A Violent End at Blake Ranch

by Terry Shames

  “So the family did visit?”

  “Mamma and Daddy went up there a couple of times early on, but the doctor assigned to Nonie said it agitated her when family came. So they stopped going. I suspect they planned to go back, but you know how things are. You think you’re going to do something and suddenly a year has gone by.”

  She’s right in most instances, but it’s hard for me to imagine a parent never going to visit a child in a mental institution. Despite Charlotte’s supposed good intentions, if she really wanted her sister to be brought home, it seems like she would have taken it on herself to at least go visit her in the hospital.

  “There is one more thing. What’s the situation with your son’s daddy? He around?”

  “No. He’s been gone a long time, since right after Trey was born. He headed off to Montana. He said he wanted me to go with him, but I had the feeling he didn’t really want me to go. I don’t think he really wanted to be a daddy.”

  “Ever hear from him?”

  She snorts. “If you’re hinting around that he might have had something to do with Nonie’s death, you’re way off base. Last time I heard from him he was living in Bozeman, working on a ranch, and fixing to get married again. I can’t in my wildest dreams imagine him coming back here and killing my sister.”

  CHAPTER 5

  I walk around back to take another look around. Adelaide told me that the ranch is bigger than most of the others and that it extends back several acres behind the house. As far as I can see it’s mostly scrub­land dotted with post oak trees. I’m pretty sure they never kept cattle out here. A big area to the right of the barn has been fenced off. At one time it was a vegetable garden. There are still a few scraggly cornstalks, and I can barely make out where there were raised rows of plantings. It’s mostly dirt now, so it hasn’t been farmed in a long time. It makes me wonder why they bought this place—what they had in mind.

  I walk back to the pond where Nonie’s body was found. Most people around here call a pond a tank, from when all these small bodies of water used to be for watering cattle. Both Adelaide and John grew up in this area, so where did they get their fancy idea to call it a pond? The word pond conjures up an image from a storybook—a shallow pool of water with lily pads and nicely kept-up banks and cute little animals playing in the grass.

  This small body of water is surrounded by weeds most of the way around. There’s an old stump on the far shore next to a big sycamore tree whose branches hang out several feet over the water. Water moccasins like to lie in shady areas under trees like that one, or even in the low branches. There must not be any in this tank, or they would likely have latched onto Nonie’s body. I shudder to think of Skeeter wading out in the muck to tow the body in. Young men can be impulsive.

  Weeds have been trampled around the side where Skeeter dragged Nonie out and the ambulance drivers picked up her body. I walk gingerly around the rest of the bank, keeping an eye out for snakes but also for disturbed areas that might indicate a scuffle of some kind. I phoned Odum this morning, and he said he didn’t see anything, but it never hurts to double-check.

  The graveled driveway leading to the house from the road isn’t that long, maybe 250 feet. Nonie could have walked down to the road and met someone. They might have driven off somewhere and gotten into an argument, and she ended up dead. Then whoever it was brought her back here to dump her. If that was the case, they would have needed to drive close up and either carry her or drag her here. There are no footprints to verify that—not surprising, given the drought-ravaged land around the tank. There’s barely any indication of all the foot traffic that was here last night.

  Still, the most likely scenario is that someone in the family killed her. I can make up a far-fetched idea of a stranger or someone from her past, but more likely she met someone from the family outside in the yard so they could have it out, and whoever it was became enraged and killed her. Does the whole family know who actually did it and they’ve closed ranks? Is that why I feel that they are hiding something?

  And what of the murder weapon? What became of it? I’ll have to have somebody look for it. I stare at the pond, thinking it’s very likely it ended up in the water. I hate to think of having the pond drained, but it may come to that.

  No sooner am I back at headquarters when the coroner’s office calls me from Bobtail. There’s no question that Nonie Blake’s death was a homicide. The blow to her head was hard enough to kill her before she was dumped into the water. “Probably done by a man,” the coroner says. “Takes some strength to hit somebody that hard.”

  “What’s your time of death estimate?”

  “That’s a moving target. If she’d been on land, body changes would have occurred fast because it’s hot outside, but being in the water slowed things down. From the condition of the body, I think she was put in the water pretty soon after she was killed. Best I can estimate is a couple of hours either side of midnight.”

  “That’ll do. Can you give me any idea of the size and type of weapon that was used?”

  “I can’t be exactly sure, but I’d say it was something not too big around—maybe the handle of a tool, like a spade or a hoe. Or maybe a tire iron.”

  “Not a rock?”

  “Definitely not a rock unless it was an especially smooth, skinny one.”

  I ask him to send me a copy of the full report when he sends one out to Texas Ranger headquarters.

  Zeke Dibble, Jarrett Creek’s other part-time cop, is in the office with me, and when I get off the phone I tell him the coroner’s findings. Dibble retired from the Houston Police Department and moved here so he could spend his time fishing. He hadn’t been retired long when he realized he couldn’t put up with retirement, partly because full-time fishing wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and partly because his wife kept finding household chores for him to do. So he joined our department. He may not have the fire of a young officer, but he makes up for it in experience. He listens to the coroner’s assessment and says, “You and I both know, Craddock, that in the right circumstances a woman could hit somebody hard enough to kill them.”

