by Ron Schwab
Bell’s eyes darted nervously and beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. “I . . . I did security work for Ralph . . . at the bank and here at the house.”
“Security work? Like what?”
Sweeney suddenly had an interest in the conversation now. “Yeah, Ike, like what?”
“Well, like I kept a special lookout at the bank at nights just to be sure there wasn’t nobody trying to break in. And I gave him advice about what to do if there was a robbery . . . all kinds of things. Then Ralph worried a fearsome amount about Celeste being took for ransom, so I kept an eye out for anybody hanging out around here . . . strangers and such.”
Sweeney remarked, “Hell, Ike, that’s what we pay tax dollars for. And the sheriff doesn’t have off duty time. I seriously question the ethics, if not the legality, of your taking money for those services. Regardless, Ralph could have hired a couple of guards around the clock for what you got paid. I truly don’t understand this.”
The sheriff was squirming now, ready to call it a night. He had lost interest in taking custody of the book. “Nobody’s business what Ralph was paying me for.”
“It is if you were blackmailing him,” I said. “Ralph got the bank in financial trouble, and as special administrator of his estate, I have a responsibility to follow the money and recover whatever I can. You see, Ike, I’ve got a theory. Would you like to hear it?”
“Hell, no. Your theories ain’t worth a four card flush.” Bell pushed his chair back and started to get up.
Will Heasty finally spoke. “Wait a minute, Ike. This is news to me, too. I’d like to hear Ian’s theory.”
Bell was obviously torn between his curiosity and his desire to absent himself from this place. Curiosity won out and he stayed put. “All right, show your cards.”
“Here’s what I think, Ike. I’m pretty sure this goes back to the rape and murder of that poor little girl outside the carnival grounds over five years ago. I think you came across some evidence that Karl Wainwright did it and you went to Ralph with the information. You made a deal that Karl would leave town and carry out his rapes and killings in some other community, and as long as Ralph kept the checks coming you’d keep your mouth shut. I’ve seen despicable acts in my time but none any lower. Not only a guilty man went unpunished, but I wonder how many poor girls have died or been assaulted.”
“You can’t prove that. You’re guessing.”
“It’s the truth. I can see it in your eyes. And I’m going to lay it out for the county attorney and suggest he have the state attorney general’s office make a special investigation. Maybe nobody can prove anything, but you will have to do some explaining. And don’t try to tell me word of the investigation won’t leak out. Secrets aren’t well kept in this town. If you hang on by a thread, the voters will cut you off next election day . . . if they don’t lynch you before.”
I paused for a moment to let my words sink into the sheriff’s thick skull. His eyes would not meet my own. He looked down at the table, evidently pondering the sudden unpleasant turn of events. His face was chalk-white, and his chest was heaving like a blacksmith’s bellows. I half expected him to keel over from a heart attack. Nonetheless, I continued. “One thing I can’t figure out, Ike, is how you and Karl tie in to Ralph's murder. It seems too coincidental that Karl shows up, his father is killed, and he waits a few days to go to the sheriff who was blackmailing the old man to tell what he saw. The sheriff’s money spigot was running dry. Maybe he figured junior would have a new one to draw from. Maybe junior and the sheriff teamed up.”
“That’s exactly what happened,” Sweeney said enthusiastically. “Ike and Karl killed Ralph.”
Bell stood up, looking tired and haggard. It was like he had aged ten years since he entered the library an hour or so earlier. “All these law wranglers in here . . . this place smells like a room full of wood pussies. I’ve had me enough.” The sheriff straightened up, sucked in his gut, and walked out of the room.
28
Ian
AFTER OUR PRODUCTIVE visit to the Wainwright mansion, Will and I returned to the office with our discovery. We sat down in my office to discuss the turn of events and to plot our course. Outside, the sky was turning smoky gray and clouds were churning angrily. The low rumble of thunder could be heard in the southwest, and I fretted over prospects of a stormy ride to the ranch after I met Mandy at the depot this afternoon. Of course, I could rent another room at The Fremont and we could stay in town overnight. And after Mandy was asleep, I could call on Casey and pray for another thunderstorm if that’s what it took to get her back in my arms. Somehow, Casey McGlaun was not bringing out my nobler motives this day.
