“Did either the Ayers or Applewhite guys even do anything in the legislature that would affect Seth Halloran?” she asked, drizzling balsamic vinaigrette over her spinach salad and slices of grilled chicken.
“Not that I could tell, really. Ayers was appointed to two standing committees: Military Affairs and Apportionment. Then Caleb Applewhite was on both the Education and the Roads, Bridges, and Ferries committees. But I can’t see any of them affecting the sheep, wool, or textiles business.”
Serena, who was a shrewd businesswoman, agreed. “Were they mentioned anywhere else?”
“Sure,” I said. “Both Ayers’s and Applewhite’s names were all over the place in their respective journals, especially when presenting petitions for other citizens. Here, let me show you.”
I opened up my iPad and showed her a photo I’d taken of a page from the Senate journal of the Third Legislature. The page was single-spaced and filled with short, one-sentence paragraphs. No less than three mentioned Caleb Applewhite; I chose one and read it aloud.
“Mr. Applewhite presented the petition of Jane Tanner, praying for relief, which was read and referred to the committee on Private Land Claims.”
“Praying for relief?” Serena echoed.
“Asking for it to be granted, essentially,” I explained. “I took a picture of the page for my own reasons, because I’m interested in the so-called headright grants that gave all heads of families a certain acreage of land if they could prove they’d been living in the state of Texas on or before March of 1836.” I pointed to the screen again. “One of the other petitions presented by Ayers and two others presented by other representatives were also sent to Private Land Claims, so it gives me several potential headright grant names to look up when I have time.”
Serena nodded, though stifled a yawn. While Ben and I might have launched into a spirited talk over headright grants and the fact that they were awarded to certain citizens as late as 1842, my bestie was a smidge less enthusiastic. She and Josephine supported me completely and tried their best to listen to my ramblings about genealogy and history with the same zeal as I explained them, but it really wasn’t their thing. It was time to change topics to something that was entertaining to both of us.
“I want to steal your whole outfit. Tell me where I can find all of it.”
TWENTY-TWO
Revived from lunch, I wished Serena luck on the second half of her photo shoot, where she would take her current outfit and dress it up for a date-night look before changing into two more outfits. Heading back to my chair by the windows, I resumed tackling the journals of the Third Legislature.
By two thirty, when I cracked open the thick volume from the Senate’s second called session, my brain was feeling like mush again with mentions of bills, amendments, and petitions. Each time I came upon a set of petitions introduced by representatives, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason for their order of presentation.
Peppered between other petitions and motions offered by his Senate colleagues, I glossed over Caleb Applewhite’s name several more times.
“Mr. Applewhite presented the petition of William McEntire; read, and on motion of Mr. Applewhite, referred to the committee on Claims and Accounts.
“Mr. Applewhite introduced a bill establishing more permanently the seat of justice of Washington County; read first time.
“Mr. Applewhite presented the petition of Jane Tanner, and her heir, praying for a grant of land, which was read and referred to the committee on Private Land Claims.
“On motion of Mr. Applewhite, Mr. Pate was added to the Judiciary committee.”
Wait. I went back to the previous sentence. Jane Tanner. I’d seen that name earlier.
Opening my iPad, I looked at the photo I’d snapped of the page from the Senate journal of the Third Legislature’s regular session. I read it again, whispering the words aloud.
“Mr. Applewhite presented the petition of Jane Tanner, praying for relief, which was read and referred to the committee on Private Land Claims.” The date was November 9, 1849.
I glanced at the date on the second petition. November 21, 1850. This made the second time that Caleb Applewhite was linked to Jane Tanner. He’d made her petition again, just over a year later, which meant it hadn’t been granted the first time. This time, an heir was mentioned, too.
I took a photo of the page with my iPad, then on a whim I spent a few minutes on some of my favorite genealogy websites looking for Jane Tanner, adding in keywords such as “Bexar County,” “San Antonio,” “Texas,” and various dates from 1840 onward to see if anything interesting floated up.
