Lethal Lineage (13 page)
The next morning there was a note from Keith by the coffeepot, where I would be most likely to see it immediately:
Sam’s on duty. I’m at Henselys checking one of their horses. Call if you need me.
The phone rang. I groaned, hoping it wasn’t Sam. I had dozed off in the recliner on the patio and hadn’t moved inside until the wee hours of the morning so I was stiff and still tired. But it was Harold Sider. For Josie.
I called up the stairs and she took it on the extension. When she came down, her lips were in a straight line.
“We’ve screwed up,” she said. “All of us. Harold called Keith to go over some of the charges filed against Deal and Keith told him about the recall petition. Harold is furious.”
“Why?”
“He says that only three people can carry it, the signatures all have to be witnessed by those three, and the three have to be citizens in the county of the person they are trying to run off.”
Stunned, I sat down. “Oh boy. So the signatures of everyone you’ve coaxed into signing will no longer be valid.”
“No, according to Harold. And he does know what’s legal, Lottie.”
“How did this happen?”
“We googled ‘Kansas Recall Petition’ and downloaded the forms. But Harold says we obviously missed the part about the three sponsors having to be registered voters of that particular county.” Still in her robe she poured a cup of coffee. She patted her pockets, hoping for a stray pack of cigarettes and finding none, she headed for the stairs. “And he says we also missed the line that it was highly recommended that we seek legal advice first.”
***
Sam looked up for only a second when I came in. I stood in front of his desk until he was forced to give me his full attention. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve been looking at all our notes about Mary Farnsworth and I’ll be damned if I can find any motive at all for murder. She was as pure as the driven snow. I would swear to it.”
“Any leads yet on the missing man?”
“None,” He sighed and pushed his hat back on his head and reached for the pipe lying in the ashtray. His shirt, like most he wore, was pocked with little burn holes.
I cleared my throat. He had to know. “Sam there’s been a complication.” I told him about the error Josie and Keith had made in obtaining signatures for the petition.
He laid down his pipe, lowered his head, and squeezed his temples with his palms as though to ward off future headaches. “Oh goddamn it all to hell. We’re going to have to call every single one of those persons that have signed and tell them that there’s been a royal screw-up. The best we can hope for is that the Deals won’t find out who signed and retaliate.”
“But what can they do?” It was a foolish thing to say. By all the incidents in the file, I knew it was plenty. Everything from vandalism to lethal word of mouth against a business.
“Keith wasn’t going to be able to keep circulating the petition anyway, since he’s now a deputy. I guess the only bright side is that he and Josie had just gotten started. If there is a bright side.” He picked up a stack of papers and tried to align them.
“I don’t think there’s been a bright side to anything from the moment of our first church service at that church.”
“Josie up?”
“Yes.”
“Tell her to fax me those petitions. I’ll give them all a heads up right away.”
“Sam, you shouldn’t have to do this.”
“Shouldn’t ever have happened in the first place.”
I swallowed, well aware of his flash of regret that he’d ever hired me, let alone promoted me.
I suppressed the urge to apologize, and called Josie, told her what Sam wanted, made sure she knew how to use the fax in our home office, and gave her the fax number at the sheriff’s office. “I’ll be at the historical society,” I said, leaving Sam to his misery. Worse, leaving him to cope with the fury of the betrayed citizens of Copeland County.
***
One of the advantages of my work at the historical society is that I’m my own boss and can choose among tasks. There’s a category of work that I can do when I’m technically brain dead. Due to the combination of pent-up worry and anxiety over the bewildering events of the past week I looked forward to a Dumb Day. When I could catch up on donkey work. Transcribing tapes certainly fell in that category.
I put on headphones, scooted the telephone over so I could see the call light if it rang, slipped one of Edna’s tapes into a player and adjusted the volume. We had discovered early on that voice recognition software did not work well with the variety of voices and old terms and usages by persons long ago.
