Lethal Lineage

by Charlotte Hinger

  I sent the cans reeling one by one. Between shots, I heard the back door open. I turned. Keith came out and sat on a chair at the edge of the patio. He watched silently as I continued my assault on the beer cans. I heard the door open and close again, and turned back to my practice. Then he stood by my side holding the .345 magnum he’d had in his holster at the sheriff’s office.

  In his other hand was a sack of cans. Wordlessly, he walked over to the fence and lined them up. I shot first. He shot second. I looked at him hard and we coldly continued alternating down the line. The moon went behind the clouds and a sudden splotch of light caught my eye. Josie had come out on her upstairs balcony to watch. Her form was as black as a specter with only the tip of her cigarette breaking the dark.

  My hand and wrist was tiring from the weight. His wasn’t, but he finally missed.

  “Rifles?” he said.

  I shook my head. No comparison there. He would win hands down. I glanced at the balcony. Josie had gone inside. I started to tremble. I carefully laid my gun down on the nearest patio table and covered my face with my hands. He set his gun beside mine and reached for me.

  “Bastard,” I whispered as I buried my face in his chest.

  “I know,” he murmured. He kissed me and then walked off and left me alone.

  He’s a seasoned husband and knows many things from having had two wives.

  I arranged pillows in a patio recliner and watched the moon for hours. I watched the rabbits play in the moonlight and heard frogs set up a dreadful clamor from our pond. I pondered reality. Facts. Between fitful dozing.

  There was no changing this man. And I knew good and well he had not done this to spite me or because he thought I was incompetent. I thought about different stances and attitudes because at thirty-eight, I knew it was possible to simply adopt a different attitude. A nice trick, which had come to me late, but it was possible. My options were not pretty.

  I could continue to rage and pout, thwart Keith at every turn and make his life miserable, try for a cutsie husband and wife combo, a kind of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, or act coldly professional toward my brand new deputy when we were working together.

  I settled on the last option.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The next morning there was a note from Keith by the coffeepot, where I would be most likely to see it immediately:

  Sam’s on duty. I’m at Henselys checking one of their horses. Call if you need me.

  The phone rang. I groaned, hoping it wasn’t Sam. I had dozed off in the recliner on the patio and hadn’t moved inside until the wee hours of the morning so I was stiff and still tired. But it was Harold Sider. For Josie.

  I called up the stairs and she took it on the extension. When she came down, her lips were in a straight line.

  “We’ve screwed up,” she said. “All of us. Harold called Keith to go over some of the charges filed against Deal and Keith told him about the recall petition. Harold is furious.”

  “Why?”

  “He says that only three people can carry it, the signatures all have to be witnessed by those three, and the three have to be citizens in the county of the person they are trying to run off.”

  Stunned, I sat down. “Oh boy. So the signatures of everyone you’ve coaxed into signing will no longer be valid.”

  “No, according to Harold. And he does know what’s legal, Lottie.”

  “How did this happen?”

  “We googled ‘Kansas Recall Petition’ and downloaded the forms. But Harold says we obviously missed the part about the three sponsors having to be registered voters of that particular county.” Still in her robe she poured a cup of coffee. She patted her pockets, hoping for a stray pack of cigarettes and finding none, she headed for the stairs. “And he says we also missed the line that it was highly recommended that we seek legal advice first.”

  ***

  Sam looked up for only a second when I came in. I stood in front of his desk until he was forced to give me his full attention. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve been looking at all our notes about Mary Farnsworth and I’ll be damned if I can find any motive at all for murder. She was as pure as the driven snow. I would swear to it.”

  “Any leads yet on the missing man?”

  “None,” He sighed and pushed his hat back on his head and reached for the pipe lying in the ashtray. His shirt, like most he wore, was pocked with little burn holes.

  I cleared my throat. He had to know. “Sam there’s been a complication.” I told him about the error Josie and Keith had made in obtaining signatures for the petition.

  He laid down his pipe, lowered his head, and squeezed his temples with his palms as though to ward off future headaches. “Oh goddamn it all to hell. We’re going to have to call every single one of those persons that have signed and tell them that there’s been a royal screw-up. The best we can hope for is that the Deals won’t find out who signed and retaliate.”

  “But what can they do?” It was a foolish thing to say. By all the incidents in the file, I knew it was plenty. Everything from vandalism to lethal word of mouth against a business.

  “Keith wasn’t going to be able to keep circulating the petition anyway, since he’s now a deputy. I guess the only bright side is that he and Josie had just gotten started. If there is a bright side.” He picked up a stack of papers and tried to align them.

  “I don’t think there’s been a bright side to anything from the moment of our first church service at that church.”

  “Josie up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell her to fax me those petitions. I’ll give them all a heads up right away.”

  “Sam, you shouldn’t have to do this.”

  “Shouldn’t ever have happened in the first place.”

  I swallowed, well aware of his flash of regret that he’d ever hired me, let alone promoted me.

  I suppressed the urge to apologize, and called Josie, told her what Sam wanted, made sure she knew how to use the fax in our home office, and gave her the fax number at the sheriff’s office. “I’ll be at the historical society,” I said, leaving Sam to his misery. Worse, leaving him to cope with the fury of the betrayed citizens of Copeland County.

