Cast a Blue Shadow

by Gaus, P. L.

  Caroline Branden was a tall, slender woman with long, light-auburn hair. Her husband, equally trim, was half a head shorter, with brown hair graying at the sides.

  “No self-respecting bird is going to be out in this weather,” Branden remarked as his wife sat down opposite him at the large maple table, the gift of an Amish friend.

  “Six kisses says you’re wrong, Michael,” she said confidently, sipping her coffee.

  “I’ll take that bet,” Branden replied and smiled. “Get bigger feeders and you wouldn’t have to go out every morning.”

  The phone rang, and he got up slowly to answer it, as Caroline remarked, “I like things just the way they are.”

  As he spoke on the phone, Caroline watched her first customer arrive, a male downy woodpecker, with his black and white coat and a small patch of red at the back of his head.

  Branden motioned her to the phone and whispered, “It’s Evelyn Carson.”

  Caroline queried him with her eyes as she came up beside him, and he cupped the receiver and said, “Martha Lehman” as he handed her the phone.

  Caroline took the phone, and the professor remained at her side. She said hello, listened, and said, “Oh no, Evelyn! Have you got her there? Not at the hospital?”

  Then Branden heard her say, at intervals, “Of course. You’re sure she’s not bleeding? Why not? OK, keep her there with you. Of course. No. I’m coming down.”

  Caroline hung up the phone and headed directly for her boots in the family room. As she sat on the edge of the couch to lace them up, she said, “Martha’s over at Evelyn’s office. She’s got blood on her apron. And it’s not fresh blood, Michael. I mean, it’s . . . I don’t know. Evelyn says she’s not bleeding. And there’s a Lexus with its front end smashed in, parked in the alley. Does Martha have a car?”

  “No,” the professor replied, “but her boyfriend has a Lexus.”

  “I’m going down to Evelyn’s office.” Caroline said.

  “I’ll go with you,” Branden said.

  “No. Better idea would be to call down to the sheriff’s office first and see if anything’s been put out on the radios about a car crash. Some kind of accident.”

  “Take your cell phone,” he said, and turned back to the kitchen.

  PAST a silent and deserted courthouse square, Caroline Branden turned right on the Wooster road, and drove north through plowed slush to a pink Victorian house south of Joel Pomerene Hospital. Here, several large Victorian homes on the left side of the road had been renovated to hold offices for doctors, lawyers, and other professionals. In an alley beside the pink house, Caroline pulled her Miata to a stop in deep snow, wedging the front of the sports car into a snowbank, next to a silver Lexus with its front end smashed into a light pole. Caroline got out of her car, brushed snow from the driver’s-side window of the Lexus, and saw a deflated airbag hanging from the steering wheel. She followed tracks through the snow to a side door, climbed the stairs to the second floor, pushed in through one of the heavy office doors, and found Martha Lehman sitting on a couch beside Evelyn Carson.

  Pulling off her coat, Caroline sat in a recliner near the couch. Martha turned her head toward her old friend, but her eyes registered no reaction.

  Evelyn Carson eased Martha Lehman back from the edge of the couch and let go of her hand. She motioned for Caroline to follow her to a small office bathroom, where she washed blood from her hands.

  Taking a seat at a desk in a far corner of the office, Dr. Carson said, “I found her curled up outside my door there, when I got in around 7:00. She’s not hurt. The blood’s only on her apron, plus her hands and whatever she’s touched. At first I couldn’t get her to move. Once I did get her inside, she wouldn’t talk.”

  Caroline asked, “Won’t talk or can’t talk?”

  “This is trauma,” Evelyn said, “so it doesn’t matter right now whether it’s ‘won’t’ or ‘can’t.’ She’s mute again, just like before.”

  “You got her through this once, Evelyn. She’ll pull through again,” Caroline said.

  The phone rang and Evelyn answered it and handed the receiver to Caroline, saying, “It’s Mike.”

  Caroline took the phone and said, “It’s not good, Michael.”

  “It may be worse than you think,” the professor replied.

