Sweet After Death

by Valentina Giambanco

  It would be an interesting conversation the next time they spoke.

  They pulled out of the driveway slowly and carefully, and Brown felt the snow sticking on the road in the steering of the pickup. The sky above them was nothing but white.

  Amy Sorensen looked out the window of the senior center. In her heart she knew that they were going to get snow at some point during the trip and the question was purely when and how much. She was sitting at her desk in the main room, going through the record books from Ludlow Outfitters. She wasn’t looking forward to telling Brown and Madison that she had checked under the Tanner family name—they were the only Tanners in Ludlow—and there was no record of them ever buying a length of white fabric that matched the cloth of the message.

  Jeb Tanner had bought patterned fabric and solid-colored fabric that could have been used for clothing or upholstery, but nothing white. And, Sorensen had noted, the last purchase had been made four years earlier by Mrs. Naomi Tanner, who must have busied herself with sewing and quilting before deciding that enough was enough and leaving her husband and children to return to California.

  Sorensen didn’t want to be flippant, and it wasn’t in her nature to be cynical, but she had been staring at lines of numbers and cloth swatches for one hour. She would much rather have been elbow deep in garbage—someone’s garbage would tell her more than a psychologist would find out in a year—or possibly tracking a questionable fingerprint that needed to be eye matched. Fabric swatches were not where her interest lay, and what she was trying to do—finding out who in town, if anyone at all, had bought the white fabric—was very likely going to be a wild-goose chase. And, she mused, she didn’t like geese in the first place.

  What remained of the rifle that had shot Ty Edwards a day earlier lay in the waters of the Bow River not a mile away from the square where the shooting had taken place. The owner had field-stripped it and disposed of the various pieces in the freezing, fast-running waters minutes after the shooting. Some—the lightest items—were already miles away, while other components had come to rest between and under the rocks that formed the bottom of the riverbed.

  The owner had accomplished much in a short period of time because he was not the kind who would dawdle and because it wouldn’t do to hesitate at such times, when the hand of fate could so easily fall this way or that.

  A good winter frost would ice the top of the river, and the rifle would remain under its glassy cover. By the time anybody might recover the various pieces, everything and anything that had connected the carbine to its lawful owner would have been washed away by the river, cleansed by the rushing stream. It was good to know that the pieces were there, a few hundred yards from the police station, mocking the investigators and all their efforts. The pieces were there, but it was far too late for anyone to put them back together.

  Chapter 37

  “Hi,” Madison said into her cell.

  “Hi,” Nathan Quinn said, and she could tell that he was surprised to hear her voice. “What happened? Where are you?”

  “I’m stretching my legs. We had a pretty useful morning and we’re about to regroup, but there’s a serious snowfall on the way and the chief needed ten minutes to work out road closures and safety warnings.”

  “And you’re stretching your legs out in the storm?”

  “Yup, snow’s nice and dry. I’m standing by the bridge at the end of Main Street and I can barely see the other end.”

  Quinn knew that Madison ran in all weathers and in all seasons. A walk in the fresh snow was not a surprise.

  “Did you meet the guy?”

  “Oh yes, we met the guy, and he’s swell.”

  “Still the prime suspect?”

  “You bet.”

  “Alibi?”

  “He’s got two: one for each murder.”

  “Doesn’t that exonerate him, Detective?”

  “Possibly but not definitely. I’m not convinced one hundred percent by either. The first one is supported by his kids, and they’re terrified of him, and the second by an old friend who might be lying about something else, anyway . . .”

  Quinn didn’t jump in. He wasn’t the kind of person who needed to fill in silences. She could hear indistinct sounds around him. Where was he, anyway? Madison was reluctant to ask.

  “I’m having lunch with Carl,” Quinn said. “I’m meeting him at the restaurant and I just got here.”

  There was only one restaurant that didn’t need to be named—The Rock—a business that Quinn had inherited from his father and that was still trading on Alki Beach. Quinn had nothing to do with the daily running of it, but there were long-established sentimental ties that often brought him back. Carl Doyle had been Quinn’s assistant, years earlier, and he now managed a different law practice with his usual combination of velvet manners and steel discipline. Madison had met him and liked him enormously.

  “I’ll let you go,” she said, and stopped herself from saying, Say hi to Carl from me! Because, like the rest of the universe, Carl had no idea that Madison and Quinn were seeing each other—whatever that meant.

  “No, wait, tell me about the guy,” Quinn said.

  “He’s still the prime suspect,” she said, and raised her face to the sky, where layers of white shifted and changed. “I think we have a potential child abuse situation. He’s got twelve kids up at the farm and—”

  “Twelve?”

  “Twelve,” she said. “We’ve met four, and they all appear to tread very lightly around him. I’ve seen those kinds of situations before. I know that kind of man.”

  “You’re going to have to be—”

  “I know, I am being careful.”

  “It’s not what I was going to say,” Quinn said quietly. “If the children are part of his alibi, if he’s somehow made them accomplices in a double murder or accessories after the fact, you need to watch out for their rights versus his rights, and it could be a godforsaken mess for everybody involved.”

