Cast a Blue Shadow

by Gaus, P. L.

  Most of the numbers Caroline found were listed beside names —friends, professors, relatives. Two numbers were listed without names. To Evelyn, she said, “See if this one is in that phone’s address book.” She held the little blue spiral notebook so Evelyn could see the number.

  Evelyn punched keys and said, “The Martins. It’s a Canton exchange.”

  “It was Martins who adopted her child,” Caroline said. “Steve and Becky Martin.”

  “Do you think she will have been in touch with them?” Evelyn asked.

  “Could have been.”

  “That would carry a significant emotional price,” Evelyn said.

  “Try this number,” Caroline said, and showed Evelyn the book again.

  Evelyn scrolled through the address book, and after a minute or so, said, “It’s listed simply as ‘Ben.’”

  Caroline stood up and took the phone. In the kitchen, she showed the display to Martha and gently asked, “Is that who I think it is?”

  Martha looked dispassionately at the listing and said nothing.

  Caroline scrutinized Martha’s expressionless features and then pushed SEND, holding the phone to her ear. Evelyn Carson sat down to listen to Caroline’s half of the conversation. Martha looked away.

  “Hello,” Caroline said. “I presume you are Ben Schlabaugh?”

  “Caroline Branden.”

  “Yes, I am sure you do, Mr. Schlabaugh, and let me assure you I remember you very well, too.”

  “No, but I wouldn’t call you on her behalf, for anything.”

  “Why?”

  “That would be out of the question.”

  “You tell me.”

  “I only want to know why she’s been calling you.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “No. It’s preposterous.”

  “I’ll do no such thing.”

  “No. You listen. Martha may be in some kind of trouble. She’s not talking again.”

  A pause.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Not Martha. Me.”

  “When?”

  “Where?”

  “Count on it, Mr. Schlabaugh.”

  She switched off and very slowly put the phone on the table.

  “It sounds as if you’re going to meet him,” Evelyn said.

  “Tomorrow is an off Sunday for Amish.”

  “He’s willing to talk?”

  “Says he’s eager to!” Caroline exclaimed. “That takes some nerve.”

  Evelyn nodded.

  “I said I’d go down to Charm, tomorrow,” Caroline explained “To meet him in the parking lot of that old cheese factory at 2:00 P.M.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “He said just me.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “OK, but I’ve got a thing or two to say to him.”

  “OK. But first, you’re going to have to hear some things that perhaps you’ll find surprising. You don’t know the whole story about Ben Schlabaugh.”

  Martha watched the two women silently. It wasn’t Ben. Don’t blame him. He took me away. He made it stop. Chased the blue shirt away.

  21

  Saturday, November 2 10:35 A.M.

  SALLY and Jenny descended the front staircase of the Favor home dressed in blue jeans and colorful sweaters. They each had a winter coat, and they held matching wool caps. They also each held a cigarette, Jenny a lighter, too. They came up to Ricky Niell at the front door waving their cigarettes, and Sally said, “Good morning, Officer.”

  Niell said, “It’s Sergeant. Sergeant Ricky Niell.”

  Jenny said, “Officer Ricky. Now that’s a nice name, isn’t it, Sally?”

  Sally said, “Sergeant, please tell the Oaf Sheriff that we’ll be on the front porch.”

  Niell opened the door for them and stepped outside to hold it open while they exited. “Oaf is right,” he said. “You got another one of those?”

  Sally and Jenny exchanged amused glances. Jenny took out a pack and offered a cigarette to Niell. He took it, and she lighted it for him. Niell drew on the cigarette as if he had needed a fix all morning. He closed the door and stayed outside with the women.

  On the shaded front porch, the snow had not melted. On the parking oval below the porch, patches of blacktop showed, where Daniel had plowed, and there the snow was melting slowly in the sun. Niell stepped to the far end of the porch, and, to the west, he saw dark clouds approaching. Blowing smoke into a crisp westerly breeze, he said, “Sheriff Robertson is a piece of work.”

