Murder Once Removed

by S. C. Perkins

  “You’re right, Gus. The photo might not be able to prove murder,” I said, excitement bubbling in my stomach at getting to reveal my other find, “but Jeb Inscore’s journal sure does.”

  That got me another two full seconds of silence. I was on fire!

  “Inscore left behind a diary?”

  “He certainly did,” I said. “That was what was in the last box belonging to Hattie Inscore, a journal from every year of her father’s adult life. They were all the definition of tame, except for the one from 1849. In that one, Jeb explained exactly what he saw that day in February. I’m sending you scans of the journal pages now, but they’re a little hard to read, so I’m also sending you the audiobook version.”

  “The what version?”

  “It’s my little joke,” I said, pulling my iPad onto my lap. “I recorded myself reading the excerpts from Jeb’s journal so you can listen to them as well as read them.”

  Placing my thumb on the tablet’s fingerprint-recognizing home button made the screen light up. Barely glancing down, I attached the recordings and hit send.

  “They’re on their way,” I said.

  “I’m an impatient man, Lancaster. Give me the gist.”

  “One gist, coming up,” I said, switching the phone back to my right ear. “Jeb wrote that he was around the corner of a building, hiding, when he witnessed the two killers standing over Seth’s body. After the bad guys left, that’s when Jeb brought his camera from his nearby studio and got the photo—which wouldn’t have been a quick process, mind you, because a daguerreotype’s exposure could be several minutes long. Then once he took his gear back, he was leaving to find the sheriff when the killers returned, this time with a draft horse. They walked the horse over Seth’s body to let the horse’s hooves and weight make enough damage to hide the knife wound.”

  “There actually was a horse? They made it trample Seth after they…” He paused. “Ye gods.”

  “My sentiments exactly. Anyway, this time the killers saw Jeb, grabbed him, and took him to their boss. He—the boss—was the man who’d ordered Seth killed and who coerced Jeb into lying at the inquest.”

  “Hang on. Are you saying this was a hit?”

  Before I could answer, Gus roared, “Then who was this yellow-bellied, lily-livered, no-good son of a biscuit who had my great-great-granddaddy murdered?”

  It took a moment for the ringing in my ear to subside so that I could hear my own reply. “Well, that’s the odd thing. While Jeb does give a few clues in his journal from 1849 about who ordered the hit, he was too scared to even write the guy’s name and only referred to him by the initials ‘C.A.’”

  “He gave clues? What clues? Do you have any idea who this C.A. character is?”

  I hesitated for the first time, wondering if I should tell him absolutely everything I’d found. Then I told myself I was being ridiculous, that Gus would handle it with the maturity of his years and experience.

  “No, I don’t know who C.A. is. Or was, rather. But I did some research based on the three main details that Jeb gave us about him and I was able to narrow down the field … I think.”

  When I didn’t continue, Gus said, “Lancaster, I don’t do well with waiting or suspense.”

  “All right. It’s important that you take this last bit of research I did with a few grains of salt, though. Just saying.” Before he could give me a crabby reply, I launched into my findings.

  “There were three main things Jeb mentioned about the man he called C.A. First, he said C.A. was a veteran of the Texas Revolution in 1836. Next, that this guy served in the Texas Legislature—at least those of the Second and Third Legislatures, and possibly more—but Jeb didn’t specify if it was in the House or the Senate.”

  “A soldier-turned-politician, huh?” Gus said. “They were a dime a dozen back then.”

  “True,” I replied. “Still, I have to say, the third clue was the most unique—and amusing—identifier. Apparently this C.A. had a big ol’ nose.”

  “Did you say nose?”

  “Yep, and his honker was passed down to his children. In fact, Jeb’s exact words were hilarious.” I opened the small leather-bound journal to the page I’d marked. “He said that it was ‘a most unfortunate trait, which even allows for the quick recognition of C.A.’s daughter from across a crowded—’”

  “Lancaster,” Gus interrupted, “I would sincerely appreciate it if you would get to the part that I need taken with a few grains of salt.”

