A Violent End at Blake Ranch

by Terry Shames

  “Then who was it?” he says. I’m always interested in how long it takes somebody to ask that question. He cuts right to the chase.

  “A woman by the name of Susan Shelby.”

  He frowns and shakes his head slowly. “I don’t believe I know who that is. Is she from around here?”

  “No, she’s from east Texas.”

  “Have you talked to the Blakes? Didn’t they realize it wasn’t Nonie? Why did they let the woman stay there?” His voice trails away, and his jowls sink as he realizes how much it all doesn’t make sense.

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? Adelaide says she didn’t know her, but that she thought it wasn’t Nonie. And still she didn’t call the law. I’m trying to pin down why that’s so. You have any ideas?”

  “Me? How would I know? Like I said, I only met her briefly, and I’ve never met Nonie, so I wouldn’t have any idea that it wasn’t her.”

  “What I mean is, do you have any ideas why they let the woman stay if they realized she wasn’t Nonie?”

  He has an odd expression on his face. Not exactly calculating but headed in that direction. He straightens up a couple of pens on his desk before he speaks. “You said Adelaide knew. Did Charlotte know, too?”

  “I’m having trouble figuring out exactly who knew what. John is the one who seems to have instinctively known right away that the woman wasn’t his daughter.”

  “John.” He sighs. “Whatever he knew, you can’t count on it.”

  “I’ll tell you what I think, and you can chime in. I suspect that this woman had some dirt on the family that they don’t want known. You have any idea what it could be?”

  Moffitt looks decidedly uneasy. “I don’t understand why you’d think I’d know. I’m their financial advisor, not their confessor.”

  “I’m wondering if whatever this woman knew about them had to do with their finances. Any idea?”

  Moffitt raises his eyebrows. “Like I said before, I can’t go into the details, but I can say they were better off before the economy went all to hell.” He pauses. “You’re not suggesting that I’ve been up to something funny with regard to their finances, are you? Because I’m telling you, I’m on the up-and-up. I’ll open my business to scrutiny by any auditor or federal overseer.”

  “Calm down. I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m curious to know where they got money to begin with, though. I’ve been acquainted with the Blake family for a long time, and as far as I know there wasn’t any money in the background. And Adelaide’s mother was a single parent whose husband died in Korea.”

  Moffitt’s eyes suddenly shift. The comment hit some kind of nerve, but in what way?

  “Did Adelaide’s mother inherit money and leave it to her?” I ask.

  He starts to speak, considers, and then says, “All I know is that the initial money they started with came from her side of the family. I assumed she inherited it. I didn’t feel like I needed to pry.”

  “I thought a financial advisor was obliged to make a good-faith effort to make sure money they were investing for people came from legitimate sources.”

  “Come on.” He spreads his hands wide. “I mean, Adelaide didn’t strike me as somebody who made a bundle selling drugs. I didn’t feel like I had to dig into her background.”

  “How much money are we talking about?”

  “I can’t really disclose that. I’ll tell you it wasn’t millions, but it was enough to keep them comfortable if they invested it properly—which I saw to it that they did.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  He flips to the back of the folder on his desk. “Like I said, they came to me around twenty years ago.”

  The first time I met Ellen Forester’s dog, Frazier, he was a trembling mess, traumatized by Ellen’s ex-husband, who had come to her house and caused a big ruckus. Now the dog is positively serene, perched up on the seat next to me in my pickup, looking around outside as if he’s never known a care in the world. Wait until he meets Zelda.

  “You behave yourself,” I say, as we walk up the steps to my house. I have him on a leash, and he’s prancing at my side.

  Zelda always comes to greet me when I get home. I presume she hears the truck drive up and knows that I bring the possibility of food. Today when she walks from the direction of the kitchen into the front room, she stops cold and ponders Frazier. He lets out a muffled whine.

  “It’s probably best if you keep quiet,” I say. He sits.