  ***

  One of the advantages of my work at the historical society is that I’m my own boss and can choose among tasks. There’s a category of work that I can do when I’m technically brain dead. Due to the combination of pent-up worry and anxiety over the bewildering events of the past week I looked forward to a Dumb Day. When I could catch up on donkey work. Transcribing tapes certainly fell in that category.

  I put on headphones, scooted the telephone over so I could see the call light if it rang, slipped one of Edna’s tapes into a player and adjusted the volume. We had discovered early on that voice recognition software did not work well with the variety of voices and old terms and usages by persons long ago.

  In fact, sometimes it was difficult to decipher hand written terms. I’d struggled with “inst.” in old letters and finally learned it meant “in the present month.” Many other old documents contained strange characters.

  Edna’s voice was clear and her narrative contained precious details. She explained the process for separating cream. Women studies scholars would love her passionate explanation about the importance of “egg money,” which most women used to fund little expenses. Given what she had said earlier, I was surprised her husband “let her” keep it. Then she said:

  My husband never liked chickens so he didn’t bother to go out to the chicken coop. I did all the work and the children helped me. Henry didn’t know how many laying hens I had. He thought I had about thirty, but I really had about fifty, and I gave Henry most of the money. I kept some back so the kids would have decent clothes and for little school expenses. My little chicks came through the mail every spring and now when I can’t get out in my garden, I think about the happiest times in my life and I would give anything to go back to
those days and my joy at receiving those flats of fluffy yellow chicks.

  I paused for a moment to catch up with the typing. I also made a note to see if baby chicks were still shipped live through the postal service. It had been a huge issue after 9/11 when flights were shut down and so many animals died in cargo planes. I frowned, aware of the sad undertone in Edna’s story. Her accumulation of little deceptions. From the mouse murder to concealing egg money. It was a miserable way to live.

  There were three more tapes to go. However, I was interrupted by a call from Keith. “Just wanted you to know that all hell is breaking loose, Lottie. News about the petition is all over town and Deal is leading a crusade to have Josie and me thrown in jail.”

  “For what?”

  “Malicious mischief. And worse, he’s vowed to make trouble for every person, every business, that signed the recall petition.”

  “It won’t work. He’s going to cause more trouble for himself. And if he’s smart, he would be looking ahead to the next regular election which will be in just another year. I’m sure people will oust him then.”

  “I’m not. Think about it. He has a lot of family and a lot of supporters. And from the calls we’re getting people are scared. Not about physical danger, but economic retaliation. Hell, most of these poor bastards with retail businesses can’t afford to miss a single sale.”

  When I hung up I poked the caller list and saw that he had called from the sheriff’s office, not from home. I poured a cup of coffee and walked outside to the corridor and stared out the exterior glass double doors.

  Jonquils lined the walkways and only the cottonwood trees were withholding their buds. When driving to the office, I’d noticed a few lawn items on the sidewalk in front of the hardware store and there was a sign promising 20% off of garden hoses. Someone around this town believed in spring.

  I walked back to my desk and forgetting that Josie was out of range, I called her cell. I was sent to voice mail so I dialed our house phone, but she didn’t pick up.

  She would be livid over Deal’s retaliation. Certainly, she wouldn’t go home to Manhattan. I took a chance that she was on her laptop and emailed her that we had managed to rile up all of Copeland County. I got an IM back:

  It’s not that I don’t want to leave this miserable hellhole. But I will not be run off. Besides, Harold and I are working on something. He has an idea.

  I groaned, wrote that I had to get back to work, and signed off. I couldn’t stand anymore bright ideas.

  I resumed work with Edna’s tapes. Her memories were not chronological and she flitted from topic to topic and dipped into times before her marriage. Much to my delight, she had included every last detail of preparing for box suppers.

  Young girls would put a meal for two in a decorated box. The boxes were auctioned off at a community event, usually connected with a school fund-raising, and young unmarried men would bid on the boxes and the privilege of eating with the girl.

  Although it was disguised as random and anonymous, naturally most of the bidders knew which blushing damsel had prepared which box. In some cases, it was the community’s first clue to budding romances and sometimes, it was a young lady’s first indication of a potential suitor:

  I had told Buddy Astor which box was mine. We was already sweet on each other. He was…

  She broke off. Somehow I knew what would be coming next. It did:

  Buddy went up to one dollar and fifty cents. It was a lot. A fortune and he was just starting to work his folk’s hard-scrabble farm. Everyone there knew what it meant. We had just started making eyes at each other, but I knew, knew if he was willing to pay that kind of money, the next step was keeping company.

  Then Henry stood up and bid two dollars. Just like that. I looked at Buddy and he looked like he was about to pass out. He didn’t have that kind of money and the next bid would have to be fifty cents higher. So Henry won the box. And me. We didn’t have much to say but he didn’t seem to mind. I was real pretty back then.

  After that, my folks never let up. Henry already had a fine start. Three hundred acres and a team of work horses and a pair of matched mules and thirty pigs. From then on, Buddy acted like I was just a passing whim. He just plumb gave up. Looked right past me when I saw him on the street.