In fact, sometimes it was difficult to decipher hand written terms. I’d struggled with “inst.” in old letters and finally learned it meant “in the present month.” Many other old documents contained strange characters.
Edna’s voice was clear and her narrative contained precious details. She explained the process for separating cream. Women studies scholars would love her passionate explanation about the importance of “egg money,” which most women used to fund little expenses. Given what she had said earlier, I was surprised her husband “let her” keep it. Then she said:
My husband never liked chickens so he didn’t bother to go out to the chicken coop. I did all the work and the children helped me. Henry didn’t know how many laying hens I had. He thought I had about thirty, but I really had about fifty, and I gave Henry most of the money. I kept some back so the kids would have decent clothes and for little school expenses. My little chicks came through the mail every spring and now when I can’t get out in my garden, I think about the happiest times in my life and I would give anything to go back to those days and my joy at receiving those flats of fluffy yellow chicks.
I paused for a moment to catch up with the typing. I also made a note to see if baby chicks were still shipped live through the postal service. It had been a huge issue after 9/11 when flights were shut down and so many animals died in cargo planes. I frowned, aware of the sad undertone in Edna’s story. Her accumulation of little deceptions. From the mouse murder to concealing egg money. It was a miserable way to live.
There were three more tapes to go. However, I was interrupted by a call from Keith. “Just wanted you to know that all hell is breaking loose, Lottie. News about the petition is all over town and Deal is leading a crusade to have Josie and me thrown in jail.”
“For what?”
“Malicious mischief. And worse, he’s vowed to make trouble for every person, every business, that signed the recall petition.”
“It won’t work. He’s going to cause more trouble for himself. And if he’s smart, he would be looking ahead to the next regular election which will be in just another year. I’m sure people will oust him then.”
“I’m not. Think about it. He has a lot of family and a lot of supporters. And from the calls we’re getting people are scared. Not about physical danger, but economic retaliation. Hell, most of these poor bastards with retail businesses can’t afford to miss a single sale.”
When I hung up I poked the caller list and saw that he had called from the sheriff’s office, not from home. I poured a cup of coffee and walked outside to the corridor and stared out the exterior glass double doors.
Jonquils lined the walkways and only the cottonwood trees were withholding their buds. When driving to the office, I’d noticed a few lawn items on the sidewalk in front of the hardware store and there was a sign promising 20% off of garden hoses. Someone around this town believed in spring.
I walked back to my desk and forgetting that Josie was out of range, I called her cell. I was sent to voice mail so I dialed our house phone, but she didn’t pick up.
She would be livid over Deal’s retaliation. Certainly, she wouldn’t go home to Manhattan. I took a chance that she was on her laptop and emailed her that we had managed to rile up all of Copeland County. I got an IM back:
It’s not that I don’t want to leave this miserable hellhole. But I will not be run off. Besides, Harold and I are working on something. He has an idea.
I groaned, wrote that I had to get back to work, and signed off. I couldn’t stand anymore bright ideas.
I resumed work with Edna’s tapes. Her memories were not chronological and she flitted from topic to topic and dipped into times before her marriage. Much to my delight, she had included every last detail of preparing for box suppers.
Young girls would put a meal for two in a decorated box. The boxes were auctioned off at a community event, usually connected with a school fund-raising, and young unmarried men would bid on the boxes and the privilege of eating with the girl.
Although it was disguised as random and anonymous, naturally most of the bidders knew which blushing damsel had prepared which box. In some cases, it was the community’s first clue to budding romances and sometimes, it was a young lady’s first indication of a potential suitor:
I had told Buddy Astor which box was mine. We was already sweet on each other. He was…
She broke off. Somehow I knew what would be coming next. It did:
Buddy went up to one dollar and fifty cents. It was a lot. A fortune and he was just starting to work his folk’s hard-scrabble farm. Everyone there knew what it meant. We had just started making eyes at each other, but I knew, knew if he was willing to pay that kind of money, the next step was keeping company.