Zilch. There hadn’t even been any families named Tanner in San Antonio or Bexar County, at least according to the 1850 census.
Wait—Senator Applewhite’s great-great-grandmother was named Jane. I recalled reading she’d married, too, though I’d only skimmed over Jane, thinking she wasn’t in the Senator Applewhite’s direct line. After secretly giving birth to her son, could the man Jane later married have been named Tanner? I found my digital file on the Applewhites and scrolled to the scant few lines devoted to Jane.
Yes, she had later married a widower named Charles Andham, a farmer, who’d had two grown sons, but no, Charles and Jane never had children together.
I added a note to myself to research the senator’s great-great-grandmother. I wanted to know more about this woman who became pregnant, bore her son out of wedlock, and then had to pretend for the rest of her life she was her child’s aunt instead of his mother. How awful that must have been for her, I thought.
Still, for now, I needed to stay on task.
I searched some more, widening my scope. The only Tanner from the correct place and time period I found was one typo-filled mention on an online genealogy chat-forum log from two years ago. The post, from a user named rootsfindr3577, read:
Looking 4 Albrecht/Albert Tanner lived bth NE bexar Co, San Antnio Tx arnd midl 19th cen
I wasn’t surprised rootsfindr3577 hadn’t received a single reply. Many posts don’t, even ones with more specific information than this one. Plus, while San Antonio itself was in Bexar County, the post was specific that this Tanner fellow also lived in the northeastern part of the county. However, in the mid-1800s there wasn’t a lot in that direction besides some cattle lands that would eventually become the small town of Selma, Texas.
Chewing on my lip, I nevertheless ran a search, combining the names “Albrecht,” “Albert,” “Jane,” and “Tanner,” and a few other keywords relating to Texas, on the slight possibility the two were connected.
My breath caught when several new hits came up connecting Albert and Jane Tanner, until I read that this Albert and Jane were born in 1932 and 1936, respectively, almost a hundred years after the Albert and Jane I needed.
Sighing, I rubbed the back of my neck. It was a quarter to three. I’d been sitting and reading for over two hours straight.
“I need a break,” I muttered.
The librarian who helped me earlier once more said I could leave my coat and books at the table. Deciding to take the capitol’s grand staircase to the ground-floor bathrooms, I wrapped my scarf loosely around my neck, slung my tote over my shoulder, and left through the library’s double doors that sported frosted-glass panes etched with an ornate pattern surrounding the Texas state seal.
Moving slowly while I checked my emails, I walked down the black stairs, their striking blue-green balusters touched with dots of bright gold, and over more symbol-laden terrazzo floors. Then at the top of the next landing, my phone vibrated. It was Ben, checking in on me.
The capitol was humming with tourist activity, with people taking in the architecture, testing the acoustics of the rotunda’s Whispering Gallery, and gazing up at the life-sized statues of Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston. I hugged the banister of the staircase to keep from being knocked over by a group of noisy middle-school kids, no doubt on a field trip of their own. Once they’d passed, I kept walking downstairs, focusin
g on Ben’s texts.
BAT IN THE BUREAU: Status?
ME: All is good with the amateur investigator.
BAT IN THE BUREAU: Funny. My class is about to start. Find anything at the LRL?
ME: Not much. C. Applewhite petitioned twice for a Jane Tanner over 2 yrs; referred to Private Land Claims office. J. Tanner nowhere (yet) on genealogy sites. Headright Grant stuff, maybe? Interesting for later.
BAT IN THE BUREAU: Good candidate for TX General Land Office records. Find anything else?
ME: Nope. But for my next mystery to solve, I plan to trace your mother’s link for the DAR. Be a lamb and send me her full name and date of birth, would you?
BAT IN THE BUREAU: Not happening. Will update you in a bit. Stay alert.
ME: Yes, sir!
I chuckled as I took the last few stairs to the ground floor. If that reply didn’t get another eye roll out of Ben, I didn’t know what would. I was still smiling as I glanced back up the staircase.
On the landing, someone was watching me. I glimpsed him for a split second here and there through the sudden mass of people moving up and down the stairs.
