Lethal Lineage

by Charlotte Hinger

  My office is inside the Carlton County courthouse in what can only be described as an old vault. The room is narrow and the ceiling is laced with old pipes. It is painted institutional green and the floor is covered with yellowing tiles, many of which have corners torn off to reveal the black tar paper underneath. Unsanitary, depressing, and trippable.

  I could afford to repair and redecorate the whole place. For that matter, I could afford to build a decent office somewhere outside the courthouse, but I was in a battle to the death with the county commissioners. They refused to grant one penny for “expendables” and I kept submitting the same budget requests year after year. The county benefitted plenty from the plethora of electronics I had brought in to use. All I asked was that they do right by their responsibility to keep the place up.

  The first person to walk through the door was Chip Ferguson, an ancient cowboy so thin I’d considered the possibility that he might be anorexic. The old bachelor wobbled a little when I rose to shake his hand.

  “Miss Lottie.” He touched the brim of his hat. His pearl-buttoned western shirt was clean, but frayed. He surveyed the pictures hanging on the walls. A can of Scholl chewing tobacco left a white outline on the back pocket of his faded jeans. His straggly little beard did nothing to improve his appearance. He handed me five pages written on lined tablet paper.

  I was thrilled that all kinds of persons were contributing their family stories. Some counties used county history mills with fill-in-the-blanks forms to create standardized stories. The responses usually came from affluent established families. But in Carlton County we used a home-grown format exclusively. All the fillers and illustrations came from our own residents. The pages were sprinkled with clippings from old newspapers.

  To my amazement, quite a number of spinsters and old bachelors like Chip came forward. It was as though they were eager to leave a written record since they had no family to bear witness to their lives.

  I glanced at the pages. “Would you mind staying for about ten minutes, Chip? While I look this over? I may have questions.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  I went to the copy machine and made a working copy of his story. Once in a while something came in that was highly unusual and this was one of those times.

  There was no white space on his pages. Absolutely none. No space between the lines, no margins, and his handwriting was tiny. This man was either very rich or very poor. He did not come to town often and the heels of his boots were lop-sided and practically worn off.

  I wrote “working copy” at the top with a red ink pen. This was an instance when the paper, the manner and size of writing, said as much about the person as the writing itself. I was not an expert in handwriting analysis, but sometimes the evidence was very, very obvious.

  His first sentence was about money. His first dollar. And the rest of the copy followed the same theme. It was hard to read because of the crowding. He sat stiffly, his hat balanced on his knee, his mouth a thin line. I usually have tremendous sympathy for a person’s struggles and emotions. It’s an instant insight into their souls and I expected to pick up on this man’s loneliness and despair.

  But as I read the totally objective account of how he had deposited the original dollar here, then there, then bought sheep, then land, then gold, and as I kept glancing at his face, I realized he was a predator. He would never ever allow anything to come between him and his money. Certainly not a wife and family. Suddenly chilled, I laid down the story.

  “Very impressive,” I said carefully. There was no doubt in my mind that he was the wealthiest man in Carlton County and with this story, he intended to announce that fact for the first time. I did not make the mistake of trying to draw him into conversation.

  “Thank you so very much,” I said, rising. “No questions on my part. Your accomplishments are quite amazing.”

  He nodded. Clapped his hat back on his head, turned, then paused in the doorway, as though he wanted me to know something, then changed his mind and started down the hall. A small boy slammed into him.

  “Jimmy! How many times have I told you not to run. Apologize to that nice man this very minute.”

  He refused. Head bowed in shame, hot tears trickled down his flushed cheeks. He put his hand inside his mother’s and she gave him a tug. “Right now, Jimmy.”

  The boy looked up and up and up. “A cowboy,” he marveled. “A real cowboy.”

  She tugged on his hand again.

  “Say it, Jimmy.”

  “I’m sorry, mister cowboy.” He stared in wonder as though Chip had just stepped out of an old TV western. “Can I ride your horse?”

  “Jimmy! Please excuse his manners.”

  “No harm done, partner,” Chip straightened to his full height, tugged on his hat and nodded to Myrna Bedsloe and walked on down the hall. But not before I had seen the momentary proud softening in his eyes when he’d looked down at the boy.

  Myrna was my next appointment and she came in with her usual entourage. A little boy clung to her skirt, she carried another, and little Jimmy followed. All three were adorable in matching outfits, and they all had her bright red hair and hazel eyes.

  “That man? Was he Chip Ferguson?”

  “Yes.” I was surprised by her interest.

  “He tried raising sheep about five years ago, but got out of it. I wondered why he quit.”

  And I wondered why she cared. Myrna talked non-stop while I made working copies of her husband’s story that started with his grandparents and ended with the birth of their own children. They were the least likely family I knew to have skeletons dangling from trees.

  “I guess my own family’s story is sort of dull,” she said. “But we’ve just always had good luck. We’ve been blessed.” The boy she held tugged at her hair, and she pulled his hand away and nuzzled his neck until he giggled. “You’re a blessing. Yes you are, even when you’re full of the devil.”

