After he had played several lines, he stopped. “I’m Volga German, Miss Albright. A German from Russia.”
Her cheeks flamed, and she looked at him with bewilderment. Not knowing what he meant. What he was trying to tell her.
He began his music again. I knew it was a song Josie had never heard before. By the time he had finished, she should have known everything about this man’s soul. His people.
Even though we were identical twins and I was considered slender by Western Kansas standards, Josie was ten pounds lighter, sometimes making her black/brown eyes look as hugely vulnerable as those of a deer. Her wonderful eyes were now focused on my husband.
I could feel the charge of energy between them, and suddenly goose bumps rose on my arm.
The phone rang. Already on edge, I jumped as though it were a siren.
Bettina answered. “It’s for you, Lottie.”
I took the call on the kitchen landline, then went back to the living room, and looked down at my trembling hands.
Keith stopped playing in the middle of a run. They all turned toward me.
“That was the sheriff. Zelda St. John has been murdered.”
Chapter Four
“I don’t understand. Why would the sheriff call you?” Josie put her violin in its case and reached for Tosca.
“I’ve left several messages on Zelda’s answering machine tonight, and he wanted to know what they were about.”
“How did it happen?” Bettina asked. “Who did it?”
“She was beaten to death.” My voice shook. “Bludgeoned.”
“My God. Poor Max,” Keith said.
“Max is her husband,” I told Josie. “He’s much older.”
“Do they have any idea who did it?”
“No, but Sheriff Sam Abbott is coming here right away to ask me some questions. He’d heard about an incident with her sister today at the historical society.” I filled them in on the riff with Fiona, and twenty minutes later Sam rang our doorbell.
Bettina let him in.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Josie said, seeing him start down the hallway. “Where did they find him? Central casting?”
Sheriff Sam Abbott had had the same effect on me the first time I saw him. His white mustache drooped like his sad old eyes and a fringe of long white hair brushed the top of his collar. Although his liver spotted hands betrayed his age, he carried his tall body with military bearing.
His office needed more personnel and he needed more rest.
My stomach was sour, my eyes wet.
“Hello, Lottie. Keith. Sorry to be disturbing you folks this time of night.”
“It’s all right, Sam.” I stepped forward. “I don’t know what help I can be, but I’ll be glad to talk with you.”
“You know my two daughters, Elizabeth and Bettina,” Keith said, “and this is Lottie’s sister, Josie.”
Sam bobbed his head in acknowledgment. “This is a bad deal, I’ll tell you.”
He glanced sharply at Elizabeth. I followed his gaze. Her eyes did not swerve. Neither did his. Elizabeth is the only person I know with turquoise eyes. Right now, they were hot and hostile.
I could not imagine what Sam Abbott had ever done to her.
“Do you have a place where we can talk privately, Lottie? I won’t keep you long.”
“Sure. Let’s go into Keith’s office.”
He nodded and followed me into the book-lined room.
“I’m still shocked.”
“We all are. Not a single other murder in this county since I’ve been in office. Just doesn’t happen here.”
“Thank God.”
“Why all the messages on her machine, Lottie? They sounded urgent. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation will be looking everywhere. At everything and everybody.”
“The KBI? So soon?”
“We’re a small county and piss poor to boot. We don’t have the talent and the resources to investigate a murder. They do. I had the right to call them in. The show-downs between the local sheriff and the big bad feds are an invention of TV. Most of the time.”
He did not blink, but there was a tell-tale bob in his Adam’s apple. “There’s a guy, Jim Gilderhaus, assigned to this region. Lives just fifty miles from here. He’s a fine fellow. Know him well. He’s over at the Hadleys now. I’m trying to clear up a few things for him because I know all the people in this county. Keeps it quieter if I handle a few of these details myself.”
“Well my messages were hardly urgent.” I shoved my hands into my jeans pockets, crossed the room and stared into the black night. Embarrassed, I turned and faced him.
“It’s been an upsetting evening. Josie meeting Bettina and Elizabeth for the first time. And my sister’s a bit of a snob. Equates bluegrass with barefoot and ignorant. And Elizabeth is…”
“Elizabeth is Elizabeth,” he said flatly.
“Exactly. If I hadn’t been so edgy, I wouldn’t have called Zelda so many times. I just couldn’t stand the tension in that room, so I kept ducking out. But back to Fiona. She caused quite a scene when she came into the office today.”
“I know that. So does everyone else in town.”
“Surely you’re not thinking Fiona had anything to do with Zelda’s murder?”
“Of course not. A tiff between The Ladies is hardly news. If one of them was going to kill the other, she’d of done it a long time ago. I’m just tracing time. But just for the record, what was Mrs. Hadley so fired up about?”
“Fiona wanted me to destroy her sister’s story. I couldn’t do that, but I could ask Zelda to write a different one for our book.”
He leaned forward.
“So that’s all. Your messages said you wanted to talk to her, but you didn’t say why. The St. Johns have an old machine that doesn’t track time and date. Your calls could help us establish the time of death. Exactly when did you call the first time?”
