A Violent End at Blake Ranch

by Terry Shames

  Skeeter says the same.

  “When I was looking for Nonie’s medication, I found some pills in the medicine cabinet with the name Susan Shelby on it. Who is she?”

  Adelaide darts a glance at Charlotte.

  Charlotte shrugs. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  “I don’t know where they came from,” Adelaide says. “What kind of pills were they?”

  “It’s called Levoxyl. Used for low thyroid, I believe.”

  “Yes, I take it myself,” Adelaide says.

  “The prescription was filled in Tyler. Anybody visit you recently who lives in Tyler?”

  She shakes her head slowly. “I think the last person who used that bathroom was my son Billy, when he was home last time.”

  “That’s your older son? When was he here?”

  “Not in a while. Several weeks. He’s out on the rodeo circuit.”

  That doesn’t explain why he would know anything about the pills. “Is he planning to come home soon?”

  “We’re trying to reach him,” Charlotte says.

  “I guess we can ask him what he knows about the pills when he gets here,” I say.

  “Nonie didn’t have much in the way of clothing or personal items. Do you know if she had planned to send for some later?”

  Adelaide’s mouth tenses, and she runs a thumb along her lower lip before shaking her head. “I don’t know anything about that,” she says. “I assumed she traveled with her belongings.”

  Another assumption that Adelaide didn’t bother to ask her daughter about. It doesn’t add up. I have an uneasy suspicion that Adelaide is lying, but I can’t imagine why. I’ll probe a little deeper when I talk to her alone, but first I want to question Skeeter about the details of finding the body while they’re still fresh in his mind.

  Adelaide protests that she wants to be with Skeeter when I question him, but I confirm he’s twenty years old. “He’s old enough for me to question him alone,” I say.

  I take Skeeter onto the front porch to talk to him, and I see that a highway patrol car has arrived and parked behind the ambulance. It’s dusk now, and the porch lights cast a dull yellow glow into the yard. There’s always a lot to be done with a crime scene, and people slip to and from the back of the house in the shadows, like ghosts. I tell Skeeter to wait, and I walk over to the patrol car to find out if they know when they plan to take Nonie’s body away. I’d as soon the boy not have to see that.

  Turns out the medical examiner has come and gone, declaring that it was a waste of his time to come out when Taggart could as easily have pronounced her dead. Before the highway patrol can authorize the ambulance to remove the body, they’re waiting for the Texas Rangers so they can decide who has control of the case. I can’t tell from the way the patrolman talks whether they want control or if they’re itching to turn it over to the Rangers. Could go either way. Jurisdiction in a small-town suspicious death is sometimes murky. Theoretically it’s up to the highway patrol to investigate if they determine that the town police force isn’t up to the job, but often they hand it over to the Rangers, who have more resources.

  When I get back on the porch, I sit down in a wicker chair next to Skeeter. “Skeeter, I’m sorry about your sister. She hasn’t been home long, but Charlotte tells me you and Nonie seemed to like each other.”

  “She had a funny way about her. Different. Finding her in the pond like that was terrible.”

  “I know it was. Tell me, how were things after Nonie arrived? What did you think of her? Did she get along with everybody in the house?”

  “She seemed nice. Charlotte told me what Nonie tried to do when they were kids, but as far as I could tell she was a regular person. Quiet. Kept to herself most of the time.”

  “Had you ever met her before she came home?”

  He stares at me. “I was a baby when she left.”

  “They never took you to see her?”

  “Far as I know, none of them ever went to see her at all.”

  That’s an interesting bit of information. Seems unlikely, and I wonder if they went to see her and simply didn’t tell Skeeter.

  “Since she got here, have there been any arguments, or problems?”

  “Not with her. But Mamma and Charlotte argue a lot.”

  “What about?”

  “You name it, they can argue about it. If Mamma says she’s making pancakes for breakfast, Charlotte says eggs. But they mostly argue about Daddy and what to do about him.”