I noted dark suit trousers with a white dress shirt, wire-rimmed glasses, and a goatee that was barely more than neatly shaped scruff. I guessed he was in his mid-thirties, maybe a little younger. Someone bumped into him as they went upstairs, and his head turned to acknowledge their apology. He seemed vaguely familiar, but I wasn’t placing him.
My mind tried to recapture a fleeting thought that had raced past too quickly. A thought that had seemed innocuous, yet was now wrapped in unpleasantness.
Then I saw something else: a mint-green tie. Oh, it was only the guy from the library’s atrium who’d waved at the kids this morning. I felt my shoulders relax.
I smiled in polite recognition as the crowd shifted and thinned. He merely peered down his nose at me for a moment, in a rather judgy way. Then he was gone, walking back upstairs, blending into a crowd of tourists.
What was his deal?
I could see once he turned that he was younger than I originally thought. He had no lines around his eyes and his jawline was razor sharp. Either he was in his twenties or he was getting some seriously good antiaging facials once a week that Serena and Jo would die to know about.
I started to hitch my bag higher onto my shoulder, then stopped.
His profile.
Holding onto the banister for control, I whipped around the landing, my eyes searching for mint-tie guy. He was my attacker. The senator’s, too, I was convinced. Betty-Anne’s thief, as well, probably. Damn it, and likely in cahoots with Winnie’s killer!
There he was, already heading up the next flight of stairs, toward the capitol’s second floor. Glancing over his shoulder, he met my eyes. Then like an eel slipping through water, he moved around a group of shepherding parents and their children, and was up the last few steps.
Without pausing to think, I raced up the stairs, my eyes searching everywhere. He’d disappeared.
All the exits were on the first floor, where I was. With him on the second floor or higher, he’d remain trapped within the capitol building.
Unless he took the elevator down to the ground floor. Also called the basement floor, it had an exit of its own—he could walk out of the elevator, head north, and disappear right into the all-underground capitol extension building. He’d be able to come up for air again via the elevators in the extension’s own open-air rotunda. I had to get to the ground floor before he did.
I nearly bumped into two women as I made for the stairs again at a fast clip.
“My apologies!” I called over my shoulder.
I raced downstairs to the ground floor, jumping the last step of each flight. Hot from all my stair running, I whipped off my scarf and stuffed it in my tote as I headed toward the entrance to the extension, just like I had at lunch. There the building’s open, airy feeling got darker, even a touch claustrophobic. I hardly noticed, though, my mind focused on where mint-tie guy could be so I could …
So I could, what?
I stopped, slapping my hand to my forehead. Seriously, how stupid was I being? This guy was dangerous and I was chasing him around the capitol building like a freaking lunatic.
I needed to call Ben. I went to dial, but then stopped. I could practically hear him berating me for being so rash.
“We’re trying to keep you safe, Ms. Lancaster! Taxpayer money is being allocated so your little designer jeans–wearing self can live to shop another day, and you go and do the most foolhardy thing you could by chasing after this dangerous, possibly armed guy? What the hell were you thinking?”
The one and only excuse that sprang to mind was to tell Ben the guy couldn’t have been armed because everyone coming into the capitol passes through a metal detector … until I remembered with a sinking heart that anyone with a valid concealed handgun license could indeed carry in Austin’s public places, including the Texas capitol and extension building.
My imaginary dressing-down by Agent Turner continued with another hard truth. “He doesn’t have to be armed to hurt you, Ms. Lancaster. The night of Serena’s party should have told you that.”
I blew out a breath, feeling chilled as the adrenaline left me.
“Better get it over with,” I said. I went to tap Ben’s number when a text popped up. It was from Serena.
Meet me in the rotunda. Important.
That’s strange. Serena had said at lunch she and her photographers would be moving the shoot for her last two outfits to Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge, which spanned nearby Lady Bird Lake. What was she still doing at the capitol? And what could possibly be so urgent? Serena wouldn’t have said something was important if it weren’t true, though, so I aimed for the stairs again and called her. I’d call Ben straight after.