  “Right,” I said. “Anyway, Jeb often wrote down the names of his customers who came in for their portraits, so Betty-Anne and I went back through all the journals, before and after 1849, and I wrote down any mention of a man whose initials happened to be C.A. I also ran some searches for men living in San Antonio in the 1840s with the same initials, just in case. The grand total was higher than you would think, actually, but most were easily ruled out by their age or being unmarried. By adding in the detail of the Texas Legislature, I was then able to narrow the field to three men. One of the three I was able to eliminate due to the fact that he never had kids and Jeb specifically mentions children, plural, with at least one daughter. Then that left two men. One was Cantwell Ayers, who was a member of the Texas House of Representatives.”

  “And the second man?”

  I paused, then said, “The second was Caleb Applewhite, who served in the Texas Senate.”

  I heard Gus suck in air, then his voice sharpened. “Was he…?”

  “The great-great-great-grandfather of current United States senator Daniel Applewhite? The man running for reelection against your son, Pearce? Yes.”

  On the other end of the phone came a silence like I hadn’t yet heard from him. Deafening would have been a good word for it. When it went into its third second, I teased, “Hey, now. It’s all conjecture, you know. Remember? A few grains of salt?”

  “I’m on a salt-free diet, Lancaster.”

  “Yes, but Gus, the clues fit both men. Either of them could be C.A. It’s likely Seth knew these two men, but there’s many miles between your great-great-grandfather knowing a man and having that man put out a hit on him.”

  “We still own land south of San Antonio adjacent to Applewhite lands,” Gus was quick to remind me. “Even Daniel Applewhite told me our families were once neighbors, so there’s no doubt Seth and Caleb knew each other well.”

  I countered with a couple of facts of my own. “True, but did you know Cantwell Ayers also had land in that area and he was a sheep farmer when he first moved to Texas, just like your ancestor? Heck, one of Cantwell’s daughters sold some Ayers land to Caleb years later, so it’s likely they all three knew each other, but that doesn’t make it clear which of the two men was the man Jeb called C.A.”

  Gus didn’t reply, so I reminded him again that more searching was necessary, adding, “There’s no guarantee we’ll ever know, Gus, so you mustn’t jump to conclusions.”

  Now I wasn’t liking the silence I was getting from him, and I was worried he was focusing on the Applewhites because of recent bad blood. The Applewhites and the Hallorans were two of Texas’s oldest families and, while I didn’t know of any feuds back in Seth Halloran’s and Caleb Applewhite’s time, the last two generations of each family had done their best to one-up each other in every theater their name had clout, from business, to philanthropy, to politics. Things hadn’t been too nasty, though, until recently, when Gus’s son Pearce decided to run for office against Senator Daniel Applewhite and both teams had mounted smear campaigns that had them slinging mud like two bratty little boys in a pigpen after a rain. Thankfully, Gus and I had steered clear of politics in our relationship, but I knew he felt the Applewhite campaign had gone too far a few times, which was made worse since Pearce was behind in the polls. Relief washed over me when Gus finally let out a tired sigh.

  “You’re right, blast it all. Well, is there anything else?”

  Once more, I gently flipped through the journal from 1849 belonging to Jebedia
h Francis Inscore. Near the end, I again came across the almost imperceptible gap in pages where the entry for October tenth had been torn out. I glanced at the surrounding entries one last time, reminding myself they were all day-to-day stuff, his biggest drama being that his mercury supplies for processing his daguerreotype photos were running low because his assistant had not ordered them on time. The chances that the entry for October tenth held anything fascinating were minimal.

  “Nope, I’m done dazzling you for now.”

  But Gus’s thoughts were still in the past. “Lancaster, what this boils down to is that Jeb saved his own hide and kept the secret of how Seth really died at the expense of my great-great-grandmother, who by then had a reputation as a grieving, raving widow for trying to convince the town her husband had been murdered.”

  “You might view it differently once you read Jeb’s journal entries, Gus,” I said. “He felt terrible about lying. Anguished, in fact. But a psychopath had threatened his family, so what could he do?”

