Cast a Blue Shadow (13 page)

26

Saturday, November 2 11:50 A.M.

WHILE Martha slept upstairs, Pastor Cal Troyer arrived at the Brandens’ home and took a seat in the living room with Caroline and Evelyn. After discussing Martha’s present troubles, he said, “I’ve counseled with her several times. She sometimes stays late after a Wednesday night service.”

“Can you tell us what about?” Caroline asked.

“Personal things,” Cal said, averting his eyes.

Evelyn said, “There are some unresolved issues stemming from her sessions with me.”

“She hasn’t spoken to either of you all morning?” Cal asked.

Evelyn said, “She was pretty out of it when I found her this morning. We’re afraid the blood has something to do with the murder of Juliet Favor.”

“Good grief,” Cal said, shaking his head. “Martha is not capable of anything like that.”

“If you’re referring to the fact that she is Mennonite,” Evelyn said, “let me assure you, as deep as her troubles likely are, we have to consider it at least possible that she’s involved in some way.”

“She’s not just Mennonite,” Cal explained. “She’s conservative Mennonite. What some people call ‘country’ Mennonite.”

“OK,” Evelyn said tentatively. “I just think you ought to know I’ve seen quite a lot in my practice, Amish and Mennonite.”

Cal nodded. “Her congregation—well, her parents’ congregation, anyway—is led by Ben Mast. He used to be Black Bumper Amish. Came out of an Old Order sect that decided to buy cars, so long as they were painted to be plain. No shiny metal. As significant as the transition was, the sect still will not permit violence of any kind. Mennonites are pacifists. It just doesn’t figure.”

Evelyn held firm. “I wouldn’t argue with you on that point, Cal. I just know how much she’s been hurt. How many issues she still faces. And what I see in her today—well, this is a young woman in extreme crisis. Something has got a hold of her deep down, and if it’s what I think, she may have been capable of almost anything. Rage, violence, even suicide.”

Cal shook his head from side to side, rubbing his short white beard with the gnarled fingers of his carpenter’s hands.

Evelyn asked, “What did you talk about with her, Cal?” “Personal problems, all confidential, I’m afraid. Lifestyle issues for the most part.”

Caroline asked, “Has she been seeing anyone other than Sonny Favor?”

Said Cal, “He’s pretty much the one. You say she’s sleeping now?”

“Upstairs,” Caroline said.

“From what I know of Sonny Favor,” Cal said, as he left, “you’re gonna want to be here when she wakes up.”

IN THE Brandens’ living room, Evelyn and Caroline became only slowly aware of the drop in temperature. They had sat talking quietly, watching the snow falling heavily again outside the big living room windows at the front of the house, and the house had grown colder incrementally, to the point where they noticed it only now.

Caroline got up and followed a draft into the kitchen and then the family room. There, she found the sliding door open, and she closed it. She motioned to Evelyn, and the two climbed the stairs together, finding the covers folded back on Martha’s bed, and no Martha. The phone that normally sat on the nightstand had been pulled over to the bed, and it sat there, line stretched across the sheet.

Back downstairs, they went out onto the back porch through the sliding door and found the storm door at the steps ajar. In the new snow outside on the steps, there were fresh footprints, made by small, flat shoes, and the tracks angled across the backyard to the cliffs at the edge of the lot.

Caroline ran out into the snow without her coat. She reached the edge of the cliffs swiftly, and Evelyn saw her stop there and peer over. She saw Caroline cup her hands to her mouth, and shout over the edge. The snow muffled the sound of her voice, but Evelyn heard, “Martha! Martha!” before Caroline turned back from the line of barren trees.

Once inside, Caroline kicked off her shoes and started lacing on winter boots. Evelyn said, “Caroline,” softly.

Pushing her arms into her coat sleeves, Caroline said, “She’s gone down that steep path. Can’t see through the snow, but I can catch her, I know I can, Evelyn.”

Dr. Carson took Caroline gently by the shoulders and said, “Bringing her back here isn’t going to help.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Martha has some decisions to make, Caroline. Even if you could catch her, that wouldn’t change anything.”

“She’s not fit to go off on her own.”

“She’s stronger than you think.”

Relenting, Caroline took off her coat and laid it on the couch.

“She’s going to have to make some important choices, soon,” Evelyn added.

Said Caroline, “I wanted to help her.”

“We still can. When she comes to us. Then it will count for something. Until now, we were just watching her, anyway.”

“What about her baby?”

“What could you tell her now?”

“What about her boyfriend?”

“She has to decide.”

Caroline sat down heavily, arms limp at her sides. Her stocking feet were cold and wet from the snow. “I know what you’ve said about Ben Schlabaugh, but I don’t think I can handle it if she goes back to him.”