Will was sitting next to my desk, studying the thick, black words inscribed on the inside cover of Paradise Lost for perhaps the tenth time, shaking his head in disbelief. “It’s too easy,” he said. “We’re supposed to win our cases with superior skills and brains, aren’t we? This just fell in our laps.”
“I’ll take dumb luck over brains most of the time. That’s the way it works in this business, Will. We stumble on a bit of information solely by accident or our mind plucks an idea from nowhere. Suddenly, we look a hell of a lot smarter than we are. Anymore, I let the client attribute that piece of luck to my genius, because I know my skill and brilliance will go totally unrecognized when things go sour because of the other lawyer’s dumb luck or because the judge’s breakfast didn’t set well or his wife didn’t share his ardor the night before.”
“How could Ralph have been certain you would find his clue in Eight Cousins? How did he figure it out in the first place? I never thought of Ralph as literary. I don’t know why he just didn’t write out a new will or let you know what had happened.”
“Like most of us, Ralph did his share of stupid things . . . maybe more than his share . . . but he was a man of substance once, and it wasn’t all by accident. He wasn’t the smartest man in this part of the country by any means, but he had an innate cunning that enabled him to outfox more bookish men. I suspect he figured out his clue by happenstance. Almost everyone’s at least heard of Louisa Alcott. He probably pulled Eight Cousins from the shelf and randomly thumbed through it and came on the words Paradise Lost, a title a lot of folks might recognize even if they hadn’t read it. From the looks of it, someone had read Eight Cousins, possibly several times before. Maybe he was familiar with it. Anyway, something triggered the idea to use the book. I think he was a virtual prisoner in the home during those last days. We know that Prince Albert and Celeste were searching all the papers in the house. They probably wanted to be sure Ralph hadn’t left something like this behind. Even if they searched the library, they wouldn’t have done more than look for loose papers.”
“That’s true. They couldn’t thumb through the pages of every book. They couldn’t begin to.”
“He could hardly talk to me without discussing the blackmail that had forced him into making out the earlier holographic will, and I don’t think he wanted that discovered while he was still alive. That’s why he didn’t just write something out on paper and give it to Greta. It could have fallen into someone else’s hands. If he and Greta had a falling out, Ralph might have had trouble recovering the document. A Louisa Alcott book would have had no significance to anyone. The only reason it had any meaning to me was the curiosity it raised when Greta delivered it.”
“He took a big chance.”
“Yes, it was risky. But he probably realized that a book was about the safest thing in that house. But what if we hadn’t picked up on the clue? By this time, Ralph had to know he was close to broke. My guess is that he had already informed Karl that the checks were coming to a stop. That’s probably what really brought him back to Borderview. He wouldn’t have believed the old man was out of money even if Ralph told him. People like that have to be hit over the head with the truth. Ike might have got the same message and forged a new alliance with Karl as soon as he could.”
“So do you think Karl or Ike had something to do wit
h Ralph's death?”
I shrugged. “Anything’s possible.”
“I assume we should go ahead and get our new will on file with the county court today.”
“Yes, go ahead and type up a copy for our file and then we’ll both sign a verification that it’s the exact wording of the holographic version . . . just in case the book mysteriously disappears. I’m not inclined to leave anything to chance.”
“Are we going to try to probate this one or just submit it as evidence that the first one was never revoked?”
“Obviously, Reuben’s never dealt with anything quite like this . . . neither have I, for that matter. I think I’ll draft an alternative pleading and let him take his pick. It would probably be cleaner to probate our first will, though, and when we have the hearing, I’ll try to nudge him in that direction. I’m going to file a motion that the hearing be set next week for admitting the will to probate. Celeste’s trial is about over, and the new will makes that a moot issue anyway. As soon as I’m appointed executor, we can go ahead with the bank arrangements. Emily’s in full accord and she calls the shots on the estate’s financial dealings from here on. I just hope we can salvage something for her out of this mess. She feels a responsibility to do something for Greta and the baby.”
