Lethal Lineage

by Charlotte Hinger

  “They are both dead,” she said. “Oliver and Claire both.” Tears rimmed her eyes. “But he needs to know. Don’t want him to spend the rest of his life hunting for them.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “Did you follow them through the years?”

  “Yes. Gerta was real good about writing. When I got to Kansas City, I had just enough money left to get a room in a boarding house. I cleaned rooms but couldn’t get ahead much. Then I saw an ad in a newspaper for a housekeeper in Western Kansas. So off I went. I worked for Stuart’s father. We fell in love and got married and everything was just wonderful.”

  She had scooted downward in her bed and I lifted her under the shoulders and pulled her back up.

  “Wonderful except that I had given up my own children. As far as they was concerned I was dead. When Gerta told me Henry died, I couldn’t just show up. There was some money.” Her voice softened. “Money for college and money for decent clothes. Stuart’s dad didn’t know a thing about them. I didn’t want my kids to think I just showed up for the money.”

  Stunned, I realized this woman was a bigamist. Married to two men at the same time. No, I corrected myself. Had been a bigamist. No longer, because both men were dead.

  “Gerta sent me clippings and I kept track of everything. Oliver died in Vietnam. And Claire, she came to a bad end. Took a wrong path. Died way too young. She should have been old like me.”

  Edna looked up at me. “I’m over Oliver because he died serving his country, but knowing Claire died before her time for no good reason…it’s hard.”

  “Edna,” I smoothed her hair and awkwardly reached across the protective rail to hug her. “Stuart will understand all this. You’ve raised a fine son. He’s a wonderful man. He loves you.”

  She had talked enough and drifted to sleep. I tip-toed out of the room.

  A bigamist.

  ***

  Agent Brooks called shortly after I got back to the office.

  “I’m about an hour away from Carlton County,” she said, “on my way to Bidwell County. Would you have time to go with me to Mary Farnsworth’s house?”

  “Yes, but I thought your team was all through processing the place.”

  “We are. Even though it’s not a crime scene, we inspected everything. But now it’s time to box up all her belongings and turn them over to the agency that handles unclaimed property.”

  “I’ll make time.”

  “Good. We prefer to have someone local there as a witness.”

  “To keep you from stealing?”

  “Something like that.”

  ***

  Margaret was already in the courthouse, but when I called her cell hoping she could fill in, there was no mistaking the tone of stiff reproach. The board had met and voted to cut down our hours. None of them, other than William Webster—who was already a volunteer—offered to help staff the office. Margaret was furious. “I really must get on home, Lottie. Please try William.”

  I sighed, understanding that she had been burdened by my frequent expectations that she would just drop everything. But prevailing on William was akin to walking over hot coals. An elderly man who counted every penny, William had served on the historical society board ever since I’d moved here. Sometimes he was my champion, sometimes my adversary, but he always played the Grand Lord Inquisitor.

  He came promptly, and blessedly, did not ask where I was going and what I was doing, but simply settled into his usual chair and pulled out his ever present whittling knife and a block of wood.

  I drove to the sheriff’s office to meet Agent Brooks. Sam looked up from the legal pad in front of him. I told him where I would be.

  “Ask her if she still wants us to keep Mary’s car here. It’s OK with me and it’s not bothering anyone but I don’t think this has come up before.”

  “She said unclaimed property goes to a particular agency, so I imagine someone will get the details and it will go up for auction like everything else.”

  “Ok. I’ll look all that up while you’re gone.” He pushed his swivel chair back from the desk. “That’s all I get done lately,” he said, his voice thick with fatigue. “I look things up.” Even his mustache seemed tired. But his shoulders never drooped, and I suspected that was due to pride, not natural perfect posture.

  I headed for the door when Nancy arrived and waved goodbye at Sam. “Maybe we’ll find something, see something,” I called back over my shoulder. “Get this whole miserable case off our consciences.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But it still won’t help me figure out what to do with a mean ex-sheriff that commits little crimes just for the hell of it. An accumulation of misdemeanors.”

  I turned. “Keith’s cow was hardly a little thing.”

  “Maybe not, but think about it. It’s not like Deal shot the critter. It’s going to be hard to prove the gash wasn’t accidental.”

  Brooks rolled down her window and hollered to me. “You good to go?”

  “Yes.” I shut the door to the office and hurried over to the passenger side of her Suburban.

  “Is this a step up or what?” I asked, admiring the leather seats.

  “Definitely up,” she smiled. “We figured this Suburban would hold everything so I got to take it instead of a Crown Vic. From the description I received, it didn’t sound like she was big on possessions.”

  “The only thing I can vouch for is her clothes. When she was in her office at the agency, she wore pant suits that I’ll bet came from Wal-Mart. I’ve seen her about three other times when she obviously had come from some kind of function having to do with the church.”

  I recalled how surprised I’d been. She had looked almost elegant, born to command. A woman used to being in charge. Her black suit jacket was smartly tailored. Her coordinating knee-length skirt was of the same fine light wool worsted. She wore a black clerical shirt with the obligatory white collar and the usual stylized cross she was never without.