  “You talked to the dispatchers?”

  “Juliet Favor has been murdered,” he said flatly, “and an inebriated Sally Favor is being questioned at the scene.”

  10

  Saturday, November 2 8:00 A.M.

  MIKE Branden climbed the snow-covered front steps at the Favor home early Saturday morning in bright sun, and heard Sheriff Bruce Robertson’s booming voice inside. Under different circumstances, the professor would have smiled, familiar as he was with Holmes County’s colorful lawman. But, the professor had not seen Robertson since late in August, when Branden’s involvement with the sheriff’s office typically diminished with the start of the fall semester at Millersburg College.

  The preceding summer had been a peaceful one, a year since Robertson had nearly died in a fire at a roadside accident. Robertson’s long recuperation from the burns and subsequent infections had forced a hiatus, and, in the year and a half that he was out, the operation of the small-town sheriff’s office had been in the hands of Administrative Captain Bobby Newell and Chief Deputy Kessler. Several promotions had taken place, most notably Lieutenant Dan Wilsher to Patrol Captain, and the odd corporal here and there to sergeant. By the time Professor Branden had taken chalk in hand for the fall term at Millersburg College, Robertson had assumed full-time command again, keeping the peace among the many Amish and Mennonite sects of rural Holmes County, Ohio.

  By Branden’s reckoning, in the year and a half since their last major case together, there had been, in all of Holmes County, only five assaults and twenty-two burglaries or thefts, a crime rate typical of a single day in Cleveland, some seventy miles to the north. Ominous, then, Branden thought in the cold morning light, that murder had once again found sleepy Millersburg. Even more so that it had invaded the repose of one of Ohio’s several dozen small colleges.

  Branden crossed through heavily tracked snow on the front porch, took off his gloves, and pushed the front doorbell. As Sergeant Ricky Niell opened the heavy wood and glass door to him, Branden slid back the hood of his winter coat and stepped into the large foyer of the house.

  Ricky Niell was dressed in a neatly pressed brown and black uniform, his black hair and thin mustache trimmed fastidiously.

  Sheriff Robertson stood opposite the front door, at the top of the grand staircase, in a gray suit, with his red tie loosened over a white shirt whose collar seemed a size too small. He bellowed, “Mike, wait there!” and started down the staircase, careful to side-step yellow plastic number markers that had been laid in several places on the beige carpet.

  Branden turned to Niell, offered his hand, and said, “Congratulations, Ricky.”

  Niell fingered the sergeant’s stripes on his left sleeve and said, “Thanks.”

  Branden eyed the insignia and said, “Well, yes. That too, but I meant on your marriage to Ellie Troyer.”

  Niell nodded and smiled. He looked down at his shoes, and again said, “Thanks.”

  “You’re going to hear from Caroline about this,” Branden teased.

  Ricky watched the sheriff descend the last few steps and said, “We eloped. Thought that was best.”

  “Yeah, I know,” the professor said, “but that didn’t give anyone a chance to throw Ellie a shower.”

  Niell shifted his weight nervously.

  Branden said, “You got out of the wedding, but now you’re going to have to sit through a couple of wedding showers. You and all those women. It might have been better to have had a nice little wedding and get it all over with at once.”

  Niell chuckled and said, “She’s worth it, Doc.”

  Robertson crossed the entryway to them and asked, “Who’s worth it?” He hitched his pants u
p and pulled on the front of his ill-fitting suit coat to align it as best he could.

  “You’ve put on some weight, Bruce,” Branden observed.

  “It’s nothing,” Robertson said, sounding annoyed. “Who’s worth it?” he repeated.

  “Ellie Troyer-Niell,” Branden answered.

  “Don’t I know it!” Robertson blustered. “She’s got me broke in about where I like it.” He pointed to Niell’s sleeve and added, “Did you see these sergeant’s stripes, Mike?”

  “Yes,” Branden smiled. He moved away from the front door to look at an area that had been marked off with crime scene tape on the black marble floor. Eric Shetler, Robertson’s photographer, was kneeling there, taking low-angle photos of the small area.