“If she has, it ought to be obvious when we talk to him tomorrow,” Evelyn said.

“The phone,” Caroline said, and started off for the bedroom.

There she sat on the edge of the bed, dialed *69, and got an answer, “I told you I can’t talk, Martha.”

“Who is this?” Caroline inquired.

“Sonny Favor. I’m busy.”

“Did you talk recently to Martha?”

“Who is this?”

“Mrs. Michael Branden.”

“Oh. Mrs. Branden. Your husband is right here.”

“Sonny, I need to know if you talked with Martha. I know she called this number.”

“What if I did?”

“You did, didn’t you. She’s left, Sonny, and we need to find her.”

“I can’t help you, Mrs. Branden.”

“Sonny, it’s important. I’m sorry about your mother, but I need to find Martha, now.”

“I’ll let you talk to Dr. Branden,” he said, and handed the phone across the table in the jail’s Interview B. “It’s your wife,” he said to the professor.

“Caroline, something wrong?”

“Martha left. Hiked down over the cliffs while we were talking with Cal Troyer in the living room.”

“I see,” Branden said. Robertson and the whole Favor entourage were in the room, their eyes focused on him.

“You can’t talk?” Caroline asked.

“No.”

“Did Sonny take a call a little before this one?”

“Yes.”

“It was Martha.”

“OK.”

“Did you hear his end of the conversation?”

“Yes. I’ll call you back.”

When she hung up, Caroline said to Evelyn Carson, “Martha called Sonny Favor. At least we know she’s talking now.”

27

Saturday, November 2 Noon

BRUCE Robertson stood at the end of the table in Interview B and watched the professor’s expression as he handed the cell phone back across the table to Sonny Favor. Clearly, the professor wasn’t happy. And clearly, he had not wanted to talk in front of people.

And this was the second call to that phone in the last ten minutes, the sheriff mused. In the first call, Sonny had evidently been talking to Martha Lehman. He had said Martha several times, once not politely. Judging from the one end of the conversation he had heard, Robertson surmised that things had started off pleasantly enough, and then had turned convincingly adversarial, as if Sonny had switched to talking to someone new and foreign. Last of all, the boy had curtly said, “I can’t deal with that, now. You’re going to have to take care of that problem on your own.”

After switching off, Sonny had been quiet and sullen, but the second call had seemed to fluster him again. He took the phone back from Branden, pocketed it, stood up, and said, “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

Robertson said, “We still have questions, Mr. Favor, about last night.”

Sonny looked down at DiSalvo, seated next to Branden, and said, “Do I have to stay?” His cheeks were vibrant red, and his eyes focused intensely on his lawyer, as he rocked in place from one foot to the other. He seemed to Robertson to be about ready to bolt from the room.

DiSalvo said, “I think we’ve talked long enough, Sheriff. The kids have nothing more to add.”

“They have not cooperated with our investigation, Henry. I take note of that.”

“I beg to differ,” DiSalvo said. “They’ve each accounted for their actions. We have nothing more to add here.”

DiSalvo rose. Sally stood up when DiSalvo held her chair, and the three navigated their way to the door. Out in the hall, DiSalvo held out his card for Robertson.

“I don’t need your card, Henry!” Robertson barked. “What in the world’s the matter with you, anyways?”

“I’m their lawyer, Bruce, at least for now. A new fellow is flying in from New York City. Ought to be here by this evening. Until then, the children have nothing more they can tell you under my instructions.”

With that, Henry DiSalvo, longtime friend to Robertson, Branden, and everyone else in the sheriff’s office, turned curtly and led his charges out the front door of the jail. That left Robertson and Branden standing alone in the pine-paneled hallway. Robertson read anxiety on Branden’s face and guessed it had to do with Martha Lehman.

Said Robertson, “I think you’d better bring Martha Lehman in to see me.”

“OK, Bruce, but we’ve got a problem.”

“She’s Sonny girlfriend, there’s the blood, and she left his house driving his car last night.”

“There’s more.”

“Give, Mike. Right now.”

“You know Evelyn Carson has been taking care of Martha Lehman since she found her outside her office early this morning.”

“Like you said earlier.”

“And that Martha was mute, again.”

“That was Martha talking on the phone with Sonny just now?”

“Right. But now she’s missing.”

“What do you mean, missing? I thought she was with Carson.”

“Caroline and Evelyn drove her over to my house to rest, and she took off when they thought she was asleep.”

“Blood on her clothes, and now you’ve lost her, Mike. That just tears it.”

“We won’t know it’s Juliet Favor’s blood until we have it tested.”

“‘We’ aren’t going to be testing anything, Professor.”

“Dan Wilsher has the clothes, Bruce. Missy can test them any time she wants.”