  It appeared to be of fine sterling silver and rather than a traditional crucifix, the outstretched Christ was smooth and elongated along the lines of Art Deco. There was a small ruby heart on the chest.

  Keith is a devotee of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. When we were first married, I’d suggested replacing the sentimental picture in his office which I disliked with one by the French artist, Odilon Redon. He had given me a withering look. Ashamed, I never mentioned it again, nor did I quiz him when he went off to participate in rituals and feasts from which I was excluded.

  Since I refused to join his church.

  However, the only time I had seen Mary Farnsworth in full vestments was during the doomed ceremony in St. Helena. Although her snowy alb and chasuble robe were unremarkable, her stole appeared to be woven from coarse threads, and the primary colors, the primitive religious images, suggested a hand loom.

  “We’ve tried every method we can think of to locate this woman’s family,” Brooks said. “I mean everything. She obviously has no criminal history or her fingerprints would be on file. And the poison frog angle is about to drive the forensic division nuts.”

  “And they can’t find any connection to her and Talesbury?” I had filled her in on every aspect of the Bishop’s background and Brooks personally had verified every detail separately that was transmitted through the Diocesan investigation.

  “No. Besides, the poison we’re talking about comes from South America, not Africa.”

  “That’s what Keith said.”

  “And of course the forensics people have looked at every possible way someone could have done this. But we’re talking about a small windowless room locked from the inside. There’s simply no way someone could have gotten to that woman.”

  “Exactly. That’s what I tried to tell everyone from the beginning.”

  “You were right. So that leaves suicide: she did it to herself. There’s no evidence of that either. Our examiners did find a tiny site that they thought was evidence of an
injection, but it wasn’t. They tested the tip of the blood sampler pen and even the extra lancets.”

  She steered around a turtle slowly making its way across the highway, then braked and eased over to the shoulder of the road. She got out and picked up the turtle and carried it across, then resumed talking.

  I smiled. I liked this woman a lot.

  “Anyway, we even took out the needles and pins from her little mending kit, but there wasn’t anything on those either.”

  “It’s almost impossible for me to believe that Mary Farnsworth would have committed suicide,” I said. “I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now. A woman who was going to commit suicide would not have a sack full of medical items waiting to deliver to persons in the community after the service. She just wouldn’t.”

  “And Edna Mavery’s theory? That someone gave her a heart attack?”

  “That would make as much sense as anything if your people hadn’t found poison in her system.”

  “So see where we come back to? Round and round we go. She could not have been murdered. There’s no discernable method by which she could have committed suicide, and even if there was, there was no indication that she intended to. So we’re back to harassing a little old lady to remember details she can’t recall.”

  When we arrived at Mary’s house Brooks used a key from the collection I’d left with the KBI, and opened the front door. She looked around the sparsely furnished combination living and dining room. The layout was typical of other houses built during that era.

  “Naturally we’ll keep an eye out for anything the team might have missed,” she said. “Some connection to her identity. But the chances of that are slim to none. We’ve used our very best people on this case from the beginning because, frankly, it’s attracted so much interest within the agency.”

  I said nothing.

  She gave me a swift look. “I’m sorry, Lottie. That was tactless of me. I know to you it’s hardly an intellectual exercise.”

  “No offense taken,” I said tersely. We sat the foldout packing boxes in the middle of her living room and went from room to room before we began. I stood in the doorway of Mary’s bedroom. I would bet every piece of furniture in the house was self-assembly.

  On her walls were cheap mass-produced prints that might have come from Wal-Mart. Even her office in Dunkirk had contained more individual touches. I went into her bedroom and my eyes were drawn to a crucifix hanging on the wall across from the foot of her bed that was in the same style as the elongated cross she wore on her person.

  “Isn’t this sad?” Brooks commented. “It’s as though she wasn’t a real person.” She went to Mary’s closet and looked inside. The clothes were cheap, drab, with the exception of a tailored black suit. A black clerical shirt hung next to it. There was a grey coarse-clothed muumuu and a collection of cotton scarves. I examined a black one enclosed in a plastic sack, then placed it with the others in a storage box.

  I was struck by the lack of color. The austerity of her surroundings was a strange contrast to the generous attention she showered on children.

  “I’ll bet everything here falls into the insubstantial property category,” Brooks said. “The state is required to store possessions for three years, but if the estimated value isn’t worth the expense of selling, it’s all destroyed.”

  “And the furniture?”

  “The type she has? They might try for ebay, but I’m not sure. We’d like to just leave it here, of course, or let her landlord buy it, but again, since we haven’t located the family we have to keep it. Unfortunately, the landlord wants to rent this place out immediately.”

  We wasted no time packing up the house. Then we drove to a U-Haul center and rented a trailer. The manager maintained a list of high school boys who welcomed a chance to earn extra money.

  Brooks secured the trailer hitch onto the Suburban and drove back to the house. She gave quick directions to the two eager young men, who were clearly happy to lend their muscular assistance to the KBI.

  In a very short time, Mary Farnsworth’s house was stripped bare.