I heard the door open in the outer office. Will got up to see who had come in and returned momentarily with a Western Union in his hand. He handed it to me and I opened it and scanned the words quickly. “It’s from my brother, Cam. He’s arriving on tomorrow afternoon’s train. Doesn’t say why.”
29
Ian
DUSK DESCENDED AS Mandy and I rode into the Lazy Key ranch yard. A storm still threatened but it had held off long enough to leave me without an excuse to stay in town. A buggy would never have made it through the murk and mire of our county roads, so I rented a horse for Mandy from the livery. We had made good time, since even Hemlock had apparently sensed the need to beat bad weather home and had been a model of good behavior during the trip.
TJ was waiting on the porch when we arrived. He had evidently been visiting lady friends at Tillie Crump’s when I departed for town a few days back, so he had been left to his own devices in my absence. I smiled to myself, thinking TJ and I both had our weaknesses when it came to the female sex. Wolf was nowhere in sight. I hoped he had not taken up TJ’s wandering ways. George had offered to castrate the dog to encourage him to stay close to home, but I held empathy for the animal that pushed me toward reprieve. Wolf was a hunter, and the local jackrabbit population kept him largely self-sufficient, but one of George’s older sons checked the place daily and was to drop off some rancid beef from time to time to supplement the dog’s diet.
As we dismounted, Mandy said, “Dad, I want to see Dancer. I’ll put up the horses if you want to get supper started.”
“You sure?”
She looked at me in feigned exasperation. “Dad, not everybody hates horses.”
“I don’t hate horses. I swear I don’t. They just don’t like me. And it’s mostly Hemlock that gives me trouble.”
“I’m sorry, Dad. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. But they sense it. Deep down you just do not like horses.”
We had shared this conversation before, so I held up my hands in mock surrender. “Okay, you unsaddle and grain the horses. I’ll see what I can scratch up for supper. You’ll probably have to settle for biscuits and beans. Maybe we can do some ginger cookies together after supper.”
Mandy was already on her way to the barn with Hemlock and the rented mare in tow. TJ followed behind, deserting me for his younger friend. Well, go with her, I thought. See what you find to eat in the barn. I went in the house and decided to light the oil lamp in the kitchen before darkness settled in. I started a fire in the wood stove, and then left it to burn down to red-hot coals while I changed clothes. I shucked my rumpled suit and slipped into some denim trousers and decided on a flannel shirt in light of the chill that was moving in ahead of the storm that was almost certainly signaled by ragged bolts of lightning flashing off to the southwest.
The impending storm triggered thoughts of my single night with Casey McGlaun, and as I commenced mixing up the biscuit dough and got a pot of beans started on the stovetop, I found myself dwelling once again on this woman who had somehow taken up residency in a portion of my addled brain. I’m a lawyer, and not being inclined toward the more visceral battlefields of the courtroom, I focus on bringing order out of chaos, and I tend to analyze and re-analyze to make sense out of things. I try to make logic rule my conclusions, although I confess I am often more comfortable when I allow my intuition to rule. I have learned to never entirely ignore my “gut feelings” and to at least test my carefully reasoned decisions against my more instinctive reactions. This had long been my internal strife—logic versus emotion—and I tried to give both due weight.
Logic told me there was no future for Casey and me. She had her sights set on a future that would make her the most sought after trial lawyer in the west—hell, probably the whole United States of America. That kind of career was not launched from a rural base like Cottonwood County. And I had found my piece of heaven here. The big city was not my destiny, not with Weeping Springs and Mushroom Rock a ten-minute walk from my doorstep. She was a young woman more malleable and capable of change than I, who tottered on the brink of middle age and whose mold had been pretty well cast some years back. Logic told me we had not known each other long enough to even think the thoughts I had been thinking lately. And what was on Casey’s mind about the two of us?
Emotion told me, I finally conceded, that I was in love with this woman and the mere notion of losing her sent my mind spinning into near panic. The thought of Casey McGlaun made me a young man again, made me more resilient and open to change, made me ready to rethink what I might be willing to do if I had the prospect of spending a lifetime with her.