  Gus groused a bit more and I murmured a few words of understanding. You wouldn’t think so, but it was part of my job to be compassionate. Even though a client’s ancestor might have died long ago, it didn’t mean that subsequent generations had let go of injustices to the family, be they real or perceived.

  “On the bright side,” I told Gus, “your great-great-grandmother Jennie took Seth’s textiles business, expanded it, and created Halloran Incorporated as we know it today. She was one hell of a lady, Gus. Tough and smart. Left your family a hell of a legacy, too. If it weren’t for her ending up in the situation she did, your family might be middle-class average Joes instead of the Vanderbilts of Texas.”

  I only got a harrumph, but in it I could hear his good humor had returned.

  “When will you have my full Halloran family tree ready for me?” he asked.

  “This coming Friday,” I replied. I planned to take tomorrow off and then put my nose back to the grindstone during the week to complete my written report that would go in the front of the book full of photos, letters, pedigree charts, census reports, DNA analysis, and the full family tree as far back as I could trace with certainty. The whole book—I called it the family record—would then be professionally bound with a cover of my client’s choice. As requested, Gus’s cover would feature the Halloran family crest, as would the website I was building for him that contained all the same information.

  “Good,” he said. “Eleven o’clock on Friday. My office. You’ll present your findings to my sisters, children, and whatever extended family can make it, and then we’d like to take you out to lunch.”

  “Gus, not even a yellow-bellied, lily-livered, no-good son of a biscuit could keep me away.”

  THREE

  I weaved unsteadily into my office, plopped down into my chair, and kicked off my heels while transferring a flowering potted plant from my arms to my desk. I would have liked to say that I’d done all that with some semblance of grace, but then I’d be lying.

  “Crikey. What happened to you?” asked Josephine.

  I grinned like a fool at my officemate. “Three-martini lunch, courtesy of Gus Halloran. I’ve always wanted to do one, and now I have.”

  Josephine Haroldson crossed the room and perched herself on the edge of my desk with much more elegance than I’d ever possessed, inebriated or not, and amusement thrummed through the London intonations of her voice. “How very Mad Men of you. Did you enjoy yourself, then?”

  I hiccupped, then giggled. “So much.”

  She tugged on a loose lock of dark brown hair that had escaped my normally sleek low ponytail. “Apparently.” Leaning over the plant, she breathed in the fragrance of the white, rose-like flowers blooming atop glossy, dark green foliage. “Mmm, lovely gardenia. Courtesy of Gus as well?”

  “Yup,” I said. “It’s the unofficial, official flower of the Halloran family. Gus said I’m an unofficial, official Halloran now, so he gave me one.”

  “My, my, don’t you look pleased with yourself,” she said with a laugh as my other officemate, Serena Vogel, walked in with her boyfriend, Walter Dalhauser. Both were holding cartons of Chinese takeout.

  “Where have you been?” I asked Serena, trying to change the focus from my current state.

  Serena pointed her chopsticks at me, a steamed dumpling caught between them.

  “I’m my own boss. I can go wherever I want. Now stand up so I can see your whole outfit.”

  I put my hand out to Josephine and she hauled me to my feet. The room only spun for a moment. I took that as a good sign. I surely wasn’t as drunk as I had been an hour ago, when I’d met some more members of the Halloran family and caught them up on their ancestor’s murder.

  The only part I really remembered was how one of them had thrust a microphone near my face so they could get my words down on tape, and I’d swatted at it like a fly before realizing what it was. Otherwise, the whole thing had been a martini-fueled blur on my end and a “resounding success” from Gus’s point of view. I figured, hell, if Gus didn’t have any complaints, I shouldn’t either.

  “Nice,” Serena said, munching on her dumpling as she surveyed the navy blue cap-sleeve dress she’d helped me find earlier in the week. A personal shopper and the author of the wildly popular blog Shopping with Serena, she was passionate about fashion, and positively drooled when she got to style someone like me, whose daily sartorial preferences centered around whatever cute shoes and top looked good with the cut of jeans I chose that day.