  Zelda lofts her tail high in the air and walks right up to Frazier and looks at him. He quivers but keeps quiet. She puts her nose up to his for a quick sniff and then turns around and strolls out of the room. The dog looks up at me and I look at him and we both relax. “You better stay here while I feed her,” I say. “You challenge her food dish, and I’ll be returning a dead dog to Ellen.”

  Frazier settles to the floor. He can’t possibly know what I said, but he sure acts like he does.

  I put food down for Zelda and then try to figure out where to feed the dog. I decide it’s best to put him on the front porch, tied up. He seems to think there’s no problem with that as long as he gets food and water. When he’s done eating he whines, and when I let him in he keeps a wary eye out for Zelda.

  I’ve got work to do on my computer, so after I have a bite to eat, I settle down at my desk. Zelda jumps up onto her usual spot crowding the computer, and Frazier eases himself down next to my chair. At least for now, we’ve got peace.

  These days when I need to find out background on somebody, I usually have success on the Internet. But when I enter Lilah Cousins’s name, I come up with nothing but her date of death and the name of her husband, Aaron.

  It’s when I start researching Aaron that things get interesting. He is listed as a veteran of the Korean War, but unlike what Lilah claimed, he wasn’t killed in the war.

  In old police records, I find that when Cousins was a teenager, he was a rowdy who got into all kinds of petty trouble. He was arrested for stealing a car and joyriding, and for stealing a carton of cigarettes. He was also arrested for assault, a charge that was later dropped. When he was twenty years old he upped the ante and took part in a fraud scheme. Apparently he and two other young men went door to door in small towns, getting down payments on nonexistent sets of classic books. Shortly after he was arrested for this, he went into the army. My guess is that a judge gave him a choice of going to jail or enlisting in the army.

  His date of death is almost two years after the end of the war. Finally I find out the information that Lilah kept quiet so the citizens of Jarrett Creek wouldn’t know. Aaron was killed during the attempted robbery of a bank in Kilgore. I remember when I said to Les Moffitt that Adelaide’s daddy was killed in the war, he got funny look on his face. Did he know the truth? Does he know more than he’s saying?

  I don’t know why Lilah chose Jarrett Creek in particular to settle down with her young daughter, but she probably knew that in a small town many miles from her home, no one would question her if she said her husband was killed in action.

  I settle back to think. Frazier sits up, and I idly stroke his head. It’s an interesting coincidence that Nonie Blake settled in east Texas, not that far from where her granddaddy was killed in a robbery. I don’t believe in coincidence. Did Adelaide tell Nonie that’s where her folks were from? Why would she do that after Lilah was so careful to keep it secret? Nonie was only fourteen and liked to tell tales at school. Wouldn’t Adelaide be afraid that Nonie would tell enough to pique somebody’s interest in the family’s background?

  But maybe Adelaide didn’t tell Nonie at all. People said that Nonie was a sneak. “Maybe she poked around in her mother’s papers and discovered the background for herself,” I say to Frazier. He looks puzzled, but his tail wiggles.

  CHAPTER 27

  After spending last night and this morning researching Aaron Cousins, I’ve got a much clearer idea of what I’m after.

  I find Charlotte outside looking at the drained p
ond. She turns when I call out to her. When I get to her side, she looks back at the muddy silt. “This is going to be a mosquito haven. I’m thinking we ought to have it filled in with dirt.”

  “I wouldn’t. It’s nice having water on a property.”

  “I suppose. But after what happened here . . .”

  “Charlotte, where did the incident with Nonie take place?”

  “Right here at the pond.” She points to the old stump next to the sycamore. “It was that tree. Daddy cut it down within the week.”

  “Why did he do that?”

  “I suppose he didn’t want me to have a reminder of what happened. As it was, Mamma said I had nightmares for a while.”

  “I wonder if you would take a walk with me around the property?”

  She looks surprised. “Sure. Let me change shoes.”