The pungent smell of overdone biscuits brought me back to the mundane tasks at hand. As I rescued the biscuits from the oven, it occurred to me that Mandy was a bit past due from her chores in the barn. This did not especially concern me, since she had a tendency to dally with the horses, but when I went to the door and looked outside and saw how quickly the sky was darkening, I decided I needed to retrieve her immediately and hurried back into the house, grabbed up the oil lamp and headed for the barn.
When I flung back the barn’s Dutch doors and stepped inside, a wave of sickening fear swept through my stomach. Neither Hemlock nor the rented mare had been unsaddled. On a backdrop of loose wheat straw just inside the doorway lay Wolf, his head and jaw mashed to shards. Blood-caked wounds in his torso indicated he had taken several bullets before being finished off with one of my long-handled axes that had been tossed aside nearby. There was no sign of Mandy. Obviously, the stalker had returned and made off with my daughter while I puttered mindlessly in the kitchen. How could I have been so careless? So utterly stupid?
I moved quickly through the barn, calling for Mandy on the chance she had found a hiding place in some nook. I checked outside the rear doors and found tracks at the exit of one, but between the darkness and the pre-rain haze, I was unable to discern anything I did not already know. My instinct was to race wildly after the tracks, but I realized my emotions were untrustworthy right now. I was weaponless in the unlikely event I caught up with Mandy’s captor. If I were killed, neither Mandy nor I would be missed until sometime tomorrow, giving the abductor nearly a day’s head start. The horses had not been unsaddled, so he must have taken Mandy as soon as she entered the barn, and this gave him a good hour’s lead. Someone else had to be informed, and I needed help, more precisely, I needed George Washington’s help.
I ran back to the house, found my slicker and an extra for Mandy, and then pulled my ’73 Winchester down from the gun rack next to the door. Then, I rushed into the bedroom and opened the dresser drawer, removing the holstered Navy Colt revolver nestled there and buckled it on. I hadn’t fired the pistol in some years, but I
oiled and cleaned it frequently and kept the belt full of fresh cartridges. I don’t like guns much, but I respect them and I know how to use them. Yes, I certainly know how to use them.
I abandoned our supper and made a beeline for the barn. I unsaddled the rented horse, tossed her some hay and left a bucket of water in her stall. Then I saddled Dancer for Mandy’s return, or to be placed into service if we needed a spare mount. I apologized to Hemlock for pressing him back in to service so quickly, and for some reason he did not protest when I slid the rifle into the saddle holster and swung into the saddle. We took off for George’s place just as the first volley of the storm struck.
30
Ian
GEORGE AND I took shelter under the shelf of a limestone outcropping less than a mile from his place. We got the four horses out of the weather as best we could and then pressed our backs to the rock wall and waited out the storm’s onslaught. George rolled a soggy cigarette and after repeated failures finally got it lit. He stood next to me, tugging the warm smoke into his lungs, savoring it, and then exhaling it slowly in thick plumes that lingered for some moments in the heavy air before sneaking away into the sheets of rain. Somehow, I found the rich tobacco odor warming and comforting.
As luck would have it, this was the most violent gale I had ever tried to ride out. I figured we must have caught the edge of one of those angry tornadoes that sweeps over the Kansas border from time to time, twists its way through southern fringes of Nebraska wreaking havoc along its path, leaving death and destruction in its wake, before petering out and retreating like some phantom, just as quickly as it had attacked. The storms that rode with it, however, might hang on for hours.
It had taken me a half hour to make what should have been a ten-minute trip to George’s farm. With the racket of thunder and snapping lightning in the background, it had taken some serious hammering on the door to arouse a response from the house. Alexander, George’s ten year-old by Willow, wife number three, had answered the door, wide-eyed and startled by the spectral appearance of the dripping figure that had emerged from the storm. I brushed past him and told him to get his father. There had been no need since George was there before the boy turned to summon him. I suspect my words sounded like gibberish, but George got the gist of my story and immediately left to collect his own weapons and stuff his saddlebags with supplies. Martha appeared momentarily and led me to a crackling fireplace in the spacious living room. A passel of small children parted like little chicks to make room in front of the fire. I savored the warmth for a few moments before George returned.