  “I have absolutely no doubt that it’s going to be a mess. He’s . . . he’s got his hooks into those kids, I can tell.” If it was strange to make such a statement about someone she had only met for a short time, neither Quinn nor Madison seemed to notice. He trusted her judgment and, as much as her judgment, he trusted her gut reaction to people. It had saved more than his life—in ways he couldn’t begin to explain to her.

  “I hope you’re wearing your vest,” he said, only half in jest.

  “I am,” she replied, and then her voice changed. “I’ve been thinking about the case, the alibis, this man’s family, and I was wondering . . .” She didn’t know how to ask the question, and yet she couldn’t not ask. “When you were a defense attorney, did you ever turn down a case because you didn’t want to represent a client?”

  “What brought this on?”

  “I’ve been thinking about what would make the prosecution’s case vulnerable, and how a good attorney would exploit those weaknesses.”

  “I see.”

  It occurred to Madison then that, while other couples had to steer their new lives together around former lovers and husbands, in her relationship with Quinn they had to navigate around their respective legal, criminal, and law enforcement pasts.

  “Yes and no,” Quinn replied.

  “Okay.”

  “It was a murder case. It was particularly gruesome, and I did not want the case because I didn’t even want to be in the same room as the defendant. I decided that I wouldn’t be an effective advocate and let someone else in my firm take it.”

  “Was he guilty?”

  “She was. The defendant was a woman. Yes, she pleaded guilty to a lesser charge just before the jury verdict.”

  “You don’t sound happy about how it turned out.”

  “I am; she’ll never be free again. But I should have been able to represent her effectively, whatever the crime.”

  “If you had represented her effectively, Counselor, she would still be on the streets.”

  �
�Both flattery and censure in the same breath.” Quinn was smiling.

  “It was neither. I’ve seen you in court. I just hope Jeb Tanner won’t have anyone half as good as you on his side.”

  “You’ve already decided that he’s the killer.”

  Madison tried to stay entirely objective, and it was not easy. “He’s something, Quinn. I’m not exactly sure what he is, but he is something.”

  After they hung up Madison paused for a moment by the edge of the bridge and then turned back toward the police HQ. None of the stores were open, and she couldn’t see far enough to determine whether the Tavern and the Magpie Diner were in business. It was Sunday lunchtime under a moderate to heavy snowfall, and downtown Ludlow was shut down.

  As she passed the radio station Ben Taylor, the DJ, waved at her from his seat by the decks, behind the window. Madison waved back. Two days in town and she was already a local.

  Jeb Tanner needed to be alone and think over what had happened. Solitary work in one of the outbuildings was not going to be enough. As he had often found at times of distress—he was not distressed, he told himself, he had concerns—he needed to put some distance between himself and everyone else, to clear his mind and get some perspective.

  He had grabbed his coat, left Luke in charge—as per usual—and had taken the path that led to the pass, with the pretext of checking on a trap before the snow set too deep.

  Samuel had already led the horses back into the barn, but Tanner told Jonah to saddle his own chestnut mare and he was out and riding before there was hardly more than a dusting of fresh white on the ground. The horse’s hooves on the frozen ground hushed the birds in the trees and Tanner rode into the silence.

  Chief Sangster had behaved in the manner he had come to expect from him; perhaps the presence of the detectives had made him even more obtuse than normal—if that were possible. The other two were more of an unknown quantity. They were happy to throw their big-city weight around, that was clear, but they were also clever, and Tanner didn’t like clever. He had played their silly game and given them the alibis they wanted; nevertheless, there was much more to them than they let on.

  One thing that pleased him was that his children had learned about the death of the doctor from someone other than himself, and they could draw their own conclusions. Dennen had come onto his land more than once and had made his crazy demands, then he’d sent a lackey from County Hall and hoped to crack open his resolve. And where were they now? His children had heard what happened to those who opposed him, and that was good—they should know. They had no idea what kind of twisted, perverted world he was protecting them from. And the boundary lay just beyond their gate.

  Tanner nudged the mare with his heels. The path opened to a wide view of the rolling valley: the horizon was streaked with snow, and soon the stretches of brown earth would disappear.

  It took him twenty minutes to get there: a clearing with an overhanging boulder, halfway between the farm and the Jackknife mine. He led the horse to stand by a dry area under the rock and dismounted. It was a bleak little corner—hardly ever in the sun, even in the summer, because of the boulder. It was dark and humid, and the soil stayed damp with morning frost all day. The kids didn’t like that spot because of an old legend that the soil was watered by the blood and the tears of the dead Jackknife miners. Tanner liked it well enough, though. And that day he needed to be there to reassure himself that all the talk of double murder would amount to nothing.

  A double murder was the kind of thing a lesser cop like Sangster might think of building a career on. Jeb Tanner was not in the least intimidated by the Ludlow chief of police; however, he was keen that the chief’s stupidity and greed would not lead him to his own door. The doctor got what he deserved, and the other man got what was coming to him. It was a simple lesson in life, and clearly they had to learn it the hard way. What goes around.

  Tanner thought of the woman detective and her deer story. Maybe it had really happened, maybe not. There was a lesson on Jackknife for her to learn too; she just didn’t know it yet.

