Ed Lynskey - Isabel and Alma Trumbo 02 - The Cashmere Shroud

by Ed Lynskey

  Quiet Anchorage was once a vital depot with a 50,000-gallon water tank to replenish the thirsty steam engines. The Coronet River meandered by Quiet Anchorage’s southern flank. The summer-long drought had depleted the river’s flow to the point where it trickled over the exposed red sandbars, black volcanic rocks, and deadfall trees.

  The young folks picnicked and skinny dipped, if the mercury climbed into the three-figure digits as it had on more than one August afternoon. Canoeists and kayakers liked to traverse the Coronet River designated as one of Virginia’s scenic byways. However due to the drought making the water shallow, the sportsmen floating in their personal crafts dragged river bottom, so they had to substitute other leisure pursuits.

  A historic steel truss railroad bridge erected during the first decade of the twentieth century spanned the Coronet River. Last year, the town council had voted to hire a local contractor (i.e., the mayor’s nephew) to repaint the bridge a silverish gray shade. Its industrial look pleased Alma while Isabel judged it as just shy of abominable. The sandy banks under the bridge offered a clean, shady spot where Sammi Jo liked to retreat, chill out while sitting on the driftwood log big as a sofa, and do her deepest thinking.

  Toward sevenish o’clock, she relaxed on the log, dabbling her toes in the refreshing pool of water. As a rule of thumb, she preferred solitude when she was mulling over issues. For this visit, however, she had company. She didn’t mind it. Isabel perched on a nearby flat rock a couple steps behind Sammi Jo while Alma remained standing between the other two ladies.

  She stayed busy skimming the fragments of slate across the widest pools shaded by the overhanging willows and sycamores. So far, she’d refined her throws to make the slate fragments skip along four leaps over the water’s surface. It was a juvenile pastime to occupy her. She felt too antsy to sit still with Sammi Jo and Isabel.

  The older ladies clung to their pocketbooks large enough to carry their paperbacks inside, and Isabel toted along a 3X magnifying glass. Sammi Jo made do without a purse, a bigger nuisance, she thought, than wearing pantyhose in August. Distracted, she watched a pair of electric blue and orange dragonflies dance a jittery tango over the sandbars. She had a lot weighing on her new deliberations.

  The sisters didn’t protest or chafe over the delay. They’d spent three-quarters of a century practicing the art of patience.

  With a swat, Isabel took out a bloodthirsty mosquito attacking her elbow. Then Alma scratched a bite left on the side of her neck. The citronella oil they’d put on before prior to leaving the house to repel the mosquitoes had lost its potency. Neither sister interrupted the meditative silence reigning since they’d halted under the railroad bridge.

  Sammi Jo had said she was headed there after they washed the dinner dishes, and Isabel opined she oughtn’t to go alone. Alma agreed, so they accompanied Sammi Jo. The older ladies didn’t see much worth gained by their riverbank loitering, but if Sammi Jo took any solace from it, they were glad to be with her. Meantime they’d turned off their cell phones and fended off the mosquitoes.

  Tonight marked the first time all three ladies had met since Ray Burl Garner had turned up shot dead at Barclay’s Turf Farm. All wasn’t glum, however. Isabel was eyeing a still warm sandbar that was the perfect spot to spread a picnic blanket, break out the game board, and play Scrabble. To say she was addicted to the wordplay board game wouldn’t stretch the truth. It was a proven remedy to ease the troubled mind like Sammi Jo’s was right now. Isabel hadn’t gotten in a game for three days, and she was getting cranky like a coffee drinker who’d been denied their morning cups. She wondered if she could cajole Alma into a nightcap round while sipping their tall glasses of iced tea and nibbling on Godiva Chocolate Truffles. Chocolate was Isabel’s sleep aid.

  Leave it to the rambunctious Alma to speak up first. “Getting darker makes it a little spookier under the bridge.”

  Sammi Jo, breaking off her thinking, smiled. “Are you a superstitious gal, Alma? Do you put stock in Aunt Phyllis’ favorite yarn of the headless Confederate officer astride his horse glowing like pale green fire in the soupy fog?”

  Phyllis Garner, Sammi Jo’s theatrical aunt and the sisters’ friend, lived in a townhouse on the next corner over from them.