Half a minute later, I was cursing under my breath as I strode into the rotunda, which was less crowded than usual save for a handful of Korean tourists. I’d called Serena twice and she hadn’t answered. I was about to try a third time when a buzzing sound started echoing throughout the chamber. The tourists and I zeroed in on the center of the terrazzo floor.
The Great Seal of the Republic of Texas was the focal point of the six seals. It was a five-pointed star surrounded by two branches of leaves, one of the live oak tree and the other of the olive tree. In the middle of the star, gently moving as it vibrated, was Serena’s iPhone. I could tell because it had a custom case emblazoned with her Shopping with Serena logo.
What the…?
I ran to her vibrating phone and picked it up. The caller ID read “unknown.”
I tapped the button to answer the call. “Serena?” I said, looking around as if she would breeze in from one of the corridors, having accidentally dropped her phone on her way to the ladies’ room or something.
“Look up, Lucy,” a voice said.
The voice wasn’t Serena’s. It was male and rough, in both tone and delivery, and I recognized it. Still, I did as I was told, tilting my head like the children did this morning, up through the bright rotunda. I turned slowly until I saw him.
He was casually leaning over the balustrade of the third floor. He’d removed his mint-green tie and was now rolling it up neatly as he held his phone between his ear and shoulder. He was high up, too high for me to clearly see his eyes. He seemed to know this and watched me with a lazy smile.
“Where’s Serena?” I demanded.
“I’ve no idea,” he replied, almost lazily. “She was too preoccupied talking to her photographers to even notice me lifting her cell out of her bag. When you see her, though, do tell her she should be more careful to fully shut down her screen before she sets it down. You know, in case someone like me takes it.”
I frowned, even as my heart thudded with relief that Serena was okay. No doubt she’d noticed her phone was missing by now and was frantically searching for it. “Then what do you want?”
Behind him a family had stopped to consult their visitor’s guide,
making a woman with loads of unruly brown curls unknowingly stand back-to-back with this dangerous man, just for a moment. As the family moved closer to the wall to look at paintings of former Texas legislators, he answered, “I want what is rightfully my family’s.”
“Which family is that?” I snapped. “And is the woman who killed my friend Winnie part of your family, too?”
I saw his head jerk back in surprise, then his face relaxed and I heard a soft snort. He was amused.
The Korean tourists kept wandering around the rotunda, taking pictures with their phones at every turn. Two of them walked up to where I was standing, smiling and nodding at me, clearly not understanding English or having the slightest clue I wasn’t standing in the middle of the star of the Republic of Texas having a lark as I talked on a phone to the guy two floors above us.
The tourists stood on either side of me, pointing their camera phones straight up to capture a picture of the rotunda’s beautiful ceiling, where another star sat two hundred and sixteen feet straight up against a sky-blue background, the valleys of each of its five points holding a letter, spelling out T-E-X-A-S.
I moved away from them without taking my eyes off my attacker as he said, “Well, if you don’t know, Lucy, I don’t feel the need to tell you. But the proof is on that missing page.”
“Whatever,” I replied in an attempt to sound braver than I felt. I also decided to pretend I hadn’t already guessed the missing page held the answer to the C.A. mystery. I wanted to hear this guy say it. If he was going to terrorize me, I was going to make him work for it. “What’s the big deal about it?” I said. “For your information, while I saw a page had been torn from Jeb Inscore’s journal, I never saw hide nor hair of it otherwise.”
Winnie did, though, and she died protecting it.
“Neither hide nor hair, huh?” he said, his own accent thickening in response. “Well, Lucy Lancaster, professional genealogist, since you didn’t do your research thoroughly, I’ll do your work for you. It’s not just a page, it’s a letter, written by Inscore way back in 1849. His daughter Hattie found it and the daguerreotype after her dad kicked the bucket. She hid the letter behind the photo and planned to throw them both away, but your little press conference with that blowhard Halloran showed me they were never jettisoned.”
Murder Once Removed Page 21