  “You mean whether to keep him home or send him to a nursing home?”

  “That’s right. Charlotte wants him to go into a home, and Mamma says over her dead body.”

  “You have any opinion on the matter?”

  “Me? I don’t know. I guess if he was out of the house, things would be a little easier around here. But I hate to think of him being taken care of by strangers.”

  “Did Nonie get into any of the arguments with your mamma and sister about that?”

  He thinks about that. “I’m not sure they argued in front of her. I think Charlotte and Mamma were trying hard to make it look like things around here were more friendly than they are.”

  “So there weren’t any arguments between Nonie and them?”

  He puts a hand up. “I didn’t say that. She got riled up a time or two.”

  “What was it that upset her?”

  “Silly things. She didn’t like some kinds of food. I mean, I guess everybody has some food they don’t like, but I don’t think most people go all ape about it.” He snickers. “She didn’t like beans. She said they made her pass gas.” He laughs harder. “I thought that was the whole point of beans.”

  I can’t help laughing with him. “When you say she went ape, what do you mean?”

  “One day she threw a vase. Not at anybody. Just threw it on the floor and broke it to smithereens. And a couple of times she yelled. Like I said, she was mostly quiet, but when she got it into her head to yell, she could make a good racket.”

  “Anything in particular that set her off?”

  “She . . . she seemed to think she should be getting . . .” He stops, as if confused.

  “Getting what?”

  “She seemed to think she was owed.”

  “Owed money?”

  “I don’t know. Charlotte is the one to talk to if you want to know more about that.”

  “Fair enough. Why don’t you tell me the circumstances when you found Nonie.”

  “Well, that.” His voice flattens. “Daddy was in a state this morning and when Charlotte went to take Trey to school, Daddy got pretty wound up. I was in my room and I heard him talking loud and wandering around the house all morning. He had been kind of riled up since Nonie got here and I wondered if she would hear him. I decided to lay low in my room until lunch. When I went downstairs, Charlotte and Mamma were sniping at each other, and Daddy was squalling. So I made a sandwich and took it back upstairs.”

  “Did you wonder where Nonie was?”

  He cocks his head. “I guess I figured she was upstairs in her room, the same as I was.”

  “What time did you go out to the pond?”

  “After lunch. I’d been inside too long and needed to go out and get some air. So I went out to the pond.”

  “Did you notice the body right away?”

  He scratches his head, the yellow light from the porch making his face ghastly. “No, not right away. I sat down under a tree and I guess I fell asleep for a while. When I woke up, I got up and walked around, and that’s when I saw her.”

  “You didn’t call out for anybody?”

  “Like I said, I didn’t realize at first that it was a person. I thought maybe it was a deer. It was around the other side in the shade of that tree that hangs over the water.”

  “So how did you get her body over to where you brought her out?”

  “I waded in and walked around to this side of the pond. It isn’t that deep except right in the middle.” He shakes his head and blo
ws out a breath. “It was spooky.”

  “Was she face up or face down?”

  “Face down.”

  “How did you know it was her?”

  “I recognized that flowered dress she wore around the house.”

  “You didn’t think to call for help then?”

  “I was in a hurry to get her out of the water. I was thinking something might get at her, like a snake or something.”

  “Must have been hard dragging her out of the water. Wasn’t she heavy?”

  “In the water she wasn’t. Hoisting her onto the bank was a problem. I guess I shouldn’t have moved her, should I?”

  “It’s all right. We all have an instinct to try to get somebody onto the land, even if it’s clear we’re too late.”

  He sighs.

  “When you pulled her out, that’s when you noticed the wound on her head?”

  He’s quiet so long I’m beginning to wonder if he heard me, but finally he speaks in almost a whisper. “Yeah, I saw it.”

  “But you didn’t tell anybody.”