  “I’ll say,” Sally said and approached Niell, kicking snow with her boots. “He’s a colossal bore.”

  Niell turned to face her on the porch. “I don’t think he has a handle on the finer points of this case,” Niell commented. “And please let me say, I am sorry about your mother.”

  “I’m not,” Sally said hotly. “She was a hypocrite.”

  Niell waited.

  Sally said, “Do you know how many affairs she’s had on campus?”

  Niell shook his head and watched Sally’s eyes intently.

  “Three in ten years, that I know of.”

  “Wow,” Niell said. “You know that for sure?”

  “Pomeroy and Royce were just the latest,” Sally said pointedly. “If she’s said it once, she’s said it a thousand times. ‘All I want is for a man to be strong.’ Please! What a whiner. She’s the biggest castrater I know.”

  “Or she was,” Niell said, hoping to get a reaction.

  “Was. Yes, was. She’s got my brother cut back to a spineless brat, and Royce, her latest, is a stumble-down drunk.”

  Niell’s mind raced to anticipate what to say next, to keep her talking. “I don’t think she would have liked our sheriff,” he said, laughing.

  Sally smiled. “She’d have taken him on, all right. The most competitive person I know.” She drew long on her cigarette and exhaled slowly. “You think it’s right, Sergeant Niell, that a mother would find it necessary to compete with her children?”

  Niell shook his head.

  “She’s all hammers and nails,” Sally said. “Tough, or so she thinks.”

  Niell crushed out his smoke on the porch railing and said, “It sounds like she had it tough.”

  “Maybe as a child, but not after she married. Not then at all.”

  “My old lady was like that, too,” Ricky lied.

  Sally said, “She was cruel. You should have heard her bawling out Martha Lehman. ‘White Trash’ this, and ‘Country Trash’ that.”

  “Is that Sonny’s girl?”

  “If he has the brains to keep her,” Sally said.

  “Is she a pretty nice girl?”

  “Yeah, sure. I guess. Kinda simple. But, my mother thought she had her number. Told her she was no good for Sonny. Told her she knew about her ‘dalliance’ with Professor Royce. Bawled her out something fierce, and told her that if she didn’t break it off with Sonny, she’d have her ruined at school.”

  “Whew, what a—,” Niell said. “Where’d she get off talking like that?”

  “If you look like you stand half a chance of costing my mother money, she’ll claw your eyes out.”

  “How did you hear them?” Niell asked. He knew instantly that he had wrecked the flow of the conversation, so he quickly said, “Say, can you spare another smoke?”

  Jenny handed over her pack, and Niell knocked one out. He bent low and cupped his hands around Jenny’s lighter, and puffed. When he looked up, Sally was gazing at the dark clouds in the west, and her eyes had moistened.

  “I’ve been on a yo-yo string all my life,” she said with her back turned. “Trying to win her approval, and then giving up. And trying again because I couldn’t help it.” She turned around, crying. “That’s Sonny’s problem. He hasn’t given up. Nothing could ever be good enough for Mother. So I quit trying. Sonny’s never going to make it on his own.”

  Niell knocked ash off his cigarette and held Sally’s eyes sympathetically. Sally grew
quiet and drew inward. Jenny went to her and embraced her as she continued to cry softly. Niell leaned against the railing and waited.

  After a while, Jenny held Sally at arm’s length and said, “It’s over, Sally. She’s gone.”

  Sally lifted her head and dried her tears on the sleeve of her coat. Niell produced a handkerchief and said, “Keep it.”

  Sally used it and stuffed it into the pocket of her coat. “I don’t know why I told you that, Sergeant. I hope it won’t be used against me in a court of law.”

  Niell laughed. “Nothing of the kind,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Sally smiled.

  The two women descended the porch steps and walked around the front corner of the house, toward the back. Niell found a bottle of mouthwash in the back bathroom on the second floor and took it out on the front porch. There, he rinsed until he could no longer taste tobacco.

  22

  Saturday, November 2 10:50 A.M.

