by Kari Bovee
He came over and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “I’m afraid our hands are tied, Grace.”
Detective Walton stopped before he took Lizzy out the door. “If you want to do something, I suggest getting this young lady a lawyer.”
Chapter Fifteen
I took Chet’s truck and followed them down to the station, determined to wait there until one or both of them were released. I paced the floor of the dingy lobby, the flickering overhead light causing an ache behind my eyes. The sounds of phones ringing and typewriters clacking added to my misery.
At about 6:00 p.m. an officer finally came out to greet me. “Mrs. Riker?” He was an older man, tall, thin, and near retirement age if I had to guess.
I wrung my hands together. “Yes. That’s me.”
“Detective Walton says to go on home. He’s holding Miss Moore until bail can be set, and he’s keeping Mr. Blaine until tomorrow at the earliest. The young man has chosen not to be cooperative. We will call you when we have further information.”
“Oh dear.” I practically wilted. Why did Daniel not see that he was making things worse?
“Do you know how soon bail will be set?” I asked, miserable for Lizzy.
The officer shook his head, and all I could do was go home.
When I arrived, everyone was at the dinner table. My bones ached, and the pain behind my eyes had only increased. My stomach swirled with anxiety.
Rose got up from the table and greeted me in the foyer. “I’ll take your coat and hat. You go on in and get some supper.”
Grateful, I handed her my things and went into the dining room. I did my best to put on a smile for Ida and Susie.
Chet looked up at me. “No luck?”
I shook my head.
“Where are Lizzy and Daniel?” Ida asked, putting down her fork.
I thought about making up a story to protect their feelings, but the situation had gone far beyond that. I sighed and gave them a weak smile. “They are at the police station. Hopefully, not for long.”
The rosy glow in Ida’s cheeks faded. “They’re in big trouble, aren’t they?”
I pressed my lips together. “We aren’t sure what kind of trouble they are in just yet. Right now, the police still have some questions for them and are going to keep them overnight. But Chet and I are going to do everything we can for them in the morning.” I looked to Chet. “Were you able to find a lawyer for Lizzy?”
He shook his head. “Not one we can afford. I’ll keep trying, but by law, she will be assigned one by the court.”
By dessert, my headache had crawled over the top of my skull and down the back of my neck. Despite my best efforts, I could manage nothing more than a bite of the pineapple upside-down cake Rose had baked that afternoon. As I sat with my elbow propped on the table and my fingertips at my temple, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Susie, who was sitting next to me, looked up at me with her big, hazel eyes.
“Are you sad, Miss Grace? Pineapple upside-down cake is your favorite.”
I lowered my hand to my lap and forced a smile. “I’m just a little tired. And so full from that marvelous dinner.” I glanced at Rose with thanks.
“It was really good, Mother,” Chet said. I couldn’t help but think he was trying to placate her. The stress of Lizzy’s, and now Daniel’s, situation had been difficult for everyone.
“Glad you enjoyed it.” Rose gave Chet a nod and stood up, gathering her plate, utensils, and glass. “Ida, help me in the kitchen, would you?” She took her dishes into the kitchen.
Ida rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh.
“Hey,” Chet warned her with a pointed look.
“Okay, okay,” she said and gathered her things and Chet’s. She went for Ned’s, but he held her off. He was still enjoying his dessert.
The phone rang, sending a jolt of pain stabbing into my ears.
“I’ll get it.” Chet went into the hallway to answer it.
“How are you holding up, Grace?” Ned asked. “You look exhausted. Is there anything I can do for you?”
I shook my head. “No, Ned. Thank you. I’m fine. Well, I’ll be fine once I can help Lizzy—and now maybe Daniel. I wish I’d never let Mr. Travis have that party here,” I said with a sigh. “If I hadn’t, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
Ned reached across the table, but his hand didn’t touch mine. “You’ve been really good for the kids. Don’t doubt yourself. I know this is all very hard, but you’ve done nothing wrong.”
I shook my head. “I’m not so sure about that.”
