Isabella Moon (42 page)

Bill showed the warrant to the Birkenshaws’ housekeeper, who merely shook her head and let them inside.

Freida Birkenshaw kept them waiting in the two-story foyer. Once upon a time it would have overwhelmed Bill, with its marble floors, massive chandelier, and elaborately carved chairs that looked large enough to seat a race of giants. The only things in the room that appealed to him now were the sculpted bronze thoroughbreds displayed in lighted cases at either end of the room. He knew very little about art, but he could tell that they’d been done by a number of artists over a long period of time. One of the largest was a single, wild-eyed stallion who seemed poised to break through the glass and run through the foyer and out into the pastures beyond the house.

“Those will go to a museum when I’m gone,” Freida Birkenshaw said, making her way slowly, carefully down the stairs. The housekeeper hovered near her elbow, looking worried.

Bill had heard that a small elevator had been installed somewhere in the house, but he suspected that Freida Birkenshaw wanted to make an entrance.

“Paxton won’t know what to do with them, and Flora doesn’t like to dust them. She has to do it only once a month, but she still complains, don’t you, Flora?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the woman at her elbow. “But only because you stand over me like they’re babies. If you’d leave me alone, it’d take me only five minutes.”

When they finally made it downstairs, Freida looked over the search warrant. Bill waited without saying anything. There was nothing she could do about it, though he was surprised she didn’t have a lawyer on the spot.

“So you want to rifle through our drawers, do you, Sheriff?”

“I don’t like to do it, ma’am,” Bill said. “But I might as well tell you that I’ll be back tomorrow with a crew from the state police to search the rest of the farm.”

“So I get the personal treatment here at the house? How thoughtful,” Freida said.

“Is your son here?” Bill asked.

“I haven’t seen him since yesterday,” Freida said. “Why?”

Mitch cleared his throat. Freida looked to him and back to Bill.

“What does Paxton have to do with any of this?” she said.

“There are a few questions I’d like to ask him,” Bill said. “As long as I’m here.”

“Then it’s just as well he’s not here,” she said.

Bill made sure that he and Mitch stayed close to each other. With Freida following close behind with the housekeeper, the search was long and cumbersome. The warrant hadn’t been easy to get, given that no one, especially the judge, wanted to piss off the Birkenshaws.

They started downstairs in the more public areas of the house. Bill had never seen so many pantries filled with china and heavy silver. Mitch also seemed awed by all the drawers filled with knives, forks, spoons, julep cups, punch cups, and serving trays. They both were impressed with the late Mr. Birkenshaw’s gun collection, and this time it was Freida’s turn to clear her throat. Embarrassed, Bill elbowed Mitch and told him they needed to move on.

Out of deference to the old woman, Bill stayed out of her bedroom and sitting room, unwilling to believe that she would tolerate her son hiding anything in her private spaces.

They did a cursory search through the four guest rooms and the housekeeper’s room behind the kitchen before they took on Paxton’s suite.

“Does your son spend a lot of time at home, ma’am?” Bill asked, directing Mitch over to the nightstands on either side of the bed.

“Flora, I need a cup of tea,” Freida said. “Will you bring it up?”

Flora left the room.

“I don’t monitor my son’s comings and goings, Sheriff,” she said. “He’s a grown man.”

“Still, you must know who he spends his time with,” Bill said.

“If you’re asking me if he brings home a posse of homeboys to take drugs and play pool in the rumpus room on Saturday nights, no,” she said. “Paxton doesn’t bring his friends home. Women either.”

“Is there a particular woman?” Bill said. “Maybe local?”

“Why don’t you just come out and ask me if he’s brought Francine Cayley here? Isn’t that who you’re talking about?” Freida said. “I don’t know her very well, but Miss Cayley really doesn’t seem to be the type to be involved in the drug trade.”

“Do you like Miss Cayley?” Bill asked.