  “Me? Pffft. Her stories are silly old wives’ tales,” said Alma.

  Isabel was grateful for the diversion. “You swallowed Willie’s outrageous claim he spotted UFOs playing tag over the piney woods. What do you call that?”

  “I agreed to spare hurting his feelings,” said Alma. “I’m not a true believer in that nonsense.”

  “Patronizing him won’t be any nicer after he sees through you,” said Isabel.

  “Willie and I remain good friends,” said Alma.

  Sammi Jo inhaled a gulp of air and filled her chest. “Smell that?” She glanced at Alma, then Isabel. “I love the one-of-a-kind aroma given off from the creosote rail ties on a hot summer evening. A perfumery should bottle it because I know it’d give the pricey Chanel No. 5 or Shalimar a run for its money.”

  Alma canted her nose and sniffed at the riverside air. “Creosote. Here? I don’t smell it.”

  “Can’t you though?” Sammi Jo sounded incredulous.

  “Our olfactory sense isn’t as sharp as it once was.” Isabel couldn’t imagine working at the office while smelling like a telephone pole. “Getting back to our earlier discussion. The bottom line is you have to pull up your bootstraps, Sammi Jo, and get on with it.”

  “That’s a mean thing to tell her,” said Alma. “She just lost her father.”

  Isabel levitated from the driftwood log and used her palm to brush the red sand off the seat of her pleated trousers. “Abrupt, yes. Mean, never. It’s all well and good for us to skim pebbles, lick our wounds, and hold a group cry. However, we’re finished with doing all that, and this is the time to get the ball rolling. Any more dallying around is counterproductive.”

  Gauging her sister’s flinty voice, Alma startled a little. “I’ve never seen you get so worked up like this. I’m usually the one who’s blunt.”

  “Do you disagree with me?” asked Isabel. “Can we afford to wait any longer?”

  Sammi Jo was also up and putting back on her sandals. “I’ve been sulking on you gals. I’m bummed, it’s true, but I can’t let Daddy’s murder investigation lag and fall into the cold case bin.”

  “I couldn’t agree more with you, ladies.” A new voice, baritone and gruff, came from behind the ladies on the riverside path.

  They spun around to identify the mystery speaker, but they didn’t run off.

  He stood there, arms folded on chest, as if he were the boss under the railroad bridge. He was huffing out of breath from his exertions to reach them.

  “No, it simply can’t be,” he went on. “The long arm of the law will not allow the killer to get away with murder. Not on my watch.”

  Chapter 4

  Alma shifted her pocketbook’s double straps to ride on her other forearm. She recovered her poise and squinted at the intruder. “Well, well. Get a load of this sight. Roscoe Fox, the good sheriff of Quiet Anchorage, is stalking its innocent citizens and eavesdropping on their private conversations.”

  “I’m performing my sworn duties of office,” he said, annoyed by her sarcasm. “New developments in the Ray Burl Garner homicide have led me here to find you.”

  Alma looked from Sheriff Fox to Isabel, to Sammi Jo, and back to him. “Do you see a bloodthirsty killer standing in our midst?”

  “Alma, please,” said Isabel. “Roscoe hasn’t stated his reason for bumbling along the riverside path to see us, but it must be important whatever it is.”

  Sheriff Fox couldn’t make up his mind whether Isabel was also being facetious at his expense. He had a sharp memory of his spirited clashes with the elderly sisters. He chafed at how more times than not he’d gotten the short end of the stick. His prematurely balding, iron gray hair with his rugged face put him in his early middle age. He wasn’t a shor
t man, or a tall man, but he was of average height to go with his average weight. Willie, a member of the Three Musketeers, said Sheriff Fox wore elevated shoes.

  He’d broken into law enforcement while an Army military cop, a solid credential he was fond of trumpeting, never more vociferously than when election time grew close. His track record as the local sheriff was mixed although the munificent Isabel gave him more credit than the crusty Alma ever would. His right knee showed a damp, sandy patch where he’d slipped and fallen down while fumbling along the riverside path.

  “Willie Moccasin told me where Sammi Jo likes to hang out.” Sheriff Fox rolled his weight forward on the balls of his feet. “That accounts for how I’m under the railroad bridge with you, not that I owe you any explanation.”