He put down his fork. “You know, my mom raised me on her own. My dad lit out on us when I was just a boy. She worked three jobs just to keep a roof over my head. I was alone a lot growing up. I would have loved to have someone like you to take care of me.”
I scoffed, feeling very unqualified at the moment. I played with my napkin in my lap.
“I’m serious,” he said, breaking into a smile. “You are such a good influence on them. You’re smart, full of life, loving. You are like a beautiful angel. The perfect woman.”
The perfect woman? I looked up at him and heat ran up my neck and into my face. I was once more taken aback at his boldness.
I was rescued from having to respond when Chet walked back into the room. His face grim. “They have posted bail for Lizzy.”
My heart lifted. So why did he look so serious? “Really? That’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
He sat down and his shoulders sagged. “It’s twenty thousand dollars.”
“What? That’s a fortune.” My chest went into spasms. “How will we ever raise that kind of money?”
“Geez.” Ned shook his head.
I put my hands up to my cheeks. They were cold as ice, and my face was hot. My head pounded. “What are we going to do?” I asked Chet.
He looked over at Ned. “Ned, do you mind?”
Getting his meaning, Ned wiped his mouth with his napkin and, with a quick glance at me, grabbed his plate. “Of course. I need to go check the horses.”
When he left the room, Chet came over and sat next to me, where Susie had been.
“Can we pay the bail?” I asked.
Chet shook his head. “I’m afraid not. We can’t afford it.”
Well, we certainly couldn’t off my salary. “What about the money from the lease to Mr. Lambert? I thought you said you were putting that and our cut of the cantaloupe crop into savings. And you also put your share of the money from the Harper case into savings. If we sell something—”
“Grace.” Chet took my hand. “We don’t have nearly enough in our savings account. We’ve had to make repairs to the barn, the fencing. We have enough to get by on but not much extra. I’m so sorry.”
Suddenly the small amount of dinner I had managed to get down felt like it was going to come back up, and the ache in my head made me feel like my brain was in a vise. Weak from pain and nausea, I pulled my hand away from him and slowly got up from the table, wishing I had never pursued a career in film and wishing I had never met Edward Travis.
That night, after a long soak in the tub, I crawled into bed aching with misery and worry—not to mention that my headache still had not subsided. I pulled open my bedside table drawer and reached for the aspirin. I popped two in my mouth and washed it down with a glass of water I’d brought up from the kitchen.
I was heartsick at the thought that I had failed Lizzy, who was now completely alone in the world. It was bad enough to have lost everyone in her life, but add to it that she was in a jail cell accused of murdering her sister? It was almost too much to bear.
It took me hours to drift off to sleep.
And then Lizzy was there.
She sits in a chair, blindfolded and gagged, her hands tied behind her back. A bright light shines on her face, and Detective Walton shouts accusations at her. Sophia and my mother stand behind her. Robert Smith and Lenora Lange are there, too, but they move in and out of the scene. Margaret holds a crying baby in her arms, trying to shu
sh it. Sophia is again speaking to me. Suddenly, I am behind a group of boulders, looking down onto a body of water. Sophia is calling me toward her, but getting to her requires going over the boulders and through the water. My mother and Lenora Lange join in her efforts to get me to cross. I want to get to them so badly, but I keep slipping on the boulders, and I’m afraid I’ll fall into the water to my death. I hold my hand out to Chet, who suddenly appeared, but when he reaches for it, he turns into Robert Smith and both his hands are covered in blood. He grabs onto mine, but I pull away from his grasp and tumble headfirst into the water.
I woke up gasping for air. I opened my eyes and breathed a sigh of relief to find myself lying in my bed, the room bathed in the gray of early morning, and the only sounds in the room were the whisper of the drapes as they fluttered against the opened window and the ticking of the clock on my nightstand. I looked over to see the time. It was 5:00 a.m. I sighed with frustration knowing I would never get back to sleep, and if I did, I’d only get forty-five to fifty minutes at most. I’d probably only gotten about four hours once again. I put my hand out to touch Chet for reassurance, but he wasn’t there. He must have already gotten up.