  In the light of the porch, I see him shake his head. Finding the body rattled him, but there’s more to it than that. I’m wondering if he thinks he knows who killed her and he doesn’t want to say.

  “Did you hear any unusual commotion outside last night or this morning?”

  “No sir, but I’m a pretty good sleeper.”

  A car drives up and switches off the lights. Probably one of the Rangers.

  “When was the last time you saw her alive?”

  “Last night. We had dinner at six—Nonie didn’t like eating so early, so sometimes she ate later. But she ate with the family last night.”

  “Did she seem okay? Did she say she was going out or anything?”

  “Out? Where would she go?”

  That’s the question, isn’t it? “Skeeter, do you have any idea who might have done this?”

  He jerks his head around to look at me. “Has to have been a stranger. Nobody here would have done that.”

  “Samuel?” A voice comes from the darkness. “Is that you on the porch? You have time to talk to me?” The voice is one I recognize, Luke Schoppe, a Texas Ranger a few years younger than me who is part of our jurisdiction.

  “Yeah, I’ll be right there.”

  I stand up, but Skeeter continues to sit there.

  “Skeeter, I want to ask you something.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Why aren’t you in college?”

  “I was over at A&M for a year and a half. I flunked out last semester.”

  “What were you studying?”

  “I hadn’t figured that out yet.”

  “Do you have a job?”

  “How can I get a job? I can’t do anything.” His voice sounds bleak.

  “Sure you can. You could work on a farm, or go on over to Bobtail and find a job. You ought to put up a notice at the café.”

  “Mamma doesn’t want me to go to work.”

  “Why is that?”

  “She said I don’t need to.”

  “You’re old enough that you shouldn’t need her permission.”

  “Yeah, but even if I got a job, how would I get there? I don’t have a car. And Mamma won’t let me use ours.” He stands up. “You better get on down there. That guy’s waiting for you.”

  “Who told you Nonie needed to take medication? Was it Nonie herself?” I ask. Luke Schoppe has come with me to question Adelaide. Charlotte has gone into the kitchen, and I hear her banging pots and pans louder than necessary.

  “Oh no, it was the woman from Rollingwood—where Nonie had been living. She said it had been determined that Nonie was well enough to be released. She was very nice when she told me.”

  “Was she a doctor?”

  “I don’t know who it was. A woman. She might have told me who she was, but I was so flustered when she told me Nonie was coming home that I forgot everything else.”

  “Charlotte said that she had no idea Nonie was coming and that later you told her you knew. Why did you keep the information from her?”

  Adelaide’s cheeks grow pink. “I know I’m going to sound awful, but I knew if Charlotte heard they were releasing Nonie, she’d insist on going up there to get her. I didn’t want Charlotte to do that. With John in the state he’s in, and Trey to be taken care of, we can’t simply pick up and leave on a moment’s notice. It would have taken a whole day to drive up there and back. I thought if Nonie was well enough to come home, she was well enough to take the bus.”

  “Humph,” Schoppe says. Like me, he must think that’s pretty harsh.

  There’s something odd going on here. I can’t imagine a mental hospital keeping someone for twenty years and then simply calling to say they’re letting her out and not making any arrangements for her transportation or to explain how she needs to be cared for.

  “Did Nonie’s doctors keep you updated on her condition over the years?”

  “What?” She’s looking past me, as if she expects someone to appear in the background. “Oh, I suppose they did. For a while anyway.” She waves her hand in a vague gesture. “You know how doctors talk. Half the time I can’t understand what they say.”

  “What do you mean, ‘for a while’?”

  “I honestly can’t remember the last time I talked to her doctor. I figured if they weren’t calling, everything must be all right.”

  What mother wouldn’t press a doctor to tell her in straight terms what was going on with her daughter? But maybe Adelaide didn’t want to know. Maybe, unlike Charlotte, she had never forgiven Nonie for what she tried to do.

  “You told me you never actually saw her take her medication.”