  “I’m happy you remembered you can’t pull off too many accessory statements and went with the gold stud earrings and cuff bracelet instead of all that and the chunky necklace,” she told me. She was looking chic herself in lots of chunky jewelry, wide-leg white trousers, and a blousy black silk top that did a wonderful job of disguising her constant midriff-area weight battles while emphasizing what she considered one of her best features: her just-the-right-amount-of-ample décolletage.

  Walter, his pale skin flushed from walking in a suit and tie in the still-baking October sun, asked me through a mouthful of lo mein, “Why can’t you pull off lots of jewelry?”

  “Too short.”

  “True that,” he said.

  Serena rolled her eyes. “I said petite,” she chided, shaking her shoulder-length blond hair, which today was styled into loose, beachy waves courtesy of her twice-weekly blowout. She pointed her chopsticks at my feet. “Now let me see you with the nude Manolo Blahnik heels I lent you.”

  “I wouldn’t make her do that if I were you,” Josephine said. “Our girl Lucy here is très ivre. I don’t know how she even made it up three flights of stairs in those four-inch heels.”

  Walter’s green eyes practically bugged out. “Seriously? She’s drunk?” He took Jo’s place to study me, parking his lanky, six-foot-three frame on the edge of my sturdy desk. Made of oak, it wasn’t as feminine as Serena’s white, scroll-legged writing desk that sat a comfortable distance behind mine, sharing the long bank of windows. Nor was it as polished and modern as Josephine’s campaign-style that commanded the space across the room, with its lacquered black top, stainless-steel crossbeam, and X-frame legs. But my big ol’ desk, aged with time and lemon oil to amber hues, had belonged to my grandfather, who had used it during his time as a newspaper reporter from 1939 until he retired and moved with my grandmother to a small town in the Texas Hill Country. The top still held all sorts of scars, including those from where his heavy typewriter scraped the wood and a large crosshatch he’d carved into the bottom right corner with a knife so he and the reporter who sat next to him could play tic-tac-toe for beer money when things got boring.

  I hiccupped again, and swayed. Good thing Jo was there to steady me. Then a flash of concern came over her face. “Wait. Lucy, you didn’t take those allergy meds before you drank, did you?”

  I nodded, breathing in deeply to show her how well it had worked. With the exception of a yearly bout of cedar fever in the winter months like every other
Austinite, I’d always considered my seasonal allergies to be mild. Then two days ago a windstorm kicked the ragweed pollen into high gear and turned me into a sniffling, itchy-eyed, dripping-nose mess. My officemates had listened all day yesterday with good graces to my sounds of nasal misery, but by ten o’clock this morning they’d started hinting they were considering inflicting bodily harm on me if I didn’t call the doctor.

  Well, Josephine hinted. Serena went into detail about how she’d kick my butt if I didn’t, even acting out certain moves. When she put one of her dress forms into a sleeper hold, I’d made the call and had taken my first dose of doctor-prescribed antihistamines laced with decongestant only minutes before lunch with Gus and his family.

  “Suck it, ragweed,” I said defiantly in the general direction of the outdoors.

  Jo bit her lip to keep from laughing. “Probably shouldn’t have done that, love.”

  “I can’t believe it. Lucy Lancaster is blotto,” said Serena. “I need a picture of this.” She reached for her handbag and her iPhone.

  “It’s not as if I don’t drink, you know,” I protested. “I drink all the time. At happy hours … dinners with friends … alone on the couch in front of the television…”

  Serena took the picture with a little too much glee. “Sure you do, Luce. But you never get drunk. A little tipsy from time to time, yes. But drunk? Never, and we’ve been friends for over half our lives, baby. Don’t forget that.”

  Walter, on his way to slurping another big hunk of noodles, added, “Nick never saw you drunk, either. He mentioned it on our last fishing trip.”

  I made a face. It used to be fun that Serena and I—BFFs since our freshman year in high school—were dating guys who were also longtime friends. Fun, until three months ago, when Nick broke up with me for Sasha-with-the-Fake-Double-Ds.

  I attempted a high-handed reply. “It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, Walter. Don’t you have some depositions or other lawyer-type things in which to attend?”