  SHERIFF Robertson met Sally and Jenny as they rounded the back corner of the big house. Waiting next to the cars and cruisers were Daniel Bliss, Henry DiSalvo, Mike Branden, and Sonny Favor. Several deputies worked with shovels in the snowbanks beyond.

  “Ready to go, girls?” Robertson asked. “It’s still an hour or two before lunch. Maybe we can finish up at a decent hour.”

  DiSalvo stepped forward and said, “First, I’ll have a word with Sally and Sonny.” He waved them over to the far edge of the parking lot and began to speak softly to them next to the family limousine.

  Jenny Radcliffe found herself alone with the sheriff. She leaned back against his black-and-white cruiser and lit another cigarette.

  Robertson pointed at the Favors, talking secretively with DiSalvo, and said, “They’re cutting you out of the play. Bluebloods stick together.”

  Radcliffe laughed outright and wagged her finger at the sheriff. “Nice try, Mr. Policeman,” she said.

  “Sally is in more trouble than you realize, young lady.”

  “Don’t you ‘young lady’ me, old man,” Jenny barked, heated. “I don’t tolerate fossils like you.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” Robertson said, feigning astonishment. “I only meant that you are over here, and they are over there.”

  “Sally will call me when she wants me.”

  “Is that how it works, then? You’re her little pet?”

  Radcliffe threw her cigarette down and crushed it hard under her boot. “I know what you’re trying to do.”

  “I’m trying to tell you what kind of trouble you three kids are in.”

  “I already know that.”

  “We know about Sally’s fight with her mother.”

  “That’s not news.”

  “We also know that Sally was going to be cut off. A busted trust. No inheritance.”

  “That’s not the way it is. Sally will be fine. She talked to Mr. DiSalvo in the kitchen.”

  Robertson unzipped his coat and reached into the breast pocket. He pulled out a small notebook and read some figures there. He angled the page so Jenny could see the numbers, and said, “Cut from a trust fund worth $10,250,000 now, to $4,000 a month until she’s thirty. That’s a motive for murder.”

  “Sally hasn’t been cut out of the will. She gets almost half of everything.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Like I said, she talked to Henry DiSalvo.”

  “What did you two overhear last night to cause Sally to take on her mother that way?”

  “You already know.”

  “Busting Sally’s trust?”

  “Yes.”

  “There has to be more.”

  “Well, there isn’t.”

  “You’re lying. You were drunk.”

  “I was with Sally. We stayed by ourselves all night. Partied in her room.”

  “You must have slept some.”

  “Not really.”

  “Yes, really. Then, sometime later in the night, closer on toward morning, Juliet Favor went downstairs, and Sally knocked her down on the marble floor. Then you two carried her upstairs, and left a blood trail in the staircase carpet.”

  “I don’t have to take this,” Jenny said.

  Robertson decided that he had her about as worked up as he wanted and said, “Then Sonny is the only one who could have killed her.”

  Jenny looked over to Sally and Sonny, who were still talking to DiSalvo beside the black limousine. She glowered up at Robertson and said, “Neither one of them killed her.”

  “They benefit from her death, equally. That means they had equal motive to have wanted her dead. You say you were with Sally all night.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  Robertson put his notebook away and zipped up his coat. “We will continue this in town.”

  Jenny Radcliffe squared up to the big man, stared at him long and steady, and started off in the direction of the limousine.

  Robertson caught her coat sleeve and said, “You’re not riding with them.”

  She jerked loose and stood her ground, saying, “Oh, yes I am.”

  Ricky Niell came around the corner of the house and sized up the standoff. He said, “She can ride with me,” and Robertson saw Radcliffe relax a bit.

  “OK,” Robertson said dismissively. “You ride with Sergeant Niell.”

  Radcliffe moved two steps in Niell’s direction, and Niell said, “This way, Jenny,” pointing to the cruiser nearest the back door.

  DiSalvo noticed the skirmish and had made it to Robertson as Niell was leading Radcliffe to his car. To Robertson, DiSalvo said, “Jenny Radcliffe is represented by Baker, Lumbaird, and Drumond, out of Wooster. The Favor children have just retained them on her behalf.” To Jenny, DiSalvo added, “You should not say anything until your lawyers are present, Jenny.”