  I feel as if talking to her away from the house I might be able to get more out of her. We head out into the fallow pastureland to the grove of post oaks beyond, where we’ll be out of the sun. Charlotte is no chatterbox. We walk along quietly until we slip into the grove of trees. It has been so hot that many of the leaves are turning brown and dropping off, so that we walk on a carpet of leaves and brush. I think briefly of snakes and keep an eye out for the copperheads that are so plentiful around here. A copperhead bite won’t kill you unless you’re very unlucky, but it will make you plenty sick.

  Charlotte knows as well as I do that snakes abound out here, and that’s why she changed into heavy walking shoes. She’s got on jeans and a white T-shirt. I notice that she has lost weight in the last couple of weeks.

  “Charlotte, what I’m going to ask you will be hard for you to answer, I know. Do your best.” I glance over at her. A dew of perspiration shines on her top lip, and her cheeks are pink.

  She notices me looking at her and meets my eyes. “I know you might find this hard to believe, but I don’t have anything to hide.”

  “I want you to think back, when the incident happened with Nonie.”

  “Okay.”

  “Before Nonie got you to climb up onto the chair with the rope around your neck.”

  “Ugh! I haven’t thought about that in . . . that’s not true. I thought about it several times when Nonie—or rather the woman we thought was Nonie—was here.”

  “Then maybe you can tell me. What did Nonie say to you to get you to put a noose around your neck?”

  She stops walking and turns toward me. “You know, that’s one thing nobody ever asked me. I guess they assumed I was too young to remember.”

  “Do you remember?”

  She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “A little. I remember she came to my room and said I’d been bad and I had to come with her.”

  “Did you know what she meant?”

  Her eyes search mine, then they focus somewhere beyond me. “I must have. I remember feeling sick to my stomach, as if I’d been found out.”

  “What kind of relationship did you have with Nonie? She was six years older. Was she nice to you? Did you play together?”

  “Billy was the nice one. He always had time for me. Was always patient.” She cocks her head. “Nonie . . . what I remember is that Nonie was always off somewhere. Always busy.”

  “Off somewhere like . . . ?”

  “Off in town. She would ride her bike into town. It made her seem a lot older to me. I always wished I could go with her, but when I asked she’d tell me I was too little.”

  “If she was here at home, where would you likely find her?”

  She grimaces and shakes her head. “I don’t remember that.”

  “Okay, so the day she came and got you and said you had been bad, you don’t remember what she meant?”

  “I remember that I was scared—I don’t know why. I had never been afraid of her before. When I saw that she was taking me outside, I was so scared I peed in my pants.” A smile hovers around her lips. “That wasn’t unusual. I was easily scared and I was always peeing my pants.”

  “Something she said scared you? Or the way she was acting?”

  Charlotte stops walking and puts her hands on her hips and looks off into the trees. Gradually she shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Did she have the rope with her?”

  She looks surprised. “No. We stopped by the barn and she got it. I asked her what it was for and she said something smart aleck like, ‘that’s for me to know and you to find out.’”

  “And she took you to the tree . . . and then what?”

  “I can see the rope in her hands. It was big, heavy.” She opens her palm out as if the ghost of the rope is there. “I don’t know what kind of knot it had in it. I don’t see how she could have tied a knot in a rope that heavy.” She stops and frowns. “I don’t have any recollection of her putting it on me. The next thing I recall is her telling me to climb up onto a chair.” Awareness floods her face. “I remember asking her what a chair was doing there, and she said she put it there. I must have been afraid of her because I normally would have stood on the chair gladly. I loved to climb onto everything in sight. Mamma was always fussing at me, telling me I was going to fall off and bust my head. But I started crying and told Nonie I didn’t want to climb up there. She said I had to. I asked why, but I don’t remember what she said.”

  “Let’s take it slow. Did you holler for anybody to come? Did you try to run?”

  She shakes her head. Her eyes are full of the horror of what she’s telling me. “I remember I was upset because my shorts were wet. And then Nonie said, ‘You have to do this because I know you won’t keep your mouth shut.’”