“My feelings about Miss Cayley are irrelevant, Sheriff. I’d appreciate it if you would get back to whatever it is you think you’re doing in my house so you’re out of here quickly. You’ve already noted that we don’t have a methamphetamine laboratory in the basement, so I imagine you’re close to being finished.”

“Mitch. Find anything?” Bill said.

“Yes, sir,” Mitch said. He held up a small glass vial. “Look’s like coke to me.”

“Bag it up,” Bill said, glancing at Freida Birkenshaw, who for once had nothing to say.

As Mitch bagged and labeled the vial, Bill said, “I’m going to need to take a look in these dresser drawers. Do you mind if I just set them on the bed?”

“You’re wasting your time and mine,” Freida said.

While Bill was pawing through a drawer stuffed with white socks and cotton boxer shorts, Flora came back with a tea tray and set it on a table.

“Tea, Sheriff?” she asked.

“No, thanks,” Bill said. Sitting down for a cup of tea and a chat with Freida Birkenshaw sounded like a special kind of hell.

The last drawer he had to deal with was a huge one at the bottom of a massive cherry armoire. It was the sort of thing Margaret loved, the kind of furniture she’d grown up with. They had a few of her mother’s antiques in their house, but Margaret had felt burdened by so many of the things her mother left and hadn’t wanted to move them to Louisville when she died. He wondered sometimes if Margaret missed living in a large house with people to wait on her. If so, she’d never said, and he was grateful.

Bill began to pull out piles of wool sweaters and regretted it immediately. There was nothing here. They
were
wasting their time.

“What’s that?” Freida Birkenshaw said from her chair.

“What?” Bill asked.

“That purple thing,” she said. “The one in your hand.”

Bill looked down to see a purple wad of woolly acrylic. When he shook it out gently, it unfolded to reveal a pattern of black and white Scottie dogs down its length.

“I’ve never seen that before,” Freida said. “It looks like a child’s scarf.”

“Yes,” Bill said. “It does.”

“Hey,” Mitch said from the bathroom doorway. “That Moon girl. You asked me about a scarf a few days ago.”

Freida stood up with the help of her walking stick. “It must belong to one of my great-nieces. Flora must have put it in there by mistake.”

She looked at Flora.

“I guess I might have,” she said doubtfully.

“Of course you did,” Freida said, turning back to Bill. “Give it to me before you start accusing my son of more nonsense!”

She snapped her fingers at Bill. He was reminded of someone reprimanding a dog. He handed the scarf to her.

“Hey, Sheriff,” Mitch said. “What are you doing?”

“We’re not here to look for scarves, Mrs. Birkenshaw,” he said. He turned back to the drawer and began refilling it with the clothes spread on the bed.

“Flora, take this,” Freida said. “Get it out of here.”

Flora took the scarf with both hands while looking nervously at Bill. She folded it and left the room.

Thus far there had been nothing to connect Charlie Matter and Paxton Birkenshaw except the comatose Delmar Johnston. The idea that Paxton Birkenshaw might have something to do with the death of Isabella Moon hadn’t occurred to anyone—except, perhaps, Kate Russell. But he suspected that had more to do with her dislike of him than any fact. Still, Paxton Birkenshaw, whom he had always thought of as an extremely shallow man, was suddenly revealing heretofore unimaginable depths. There were a lot of questions that he apparently held the answers to. Now, it was just a question of tracking him down.

He put the drawer back into the armoire and stood up to brush the dust off. Margaret would be interested (eventually—the tension between them couldn’t last forever, he hoped) to hear that the remarkable Birkenshaw house looked grand and imposing, but that when one got down to handling the things inside it, it was far dirtier than their own.

Freida Birkenshaw had retreated to her bedroom by the time Bill and Mitch reached the front hall. Before they were out the front door, Flora hurried into the hall after them, a look of worry on her face. Bill suspected it was a look she wore often, given the mercurial nature of her boss.