  So I showed him. Me and Henry got engaged and then got married.

  ***

  She could have talked to Buddy. Poor timid girl who became a poor timid woman, never standing up to her husband.

  Margaret would be here at one o’clock. We closed during the noon hour. I put away all of my equipment and decided to go back to the farm as apparently it would not be necessary to take a shift at the sheriff’s office.

  An old hymn, “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” echoed through my mind as I drove toward home. It wouldn’t hurt me to try a little solitude. Silence.

  I drove out of my way and headed for St. Helena.

  But when I approached I saw a white Camry parked in front of the church.

  Bishop Talesbury.

  This man had no business here. I parked at the outer edge of the parking lot. I considered calling Sam to inform him that there might be a “situation” and then remembered it was Keith who had called to tell me about Deal’s threats. I wasn’t ready to cope with my husband’s paranoia about my well-being.

  Since I hadn’t planned to work at the sheriff’s office today, I didn’t have my .38 with me. It’s bad form for an editor to be locked and loaded when persons come in to submit their family history. But I always had a gun in my purse.

  I quietly shut the car door and dug out my little Airweight, just in case. I walked toward the front door, then soundlessly pulled it open and peered inside. My eyes struggled to adapt to the semi-dark interior.

  There was no sign of Talesbury. The anteroom door was closed and only I had the key, but it was the only place where he could be. Then I heard a sound directly in front of the altar. A moan. I looked down the aisle and saw Talesbury lying full-length face-down on the carpet with his arms out-stretched. Stunned, I started to rush toward him, then stopped, realizing the groans were in Latin. He was not injured, but prostrate before the Lord.

  He heard me, slowly rose to his feet, turned, and his hollow-eyed gaze met my own shocked eyes. He wore a cassock and looked ghastly. Otherworldly. Guilty. Like he had been caught in an unclean act.

  Profoundly ashamed, I put my gun back in my purse. “Sir, I am so sorry. I did not mean to intrude.”

  He had already pulled himself back together. The moment of vulnerability passed. “Miss Albright,” he said in acknowledgement, with a slight nod of his head. He walked toward me without a trace of friendliness, clearly heading for the door.

  When we were adjacent, I stopped him. “Bishop Talesbury. I have a few questions about Mary Farnsworth’s death. The KBI does too. We haven’t known where you were staying. We don’t have a phone number where we can get ahold of you.”

  He stood motionless, not volunteering a thing. I dug out a little notebook. “We need to know where we can contact you. Where are you staying?”

  “With my nephew, Sheriff Irwin Deal.”

  I can’t assume a poker face at will, like Josie. But I did a pretty good job. And I certainly didn’t yield to the desire to slap him. Resenting his arrogant distance, next I went for the information that plagued me the most.

  My heart pounded. “Sir, did you know Mary Farnsworth?”

  He stiffened, lost even more color from his blue lips, and stared straight ahead.

  “Yes, I knew Mary Farnsworth,” he said softly.

  He swept out the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Dazed, I drove home. I couldn’t think straight. In fact, I was too bewildered to think at all. All I could manage was a merry-go-round of questions and fragmented facts. I’d already reviewed them endlessly, but they kept circling around in my mind.

  The decision to build St. Helena on the corner of four coun
ties was innocent, but stupid. My original assumption that Reverend Mary had died a natural death was understandable, but stupid. As a historian I knew better than to make assumptions about anything. And I was certainly stupid to have assumed there was no connection between Talesbury and Reverend Mary.

  And it was beyond stupid to hope Josie would simply go back to Manhattan.

  The KBI, everyone, needed know about this immediately. When I arrived home and went inside, Josie was waiting.

  Simultaneously, we started to speak, “I’ve got news…”

  She laughed. “You go first,” I said.

  “Harold thinks Mary may have been in a witness protection program.”

  Dumbfounded, I set my purse on the kitchen table. “My news trumps yours,” I said. “I think.” I tried to process Harold’s idea. It would make sense. Then I told Josie about the episode with Talesbury at the church.

  “If she was in the program, it would explain why she was so jittery during the procession,” she said. “Her nerves went beyond uneasiness over Talesbury’s overbearing ways.”

  “We’ve got to find out what their connection was.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard to do,” she said. “Just haul him in and ask him.”

  “I can’t because of this quarrel over jurisdiction. Not with Sheriff Deal insisting the murder took place in his county.”

  “But the KBI will have authority.”

  “Yes.” Then I thought again about Talesbury’s strange comment the day of the service that “this was just one death.”

  ***

  While Josie phoned Harold with the latest developments, I went upstairs and changed into old jeans and went outside to pull weeds from around my hyacinths. I removed thatch to give my summer daylilies a chance if they chose to make an appearance and the rabbits weren’t plotting against them.

  My mind cleared enough to gain some objectivity. I straightened and rubbed my back. The smell of earth, the growing pile of weeds, the small patches of green promising the arrival of spring restored my perspective.

  I went inside and made a glass of ice tea and sat at the kitchen table. Josie came into the kitchen.