I closed my eyes in an attempt to get a few more winks, and the image of Robert Smith passed through my mind again and again. I recalled his bloody hands in my dream. Realizing I would just replay the scenario in my mind for the next hour, I got out of bed. I pulled on Sophia’s dressing gown and went to the bathroom to splash water on my face.
I stepped into my slippers and then opened the door to the hallway. All was still quiet in the house, and I was grateful for it. In an hour it would be bustling with activity and I would need to get ready for work, as much as I didn’t want to go with Lizzy sitting in jail. It didn’t seem right to have life go on as if nothing had happened when hers was in jeopardy. If she was found guilty of the crime, she would hang. Bile swirled in my stomach at the thought.
As I passed by the living room to go into the kitchen, I spied Chet on the sofa. He’d slept in his clothes—even his boots—and without a blanket. He must have stayed up late and then slept down here to keep from disturbing me. I smiled at his thoughtfulness. The room was chilly, and I grabbed the crocheted blanket from the back of the love seat and draped it over him.
I padded into the kitchen and boiled the water for coffee. I scooped some grounds into the Drip-o-Lator and waited. Once the water was ready, I set the Drip-o-Lator on the pot and poured in the water. In minutes, I had a fresh brew and inhaled deeply as I looked out the kitchen window at the fields. The sun had turned the sky a pale pink.
As I sipped, my gaze drifted over to the area where I’d found Robert Smith the night of the murder. My mind flashed to the dream and him reaching for me with those bloody hands. I shook my head to rid myself of the image, but it kept pressing into my thoughts. The sky was now a deep peach and the hills in the distance glowed, bathed in mauve. I left the window, went to the kitchen door, and stepped outside to get some air and immerse myself in the sunrise.
Taking in a deep breath of cool air, my head began to clear. I rolled my head in a circle to work out the kinks in my neck, which was still sore from the headache the night before.
The field where I’d seen Robert Smith drew my attention again. He was the only person I’d seen out here on the night of the party. I walked toward the fields, trying to relive the moment. I couldn’t help but think he had something to do with the murder, even though I didn’t want to believe it. He had been so angry at Mr. Travis, not to mention intoxicated.
I looked to the barn and estimated that it was about five hundred yards away. I stepped off the drive and walked out into the field. The dew unleashed the alfalfa’s sweet aroma, and the tension in my shoulders began to melt. I never imagined I could be so contented living on a farm when I’d been born and raised in the city. But the hills, the grass, the sky, and the air, they sang to me, and I felt a rush of gratitude that I was able to share this with those who needed some stability in their lives. But it was quickly replaced by a pang of guilt at the notion that I hadn’t been able to do that for Lizzy
I walked a bit farther into the field when my slippered foot hit something. I knelt down to see an empty bottle of Gibson’s Rye—obviously Mr. Smith’s. How had the police missed this? Maybe they’d only searched the barn? As I stood up, my gaze landed on something else about six feet away. It looked to be more glass, and I wondered how many bottles he’d taken out there. I had also seen him with a flask. I bent down to pick it up. A sharp prick pinched my index finger, and I pulled my hand back. A tiny pearl of blood beaded on my finger, and I stuck it in my mouth. I then pushed some of the alfalfa aside and stared in amazement. It was a broken, pink drinking glass. Like the ones we had in our kitchen. Perhaps like the shards in the barn?
More carefully this time, I reached for the rounded base of the glass and held it up. One side of the cylinder had completely broken away, leaving the other half almost whole, but jagged and coming to a fine point. It was coated in something dark. Something like blood.
I sucked in a breath. I’d found the murder weapon. And now I knew for certain who’d committed the crime.
Chapter Sixteen
I ran back to the house and dashed into the living room. “Chet, wake up.” I shook his foot at the end of the sofa. He attempted to roll over, and I pinched his toes.
“Ow!” He opened his eyes.
I pulled the blanket off of him. “I need to show you something. C’mon, get your shoes on.”
“What time is it?” He reached up and swiped his hands down his face.