  “Candy?” I mouthed, not wanting to suggest it if she didn’t allow sweets between meals.

  “What about it, boys? Think you’ve been good enough to pick out a sucker?”

  “Yes,” they both chorused together.

  I opened my desk drawer and pulled out an assortment of Tootsie Pops. They said “thank you” with a little prompting and waved goodbye as I watched them walk down the hallway.

  If only there were more people like Myrna in the world. “All blessings and good luck,” she’d said. No problems. And she’d meant it. I could see it in her happy face and those of her kids. “No problems.”

  The truth of the matter was that she had been taking care of her husband’s mother ever since they were married. A nasty old woman with Alzheimer’s who could aggravate a saint. Her husband was a broody man who second-guessed every decision they made on the farm.

  If he’d planted wheat, he immediately regretted that it wasn’t milo. If he borrowed operating money, he wished he’d skimmed by and done without fancy fertilizer. I knew this because he managed to find time to come to the coffee shop every day and complain about himself. Not about God, or the world, but himself. And of course every word he uttered was transcribed, verbatim, into the town gossip mill. Twitter had nothing on the speed of our town’s information network.

  “Well, I’m a dumb son-of-a-bitch,” he’d begin, according to the husband of my office manager, Margaret Atkinson “They ought to take a rope and hang someone as dumb as me.” Then he would launch into his latest farm decision, his antenna aquiver for opinions, to tell him if he’d made a mistake or had lucked out.

  Myrna held his world together.

  This woman swore she had a blessed life. But she worked like a galley slave and most people knew it. No one would be able to keep up that kind of existence forever.

  I watched her cheerfully herd her sons down the stairs, and stood there for a moment, thinking about the two persons who had just dropped off stories. Chip would be shocked that I considered him as ruthless as
any Mafia don and Myrna would be really shocked to know I saw her as teetering on the edge of tragedy.

  Margaret came in and picked up a pile of newspapers she would scan for clippings in her home. “So what did Myrna have to say?”

  “Not much. She changed Tim’s family story. Again.”

  “That’s what? The third time?”

  “Uh-huh. Until it goes into print, or I’ve done some work on it, I guess it doesn’t matter.”

  “Changing that story should come natural to her.” Margaret said. “Considering the front she puts up about her husband.”

  I didn’t reply, because I didn’t want Margaret to get started on Myrna. My office manager can be a dreadfully unkind person, but she was often right. She simply looked for the worst in people, and of course it’s always there.

  “Folks think Tim depends on her, but that’s not so. Myrna needs to be married to a weak man so she can be the star. She needs to hear ‘ain’t that pitiful. She’s little better than an indentured servant. Just think what she might have been.’”

  Margaret left with the papers. I hoped she was wrong. But there was something unnerving about Myrna’s relentless cheerfulness.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Was Margaret right? I knew how easy it is to read into other persons’ lives complications based on our own. My own curiously difficult marriage that only Keith and I understand, or think we do, sometimes causes me to look at situations with rose-colored glasses.

  Strangers. We were all strangers to each other and ourselves, I thought savagely as I stared at my face in the mirror. I dug out a brush and unpinned my chignon, attacked my thick black hair, then braided it while I focused on the collection of strangers besides my immediate family who were driving me crazy: the Reverend Mary Farnsworth, Bishop Ignatius P. Talesbury, and an unidentified man who had triggered a series of events that had set the Kansas Bureau of Investigation reeling.

  Edna Mavery was my last appointment of the morning. She had asked for personal help with her story because she had trouble grasping a pen.

  Her old rheumy eyes were wet when she came through the door. Alarmed, I rose and squeezed her hand as I put my arm around her shoulder and ushered her over to a chair.

  “Edna, you didn’t have to come in today,” I said gently. “We can postpone this. Give yourself a little more time.”

  “Don’t need no more time. Can’t get that poor woman’s face out of my mind. She was the sweetest person.” Her eyes brimmed again.

  “Yes, she was.”

  “Have you found that man yet?”

  “No, I’m sorry to say that no one remembers a thing about him. Not a thing. But let’s get on with your story.” I spoke quickly, suddenly realizing that very few people knew Mary Farnsworth had been murdered instead of having a heart attack. There certainly was no need to burden this poor woman with that information.

  “Do you mind if I record all this?”

  “No,” she sniffed. “I’m just sorry you’re going to have to go to all this trouble just because my hands won’t work right.”

  “Nonsense. I write about thirty-five percent of the stories.”

  “I can’t dig and pull weeds anymore. Could last year. Now my son in Wichita takes care of all my bills. My social security, everything, goes through some kind of a fancy on-line bank. But as long as I have my little house, I do OK.”

  It was a good arrangement, but I doubted it would last much longer. She was simply too frail to keep living by herself. Just months away from falls, missed steps, leaving pots on the stove too long.

  A fight loomed, and I had met Stuart Mavery. He was a conscientious man, a CPA. He understood the importance of keeping his mother in her own home in charge of her own beloved garden as long as possible. But the time was coming.

