeply underestimated another human being. I had tried to tell her. Who this man was. What he was like. He stopped abruptly and began to play a heartbreaking rhapsody.

After he had played several lines, he stopped. “I’m Volga German, Miss Albright. A German from Russia.”

Her cheeks flamed, and she looked at him with bewilderment. Not knowing what he meant. What he was trying to tell her.

He began his music again. I knew it was a song Josie had never heard before. By the time he had finished, she should have known everything about this man’s soul. His people.

Even though we were identical twins and I was considered slender by Western Kansas standards, Josie was ten pounds lighter, sometimes making her black/brown eyes look as hugely vulnerable as those of a deer. Her wonderful eyes were now focused on my husband.

I could feel the charge of energy between them, and suddenly goose bumps rose on my arm.

The phone rang. Already on edge, I jumped as though it were a siren.

Bettina answered. “It’s for you, Lottie.”

I took the call on the kitchen landline, then went back to the living room, and looked down at my trembling hands.

Keith stopped playing in the middle of a run. They all turned toward me.

“That was the sheriff. Zelda St. John has been murdered.”

Chapter Four

“I don’t understand. Why would the sheriff call you?” Josie put her violin in its case and reached for Tosca.

“I’ve left several messages on Zelda’s answering machine tonight, and he wanted to know what they were about.”

“How did it happen?” Bettina asked. “Who did it?”

“She was beaten to death.” My voice shook. “Bludgeoned.”

“My God. Poor Max,” Keith said.

“Max is her husband,” I told Josie. “He’s much older.”

“Do they have any idea who did it?”

“No, but Sheriff Sam Abbott is coming here right away to ask me some questions. He’d heard about an incident with her sister today at the historical society.” I filled them in on the riff with Fiona, and twenty minutes later Sam rang our doorbell.

Bettina let him in.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Josie said, seeing him start down the hallway. “Where did they find him? Central casting?”

Sheriff Sam Abbott had had the same effect on me the first time I saw him. His white mustache drooped like his sad old eyes and a fringe of long white hair brushed the top of his collar. Although his liver spotted hands betrayed his age, he carried his tall body with military bearing.

His office needed more personnel and he needed more rest.

My stomach was sour, my eyes wet.

“Hello, Lottie. Keith. Sorry to be disturbing you folks this time of night.”

“It’s all right, Sam.” I stepped forward. “I don’t know what help I can be, but I’ll be glad to talk with you.”

“You know my two daughters, Elizabeth and Bettina,” Keith said, “and this is Lottie’s sister, Josie.”

Sam bobbed his head in acknowledgment. “This is a bad deal, I’ll tell you.”

He glanced sharply at Elizabeth. I followed his gaze. Her eyes did not swerve. Neither did his. Elizabeth is the only person I know with turquoise eyes. Right now, they were hot and hostile.

I could not imagine what Sam Abbott had ever done to her.

“Do you have a place where we can talk privately, Lottie? I won’t keep you long.”

“Sure. Let’s go into Keith’s office.”

He nodded and followed me into the book-lined room.

“I’m still shocked.”

“We all are. Not a single other murder in this county since I’ve been in office. Just doesn’t happen here.”

“Thank God.”

“Why all the messages on her machine, Lottie? They sounded urgent. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation will be looking everywhere. At everything and everybody.”

“The KBI? So soon?”

“We’re a small county and piss poor to boot. We don’t have the talent and the resources to investigate a murder. They do. I had the right to call them in. The show-downs between the local sheriff and the big bad feds are an invention of TV.
Most
of the time.”

He did not blink, but there was a tell-tale bob in his Adam’s apple. “There’s a guy, Jim Gilderhaus, assigned to this region. Lives just fifty miles from here. He’s a fine fellow. Know him well. He’s over at the Hadleys now. I’m trying to clear up a few things for him because I know all the people in this county. Keeps it quieter if I handle a few of these details myself.”

“Well my messages were hardly urgent.” I shoved my hands into my jeans pockets, crossed the room and stared into the black night. Embarrassed, I turned and faced him.

“It’s been an upsetting evening. Josie meeting Bettina and Elizabeth for the first time. And my sister’s a bit of a snob. Equates bluegrass with barefoot and ignorant. And Elizabeth is…”

“Elizabeth is Elizabeth,” he said flatly.

“Exactly. If I hadn’t been so edgy, I wouldn’t have called Zelda so many times. I just couldn’t stand the tension in that room, so I kept ducking out. But back to Fiona. She caused quite a scene when she came into the office today.”

“I know that. So does everyone else in town.”

“Surely you’re not thinking Fiona had anything to do with Zelda’s murder?”

“Of course not. A tiff between The Ladies is hardly news. If one of them was going to kill the other, she’d of done it a long time ago. I’m just tracing time. But just for the record, what was Mrs. Hadley so fired up about?”

“Fiona wanted me to destroy her sister’s story. I couldn’t do that, but I could ask Zelda to write a different one for our book.”

He leaned forward.