  “Keep your mouth shut about what?”

  Charlotte’s eyes widen. “I have no idea. This is the first time I’ve ever even remembered that. My family tried to get me to forget what happened so it wouldn’t traumatize me. Maybe she thought I was going to tattle about something I knew about her, but I don’t have any idea what that was.”

  “But eventually you went ahead and climbed up there anyway.”

  She nods her head and hugs her arms to herself. “Then she threw one end of the rope over the branch and drew it tight around the trunk of the tree. After that she told me to put my head through the loop in the rope.” She shakes her head vigorously as if to clear out the image. “Hard to grasp that this really happened. Seems like something I imagined.”

  “What’s strange to me is that you actually did it. Were you used to obeying your sister?”

  “Always. She was older and I thought she was the most sophisticated girl I could ever imagine.”

  I find Adelaide in her kitchen making a big pot of chili. She tells me that John is in the barn and Skeeter is keeping an eye on him so she can have a few minutes to cook.

  I lean against a wall near her. “Did you ever meet any of your mother’s relatives?”

  “Mamma told me everybody in her family was gone,” she says. “Her mamma and daddy died when I was little.”

  I clear my throat. “That’s not entirely true,” I say.

  Last night I woke up in the wee hours and realized that I needed to look farther into Lilah and Aaron Cousins’s past. This morning I located the marriage records and found out that Lilah Cousins’s maiden name was Gitlen. Turns out that Aaron Cousins was an only child, but Lilah Gitlen had two brothers, one older, one younger. Her younger brother is still alive.

  “Yeah, alive and kicking,” his daughter had said when I located her in Tyler. “He lives in a retirement community an hour away from here. Plays golf morning, noon, and night.”

  Now I tell Adelaide that I found that she has an uncle and some cousins living in east Texas.

  “It can’t be the same people,” she says.

  “Did you ever look for relatives?”

  She turns off the stove, lays down the knife she was cutting onions with, and faces me. For a minute she stands there without speaking. “Why would I? I believed Mamma. Why would she lie to me?”

  I’m beginning to susp
ect that lying runs in the family. Because I think Adelaide knows more than she’s telling. “Could be she had a falling-out with them and wanted to put it all behind her,” I say.

  “That makes sense. She didn’t like to talk about her family. You know how little kids are. They want to know everything and it was the one thing she refused to go into.” She goes over to the kitchen table and sits down heavily. I sit down across from her.

  “You didn’t find anything in her belongings pertaining to her family after she died?”

  “No. She wasn’t one to keep things.”

  Adelaide has told me so many lies that I don’t believe her. “Are you sure?”

  She’s looking at me as if I’m holding a hammer over her head. “You say there’s an uncle?”

  “Yes, and he has a daughter. That would be your first cousin. I talked to her this morning.”

  She draws a sharp breath. “You talked to her? What did she say?”

  “She told me she knew her daddy had a sister—that would be your mother—but he wouldn’t talk about her or why they were estranged.”

  “I see.” Her shoulders sag a little, as if she’d expected a blow and had dodged it. “I guess that’s why my mother never mentioned him. Like you said, there must have been a falling-out.”

  “There’s more,” I say.

  She closes her eyes, hand to her mouth. When she opens them again, for the first time she looks really scared. “What is it?”

  “Your daddy didn’t die in the war.”

  She nods, but again I get the sense that she was expecting something different—something worse. “I did know that. I pestered my mamma to tell me about him, and she admitted that she told people that he died in the war because it was easier. She said he got in trouble with the law and was killed. I’ve lived with that since I was a young girl.”

  “Have you ever told the rest of your family?”

  She shakes her head. “Just John. What would be the point of telling the kids? It has nothing to do with them. They never met him or knew anything about him. He was just some stranger from the past, and you know how kids are. If it doesn’t have to do with them, they don’t have much interest in it.”