  I switched on the recorder.

  “I was born in Iowa. There was three of us girls and two boys.”

  I paused the tape, checked the spelling of names and listed them on my pad.

  “I was not the wild one. Gerta was.”

  The phone rang. I dealt with a couple of printing problems before we continued. It was close to noon and Edna’s ride would soon be here to pick her up and take her back to the house. She had finished high school, then married a farmer her parents had more or less selected for her.

  “I wanted to teach, but my parents thought I ought to grab Henry when I could. We had two children. A son and a daughter. They was just darling. Henry turned out to be…not the person we thought he was. Mean. Mean to his stock. Mean to me. And mean to the children.

  Shocked, I paused the tape. Her chin quivered and her mouth tightened. She clenched her teeth to keep her dentures from clicking.

  This was a clean-up story. One that persons told me behind the scenes. The kinds of stories that never made it into the books. County history articles and family stories were not intended to embarrass anyone and they were not supposed to get the historical society sued for libel either.

  “I did everything I could to keep my children happy. Made little treats, looked after their clothes. Once when they was just little, Oliver found a little nest of field mice. The mother mouse got plowed under and he took them home and Mary Claire tried to feed them with an eye dropper. I knew Henry would beat the boy half to death. He was that kind of man. Course we couldn’t keep the mice. No one in their right mind lets them get started.”

  I took notes, but I still did not turn on the tape. Tears streamed down her parchment cheeks. I reached for a box of Kleenexes and handed it to her.

  “Freezing is the easiest way to die. I read that in the Reader’s Digest.” She dabbed at her tears. “So I put each little mouse in a section of an ice cube tray and froze them. I thawed them out before the children came home from school and told the kids it was awful hard to keep wild things alive.”

  I laid down my pen. At the historical society, I hear my share of strange stories, but this one was right up there.

  “It saved the children from a beating. We gave them a nice little funeral before their dad got in from the field, and they didn’t have to think of their mother as a mouse murderer.”

  Just then the phone rang. The caller ID displayed Josie’s number. Edna’s ride knocked on the door and she struggled out of her seat. We weren’t finished and it was hard telling when I could lure her in again.

  “Josie, let me call you back.” I hung up and helped Edna into her coat.

  “I’m sorry we had to cut this short,” I said. “I’m free next week if you can come in then. Or shall I come to your house?”

  “No need. Nothing more to tell. I came to Kansas and married Archie, Stuart’s dad. He died fifteen years ago.” Her mouth quivered again. “I get up every morning and go to bed every night.”

  Her depression was worse than I thought. “Well, if there’s anything you want to add, let me know.” I said this knowing there was no way she could unless someone brought her in here again. Those hands, those poor old arthritic hands certainly couldn’t handle a telephone.

  After I saw her out the door, I called Josie back.

  “I’m just checking to see if there’s anything you want me to bring there from civilization,” she said.

  I groaned. She would be in Carlton County in another week. It was quite clear she had no intention of cancelling the trip and Keith certainly hadn’t mellowed.

  I took a deep breath. “Josie, there’s something you should know.”

  “In the interests of full transparency,” she chided.

  “Something like that. Anyway, yesterday morning, someone…”

  “Left a note in your mailbox.”

  “Yes. How could you possibly know that?”

  “Well, my darling brother-in-law told me so.”

  “You’ve been talking to Keith?”

  “Every day. We are coordinating the recall election. For Sheriff Deal,” she prompted. “Lottie, are you there?”

  “Are you
two nuts? Coordinating? Like heading it? I thought you and Keith were merely going to help out Copeland County residents. You barely survived this county last year and you’re going against a man who has more crazy relations than a dictator in a third world country.”

  “Didn’t you tell me just a couple of days ago that we needed to do something about this man?” No mistaking the frost in her voice. I was not up to a little mini-analysis session. I headed her off.

  “Yes, but I meant quietly behind the scenes, not setting the whole Fiene family against the Deals. Or perhaps I should say Deals and Albrights.”

  “Well, get over it, Lottie. I’m not going to let this go. I’m going to nail that bastard’s hide to the wall.”

  She would too.

  Chapter Seventeen

  My afternoon at the sheriff’s department was uneventful. Like the job was supposed to be. I checked some of the databases I didn’t have access to on my home computer, but could not find any records on Talesbury.

  Betty Central would relieve me at five. I spent my time compiling a list of expenses and composing the weekly report for the Gateway Gazette. It was worded as though offenders were anonymous, but there wasn’t a person in town who didn’t know exactly who had committed an offense within minutes of the occurrence.

  Sam had once threatened to send all our forms directly down to the boys at the coffee shop and save our office the work of filling them out.

  About three Bishop Rice called.

  “I’ve got some good news and some bad news,” he announced.

  I laughed. “Is there any other kind?”

  “The good news is the bad news, actually. The Right Reverend Ignatius P. Talesbury is really and truly a bishop.”

  “So that means Tammy is really and truly confirmed.”

  “Yes, possibly.”