Lethal Lineage

by Charlotte Hinger

  The pews had been so lovingly refinished. We even had a start on funds for a stained glass window. Once installed, the lovely celadon blue carpet, a hue Josie always referred to as Virgin Mary blue, met with everyone’s approval. We had a real church.

  Bishop Talesbury bowed toward the altar again. Then he walked over to a small black satchel and drew out a very sharp knife. I couldn’t move.

  A stiletto.

  Chapter Three

  I closed my eyes. Prayed. Foolishly, I had left my gun at home. Helpless, I stood frozen as he turned toward me with the knife held stiffly, at an odd angle in front of him, tip upward.

  My God, my God. My blood started circulating again. Some small remnant of professional training kicked in.

  He nodded toward me, and turned back toward the altar. Then he genuflected, crossed himself, knelt, and raised the knife as though asking God’s blessing.

  My God. Did he plan to use it on himself? I started toward him, then stopped, afraid I might provoke him. He walked over to the splotch of spilled wine, inserted the tip at the outermost edge, and began to cut around the spill.

  Rage seared through me like a bolt of lightning. He was cutting the blot out of our precious new carpet. This carpet represented countless bake sales and fund-raisers.

  Inter-county cooperation is rare in Western Kansas. Each county is its own fiefdom. In fact, most tiny little towns and hamlets have a tribal sense of self-preservation.

  I wondered if this bishop could understand how difficult it had been to build this little four-county church. Agreeing on the location alone had required the diplomatic skills used to settle territory after World War I.

  Now this self-righteous bastard was mutilating our carpet.

  I usually know what to do. But thinking furiously, I realized it was too late. Too late. The damage had already been done. I stood rigidly unmoving. Tears trickled down my cheeks.

  He finished his work, raised the stiletto again as though he were offering the elements, then wiped it and placed it back in the satchel. He knelt, picked up the piece of carpet, and handed it to me.

  “Burn this.”

  My hands trembled as I received the remnant. Not trusting myself to speak I simply nodded.

  He started toward the anteroom where Mary had fled. It was the only changing room we had. He was on my turf now.

  “Sir, you can’t go in there.”

  He whirled, his face no longer pale but angry, distorted.

  “This was a sudden unattended death. There are things we must do. And besides, I don’t think you would want to.”

  Dumb son-of-a-bitch. Stupid bastard. Was I going to have to draw him a picture? There are smells, fluids when someone dies. My voice did not shake.

  He lowered his eyes and nodded his head again. Graciously. As though he were humoring me. He went to a far corner and removed all his vestments, carefully folding each piece. I began removing altar trappings.

  He finished. Underneath his vestments he wore a black cassock. Strange, oddly formal attire.

  His penetrating eyes scrutinized my tear-stained face. “This is just one death, Miss Albright.” Then he swept out of the church without so much as another word and drove off in a white Camry.

  Shocked, I watched from the doorway. He hadn’t said goodbye, I’m sorry for your loss, or offered one speck of comfort. He hadn’t even asked if I was all right.

  I went out to my Tahoe to retrieve the basket I’d brought to gather up the linens. I went to the anteroom and looked around. The floor was untainted. Obviously Reverend Mary’s layers of clothing and vestments had absorbed everything. I wanted to scrub the room clean, but could not until we learned the cause of death.

  The room was barren. Windowless. A small battered mission style donated oak table was centered on the east wall. A calendar listing the church’s seasons hung on a nail above it. There was a small wardrobe intended for spare robes in case the church experienced growth.

  I called Sam. “I’ll come back this evening after the picnic if we’ve heard from the coroner. And her car is still here.”

  “OK,” he said. “We can store the car in back of the office.”

  I studied the anteroom one more time, then closed and locked the door. I picked up the basket of linens, walked outside, and secured the main door of the church.