  Her jaw tightens. “Yes, I told you that.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual in Nonie’s behavior the night before she was killed?” I’m thinking that one reason I may not have found any medication is that Nonie decided she didn’t need it and threw it away. I know that sometimes happens with mental patients. Right after they stop taking the medication, they seem fine. But before long, the holdover from the drugs wears off, and they start to act up again.

  “Mr. Craddock, or Chief Craddock, I guess I should say, and . . . I’m sorry what was your name?”

  “Luke Schoppe.”

  “Yes, now I remember. Listen, if she acted strange, I wouldn’t have known it. I’m so distracted by John that I hardly know what goes on in this house anymore.”

  “When was the last time you visited Nonie in the institution?”

  “I’m not sure.” She tugs at a stray piece of hair and tries to tuck it up into her bun, but it falls out again. “I don’t know what that has to do with anything. As I said, it’s difficult to get away.”

  “When was it?” I see Schoppe’s eyes narrow, assessing Adelaide.

  “It’s been a while. We went up a few times, but the doctors said our visits upset her. I don’t know why visits from her family should upset her, but when the doctor said I shouldn’t come back for a while, I decided I didn’t have to go if she was going to be that way.”

  Her eyes are suddenly angry. She sits forward at the edge of her seat “I know you judge me for not going to visit her. I know a lot of people would. But do you have any idea what it’s like to know that you have a daughter who tried to kill her sister? I never got over it. I admit that. I wanted to do the right thing and bring Nonie home, and Charlotte kept saying she wanted Nonie to come back, but I never really wanted that. I’d have been happy to forget she ever existed. There, I’ve said it.” Her mouth starts to tremble and her eyes fill with tears.

  “When you first heard that Nonie was dead, what did you think had happened to her?” Schoppe says.

  “I didn’t know. I don’t think that pond is dangerous, but maybe that’s because I’m used to it. When you told us that the side of her head was bashed in, I hoped it was a mistake and that she really just drowned, pure and simple.”

  “No, she didn’t drown. Somebody hit her with
something.”

  Adelaide kneads her temples between her thumb and forefinger. “It was such a shock to see her lying there. Poor child. She was a wrong one from the beginning, but she didn’t deserve to die that way. It makes no sense. Who would kill Nonie?”

  “I’d like to ask you the same thing. Do you have any idea?”

  “Of course not!”

  “How did John react to her being here?”

  Her cheeks are flaming red already, so I don’t know if the question flusters her more. “He was fine. As fine as he can be, anyway.”

  Schoppe says, “You say your husband has dementia. Could he have gotten it into his mind that she was a danger and killed her?”

  “Oh, good heavens no,” Adelaide says. “He can’t make his hands work well enough for that, even if he had that kind of nature, which he doesn’t.”

  We don’t get any more out of Adelaide. I tell her I’ll be back in the morning. Schoppe and I go outside. The ambulance is gone, but there’s still a highway patrol car in the driveway.

  “I asked the highway patrol to have somebody stay here for the night to keep an eye on things,” Schoppe says. He shakes his head. “I don’t know that that’s necessary. Whatever happened here, I suspect no one else is in danger.”

  “I agree, but somebody needs to stay here until I can do a more thorough search of the grounds.”

  We walk back to the pond and find a young patrolman walking around. He’s slapping at mosquitoes, and I ask him if he’d like some bug repellent. He says he’s already sprayed some on him. “It’s dark. The bugs will be gone before too long.”

  I give him my phone number in case anything comes up.

  When Schoppe and I get back to the front of the house, we both start to say something at the same time. “Go ahead,” I say.

  He says, “You want to look into this and call me if you have problems?”

  “I was going to say I’ll be glad to turn this over to you.”

  “Why’s that? You’re usually ready to jump right in.”

  “I don’t know these people, and I don’t have a good handle on what they might be up to.”

  “Anybody I assign to it won’t know them any better than you do. You know how to investigate a crime.”