  Robertson said, sarcastically, “Now see, Jenny. They’ve gone and made this all adversarial.”

  Radcliffe pulled an imaginary zipper across her lips and smiled at DiSalvo before getting in the front of Niell’s black-and-white.

  DiSalvo told Robertson, “She’s not to be questioned,” and walked back to the limousine. Robertson watched the three climb in the back. Bliss closed up and got in behind the wheel. When Niell pulled out, Bliss followed.

  Alone on the packed snow stood Robertson and Branden. The sun was up at its midmorning position, but clouds were swarming in from the west on a cutting wind. Robertson put on gloves and smiled.

  Branden shook his head. “You were working her pretty hard, Bruce.”

  “I’m just warming up.”

  “We’re going to have to keep them separated down at the jail.”

  “I’ve already called Ellie. She’s setting up Interview A and B, and we can use my office, too. You gonna help?”

  “I’d like to, but what’s with you? You don’t seem like yourself.”

  “It’s nothing, Mike. Now, what have we got so far?”

  “We know who was here, and when,” Branden said.

  “For the most part. But, there’s still that little matter of the Lexus that seems to move itself from place to place.”

  Branden ignored the thrust. “We also know when everyone left.”

  “Except that Bliss didn’t sweep through the house before he turned in.”

  “We do know that Sally, Jenny, and Sonny stayed the night,” Branden said.

  “And we know someone cracked Juliet Favor’s skull.”

  Branden shook his head. “Trouble is, there are a good fifteen people with motive to have done that.”

  “I put it at more like twenty.”

  “So, motive won’t solve this one,” Branden said.

  “Not at first. Someone has to make a mistake,” Robertson said.

  “Do you know when Missy and her people will be done in the house?”

  Robertson checked his watch. “In about an hour. By noon, anyway.”

  “Her station wagon is out front. Who else is still here?”

  “My photographer just left
,” Robertson said. “There are still two tecs with Missy.”

  “She knows about the pitcher?”

  “Right. There’s something else.”

  Branden waited.

  Robertson took off his hat and rubbed the top of his head with a gloved hand. “I’m having them test a little bottle labeled DMSO.”

  “Pomeroy’s medicine?”

  “She was dabbing that stuff on her temples all night long.”

  Branden said, “Then I’ll see you in town,” and started walking toward his car beside the garage.

  Robertson looked suspiciously at the professor’s vehicle and said, “That a new one?”

  “No.”

  “How many cars do you have, Mike?”

  “This is just our little around-town sedan.”

  “How many? Give!”

  “I still have the truck.”

  “OK.”

  “We also have our custom van.”

  “Tough life.”

  “There’s Caroline’s Miata, too.”

  “Four. You’ve got four cars.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “What, Doc. Have you been taking money from Old Lady Favor, too?”

  23

  Saturday, November 2 11:00 A.M.

  CAROLINE and Evelyn moved Martha to an upstairs bedroom, and she was asleep by the time they had pulled the covers up over her shoulders. Evelyn went downstairs to make another pot of coffee, and Caroline lingered in the bedroom doorway, watching Martha sleep.

  It had been nine years since Martha’s son had been born, and Caroline now bitterly remembered the day Ben Schlabaugh had brought her in a flatbed wagon to the emergency room of Joel Pomerene Hospital. Caroline had been a volunteer in pediatrics, and Martha had been fourteen.

  The mad scramble in the emergency room was lodged vividly in Caroline’s mind. The filthy clothes they had cut away. The Cesarean section to save the child. The transfusions as Martha had bled out on the table. All these played again in her memory, like an old movie, scratched film on a tattered screen, as Caroline fingered the veins in her arm where they had taken blood for Martha. When she realized she was crying, Caroline went to the bathroom, dried her eyes and blew her nose, and went down the steps angry again at the backward Amish peasant doctrines that had nearly cost child and mother their lives.