“I don’t want you having anything more to do with Martha Lehman, Mike.”

“I couldn’t know she’d skip out like this,” Branden complained.

“Yeah, well, now she’s gone. I ought to run the three of you in.”

“Evelyn’s got a right to treat her patient. To protect her while she’s vulnerable.”

“I still ought to run you and Caroline in. You for withholding evidence! Caroline for harboring a material witness!”

“If we had brought Martha right out to the Favor mansion this morning, at the earliest possible moment, what would you have done?”

“I’d have asked her about the blood on her clothes.”

“You’re not hearing me. She wasn’t talking. She was in shock. You couldn’t have gotten a thing from her.”

“At least she’d be in custody.”

Branden sighed. “This was just a couple of hours ago, Bruce. We needed time to bring Martha out of a stupor. Time to see what we were up against at the Favor house. And just as soon as I knew we couldn’t produce Martha on demand, I told you about it. So cut me some slack, OK?”

“I don’t want you talking to Martha Lehman, Mike. You’re to stay out of that part of this case.”

“OK.”

“I mean it, Mike.”

“We’ll find her.”

“No, you won’t. My people are gonna do that. You’re gonna stay the hell out of it. You can handle the college people for background, but that’s it.”

Branden studied the sheriff’s eyes and saw raw determination there, mixed with anger. He ruffled his brown hair and said, “All right, Bruce.”

“Nothing whatsoever to do with Martha Lehman,” Bruce said with emphasis.

“All right,” Branden said, allowing some exasperation to sound in his voice.

“And you’ll let me know what you find out about the college people who were at dinner last night.”

“Right,” Branden said, sounding distracted.

“Maybe you’d better just stay out of the case altogether.”

“No, look. I can still be of some help.”

“What do you propose to do?” Robertson asked.

“I need to call Caroline,” Branden said, and turned into the empty squad room.

Alone in the hall, Robertson allowed his mind to wander over aspects of the case. The blood on Martha Lehman’s clothes was a bombshell. And Martha had driven Sonny’s car back out to the Favor residence early that morning, when Juliet Favor had evidently been killed. Other aspects of the case seemed less important, but Robertson knew not to disengage from them now. It was a tangled ball of string, when taken whole. The problem was, there were a hundred loose ends in this ball of string. None as prominent as bloody clothes, but that would have to wait for Missy Taggert’s analysis before it meant anything solid in this case. But, in addition to the Martha Lehman string, there was the Sonny/Sally string, tied to a motive of inheritance? Or maybe just kids hating their mother. The dinner party string, tied to a couple dozen motives, all having to do with the financial reorganizations Juliet Favor had been poised to institute? Branden, who knew the players better than anyone, was the key to unraveling that tangled mess. There was also the physical evidence. That might prove to be the most promising. Dan Wilsher’s search of the house and grounds. Bobby Newell’s green pitcher and the other items at the scene. Which connected, Robertson thought, to Missy Taggert—crime scene analysis and the actual, official cause of death.

Robertson walked back into his large, paneled office and dialed the morgue in the basement of Joel Pomerene Memorial Hospital. After two rings, he heard Melissa Taggert answer, “Taggert.”

“Hi, Missy. Do you have any bloody clothes to test?”

“Don’t know anything about that.”

“One of Mike’s students turned up at Evelyn Carson’s office this morning with blood on her clothes.”

“Nothing like that here, Bruce.”

“Have you heard from Dan Wilsher?”

“No. Should I have?”

“According to Mike Branden, he’ll be bringing in clothes with blood samples to test.”

“Don’t have them yet.”

“Then I’ll have Ellie get him on the radio.”

“OK, but whose clothes are they?”

“Belong to Sonny Favor’s girlfriend.”

“Good grief, Bruce.”

“I know. Mike screwed up.”

“You’ll have to explain that one to me.”

Robertson gave her a brief rundown and said, “She’s been in no shape to talk, anyways, but now she’s also missing.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Caroline Branden and Evelyn Carson were taking care of her. First they couldn’t get her to talk and now she’s skipped out, and they don’t know where she is.”

“Evelyn Carson will do what’s best for her patient, Bruce.”

“I know that. But Mike could have brought her in sooner.”

“If she needed to be in the care of a psychiatrist, then Mike probably couldn’t have done that. Carson would be calling the shots, not him.”

“Mike doesn’t believe this girl could have killed Juliet Favor.”

“Why?”

“She’s Mennonite.”

“Then I’d have to agree with Mike.”

“I backed him off the case a bit.”

“I don’t have to tell you how much you can trust Mike Branden.”

“I just don’t like the idea of him staying involved with the Martha Lehman aspects of the case.”