Then Henry stood up and bid two dollars. Just like that. I looked at Buddy and he looked like he was about to pass out. He didn’t have that kind of money and the next bid would have to be fifty cents higher. So Henry won the box. And me. We didn’t have much to say but he didn’t seem to mind. I was real pretty back then.
After that, my folks never let up. Henry already had a fine start. Three hundred acres and a team of work horses and a pair of matched mules and thirty pigs. From then on, Buddy acted like I was just a passing whim. He just plumb gave up. Looked right past me when I saw him on the street.
So I showed him. Me and Henry got engaged and then got married.
***
She could have talked to Buddy
. Poor timid girl who became a poor timid woman, never standing up to her husband.
Margaret would be here at one o’clock. We closed during the noon hour. I put away all of my equipment and decided to go back to the farm as apparently it would not be necessary to take a shift at the sheriff’s office.
An old hymn, “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” echoed through my mind as I drove toward home. It wouldn’t hurt me to try a little solitude. Silence.
I drove out of my way and headed for St. Helena.
But when I approached I saw a white Camry parked in front of the church.
Bishop Talesbury.
This man had no business here. I parked at the outer edge of the parking lot. I considered calling Sam to inform him that there might be a “situation” and then remembered it was Keith who had called to tell me about Deal’s threats. I wasn’t ready to cope with my husband’s paranoia about my well-being.
Since I hadn’t planned to work at the sheriff’s office today, I didn’t have my .38 with me. It’s bad form for an editor to be locked and loaded when persons come in to submit their family history. But I always had a gun in my purse.
I quietly shut the car door and dug out my little Airweight, just in case. I walked toward the front door, then soundlessly pulled it open and peered inside. My eyes struggled to adapt to the semi-dark interior.
There was no sign of Talesbury. The anteroom door was closed and only I had the key, but it was the only place where he could be. Then I heard a sound directly in front of the altar. A moan. I looked down the aisle and saw Talesbury lying full-length face-down on the carpet with his arms out-stretched. Stunned, I started to rush toward him, then stopped, realizing the groans were in Latin. He was not injured, but prostrate before the Lord.
He heard me, slowly rose to his feet, turned, and his hollow-eyed gaze met my own shocked eyes. He wore a cassock and looked ghastly. Otherworldly. Guilty. Like he had been caught in an unclean act.
Profoundly ashamed, I put my gun back in my purse. “Sir, I am so sorry. I did not mean to intrude.”
He had already pulled himself back together. The moment of vulnerability passed. “Miss Albright,” he said in acknowledgement, with a slight nod of his head. He walked toward me without a trace of friendliness, clearly heading for the door.
When we were adjacent, I stopped him. “Bishop Talesbury. I have a few questions about Mary Farnsworth’s death. The KBI does too. We haven’t known where you were staying. We don’t have a phone number where we can get ahold of you.”
He stood motionless, not volunteering a thing. I dug out a little notebook. “We need to know where we can contact you. Where are you staying?”
“With my nephew, Sheriff Irwin Deal.”
I can’t assume a poker face at will, like Josie. But I did a pretty good job. And I certainly didn’t yield to the desire to slap him. Resenting his arrogant distance, next I went for the information that plagued me the most.
My heart pounded. “Sir, did you know Mary Farnsworth?”
He stiffened, lost even more color from his blue lips, and stared straight ahead.
“Yes, I knew Mary Farnsworth,” he said softly.
He swept out the door.
Dazed, I drove home. I couldn’t think straight. In fact, I was too bewildered to think at all. All I could manage was a merry-go-round of questions and fragmented facts. I’d already reviewed them endlessly, but they kept circling around in my mind.
The decision to build St. Helena on the corner of four counties was innocent, but stupid. My original assumption that Reverend Mary had died a natural death was understandable, but stupid. As a historian I knew better than to make assumptions about anything. And I was certainly stupid to have assumed there was no connection between Talesbury and Reverend Mary.