  “Yeah, but I was hoping to eliminate half the population,” I say dryly.

  The bigger question is, why would anybody want to kill Nonie in the first place? What kind of threat did she represent? And if not to the family, then to whom? How in the world am I going to find out if she actually met someone the night she was killed? And if so, how did she arrange to meet them?

  I pull the phone to me and call Charlotte Blake. “Charlotte, I need to find out all the phone calls made from your house line during the time Nonie was there. Do you have a current bill?”

  “Our last bill was at the beginning of the month. Can’t the police call and get that?”

  “They’ll want a court order or a consent from you. It’d be easier if you ask for it.”

  Les Moffitt’s secretary says he’s in his office, and after she consults with him she says that he’ll be glad to make time to see me this afternoon.

  Bryan-College Station is only thirty miles away from Jarrett Creek, but it could be a thousand. It’s not what you’d call a city, but it’s a big, thriving town dominated by the Texas A&M campus. It’s where I went to school a long time ago, and I hardly recognize the place anymore. When I went there it was a sleepy university in a sleepy town. Now the town bustles with activity. Its streets are lined with restaurants and clothing stores, and in the past several years the buildings have grown up rather than out.

  Moffitt’s office is downtown in a building that houses a bank on the ground floor. The roster of businesses in the building tends toward financial dealings of one kind or another, except for one floor taken up with a law firm.

  I’ve never used a financial advisor other than the Fort Worth banker that my wife’s family always depended on. The money Jeanne and I inherited from her family was tied up in mutual funds and some solid real estate holdings. I found no reason to change that. It all brings in more money
than I ever would have made in my lifetime. It isn’t a huge amount in the financial world, but it’s enough, and in a vague way I’ve always been a little uncomfortable about it. It seems odd that eventually the money will go to my nephew, Tom, who is no blood relation to Jeanne’s family. But all of her immediate family is gone, and all the money ended up with her, then with me when she died.

  The doors to Moffitt’s office are glass leading into a pristine outer office with plush rugs, fine furnishings, and the kind of nondescript art on the walls that says it was selected for how it goes with the décor rather than for its artistic worth. The middle-aged secretary I talked to on the phone earlier is dressed as professionally as her voice indicated she might be, in a crisp white blouse, with not a hair out of place. She sets me up with coffee and says Mr. Moffitt will see me as soon as he finishes up his phone call. This takes several minutes, during which the secretary has to answer a surprising number of phone calls. Moffitt appears to be very successful.

  Moffitt looks different here on his own turf, more self-assured and businesslike. He has a warm smile, but a habit I noticed from when I met him at the Blakes’ of meeting my eyes and then instantly sliding his gaze to the right. It makes him look nervous.

  He takes me into his inner office, asking his secretary to bring him a cup of coffee, too. His desk is massive, with stacks of papers and a very nice bronze sculpture. There’s a large picture frame on his desk, turned toward him so that I can’t see the photo. I wonder if he has a family.

  He sits back in his chair and steeples his fingers. “How can I help you?”

  I’d like to tell him I have a fistful of questions that will get straight to the heart of what I’m after, but I don’t. This is a fishing expedition. I’ll have to cast my net wide and hope for information that will lead me somewhere. “We didn’t have a chance to talk much Monday, and I thought you might be able to fill in a few blanks.”

  “I’ve known the family a long time,” he says.

  “You said you’re their financial advisor.”

  “That’s right, and together we’ve made some decent investments. I’d have to say we’re mutually satisfied with the results of working together.”

  “When did you first start working with the Blakes?”

  He leans forward and opens a fat folder close to hand. “I pulled out their file when you called because I figured you’d want some specifics.” He flips all the papers over until he’s at the back of the stack. He picks up a letter and hands it over. “This is our initial agreement. I was a young man starting out, working for Bryan State Bank at the time, and I was drumming up clients. John Blake came over to talk to me, and as you can see we decided to do some business.”

  The letter is as he says, referencing a formal contract that they signed.

  He picks up a fat bunch of pages. “This is the contract that the letter refers to. I’m happy to let you go through it if you want, but personally I’d rather have my fingernails pulled out than have to read this stuff.”

  “I don’t think it’s necessary.”

  On the way over to Moffitt’s office, I was trying to remember what I knew of Adelaide and John. John’s family had a farm outside of town, and I only knew Adelaide’s mother as a mousy woman who kept to herself, much the way the Blakes do now. But I also know that she worked her whole life and didn’t appear to be well off. If either of the families had money, I don’t know where it came from. Like my money, it must have been inherited.

  “The family money is John’s, I take it?”

  Moffitt hesitates. “You understand there’s only so much I can tell you about their finances. It’s a private matter, but I guess I’m not crossing any lines if I tell you that the money was Adelaide’s, not John’s.”

  “And since you started working with them, you’ve become a friend of the family?”

  “I was John’s friend, really. Still am, as far as that goes. It’s a damned shame what’s become of him.”

  “How often do you visit them?”