  I bowed my head in sorrow. Bishop Talesbury had not said one word, not one single solitary word over Mary Farnsworth’s body. I started to drive off, then realized I had left the mutilated scrap of carpet inside.

  When Talesbury had handed it to me, I had laid it on a piece of linen on a pew at the front of the church. I went back inside. I looked again at the mutilated sanctuary and picked up the jagged patch of blue carpet.

  Worried that I had forgotten something else, I walked to the anteroom, tested the door to make sure I’d locked it, then left.

  “Burn it,” the Bishop had said. Well, I would have liked for him to use his head. This was Western Kansas, for god’s sake. St. Helena, not Westminster Abby. Not high church. In fact, not proper in many ways.

  The hardest part of my job in law enforcement is not working with the criminal element. It’s working with ignorant people and that has nothing to do with their education.

  One would think that this man would have a clue and consider our circumstances. Notice the absence of a baptismal font. We didn’t even have an aumbry where the reserved sacrament was kept. No red light burning to indicate the presence of Christ. In fact this little church wouldn’t have been built here at all if other denominations had given us permission to use their buildings.

  In another Western Kansas county there’s a beautiful little church that was once shared by the Methodists and the Episcopalians in the 1880s. It’s located in Studley, named for Studley Park Royal in England. Western Kansas was once considered to be a grand place to send English remittance men and worrisome progeny. Kansas offered homestead land, theirs for the asking. A few got rich, learned to farm, and became Kansans. Which means proud of doing things the hard way.

  But a much larger group who settled Studley had one hell of a good time. They had high tea, brought their English ways to America, and even rode to the hounds across the prairie. They substituted jack rabbits for foxes and quite a few sank into genteel drunken poverty and were called back by their outraged fathers. More than one poor aristocratic English woman lost her mind to the wind.

  But since in this new century no denomination would let us share their building, we defiantly built our own wee St. Helena.

  Nervously, I glanced at the bundle of carpets and linens. I had purchased a copy of the church Canons from Morehouse Publishing, but it hadn’t shipped yet. I hoped there were instructions for handling this situation.

  I believed under the circumstances it was proper to bury Him. It? Him? The carpet contained the blood of Christ. Had to be disposed of in a proper manner. Couldn’t just heave the carpet into the trash for god’s sake.

  God’s sake? Was I drifting into profanity?

  Chapter Four

  I topped the hill and came upon Fiene’s Folly, our large three-story house rising like a white-walled castle on the plains. When I married Keith there was no question of where we would live, even though this house had been planned and decorated by his late wife.

  Some brides are reluctant to live in a house that bears another woman’s stamp, but I knew immediately it would be a colossal mistake to insist on moving elsewhere. It would have alienated Keith’s grown children forever.

  There is one room we avoid, of course: the one where Regina hanged herself. It was once her studio, where she painted, wept over her unhappy marriage, and stored all the trappings of her unfinished projects. I had decided immediately to banish every trace of this tragedy and transformed it into a spare bedroom with a sitting room. I hadn’t even discussed it with Keith. Just did it. Nor did he comment on it afterwards.

  The spare bedroom. That’s wha
t we call it. However, Josie is the only one who ever uses it, even when we are strapped for space during our huge family gatherings.

  None of his children said a word about the redecorated studio. One of my stepdaughters is older than I, and if any one of my inherited brood would have spoken out, it would be she. Elizabeth.

  For a brief period after last fall’s tragedies, which we now simply refer to as “The Troubles,” Elizabeth had actually been quite nice to me. But it hadn’t lasted long. I don’t like handling people and sometimes it takes all my energy to keep from slapping her.

  The other children, Keith’s daughters Bettina and Angela, and his son Tom, were only faintly disapproving of their father’s remarriage, but there was nothing faint about Elizabeth.

  To Elizabeth, her father marrying a woman twenty years younger had been absolutely unthinkable.

