A Violent End at Blake Ranch

by Terry Shames

  Henry Shelby is bald and has a face as stern as a Baptist preacher. After I’ve shown him my badge and ID, he allows me into his home. His wife, Nancy, a tiny, pinch-faced woman with a helmet of gray hair, is sitting in the living room in front of a television set, tuned to a quiz show, with the sound muted.

  They offer a cup of coffee, which I decline, and a chair that looks to be the least comfortable in the room, a wooden chair that doesn’t go with the rest of the matching upholstered furniture. I suspect they dragged it in here specifically for my visit, so I wouldn’t linger. I wonder if they are always inhospitable, or if they are feeling that way because of the subject matter.

  “Now what’s this all about?” Shelby says, settling onto the sofa next to his wife.

  “I hate to break the news to you, but it looks like Susan Shelby has been killed.”

  “Oh, no. That’s a shame. What happened? Was she in an accident?” More curious than distressed.

  “No, she was visiting the town where I’m chief of police and somebody killed her.”

  “She was murdered?” Nancy reaches for her husband’s hand. “That’s awful. Did you find out who did it?”

  “Not yet. I only figured out her identity a few hours ago. One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is to try to get some background on Susan.”

  “I don’t see how we can be of any help to you,” Shelby says.

  “Why is that?”

  “We didn’t have any kind of relationship with her,” he says.

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  He turns to his wife. “What do you think, Mother, five years?” I’ve always thought it was odd for a man to call his wife “Mother.”

  “Oh, longer than that. Celia’s been gone that long. That’s Susan’s mother,” she explains to me.

  “Thereabouts anyway,” Henry says.

  “I have a photo here and I’d like to see if you can identify her from it.”

  Nancy Shelby clutches her neck. “You mean a picture of her dead?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Oh my.”

  I pull the photo out of the envelope I’ve brought and hold it out to them. Nancy clutches her husband’s hand and peers at it. “What do you think, Henry?”

  “It looks something like her. Like I said, we haven’t seen her in quite a while.” They thrust the picture back at me.

  “You had more contact with her when her folks were alive?”

  “Yes, when she was a youngster we knew her better.”

  “Can you tell me if she broke her leg when she was young?”

  Henry looks surprised at the question, but he nods. “Fell out of a tree. I guess she was around six. Why is that important?”

  “The autopsy mentioned it.”

  “Autopsy? Who ordered an autopsy?”

  “In a suspicious death, the state is required to do one.”

  “I see. This is all very strange. I don’t know how we can help you. What else do you need from us?”

  “Susan lived close by. Was there a particular reason you weren’t friendly?”

  “I wouldn’t say we weren’t friendly,” Henry says. The couple exchanges uncomfortable glances. “We don’t have anything in common with her, though, the kind of life she leads.”

  “What kind of life do you mean?”

  “We’re good Christian people, and Susan chose a different path,” Nancy says. “It like to have done her mother in.”

  “I don’t know quite what you mean.”

  “She didn’t live a regular life.”

  “I see.” There’s code here, and maybe it will become clearer as we talk.

  “I have a question of my own,” Henry says. “What was she doing in the town you live in? Jarrett Creek, you say? Who was she visiting?”

  “Yes, Jarrett Creek. She was visiting the family of the woman she shared a house with, Nonie Blake.”

  “What was she doing with them?” Henry says.

  This is where it gets a little dicey. “She was posing as her roommate.”

  Nancy gives a little laugh. “That makes no sense,” she says, her tone sharp. “Was the roommate there, too?”

  “No. Do you know the roommate?”

  “We didn’t want to meet her. We don’t hold with that kind of life.”

  It suddenly comes clear what the problem is. “You think they were a couple?”

  “We can’t say for sure,” Henry says. “We didn’t pry. But we thought the whole setup was strange. I mean that she decided to let that woman live with her. We didn’t think it was a good idea. The woman had been in a mental hospital for trying to kill her sister.”

  “I sure wouldn’t want to live with somebody like that,” Nancy says.

  “How did you find that out?”

  “Susan’s mother told me, that’s how.” Henry speaks sharply. “Celia was scared to death that Susan would be killed in her sleep.”

  “As I understand it, Susan had spent time in the mental institution, too.”

  Henry shifts uncomfortably. “It wasn’t the same thing,” he says firmly.

  “I understand Susan was sent to Rollingwood because she tried to kill herself, is that right?”

  Henry rears back in his chair. “Who told you that? She was there because she attacked somebody in school. She claimed the girl hit her first, but witnesses said Susan did all the attacking.” Interesting. Was Nonie lying when she told me Susan had tried to kill herself—or did Susan lie to Nonie?

  Nancy chimes in, “If one of our kids had done something like that, they wouldn’t have been able to sit down for a week. They would have had to deal with Henry.” She nods at her husband.

  “That’s right,” he says. “And they would have had to come straight home from school for the rest of the year. We didn’t put up with any shenanigans. Not like Celia. Instead of punishing Susan, Celia decided to send her to that Rollingwood place where they’d fuss over her and ask her about her feelings.” His face is getting red, and his voice has risen.