  “Some significance here?” Branden asked, looking back at Robertson.

  “That’s gonna be where Juliet Favor died,” the sheriff said. “There was a fight here, and you can see where she cracked her head on the floor. Then, someone carried her up the stairs, and there are blood drops on the carpet, leading up to her bedroom.”

  Staying outside the tape, Branden got down on his hands and knees and studied a small star crack in the black floor. If it hadn’t been marked, he would not have seen it. He got back on his feet, took off his heavy coat, and draped it over an upholstered chair in the corner of the large entryway. “What else do you have?” he asked.

  Robertson led the way up the stairs to the hallway outside Juliet Favor’s bedroom. Looking in, Branden saw Coroner Missy Taggert and two lab technicians bent over Favor’s body, studying a small patch of blood at the back of her skull. Favor was lying on her side, head on a pillow, as if she had simply fallen asleep there. The covers were pulled up over her shoulders.

  Back downstairs, in the front foyer with Ricky Niell, Branden asked, “Have you talked with any witnesses, people who came out, that sort of thing?”

  “We’ve just started,” Robertson said and frowned. He turned to Niell and quietly said, “Niell, put one of your deputies on each of the doors. Nobody gets upstairs except us.”

  Niell nodded, “Yes, sir.”

  On reflection, Robertson added, “Look, Ricky, this one’s going to be a mess. There’ll be a regular stampede out here once word gets around. Anyone who insists on staying, you send around to the kitchen door in back. Have Armbruster take them all into the dining room from there. They can each wait there until we get statements. I’ll want to know what they’re doing here this morning. Why they came out. And whether they were here last night. How many’s that going to be, Doc?”

  “Probably a dozen at dinner. Kitchen staff makes for more.”

  “Get a list started, Ricky,” Robertson said. “We’re gonna do this one by the book.”

  “I’ve got one for the staff already,” Niell said. He took a spiral notebook out of a creased uniform breast pocket. “The butler already gave me the staff on duty last night.”

  “OK. Good,” Robertson said. “Let’s get Armbruster started making a list like that for this morning. The whole campus will probably be out here before the day’s over.”

  Robertson said to Branden, “You’ll be an asset on this case, Mike, with so many college people involved. Without you, we’d need a program and a scorecard to keep all the players straight.”

  “You might consider me a suspect, Bruce.”

  “Get real, Doc.”

  “Hey, I was out here last night like everyone else.”

  “I’ll kick you off the case as soon as you screw up. But maybe you don’t like the idea of working a case during the school year.”

  “Doesn’t bother me.”

  “OK, then. I can use your help on this one.”

  “I hoped you’d say that,” Branden said.

  “Why don’t you and I go interview the butler?” Robertson asked. He glanced back to Niell for a name.

  Niell flipped a page in his notebook and said, “Daniel Bliss.”

  BLISS was seated at his small desk, wearing a trim blue blazer and matching bow tie over a white shirt. He made a show of rising slowly to greet the sheriff and the professor.

  “Daniel Bliss, butler to the Favors,” he said formally. “Sheriff, I see no reason for your captain to have detained young Miss Sally, much less to have subjected her to a grueling interrogation.”

  “Actually,” said the sheriff, “there is good reason to question Sally Favor, Mr. Bliss.”

  “She has admitted to spending the night, nothing more.”

  “We haven’t detained her yet,” Robertson said. “Not officially. We’re really just waiting for her to sober up, as I understand it.”

  “I’ve told your captain that Sally will say nothing more until the family lawyer arrives.”

  Robertson changed the subject. “I understand there were quite a few people out here last night.”

  “I’ve already given your sergeant a list of the staff.”

  “I’ll need a list of the guests, too,” Robertson said.

  Bliss turned to his desk, took a handwritten list from the blotter, and gave it to Robertson. “This is the invitation list. I’ve been working on it for you just now. So far as I remember, everyone attended. Perhaps Professor Branden could verify the list.”

  Robertson handed the list to Branden without looking at it.