  But not to us. Not to Keith and me. I loved my rock-solid, two-fisted husband. He was proud of my work as a historian and my contribution to the community. In fact, everything would have been nearly perfect if I hadn’t decided to become a deputy sheriff so I could help solve a murder.

  He didn’t sign up for that.

  My work load had increased since my promotion to undersheriff. A deputy is on call. The hours are flexible. Being an undersheriff is a real job requiring a set number of hours a week, even though it’s not full time in Carlton County.

  Keith thought he’d married a historian. Which I was. Am.

  He still encourages my work at the historical society and tolerates my foray in law enforcement. But he worries. However, being either a sheriff or undersheriff in a small rural county mostly consists of boring routines.

  Accepting my alleged promotion was a mistake. But it seemed like a good idea at the time and I thought I could handle it. The county commissioners wanted our county to have a more professional image. They were embarrassed by the blunders made last fall and increased our budget.

  By now Sam had come to admire the fusion of my research techniques with police work. Truth was, I adored the old man and couldn’t bear to refuse. But beneath the surface, both Sam and Keith believe in protecting the womenfolk: we should get in the lifeboats first.

  ***

  A number of cars were parked close to the house and people started toward me before I could even manage to get my Tahoe in park. Through the involvement of EMT’s and peripheral persons, information had infiltrated the picnic.

  “Lottie, I’m so sorry. Do you know what happened?”

  “What happened? Just what actually happened?”

  “We won’t know until the coroner gets back to us,” I said. “And I’m sure he’ll want to access Dr. Golbert’s medical records.”

  “Well, you must have some idea.” Inez Wilson spoke sharply.

  Inez is our county health nurse. I thought a second before I replied, because whatever idea I put forth would be all over the county in an instant. In fact, since the residents of Carlton County had discovered Facebook, nothing was sacred.

  “I suspect a heart attack, Inez. Heart attack or a stroke.” In fact, I had no idea why Mary had died.

  I wove in and out of the throng of people, and ran up the stairs to change into jeans. The weather was holding. Keith had started setting up tables and chairs early in the morning and those coming to our four-county celebration brought their favorite pot-luck dishes. I only had one goal now; to get the discussion about Mary’s death over with and salvage what we could of the day for my niece’s sake.

  Josie stood beside the grill. She was a quick study. After her first disastrous visit to our farm, she’d figured out she had to leave her city clothes behind. I smiled at the label on her jeans. Two hundred dollars a pair, I would guess, and the dirt on them was not acquired by honest hard labor. The lightweight tan LL Bean pullover was just the right weight for the day.

  Even though we’re identical twins and people often can’t tell us apart, I’ve always felt she is more attractive than I. We both have black hair and dark brown eyes. I lost ten pounds last fall, so if anything we look more alike than ever, with our model’s slimness.

  However, Josie really is more glamorous. Sometimes I envy her flawless grooming and regular facials. She is what I could look like if I gave a damn. Which I do, off and on.

  She held her little Shih-Tzu, Tosca, and I laughed and rolled my eyes at all the admirers. Tosca was white and tan and her groomer had tied little ribbons in her hair and inserted spring flowers. Fake, of course, but then so was the dog. She wasn’t worth much except looking adorable, and reminding everyone that the economy couldn’t be all that grim if someone, somewhere, had the cash to pay for high-dollar doggie shampoos.

  Keith was grilling hamburgers and couldn’t leave his post, so I went over to see if I could lend a hand. He laid down his spatula and hugged me.

  “You’ve heard?” I hugged him back.

  “Yup. It’s all folks have talked about. Hell of a thing to have happened.”

  I didn’t respond. Just patted him on the shoulder, then started greeting relations. I gritted my teeth. Every last one of them had the same question.

  “What happened?”

  “We won’t know for sure until the coroner gets done.”

  “But she was so young! And looked plenty fit enough.”

  “I know. But you can’t always tell.”