  “Daddy, there’s no need for you to get all riled up.” Nancy leans over and pats her husband’s knee. “Say what you want,” she says to me. “But Henry’s right. Our kids knew better than to cause trouble.”

  Despite Henry’s assessment of Rollingwood, I suspect Celia didn’t send her there to be coddled but to avoid having her sent to a juvenile detainment center.

  “Do you know if she ever had problems with anybody after she got out of school?”

  Again a look passes between the Shelbys. “Different kind of a problem,” Henry says. “Celia told me that there was somebody stalking Susan for a while.”

  “Stalking her? You mean following her?”

  “All I know is what her mamma told me. She said this woman claimed that Susan borrowed money from her and never paid it back and that she was bound and determined to get Susan to pay up.”

  “What finally happened?”

  “Celia paid her off. Said she didn’t think for one minute that the woman was telling the truth, but she was afraid the woman would hurt Susan.”

  “You don’t happen to know the name of this woman, do you?”

  Henry shakes his head. “Wouldn’t remember it even if she’d told me. But I’ll tell you one thing—the same thing I told Celia. I didn’t doubt for one minute that Susan borrowed that money. She was always careless with money and seemed to think the world owed her a living.”

  I get a tingling echo of Skeeter’s assessment that Nonie, or rather Susan, seemed to think she was “owed.”

  “She did all right for herself, though,” I say. “I understand she owned a couple of properties.”

  “That came from Celia and Dusty, her folks. They were hardworking people. They put money away for their old age. Shame neither one of them lived long enough to enjoy it.”

  “Susan was the only child?”

  “Yes. Celia wanted more kids but couldn’t have any and that’s why she spoiled Susan.”

  “Do you
know if Susan has stayed in touch with any of her other relatives?”

  “If she kept up with anyone, it would be my sister Louise,” he says. “She and Susan got along better because her ways are a little more free-thinking than mine.”

  Now I have to approach the delicate part of the conversation. “There is a matter that her relatives are going to have to deal with.”

  “What’s that?”

  No matter how many times I’ve rehearsed this in my head, I haven’t figured out a good way to say it. I explain that the body was misidentified and subsequently buried in the cemetery in Jarrett Creek.

  “What do you mean, misidentified?”

  “Nonie Blake’s family identified the body as Nonie.”

  Both of them speak at once. “Who are these people? What’s wrong with them? How could they not know if it was their own relative?”

  “They hadn’t seen Nonie in twenty years, and the two women looked something alike.”

  The next morning I go to see Louise Kellen, Susan’s aunt. She lives in a small house on a tree-lined street with several older, eccentric residences. This one looks like it could be a gnome’s house, with little stone sculptures in the front yard surrounded by a wild overgrowth of greenery.

  The room Louise shows me into couldn’t be any more different from her brother’s house. The walls are painted in bright colors and covered with art posters and quirky paintings and family photos. The furniture is a comfortable mish-mash of wicker and cushions.

  “She was an unsettled child,” Louise says. She’s dressed in a long colorful skirt and a kind of lacy black blouse and big hoop earrings that make her look like a gypsy or a throwback to the ’60s. Her hair is long and liberally sprinkled with gray, but her eyes are lively and her wrinkles are smile wrinkles rather than the kind you get from pouting. “I always thought it would have been better if I had been Susan’s mother. Celia didn’t seem to know what to do with her, although goodness knows she tried. She and Dusty.”

  “Henry said she got in trouble in school—attacked someone—and that’s why she was sent to Rollingwood.”

  “That’s right. I wasn’t living here at the time. My husband and I lived out near San Francisco, and when he passed away I moved back.”

  “Did Celia ever talk to you about the attack?”

  “I didn’t ask, because it didn’t matter what really happened, she always stuck up for Susan. She would have told me it was the other person’s fault, no matter what.”

  “It must have been a pretty violent attack for her to have been sent away to a mental institution.”

  She looks sad. “Even though I didn’t talk to Celia, I do know what happened—at least what the newspaper said. Henry gave me the clipping. It said a girl had been teasing her and she went after her with a baseball bat. The girl ended up with brain damage.”

  “Did you ever visit Susan in Rollingwood or correspond with her?”

  “I feel so guilty that I didn’t reach out to her. I apologized when I moved back, but by then she had grown a thick skin and she wasn’t all that easy to talk to.”

  “You have children?”

  “Two, grown now of course. One of them in Los Angeles—he’s an actor—and my daughter lives in Chicago. She married a lawyer and moved there. She’s got a couple of little ones that I see as often as I can.”

  When I phoned Louise this morning, I found that Henry had already alerted her to the fact that I’d be calling, and he had told her what had happened to Susan. When I first came in and showed her the photo of Susan for identification, she cried a little and has held onto it since then.

  “Did your kids get along with Susan?”

  She sighs. “My kids only met her a few times, and I’ll be frank with you, they didn’t like her much.” She picks at her skirt, eyes averted.

  “Any particular reason?” I wouldn’t normally ask that, but I have a feeling she’s holding something back that she’d actually like to divulge.