  Moffitt squirms in his seat, the first time he’s shown any real uneasiness. “I try to get out there once or twice a week.”

  I try to picture the circumstances. Does he call first and set up a time to go, or does he drop in? Who is he really there to see?

  “You go to keep an eye on John?”

  He meets my eyes, and again his gaze slides off. “And Adelaide. To make sure everything’s okay. And Charlotte, of course.”

  It finally comes clear. He has a crush on Charlotte. “You like her son?”

  “He’s a cute kid.”

  “Ever had any kids of your own?”

  He sighs. “They’re grown. I have a boy in the military service and a girl who just got married. I don’t know them very well. My wife and I split up a number of years ago and she moved off to Houston and remarried. Nice man. We’re all cordial with each other. I didn’t keep up with the kids the way I should have, though, although it doesn’t seem to have affected them too much.”

  “So Monday you said you were dropping by and happened to get there right after Skeeter found the body?”

  His answer takes longer than it should. He pats the stack of papers in front of him from the Blake file. “They called me.”

  “You mean they called to tell you that Nonie’s body had been found?”

  He nods and runs his hands along his mouth as if he doesn’t want the truth to escape. “Yes, and they wanted me to come over. I had to cancel a couple of appointments, but Charlotte sounded upset.”

  “Why did they call you? What did they expect you to do?”

  He frowns. “I told you, I’m a friend of the family. I think they didn’t quite know what to do, and I like to think I have a soothing effect on them.”

  “How long had you been there when I arrived?”

  “Not long. Ten, fifteen minutes.”

  This is new information. It would have taken him thirty minutes to get to the Blake house. I was there no more than fifteen minutes after they called. “Did you tell them to call me?”

  “Yes, I did. I told Charlotte to call the law the minute she got off the phone with me. Like I said, they didn’t seem to know what to do. When I got there I asked if they had called an ambulance or the police, and they said they still hadn’t. I told them they ought to call you and you’d take care of the rest.”

  “The girl was dead. How hard could it be to figure out that they needed to call the police?”

  Moffitt holds his hand up to settle me down. “I know, I know. I’m trying to figure out how to describe the situation. They were scared.”

  “Scared of what?”

  He sits forward, his face screwed up. “They were afraid they would all be suspects.”

  Suspects. So they knew Nonie had been murdered. They all acted like it was a big surprise, telling me they thought she had hit her head on a rock. What Moffitt is telling me is that they knew somebody killed her, and they were worried.

  “They called you first because they needed to get their story straight?”

  He grunts. “Not exactly. More like they needed to figure out if they ought to call a lawyer before they called you.”

  Their hesitation still doesn’t make sense to me. Then I remember Schoppe’s questions last night, and suddenly I understand. “They thought maybe John did it.”

  He nods. “I think it crossed their minds. John is . . . how do I say it? He’s unpredictable. I don’t think he’d hurt a fly, but he didn’t like Nonie much. We couldn’t tell whether it was because she disrupted the routine or if there was some other reason.”

  “But in the end, they decided to call me. Which side were you on—calling me or getting a lawyer?”

  “You have to understand, I’m a businessman. I never think it hurts to have a lawyer standing by to help you deal with unusual situations.”

  “Who made the decision not to call a lawyer?”

  “That was Charlotte. She said if they didn’t have anything to hide, why bother w
ith a lawyer? I guess I see the wisdom of that now that I’ve met you. You didn’t jump to any conclusions.”

  I may not jump to conclusions, but I’m disturbed that they all knew Nonie had been murdered and pretended they didn’t.

  “You say you were out there at the house a couple of times a week. Did you meet Nonie?”

  “I did. Just once. Can’t say I had much of an impression of her. I met her, and right afterward she excused herself and took off upstairs to her room. They said she was a little shy and didn’t want to be around people too much.”

  “Besides John, did you get the impression that the family was upset with her being there?”

  Moffitt considers. “I’d say of them all, Adelaide was the most disturbed about it. It’s like she didn’t know what to do with the girl. Now whether that was because the situation upset John, or because Adelaide herself had a problem with her, I couldn’t tell you.”

  “I have to go up to Rollingwood and find out more about Nonie’s last weeks there,” I tell Ellen Forester that night. It’s the third time she has asked me to dinner at her house. She’s a pretty good cook, although it’s always a vegetarian meal. I like the food fine, but the other two times I ate at her house, when I got home I felt like I had to rustle up a roast beef sandwich. No wonder she stays so petite.

  “This is the most awful story,” she says. She’s preparing the meal and has relegated me to a stool at the counter. I tried to get her to let me help, but she says it makes her nervous to have someone else working in the kitchen with her. A lot of things make her nervous, which I blame on her ex-husband. He’s a big brute of a man who treats her like she’s worthless but doesn’t seem to want to let her go. Ellen won’t say much about him, but I gather that she took a lot of bullying from him, if not outright abuse, before she finally got the courage to leave him. She moved here to Jarrett Creek after her divorce and opened an art gallery where she also gives art classes. After she moved here, he continued to hassle her, which brought him unwanted attention from the Jarrett Creek police a while back.