  Edna Mavery came wobbling up. I’d privately labeled her the Bird Woman. In her late eighties she was incredibly frail with her arthritic joints jutting out like a baby bird’s. Thank goodness she’d given up driving. Although her mind was still sharp, I couldn’t imagine her having the strength to stomp on a brake pedal.

  Her skin was as thin as tissue paper and her white hair was carefully rolled into sausage curls and covered with a nearly invisible net. Her dentures clicked faintly and an embroidered handkerchief peeked out of her floral-printed, pastel crepe dress.

  Edna had declined sharply since I first met her. She lived in a little white house on the edge of Gateway City and for years when I drove past, I would see her out in her wonderful yard decorated with an eclectic assortment of rural art.

  A couple of mornings I’d watched her start down the steps from the porch into her back yard carefully, deliberately placing one foot in front of the other.

  Then when she was safely down, I thought she was going to jump and click her heels in anticipation of a day in her glorious old-fashioned flower garden filled with hollyhocks and sweet peas, pinks, Sweet William, and nasturtiums.

  Edna, along with three others, was being honored today for her contribution of land encompassed by the forty acres on which we had built St. Helena. The titles regarding these parcels had been a first class mess. Some of the boundaries were inaccurate due to ancient county line disputes. There were casual undocumented sales, gentlemen’s agreements, and careless abstract work by an inept clerk in the 1920s.

  By the time we’d sorted out who owned what, the startled landowners were simply glad to get out of paying back taxes.

  I went over to Edna. Her neighbor, Elmira Howarter, stood at her side, making sure she didn’t fall.

  “I’m so very happy to see you here today, Edna. You, too, Elmira. Are you still able to work in your wonderful garden? Would it help if Keith came over and helped till or are you going to have town boys do it?”

  Tears filled Edna’s eyes. “My hands won’t work right anymore. Might be my last year.” Her chin quivered.

  “We heard about Mary Farnsworth,” Elmira said. “The poor soul.”

  I sighed and resigned myself to discussing death every blessed moment the whole livelong day.

  Edna clicked her dentures. “Lottie says she had a heart attack,” Elmira said to Edna.

  “No,” I protested. “We won’t know for sure until they complete the autopsy.”

  Edna eyes brimmed with tears again. “Well, I know. It’s a heart attack all right. They say it can’t be done, but I know better.�
��

  “What can’t be done?”

  “Giving someone a heart attack. You can. I know of another time.”

  The hair rose on my arm. Suddenly my stomach drew into a little knot. “What do you mean, Edna?”

  Her voice quivered. Tears spilled over. “At the communion rail. When she spilled the wine. I think it’s because of what that man said to her.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “What did he say, Edna?”

  “He said, ‘I know who you are and I know what you’ve done.’”

  Chapter Five

  “The poor little thing. God rest her soul.” Edna clamped hard on her dentures to still her trembling mouth. “That’s when she gave a little yelp and dropped the wine. The Blood. I’ve only seen that once before. It’s a mess when it happens, I tell you.”

  Incredulous, I stared at her for an instant, then turned to Elmira. I didn’t want her to hear another word.

  “Elmira, would you mind telling Keith that it’s time to start? We’ve got a special table set aside for the land donors, so ask him to round up the other three and I’ll help Edna get over there.”

  I led Edna over to a chair and eased her into it. “Just sit for a while, Edna. Catch your breath. You’ve had a shock.”

  Josie stood next to Keith and I caught her eye and beckoned for her to come over. “Something has come up. I need to stay right here with Edna for a bit. Please ask Keith to say grace. Then I’ll say a few words thanking everyone who worked so hard and then we’ll have Tammy stand and with any luck at all, we can focus on her confirmation.”

  Josie went back to Keith, leaving me to concentrate on Edna. I was in pure cop mode now. I didn’t want to scare her, but I needed to follow up right away.

  “Who was this man, Edna?”

  “Don’t know. Never saw him before in my life. But then, I didn’t know most of the folks.”