  It was as though she had never existed.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  I couldn’t fall asleep. Keith moved constantly from his front to his back, then each side, and frequently adjusted his pillow. “We’re a mess, aren’t we?” I whispered softly. The clock hand pointed to 1:30.

  He grunted, and sat up and switched on the light on the bed table. “Mind if I read?” He turned and kissed my cheek.

  “No. Mind if I do?”

  But I couldn’t concentrate. I finally put down my book and reached for a notepad. I made a little flow chart of all the people who were involved with this entire fiasco. There were very few logical connections and none at all that led to Mary Farnsworth’s death.

  The KBI was the A team. As far as I knew, there was nothing I could contribute that they could not do better. But I kept coming back to one name. Or rather a pair of names. Keith put down his book and glanced at my list.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  But there was. In the space of a few seconds, I decided to tackle Bishop Talesbury. That man had called the historical society and wanted to tell me something. What was it? He had chickened out. Changed his mind. Tomorrow I would track the bastard down and wring it out of him, if necessary.

  The second person I need to extract information from was Irwin Deal, but I wasn’t that gutsy. Thinking about his cold lifeless eyes, I shivered.

  ***

  I was up before dawn the next morning, and in surprisingly good shape. Deciding on a course of action does wonders. At some point between waking and sleeping, I had decided to confront Talesbury and force him to answer questions.

  Sam and I had the right to do that despite the fact the KBI no longer considered Bishop Talesbury a person of interest. And Keith, I reminded myself. And Keith. As an official member of the Carlton County sheriff’s department.

  We had a copy of Talesbury’s and Deal’s statements to the KBI taken during their earlier trip to Topeka when Agent Dimon had turned over the keys to the church over to Talesbury. Since the bishop had presented court papers proving the land and the church legally belonged to him and St. Helena was no longer a crime scene, Dimon could not have done anything else. Besides, at that time Deal was still a sheriff and had insisted his county was in charge of the investigation.

  ***

  All coffeed up and braced for a fight, I drove over to St. Helena, hoping to find Talesbury there. The sky was clear and across our pasture chartreuse yarrow buds sparkled with a touch of dew. It made a deceptively pleasant setting for the bizarre tableau before me when I topped the rise on the road that went past the church.

  In the lot in front of the church were four cars and four people! Talesbury, Deal, Myrna Bedsloe, and Chip Ferguson. They were standing outside the church and appeared to be arguing. It was the first time I could recall seeing Myrna without a child on her hip. She shook her finger at Deal who was waving his arms. Chip stood with his fists clenched and his arms pressed against his sides. Talesbury paced, with his hands behind his back.

  They all heard my car, of course, and stopped and stared. All thoughts of having a conversation with Talesbury vanished so I simply gave a feeble wave and drove on past the church. Simply Undersheriff Albright doing her duty. Simply making her rounds.

  But what the hell?

  ***

  I wanted to talk to Margaret Atkinson. Immediately. I called Sam. “I’ll be late. Probably won’t be there until around ten. I need to swing by the historical society.” It was a statement, not a request.

  “No problem,” he said.

  Margaret would be more than willing to answer my questions. No matter what interpretation she made of a person’s motives, she was a walking database of seemingly unrelated tidbits.

  “I thought you were on duty today,” she said, when I walked through
the door.

  “I am. I have a few questions. Not related to anything that has to do with the sheriff’s office.” I hastily held up my hand, palm outward, in what I hoped she would take as a gesture of peace. “Something else. Just something I’m curious about.”

  She relaxed. Whenever she suspected she was being quizzed about anything to do with my “other job” she immediately clammed up. As though it would be held against her in a court of law, whether she had committed a crime or not.

  I sat opposite her, chin in hand. “There’s something I want to know. Do you know of any connection at all, I mean anything, between Chip Ferguson and Myrna Bedsloe? Anything at all those two have in common?”

  “Greed,” she said immediately. “Naked greed.” Her lips thinned with disapproval. “Land hungry. Both of them.”

  “I’m sure you’re right about Chip, Margaret, but Myrna?”

  “Absolutely. It’s in her blood. Tim may be the front man sneaking around to all these auctions, but you can bet Myrna is the mastermind. Acre by acre. Same as her father before her.”

  I leaned back and gave it some thought, then wandered over to the coffee carafe. It was full of hot water and I needed more than a cup of timid tea. Margaret’s assessment certainly didn’t explain what I’d had witnessed this morning.

  “Is there something more direct than shared personality traits? A lot of people in Northwest Kansas are land hungry.”

  She carefully laid down her pencil, then looked up at me with feigned reluctance. “Well, as a matter of fact, according to my husband, there’s a rumor going around the boys at the coffee shop that those two have become thicker than thieves.”

  “My god.”

  “Not that way. Chip is old enough to be her grandfather. It’s not that. But they say folks have seen them together at seed stores and equipment dealers, and a couple of folks have driven by the Bedsloes and seen them together walking around in fields.”

  “Why?” I sat back. “What on earth is going on?”

  “You asked if there was a connection,” Margaret said primly. “There is something. Something there, but I don’t know what. Why? Is it important?”