And it was beyond stupid to hope Josie would simply go back to Manhattan.
The KBI, everyone, needed know about this immediately. When I arrived home and went inside, Josie was waiting.
Simultaneously, we started to speak, “I’ve got news…”
She laughed. “You go first,” I said.
“Harold thinks Mary may have been in a witness protection program.”
Dumbfounded, I set my purse on the kitchen table. “My news trumps yours,” I said. “I think.” I tried to process Harold’s idea. It would make sense. Then I told Josie about the episode with Talesbury at the church.
“If she was in the program, it would explain why she was so jittery during the procession,” she said. “Her nerves went beyond uneasiness over Talesbury’s overbearing ways.”
“We’ve got to find out what their connection was.”
“That shouldn’t be hard to do,” she said. “Just haul him in and ask him.”
“I can’t because of this quarrel over jurisdiction. Not with Sheriff Deal insisting the murder took place in his county.”
“But the KBI will have authority.”
“Yes.” Then I thought again about Talesbury’s strange comment the day of the service that “this was just one death.”
***
While Josie phoned Harold with the latest developments, I went upstairs and changed into old jeans and went outside to pull weeds from around my hyacinths. I removed thatch to give my summer daylilies a chance if they chose to make an appearance and the rabbits weren’t plotting against them.
My mind cleared enough to gain some objectivity. I straightened and rubbed my back. The smell of earth, the growing pile of weeds, the small patches of green promising the arrival of spring restored my perspective.
I went inside and made a glass of ice tea and sat at the kitchen table. Josie came into the kitchen.
“Want some?” She shook her head and lit a cigarette. Tosca came in and looked at her first and then me as though trying to decide when one of us had the greatest need.
Josie went to the patio doors and gazed outside. I followed and saw a platoon of rabbits springing out of my windbreak. Undoubtedly setting up their next assault.
“Is Harold making any progress?”
“No, it’s way too soon, but he’s less sure about the witness protection program being a possibility after I told him about the Talesbury connection.”
“I feel like I’m walking across land mines.”
“You are,” she said flatly. “But for now, it’s as dangerous to start back as it was to begin all this in the first place.” She went to the window, then back again. Edgy, touchy, not like herself.
“Storm coming up,” I said. She studied the clear blue sky. Only a few stray clouds floated serenely toward the east. I laughed. “It’s the electricity in the air. It gets under your skin. Makes you crazy. That’s why you can’t settle down.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me.” There clearly was and Tosca thought so too. She lay stretched out with her head on her paws, anxiously watching Josie’s every move.
“It’s not just the weather,” she said. “I’ve collected all the local papers in every town I’ve visited. And there’s so many things I don’t understand. Some of the issues that I haven’t even heard about sound like a matter of life and death out here.”
“Like what?”
“Wind. Wind energy. Wind farms. What do people have against wind farms out here for heaven’s sake? It would boost local economies, it’s green, and it’s so logical. This has to be one of the best places in the world to harness the wind.”
“People are fighting it tooth and toenail in the Flint Hills, aren’t they?” She had to be aware of the controversy there. Manhattan was in the heart of this treasured area. The Kansas Flint Hills region extends from near Nebraska down into Oklahoma. It’s the last large expanse of tallgrass prairie in the nation.
Keith has long envied the ranchers lucky enough to own land there. The lush grass, whose roots reach down on limestone and chert, contains calcium and minerals and produces some of the finest beef in the world.
“The Flint Hills are a different matter altogether,” she insisted.
“Many farmers feel the same way about the land out here. I don’t know where to start. But different people in both parts of the state have marshaled the same arguments.” There were concerns about driving away wildlife, causing cancer, general ugliness, noise pollution from the equipment, and odd research about vibro-acoustic disease—wind turbine sickness. Opponents say there’s a constant subtle noise that causes memory loss in little kids and migraines in young mothers.