“It’s early. Get up!” I picked his shoes up off the floor and held them out to him. Reluctantly, he took them and put them on.
I led him outside and jogged toward the area where I’d found the broken glass. Sensing he wasn’t behind me, I turned to see him yawning and stretching. His hair stood up at various angles, and his shirttail hung partially out of his pants. I took in a deep breath, annoyed at his sluggishness. I moved on, and when I reached the spot waited for him.
“Look,” I said when he got there. I picked up the glass and held it out for him to see. “Think you could kill a person with this?”
He took it from me and examined it. “Yeah, it’s possible.”
I reminded him of what I had seen before I went in the barn to look for Lizzy. “I think Robert Smith killed him. At the studio a couple days before the party, Mr. Travis humiliated him on the set in front of everyone. Then he saw to it that Mr. Smith was fired. I also witnessed Mr. Smith threaten Timothy O’Malley. He has a severe problem with alcohol and possibly drugs—although he said he’d quit the morphine, if he is to be believed—and he’s shell-shocked from the war. He’s mentally unstable.”
Chet took in a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “Well he certainly had a motive. And yes, he could have used this to stab Travis. Can’t be sure if that is blood, but if it is . . .”
“There was broken glass at the murder scene. Lizzy had a cut on her hand. She said Mr. Johnson gave her a glass of water before she went out to the barn. What if she had been trying to stop Mr. Smith, intervened on Mr. Travis’s behalf and the glass broke in her hand, then Mr. Smith used it to stab Mr. Travis?”
“It’s plausible.”
“Yes! I think we need to get Detective Walton out here.”
Chet ran a hand through his unruly hair. “Let’s go in, and I’ll call him.” He reached out to touch my arm. “Hey, I’m really sorry we don’t have the money to get Lizzy a lawyer or pay for her bail. I’m just sick about it.”
I took his hand. “Me too. But who could have known something like this would happen? It’s not your fault. It’s mine. For having the party here. I never should have exposed the kids like that.”
Chet wrapped an arm around me. “They need to learn how to handle themselves in social situations, Grace. It’s part of growing up. I wish I’d had that kind of opportunity. But Mother felt she couldn’t keep me, let
alone raise me and teach me about things like how to behave at a party.”
“I know. And I had Flo to teach me. But both Daniel and Lizzy were drinking at the party. We failed them.”
Chet squeezed my shoulders. “They’re teenagers, Grace. They are going to see what they can get away with. Didn’t you? I know I certainly did.”
I shrugged. “Yes, I suppose so. But Lizzy is facing a murder charge.”
“For her sister,” he reminded me. “They haven’t found substantial evidence to charge her for Travis’s murder.”
A sudden thought came to me. “The murders have to be linked. They both involve Lizzy.”
Chet nodded. “That’s why Detective Walton thinks Lizzy is guilty of both crimes.” He looked at me like I wasn’t quite getting it.
I pressed my lips together, thinking. “Why would Lizzy be involved at all?” I wondered aloud. “She’s just an orphaned teenage girl.”
“Maybe it has something to do with the robbery she was involved with. She didn’t get a prison sentence, but we should find out if the man she’d been helping did and where he is now.”
“Perhaps,” I said, not entirely convinced. Murder and robbery were two very different crimes. “But they both could involve greedy, dangerous people . . . ” I muttered to myself.
“What’s that?” Chet asked.
I gasped as something clicked in my mind. “Chet, what if Lizzy is Elsa Mayfield, Mr. Travis’s heir? Someone could be setting her up hoping to get her inheritance.” Images of Mr. Travis’s two wives flashed in front of my eyes.
“But then who is Margaret?” he asked. “Travis only had one child.”
I bit a fingernail. “Maybe a stepsister? Maybe their mother remarried and Margaret is only her half-sister? We have to find out, Chet. How do we find out?”
Chet rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “I don’t know. But believe me, darling, I’ll find a way.”
I waited by the front room window in silence for I don’t know how long, pondering my newfound theory and praying Detective Walton would show up soon, hopefully with Daniel in tow. They’d only been questioning him. It was about time he came home.