  Jeb Tanner always carried the Remington 870 he had inherited from his father when he went more than a hundred feet from the compound. It would have been foolish not to, and he was not a foolish man. For the sheer pleasure of it he pumped the action twice to slide a cartridge into the chamber. It made a snick-snick sound that he loved. Some lessons, he mused, have to be taught—whether they want to be learned or not.

  After a few minutes in his quiet place, Tanner got back on the horse and rode home.

  Everything was just as it should be.

  The moment his father was out of sight of the farm, Samuel let out the breath he had been holding. He didn’t know why the woman police officer had asked him those specific questions. However, her intention had been clear: she meant to help. It went against everything they had been taught. She didn’t look like a killer, a beggar, or a thief—she looked . . .

  The boy couldn’t find words to describe her. She looked like she meant what she said was the best he could come up with.

  Samuel looked around the cabin: it had never crossed his mind to count his brothers and sisters. What an odd question that was. And how curious that the woman officer—he should call her by her name, Alice—had been interested in their ages. It had taken Samuel a little while to sort it out in his head, and he had been afraid that she would walk away from him before he had a chance to answer her question. There were twelve of them: Luke, Seth, Joshua, Jonah, Abigail, Caleb, Jesse, Samuel, Elisabeth, Ruth, Sarah, and David. Luke was twenty-five, David was four. Everyone else was in between. At present Luke was making sure the cows were settled before the storm; Seth and Joshua were feeding the pigs; Jonah and Jesse were stocking the wood stove; and Abigail was running his younger sisters ragged around the house. And Caleb, Samuel thought. Caleb was somewhere, somewhere nearby. The boy knew it in his heart.

  Their father had been gone for half an hour and the snow had made the yard light where it had been murky, and soft where it had been stark. Jesse was pushing for a snowball fight, and Luke gave in because it was Sunday, but mostly because it made him feel superior to be able to grant something when he was still shaken about what he’d overheard in the barn.

  They all spilled out of the cabin in a rush of energy. As always, Jesse was the loudest and Jonah the quietest. Ruth and Sarah, ten and six, were fast on their feet and impossible to catch. Seth and Joshua, who were not twins but might as well have been, engaged in a furious battle and rolled small, hard snowballs that flew like missiles between them.

  Abigail, holding David lest he get hit by mistake, sidled up to Samuel. “Who was that woman?” she whispered.

  “A police officer,” he replied.

  “What do they want from Papa?”

  Samuel shrugged. “I don’t know.” It was the truth, although it was less than the full truth.

  Abigail reached over and ruffled Samuel’s hair with a gentle hand. “Don’t make Papa punish you, Samuel,” she said, her voice low and serious. “I worry about you.”

  “Don’t, I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.”

  She kissed the top of David’s head while he was wriggling and trying to get free and into the snowball fight. “Is it true the doctor is dead?” she said.

  Samuel nodded.

  Abigail sighed and hugged the little boy tighter. She would soon go back inside because under her coat she was only wearing a long skirt and a shirt that she had fashioned from an old dress, as white as the flowing sky.

  With remarkable timing Luke called out for everyone to get back inside just before their father turned the bend in the path. That kind of play was frivolous and, though not forbidden, it was discouraged and almost a dereliction of his supervisory duties.

  Jonah was the first to obey, because he always did what he was told.

  Chapter 38

  Working a double murder did not release Chief Sangster from his normal duties, and after they returned from interviewing the
Clays, he managed the closing of three roads and two thoroughfares that would be either completely impracticable or too dangerous to pass if the snowfall continued as predicted. Admittedly, the closing of a road only entailed Deputies Hockley or Kupitz stretching the ROAD CLOSED sign across it, but quite frankly, with everything else that was going on, working out where the signs had been stored and how to split the work between the two deputies was as much as he wanted to handle.

  Any distraction from the case was to be put on the back burner. And if someone else turned up about a missing dog, he would—

  Sangster stopped himself midthought: the missing dog had been taken by the killer, and Lee Edwards was at home mourning her dead husband. It occurred to him that he should go visit her—or that, at the very least, he should call her to make sure that someone was with her. It was the kind of thing Polly would have been good at. But Polly didn’t work on Sundays.

  “Twelve,” Madison said. “And six are minors.”

  “It’s not illegal to have a big family,” Brown said.

  “One of them asked the doc for help.”

  “Allegedly.”

  “There’s no record of anyone in the Tanner family buying the white cloth from the outfitters,” Sorensen said. “But it’s definitely the same cloth. I have a sample, and they’re a perfect match.”

  The blinds of the senior center were open because the streets were deserted, and nobody felt like entombing themselves in a lavender-scented vault.

  “Does Tanner buy fabric there? I wouldn’t have taken him for the quilting type,” Madison said.

  “He’s not, but his wife was. She made a lot of stuff for the kids.”

  “Is it worth trying to reach her? How long ago was the divorce?”

  Brown consulted his notes. “The papers were filed from California, came through about two years ago. I could find out the attorney’s number and her address.”

  “How old was the little boy? Three, maybe four years old?”