  Alma muttered just loud enough to be heard. “We’ll be sure to give Willie our thanks.”

  “What’s the big attraction down here?” asked Sheriff Fox.

  “Daddy used to bring me here when I wore pigtails,” replied Sammi Jo. “He pretended to fish for bass and bluegill while he napped after his long work week. Meanwhile I played building sand castles, grappling for crawdads in the feeder creeks, and floating on a tractor’s inner tube.”

  “Speaking of whom, I have a few more questions to ask you. Obviously, I’m not deposing you while I’m fending off the pythons, skeeters, and varmints. I conduct my official business within the civilized confines of the station house. Shall we go there now?”

  Sammi Jo barked out a derisive bray of laughter. “If you didn’t bring an arrest warrant, Sheriff Fox, there’s no way in a month of Sundays I’m marching into your station house. I still seethe over how Megan got double-crossed when she played nice and cooperated. Before you can say Jack Sprat, she was locked up in one of your jail cells. This smart cookie knows better than to fall for that old ruse.”

  “Apples and oranges,” said Sheriff Fox. “Megan was regarded as a murder suspect, mistakenly as it turned out. But you’re the decedent’s next-of-kin.”

  Sammi Jo swiped the hair out of her face and jutted her chin. “Whatever you need to ask me, spill it here, or you can forget about it.”

  Turning, Sheriff Fox petitioned Isabel, the only sensible lady he felt he had left to approach. “Can you translate how I’m the sheriff to the headstrong young lady?”

  “Sammi Jo keeps her own convictions, and I have to go along with her on this one,” said Isabel. “Just do your interview. Nobody is close enough to overhear you. Alma and I can hike back to the bridge if that puts you at better ease.”

  Sammi Jo placed her hands on her hips. “That dog don’t hunt. Isabel and Alma can also stick around if they like.”

  “Of course we’ll be here,” said Alma. “We’re her only family who’s now left.”

  Raking his fingers through his thinning hair, Sheriff Fox gazed back with longing up the riverside path to the highway bridge. He’d left his cruiser parked there behind their sedan. He begrudged how the elderly Trumbos cowed him, but they’d be quick to point out they’d changed his diapers if he dared to stand his ground. Why that personal fact intimidated him, he didn’t understand, but it did, and he didn’t like it.

  Arguing with an older person who’d powdered your tukus as a baby was intimidating. During her emergencies, his mother had leaned on the sisters to pinch hit for babysitters when they were back visiting. Folks trusted and helped folks. They just did that in Quiet Anchorage. Or they had before the two murders had struck and turned everything topsy-turvy.

  He realized he could finish his canvass with Sammi Jo and then go on home, ending his taxing day. He’d sink his tired bones into the Barcalounger, swig icy cold PBR, and veg out in front of his big screen TV watching Jay Leno he’d recorded.

  Sheriff Fox scratched his forearm. Blasted mosquitoes, he fumed. He cleared his throat and assumed his bassy cop voice.

  “Did Ray Burl—your father—ever mention any beefs he’d had with an employee at Barclay’s?”

  “No, Sheriff. Daddy and I only covered the general stuff in our conversations.”

  Perplexed, Sheriff Fox frowned. “‘General stuff’ is pretty wide open. What sort of general stuff do you mean?”

  “Oh, the weather, NASCAR, and fishing. Do I have to draw you a picture? He never liked to bring the day job home.”

  “Was he always so closed-mouth and guarded?”

  “Believe it or not, he had a life if that’s what you’re getting at.” Sammi Jo noticed Alma behind Sheriff Fox yawning and stifled doing the same thing.

  “Can you make this go any snappier, Roscoe?” asked Alma. “The mosquitoes are making us into their main course and dessert.”

  “If Sammi Jo fields my questions without any interruptions, I can cover more ground. Now, Ray Burl was the foreman out there. He must’ve had some smarts to impress Old Man Barclay.”

  “Daddy busted his hump working sixty to seventy hour weeks and never once complained about it. Nothing was given to him on a silver platter. He earned his stripes through the good, old-fashioned sweat of his brow.”