  “They said she didn’t talk nice. I asked them what they meant because I’d never heard them say anything like that, and they said she cursed a lot and . . . that she talked dirty sex talk.”

  “Do you know if she ever had trouble with boys?”

  Her smile is rueful. “I’m not sure she was into boys. I don’t know how to describe it; I think she wasn’t inclined that way. You know what I mean?”

  “Of course. Is that part of what bothered your kids?”

  She sighs. “I don’t think so. I think it was more the language she used. I figured she was trying to shock them, but some of the things she said . . .”

  “Did you tell her mother?”

  By now her face is bright red. “No, and I probably should have. But how do you tell somebody something like that about their own child?” She pushes the photo back across the coffee table to me.

  “Did Celia ever tell you what Susan’s psychiatrist diagnosed?”

  “No, and with her and Dusty both gone I expect all those papers were thrown out.”

  “Did you see Susan at your sister-in-law’s funeral?”

  Louise goes still. “I didn’t go to the funeral. None of us did. Susan didn’t tell us Celia died until after the burial. I have to admit it was the only time I was ever really mad at her. She said Celia didn’t want a funeral, that she wanted to be buried in a quiet graveside ceremony. I know that was just plain nonsense.”

  “Susan’s folks died young.”

  “Yes. Both died in their fifties. Dusty went fishing with a friend and had a heart attack. They were so far out on the lake that by the time the friend got the boat back, it was too late. I think when Dusty died, Celia gave up. She died a year later. They said it was ovarian cancer, but I think she died because she didn’t want to live anymore.”

  I approach the matter of the wrongful burial, and, unlike her brother, Louise is distressed. “We’ve got to bring her home. I feel like we all failed her. There was something wrong with her, and we should have figured out how to get her help. The least I can do is make sure she gets buried among her own people.”

  I’ve never been so glad to get back to Jarrett Creek, even though I’ve got a lot to tackle. All the way home, I plotted how I’m going to approach the Blakes. Although Susan and Nonie looked alike, I still can’t help thinking Adelaide would have known that Susan Shelby was not her daughter, even after all these years.

  The bigger question is what Susan Shelby intended when she came here. Were she and Nonie up to something together? And if so, exactly what was it?

  Finding that Nonie Blake is still alive and that the dead woman is someone else entirely is something of a break in the case, but I still feel skittish about whether I’m going to be able to gather enough facts to figure out who actually killed Susan Shelby. There are no physical clues to speak of, so I have to rely on a prod here, a push there, a hunch, and hard listening. Is that enough? If one of the Blakes did the killing, all they have to do is continue to stonewall. But I’ve found that isn’t always easy for people who commit crimes. Many of them seem to need to push their luck. Is it guilt that drives them to blab a little more than they should? Is it overconfidence?

  I think that deep down most of us are pack animals, like dogs and wolves, uncomfortable with being outcast. Murder sets the perpetrator out of kilter with his community. That’s what I have to play for—finding out how this crime put somebody at odds with others. Investigating a crime isn’t about leaning on one person right away. It’s a matter of getting a few facts from one person, then another, and building a picture of what happened and hoping to drive the criminal to make a slip, because at heart he wants back into the pack.

  CHAPTER 23

  I’m up at dawn and, after brewing a cup of coffee, I head down to the pasture to visit my cows. When I left, the three “extra” cows that were trucked in by mistake were in my two holding pens. Now I see that Truly has rearranged everything. He cobbled together a temporary enclosure for the scruffy cows and put the two cows I orig
inally bought in one of the permanent pens. In the other pen is the fine-looking bull. I’m not one to give human traits to cattle, but if I were, I’d say this bull looks like he’s mad at the world.

  My communion with the bull is short. I don’t have time to sweet talk him for long, just say a few words so he gets used to the sound of my voice while he recovers from the trauma of being trucked over here. You wouldn’t think as sturdy looking as bulls are that they would be delicate, but they are. If you rush things with a new bull, you could end up with a sick or insecure animal that can’t or won’t perform his job.

  I get back as Loretta is coming up my front walk bearing a pan of sweet rolls. “I’ve brought some extras for you to take down to headquarters to that new girl.” She says she can’t come in for long, but she wants to hear how my trip to Dallas went.

  I’ve thought long and hard about how to introduce people to the idea that Nonie Blake is still alive and well, and that another woman is the victim of murder. As much as I’d like to fill in Loretta, I need to talk to the Blakes before anyone else hears the news. “It was a strange trip,” I say.

  “Strange how?”

  “I want to tell you the details, but there are some people I need to talk to first,” I say.

  “You were gone longer than you thought you were going to be.” I see by the look on her face that she’s calculating how to weasel more information out of me. I know this trick of hers—easing around the back of a subject to get a wedge in.

  “And glad to be home,” I say. “Did you know I bought a new bull? It got delivered while I was gone.”

  “I wondered what Truly was up to back there. I saw the truck and all that activity. I’m surprised whatever happened up in Tyler was so interesting that you couldn’t come back to help Truly.” Another foray into getting information out of me.

  “Actually, I was in Jacksonville. Anything happen while I was gone?”

  “The new girl is making herself right at home.”

  “You mean the new police officer?”