“And I suppose there’s another side?”
“Absolutely. Economics for one thing. Folks who allow companies to use their land for wind turbines get generous payments.”
We moved from there to ethanol plants and then to immigration. It was rather pleasant actually, to be discussing something other than killers and intrigues.
But, finally, we came back full circle to the elephant in the living room. Mary Farnsworth’s murder.
We traded theories, and shot each one down while we waited for Harold to call back about the witness protection program.
We both jumped like we’d been shot when the phone rang. Josie answered. She listened intently. “When will you know?”
She hung up. “Harold says this will take several days. It’s one of those ‘why do you want to know’ situations.”
Keith came home and whistled as he hung his jean jacket on a peg in the mud room. Tosca was ecstatic and nearly wagged herself to death until he reached for her.
“Big discussions going on, I see.”
“Not that big. We’re just wading through the major issue of the day. The week. Did you have a good day at the office?” I managed to look him squarely in the eye. Keep my voice pleasant.
“Yes, in fact it was rather boring.”
“It usually is. But I had an interesting run-in on my way home.” I told him about Talesbury. He listened intently.
“There’s something terribly wrong with the man,” he said. “Or something has gone terribly wrong in his life.”
Josie nodded. “Prostration. Deep penance. Unbearable guilt. This disconnect from people. There’s something we don’t know about.”
***
The next day Keith announced he was willing to be on duty again. “If you don’t mind.” His glance was cautious.
“Fine. In fact, I’m starting to make a little headway on stories. I have three more tapes to go for Edna before I start on Chip’s story. And with any luck at all, Myrna won’t phone in any more changes. Thank you for volunteering.”
He checked to see if I meant it. Then nodded and headed for the garage. I watched him drive off. He was making the ultimate sacrifice in sitting at a desk with relatively little to do. It showed how worried he was about my safety and how confident he was that no one would ever cross him.
He was wrong. He came roaring back in the drive in about twenty minutes and crashed through the back door. His face was flushed, furious, and he headed to his gun rack.
“What’s wrong? Tell me what’s wrong?” I pressed my fingers to my throat. Tosca leapt into Josie’s arms and we both stood there wide-eyed as he grabbed a rifle.
He started swearing then, and used words he’d never used in front of Josie before. He stood there, shoulders slumped, then put the rifle back in the case.
“Come look,” he said finally. “Just come look.”
Wordlessly, we followed him out to his Suburban. He drove down the road to his newly planted oats field. He depended on it to start feeding cattle before they switched to corn.
Although Kansas has a moratorium on wells until the state decides what to do about the declining level of the Ogallala aquifer, Keith’s family had grandfather irrigation permits. A complicated circle pivot system rotates around the oats field. It’s massively expensive and although Keith had once spent an entire evening explaining all the parts and reasons and advantages, most of it was over my head.
But it was clear the circle pivot wouldn’t be rotating this year. Someone had plowed swaths diagonally across the field back and forth. A few tracks were circular for good measure. Buying oats on the market would be a major expense. And planting oats was tricky. It was too late to do it over.
Plus, one can’t just transfer circle pivot equipment to another field because the set-up depended on a well. We only had one well. And there was no way to harvest any oats that came up now, because the rows were ruined.
Whoever did this, knew what he was doing.
“They used a V-ripper,” Keith said. “Can’t be too many of those around. I’m going to find the bastard that did this. And it shouldn’t take long.”
I breathed a little easier. At least he was no longer threatening to blow someone’s brains out.
Josie solemnly looked at the ruined field. “It’s so mean. So malicious.”
“Yes,” I said. “Exactly. And this has all the earmarks of a Deal.”
“I’m afraid this isn’t all that sick son-of-a-bitch has in mind,” Keith said. “If this is a sample of what he intends for any of the petition signers, all hell is going to break loose.”