  “I’m not calling his work ethic or loyalty into question,” said Sheriff Fox. “But I have to delve into why he was so nose-to-the-grindstone all the time. Everybody comes up for a breath of air at some point, but from what I’ve gleaned, he was a working fool. You say he had a life outside the job. If he did, then it couldn’t have amounted to much of one.”

  “Where are you going with this line of inquiry, Roscoe?” asked Alma. “An industrious man doesn’t have oodles of spare time to get into any trouble. Ray Burl fits that category. Accept that as fact and move on.”

  “You’re running on the same track as I am,” said Sheriff Roscoe. “I’m pursuing the angle he clashed with the troublemakers while he was on the job.”

  “Troublemakers like whom?” asked Sammi Jo.

  Sheriff Fox shrugged a shoulder. “He was your father. You can tell me.”

  “He never told me if he did such a thing,” said Sammi Jo.

  “You must have a suspect in mind to tramp all the way out here,” said Alma.

  “Nobody in particular, Alma. I’ve just got different theories. Suppose Ray Burl had a side action going. Suppose a dispute broke out between him and a disgruntled customer. He dug in, claiming he’d been honest, only the customer didn’t agree with him.

  “Angry barbs were exchanged, leading to male tempers on short fuses exploding. Hollered threats weren’t enough, and one whipped out a handgun, and that only goes down Homicide Street. Ray Burl got hit, and the perpetrator fled the scene, and yours truly is left with this gory mess.”

  “You got one part wrong because Daddy was a mellow, laid back dude,” said Sammi Jo. “He didn’t have a short fuse, and he didn’t use a hair-trigger temper. As for the side business, he made a few sticks of furniture, but nothing that major came of it.”

  “Did he ever break the law?” asked Alma.

  “Not even once,” replied Sammi Jo.

  “Does he have a criminal record, Sheriff?” asked Alma.

  “Any rap sheet question automatically falls under proprietary information,” replied the haughty Sheriff Fox.

  “Uh-huh. In other words, Ray Burl was never arrested and had a clean record. He was the same law-abiding citizen as you or me. Sounds like a dead end.”

  Sheriff Fox couldn’t bite off his chagrin any further. “Alma, you and Isabel had just better cool your granny jets. Murder is a serious business. Stand back and give us skilled pros the room to perform our duties free of your Pinkertons-in-petticoats meddling. Am I making myself crystal clear?”

  Before Alma gave her retort, a familiar toot bleated off in the near distance, followed by a longer whistle. Alma compared it to the firehouse’s whistle or a jumbo-sized leaf blower on steroids. Her heartbeats stepped up their pulsing throbs. She’d been a train lover since girlhood, especially of the now extinct steam engines.

  The onrushing clatter to the fleet steel wheels rumbled over the twin ribbons of metal
lic rails. The four recognized the early evening freight train was approaching to zoom by above them on the steel truss bridge and clamber on through the metropolis of Quiet Anchorage and all points beyond. If he were checking his cell phone for any new text messages, the locomotive engineer would zip right by and miss seeing Quiet Anchorage.

  The freight train, throttling off the fuel, slowed before entering the steel truss bridge, but the check in speed didn’t lessen the hybrid diesel engine’s clamor, which engulfed them in their position a few yards under the bridge and the freight train’s mammoth underside. The train’s steel wheels grinding over the steel track created the red sparks.

  Again, the engine whistle shrilled, and the din’s shockwaves grew louder to their ears. Every townie was familiar with the various freight, and with lesser frequency, the faster moving Amtrak passenger trains clickety-clacking by their burg. The four had no fear of the thunderous mechanical leviathan rumbling so close to them. Nobody pressed their hands to cover their ears. Suddenly a girl again, Alma cracked a wry smile at Sammi Jo who was pumping her fist, celebrating the freight train’s crossing.

  No doubt she’d done this cheer before when she’d sought refuge here, and the rolling big hardware chugged by her. Sheriff Fox wasn’t nearly as amused, watching the irrepressible Sammi Jo and wondering about her behavior. He stroked his stubbly chin.

  She didn’t convey the image of the inconsolable grieving daughter to his way of thinking. He gave her a second once-over. Did she harbor an angry or greedy motive to bump off her father Ray Burl? Families were the prime suspects to crack murder cases. Sheriff Fox needed a prime suspect in custody like yesterday.