“So that’s all. Your messages said you wanted to talk to her, but you didn’t say why. The St. Johns have an old machine that doesn’t track time and date. Your calls could help us establish the time of death. Exactly when did you call the first time?”

“About five-thirty, when I got home from work. Then everyone started arriving. I didn’t call again until seven-thirty or so. It was after supper. I remember that.”

“So you would have called the first time before Max got home from the hardware store and the second time after he had left for the Lion’s Club meeting at seven o’clock.”

“I called again around eight, again at eight-thirty, and finally a little after nine. Then you called me. As I said, it really wasn’t urgent. I’m a wee bit compulsive.”

He grinned. “Since you’re not a suspect, I don’t really care why you called. No one is under suspicion right now. But the times when she didn’t answer the phone could be very important.”

“Any idea of motive?”

He patted his breast pocket wistfully like a scolded smoker.

“Gilderhaus thinks robbery. Bank cards gone, purse missing.”

“But you don’t,” I said, noting the politeness of “Gilderhaus thinks.”

“No. There was no forced entry. Jim was raised in Kansas City. Believes a lot of guff about rural people that just ain’t so.”

“That we all keep our doors unlocked?”

“And that we would all open our doors to rank strangers.”

At Fiene’s Folly we don’t have a yard light that burns automatically all night. We don’t want one acting as a beacon, advertising our isolation.

“What was in that story?”

It was a smooth ploy. Asked abruptly that way, I responded in kind.

“Frankly, an exposure of their family’s vicious prejudice. If the press ever got hold of it, there’s no way Brian could convince voters he didn’t share those attitudes.”

Sam thoughtfully rubbed the side of his large Roman nose. “Knowing Fiona, if she thought it could hurt Brian, she’d be livid.”

“Actually, I think Fiona shared her sister’s attitude toward blacks and was blind to the damage it would cause Brian. Something else set her off.”

“No idea what?”

“None whatsoever. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help. How’s Max taking it?”

“Hard. Already had enough on his plate with health problems, then his old hardware store got Wal-Marted.”

“And Fiona? She okay?”

“Don’t know.” His mouth tightened. “I had to work the scene. I sent Betty Central over to break the news to the Hadleys. She hasn’t called me yet. You know how short-handed we are, Lottie,” he said, seeing the look on my face. “I have to work with what I’ve got.”

Betty Central’s mean, loud mouth could turn a missing pencil into a four-star crisis. It was hard to imagine anyone less sensitive, less appropriate, to break this kind of news to a family.

Sam flushed. “I’ve put ads in the paper, Lottie. Asking for part-time help. Not many people are dying to be in law enforcement, and this county operates on a shoestring. People go to work for us, they have to buy their own guns.”

He slapped his hands on his knees and stood.

“At least we have a clearer picture of time, thanks to you.”

I walked him to the foyer.

When I went back into the family room, Elizabeth was seated at the piano, raging through a complicated piece. Her hands faltered. She rose, ran to Keith, and sobbed on his shoulder.

“What’s wrong, Elizabeth?” I asked. I looked over at Josie, who was sitting very still, cuddling Tosca. Her eyes grave, professionally alert.

“The last time I saw that meddling old fool was when Mom died.”

Josie rose and walked toward father and daughter. She patted Elizabeth on the shoulder.

“Can I help? Lottie’s told me your mother died tragically. When you were just thirteen?”

Elizabeth spun around, dislodging Josie’s hand.

“Tragically? Like in an accident? A car or something? No, Ms. Albright, we’re the suicide’s kids. Didn’t you know that?”

Josie blanched. “No. I didn’t know. I’m sorry, Elizabeth. Still, I
am
here this weekend. Perhaps it would help you to talk about it.”

“It won’t, and even if talking would help, I doubt I would have much in common with a shrink driving a Mercedes.”

“I want you to apologize to my sister at once, Elizabeth.”

Then she turned on me.

“Or for that matter, a lady whose idea of real life is working with dusty old manuscripts analyzing the lives of people who lived a hundred years ago.”

“Elizabeth! That’s enough,” Keith thundered.

Then this thirty-nine-year-old woman who Wonder-Womaned around Denver, unbattering women and tying up gang members in Byzantine legal procedures, ran from the room like a heart-broken adolescent.

I couldn’t breathe. The muscles in Keith’s jaws jerked. He watched Elizabeth’s flight up the stairs like he wanted to call her back. Make her say the right words. His great hands dangled at his sides as if they were on the end of clay clubs.

Tears welled in Bettina’s eyes.

“So sorry,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do.” She hurried after Elizabeth.

Josie sat back down on the sofa, terrier tense, ready to spring.

Keith walked over to his violin, carefully loosened the tension on the strings, put it back into the case. He placed it in the storage cupboard. When he had calmed himself, he turned to face her. He suddenly looked every bit twenty years senior to me.

“Josie, you have my sincere apology for this miserable evening. I’m very sorry.”

She nodded at him. Smiled gently.

“I’ll see you ladies in the morning,” he said, heading for the stairs. He left us alone.