Bill stopped when she approached and leaned in close to him, her wrinkled mouth inches from his ear.

“I raised that boy from a pup,” she said. “But I can’t say he’s no murderer.”

“I appreciate your help, ma’am,” Bill said. “Nobody’s calling anyone names.”

“That scarf is safe as houses,” she said. “Don’t wait too long, though. I got a granddaughter wants to start beauty college next year, and ain’t no one else going to hire me for what Miz Birkenshaw pays me.”

“No, ma’am,” Bill said. “It’ll be no time at all.”

In the cruiser, Bill called Frank on the cell phone.

“Frank,” he said. “You get that report done?”

“We’re on our way,” Frank said on the other end.

Bill wondered a moment if Mitch could hear Frank’s voice, but a glance at Mitch told him that he was oblivious to everything but the intricacies of his own phone.

“Ten-four,” Bill said, and hung up. There was a burning sensation in his stomach. He didn’t like what he was about to do—it felt dishonest to him to set up Mitch. And now, with the complication of the Moon girl’s murder, things felt completely screwed.

“Your kids coming down to stay with you this summer?” Bill asked. They had just passed into town. Charlie Matter’s place was north of town, but they would have to go through town to get there.

“Hell,” Mitch said. “I don’t know what she’s got the kids talked into. One wants to go to camp, the other one doesn’t want to have shit to do with me. They’re cute as anything when they’re babies, but then they hang around their mothers for a while and damned if they’ll listen to their old man. You and Margaret sure dodged that bullet.”

How many times had he heard that kind of backhanded sympathy from people’s mouths?

“We weren’t exactly looking to dodge that particular bullet,” he said. “It just didn’t happen.”

“Well, don’t be too sorry,” Mitch said. “They’re sure more trouble than they’re worth.”

Bill decided to let it go. Mitch’s rudeness put a kind of distance between them, and right now, distance maybe wasn’t such a bad thing.

“Have you got anything on your mind you want to tell me?” he asked.

Mitch looked out the passenger window as the shop fronts of Carystown crept by. Traffic was heavy for a Tuesday.

“Can’t think of a thing,” Mitch said.

“You ever run into Birkenshaw on your travels? Maybe one of those disco bars in Lexington?”

“What kind of bars?” Mitch said with a laugh.

“You know what I mean,” Bill said. “You get around enough.”

“Sure. But you can bet your ass I’m not looking to hook up with rich white boys from Carystown,” Mitch said. “What are you trying to get at?”

“It’s a small world, is all,” Bill said.

A heavy-duty pickup pulling a cattle hauler blocked the intersection at Main and First Avenue as it tried to negotiate the narrow turn, and traffic was backed up almost all the way to the station. There was almost certainly an amateur at the wheel. One of the drawbacks of living in a town smack in the middle of some of the state’s best pastureland was the preponderance of farm boys who thought that if they could drive a tractor, they could drive anything. When they finally were able to make some progress, Bill passed the road to the station house without slowing down or stopping.

“I thought we were headed back in,” Mitch said.

“There’s something I need to take care of north of town,” Bill said.

“Well, I need to get back into the office a-sap,” Mitch said. “Will it take long?”

“We’re almost there,” Bill said.

45

WHEN PAXTON AND JANET
awoke in one of the guest rooms—Janet’s mood, too, had improved with their shower and the last of the coke, and she’d been more than happy to change their location—it was almost two in the afternoon. The bed was comfortable enough, but as soon as Janet saw how late it was, she was out of it.

“You can stay here if you want,” she said. “
I’m
going into work.”

Before Paxton could even raise his head from the pillow, she was on the bedroom’s phone extension telling Edith, in an authoritative voice that belied the fact that she was stark naked, that she would be at the office in an hour and that Edith should be ready.

“You can’t be serious,” Paxton said. “The day’s almost over.”

“Listen,” Janet said. “She’s never going to take you back, you know. She’s not even in your class.”