“OK. Are you still coming for lunch?”

“I thought we could go home and grab something there.”

“It’s a working lunch, Bruce. I told you it’d be that way this morning. There’s too much that doesn’t make sense about Juliet Favor. You can bring something from home.”

Robertson grimaced. “I can’t eat lunch if you’re gonna be cutting something, Missy.”

“All the cutting is done, Bruce. Now, it’s just samples, instruments, and analysis.”

“If you promise,” the sheriff said. “Are you going to be able to finish by tonight?”

“What time’s our flight tomorrow?”

“Nine-thirty.”

“I’ll get enough done for now. Have you told anyone we’re leaving?”

“I told Ellie,” Robertson said. “I’ll tell Bobby and Dan later this afternoon.”

“Are you sure we have to go?”

“Like I said, Babe, I’ve got plans.”

HALF an hour later, Sheriff Robertson lumbered into the basement labs at the hospital with tuna fish sandwiches and a thermos of coffee. Coroner Taggert was seated at her desk in the little office off the larger lab, draped in a white lab coat. When she saw the chaotic sheriff, she instinctively closed several manila folders that she had open on her desk, and slipped them safely into a drawer.

Robertson picked up a stack of graphs, 8.5 x 11 sheets stapled together, and started turning the pages.

“No you don’t, Big Guy,” Missy said, and took the pages back. By the time she had those safely tucked into a drawer, Robertson had taken two or three microscope slides off her desk, and was holding one up to the ceiling light. She reached up, lifted it out of his fingers and held out her hands for the others. “Hand them over, Sheriff,” she ordered.

Robertson smiled and shrugged. “Just trying to help,” he said.

“I need your help in here like I need a hole in the head.”

“People say you’ve already got a few holes in your head, engaged to me.”

“Oh? Are we engaged now? Who told me?”

“I thought we might give that a try.”

“Give it a try? Sounds sooo romantic.”

“Ah, Missy. You know what I mean.”

“If you’re going to propose to me, Bruce Robertson, it had better be the most seriously romantic thing you’ve ever done in your entire life.”

“It’s like that, is it?”

“It is. Now, where’s my lunch?”

Robertson eyed the beautiful coroner for a long twenty seconds and considered the weight of what he had just heard. Done properly, it seemed, Missy Taggert had just given him better than half a chance of proposing successfully. “The most seriously romantic thing,” he repeated in his mind. He froze with a hundred amazing thoughts, and he seemed to lose his place in the world for a moment. He had held the idea out to her as a single impulsive rose, and she had transformed it to a dozen arbors in full summer bloom. Nuances were sometimes lost on Sheriff Bruce Robertson, but this one he got. He knew in that brief exchange that their relationship had transcended itself. They were to be engaged. He was to do it right. He gazed into her eyes and made a silent covenant with his heart.

For her part, Missy noted the reverence that had passed over his eyes, and she said, “Tuna fish, Bruce?” When his eyes were focused again, she was lifting the sandwiches out of their brown paper bag.

“Best I could do,” he said.

“It’ll be fine.”

Robertson sat down beside her desk and ate quietly, watching her eyes. She ate quietly, too. When they were finished, she stood up and walked into the lab, where Mrs. Favor lay under a white cover, head tilted to the left, the gash at the back of her skull lighted from above. Robertson came alongside, and Missy said, “She took a tremendous blow to the back of her head, here. A really vicious blow.”

Robertson leaned over to study the wound.

“Bone fragments from the skull penetrated the brain, but that didn’t kill her,” Missy said.

“There should have been a lot of blood, but we can’t find any out at the house,” Robertson said.

“There wouldn’t have been much,” Missy said. “Everything says she was already dead when she got clobbered.”

“Are you sure?”

“County pays me to be.”

“Then how did she die?”

“I don’t know, yet. The tox screens are negative, at least at this preliminary stage.”

“We were going to have you test a green pitcher and the contents of several sink traps.”

“I already did that. Those were the papers you rifled on my desk.” She retrieved them. “These are GC/MS plots for all the water samples. There is nothing out of the ordinary in them.”

“I thought that was going to be a good angle.”

“All I found was low levels of pesticide residue and the things you normally expect in well water. You might want to tell the family to drill a better well. This one is marginal.”

“No poisons? Sedatives?”

“Just water, Bruce, plus the trace contaminants everybody has in their wells. I’m afraid pure water samples are hard to come by, these days.”

“I think she hit her head on the foyer floor. You say it cracked her skull?”

“Something did.”

“Then how’d she get back upstairs?”

“She didn’t move herself anywhere, after this injury, Bruce. Aside from the fact that she was already dead, it would have been instantly fatal.”

“Somebody moved her, then.”