  Captain Bobby Newell entered the narrow room from a door to the kitchen and said, “Lawyer’s here.”

  Newell was dressed in gray sweats, as if he’d been summoned to the scene from the gym. He was stocky and well muscled. His habit of flexing the muscles in his body builder’s arms and shoulders made him seem constantly agitated.

  Branden asked him, “Didn’t get much from Sally?”

  “No,” Newell said. “She’s still pretty wasted. Her girlfriend up in the back bedroom is the same. They say her mother was drunk last night, too.”

  “That’s not possible,” Daniel countered.

  Newell ignored the butler. “I’ve collected several champagne bottles out of Sally Favor’s room and elsewhere, and enough gin was served here, last night, to keep ten people drunk,” he told Robertson. “Gave all the bottles to Dr. Taggert already.”

  “You’ve no right to search through people’s rooms,” Daniel complained.

  “Oh, I very much do, sir,” Newell answered. “At any rate, the young lady is still inebriated. It’s going to be a while before we get anything coherent out of her.”

  Robertson tapped the list Branden held and said, “Now, Mr. Bliss. For the record, do you consider that anyone on your list there will have had a motive for murder?”

  Branden was surprised by the direct question, and from what he saw in the butler’s expression, so was Bliss. Newell instinctively moved a little closer and sat on the edge of Bliss’s desk, crowding the butler somewhat. Robertson held Bliss’s eyes and waited.

  Bliss sighed as if his integrity had been impeached by imbeciles, and said, “Any of them.”

  “And why do you say that?” Robertson asked.

  “They all were taking cutbacks in their budgets.”

  “Hardly seems a reason to kill someone,” Robertson said.

  “There were to be wholesale changes in the disposition of the Favor estate. Mr. Henry DiSalvo was to come out here today to help Ms. Favor meet with each department head from last night’s banquet. There was to be another banquet tonight, with the rest of the academic department heads, and meetings with them on Sunday. Everything was going to be changed, even the children’s trusts.”

  “I see President Laughton’s name is on your list. Do you consider him a suspect, too?” Robertson asked.

  “He had more reason than most,” Bliss replied flatly.

  Robertson stared wordlessly at Bliss, waiting for an explanation.

  Said Bliss, “The college budget, as a whole, was to be reduced, and he and Ms. Favor had had a disagreement over leadership of the college board.”

  Robertson eyed the butler for a long thirty seconds and said, “Thank you, Dan
iel. That’ll be all for now. I want you to stay in your room here for the next several hours.”

  Bliss blanched indignantly. “That will be quite impossible.” The sheriff stepped eyeball-to-eyeball with the butler and raised his voice to say, “Stay here, Bliss. Talk to no one. Am I understood?”

  Daniel sputtered a few syllables and backed up against the edge of his desk, displacing Bobby Newell.

  Robertson said, “Captain Newell will take your statement now.”

  Newell nodded and took a notepad out of his waistband.

  Robertson asked him, “Sally Favor?” and Newell pointed toward the kitchen door.

  BRANDEN followed the burly sheriff through the swinging door, and the two found Sally in a white terrycloth bathrobe, her short hair disheveled, hovering over a cup of coffee at a small round table in the corner of the large kitchen. Henry DiSalvo sat next to her in an old-fashioned three-piece suit. His long winter coat was draped over his knees.

  As soon as he saw Robertson, DiSalvo rose to his feet, laid his coat over the back of his chair, and said, “Miss Favor is not answering any more questions, Bruce.”

  “You’re an estate lawyer, Henry,” Robertson said. “Sally, from what I’ve seen upstairs, you’re gonna need a criminal lawyer. I’d be happy to recommend someone.”

  “I’m sure you would,” Sally muttered, cradling her head. She took a cautious drink of her coffee and said, “Henry has been our family’s lawyer for twenty years. Besides, I don’t need a trial lawyer. Didn’t kill my mother, you see.”

  “Don’t say anything,” DiSalvo said.

  Robertson sat next to Sally at the table and said, “I understand you didn’t get along very well with your mother.”