“About five-thirty, when I got home from work. Then everyone started arriving. I didn’t call again until seven-thirty or so. It was after supper. I remember that.”
“So you would have called the first time before Max got home from the hardware store and the second time after he had left for the Lion’s Club meeting at seven o’clock.”
“I called again around eight, again at eight-thirty, and finally a little after nine. Then you called me. As I said, it really wasn’t urgent. I’m a wee bit compulsive.”
He grinned. “Since you’re not a suspect, I don’t really care why you called. No one is under suspicion right now. But the times when she didn’t answer the phone could be very important.”
“Any idea of motive?”
He patted his breast pocket wistfully like a scolded smoker.
“Gilderhaus thinks robbery. Bank cards gone, purse missing.”
“But you don’t,” I said, noting the politeness of “Gilderhaus thinks.”
“No. There was no forced entry. Jim was raised in Kansas City. Believes a lot of guff about rural people that just ain’t so.”
“That we all keep our doors unlocked?”
“And that we would all open our doors to rank strangers.”
At Fiene’s Folly we don’t have a yard light that burns automatically all night. We don’t want one acting as a beacon, advertising our isolation.
“What was in that story?”
It was a smooth ploy. Asked abruptly that way, I responded in kind.
“Frankly, an exposure of their family’s vicious prejudice. If the press ever got hold of it, there’s no way Brian could convince voters he didn’t share those attitudes.”
Sam thoughtfully rubbed the side of his large Roman nose. “Knowing Fiona, if she thought it could hurt Brian, she’d be livid.”
“Actually, I think Fiona shared her sister’s attitude toward blacks and was blind to the damage it would cause Brian. Something else set her off.”
“No idea what?”
“None whatsoever. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help. How’
s Max taking it?”
“Hard. Already had enough on his plate with health problems, then his old hardware store got Wal-Marted.”
“And Fiona? She okay?”
“Don’t know.” His mouth tightened. “I had to work the scene. I sent Betty Central over to break the news to the Hadleys. She hasn’t called me yet. You know how short-handed we are, Lottie,” he said, seeing the look on my face. “I have to work with what I’ve got.”
Betty Central’s mean, loud mouth could turn a missing pencil into a four-star crisis. It was hard to imagine anyone less sensitive, less appropriate, to break this kind of news to a family.
Sam flushed. “I’ve put ads in the paper, Lottie. Asking for part-time help. Not many people are dying to be in law enforcement, and this county operates on a shoestring. People go to work for us, they have to buy their own guns.”
He slapped his hands on his knees and stood.
“At least we have a clearer picture of time, thanks to you.”
I walked him to the foyer.
When I went back into the family room, Elizabeth was seated at the piano, raging through a complicated piece. Her hands faltered. She rose, ran to Keith, and sobbed on his shoulder.
“What’s wrong, Elizabeth?” I asked. I looked over at Josie, who was sitting very still, cuddling Tosca. Her eyes grave, professionally alert.
“The last time I saw that meddling old fool was when Mom died.”
Josie rose and walked toward father and daughter. She patted Elizabeth on the shoulder.
“Can I help? Lottie’s told me your mother died tragically. When you were just thirteen?”
Elizabeth spun around, dislodging Josie’s hand.
“Tragically? Like in an accident? A car or something? No, Ms. Albright, we’re the suicide’s kids. Didn’t you know that?”
Josie blanched. “No. I didn’t know. I’m sorry, Elizabeth. Still, I am here this weekend. Perhaps it would help you to talk about it.”
“It won’t, and even if talking would help, I doubt I would have much in common with a shrink driving a Mercedes.”
“I want you to apologize to my sister at once, Elizabeth.”
Then she turned on me.
“Or for that matter, a lady whose idea of real life is working with dusty old manuscripts analyzing the lives of people who lived a hundred years ago.”
“Elizabeth! That’s enough,” Keith thundered.
Then this thirty-nine-year-old woman who Wonder-Womaned around Denver, unbattering women and tying up gang members in Byzantine legal procedures, ran from the room like a heart-broken adolescent.
I couldn’t breathe. The muscles in Keith’s jaws jerked. He watched Elizabeth’s flight up the stairs like he wanted to call her back. Make her say the right words. His great hands dangled at his sides as if they were on the end of clay clubs.
Tears welled in Bettina’s eyes.
“So sorry,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do.” She hurried after Elizabeth.
Josie sat back down on the sofa, terrier tense, ready to spring.
Keith walked over to his violin, carefully loosened the tension on the strings, put it back into the case. He placed it in the storage cupboard. When he had calmed himself, he turned to face her. He suddenly looked every bit twenty years senior to me.
“Josie, you have my sincere apology for this miserable evening. I’m very sorry.”
She nodded at him. Smiled gently.
“I’ll see you ladies in the morning,” he said, heading for the stairs. He left us alone.
Chapter Five
Josie rose and pulled a hassock closer to the sofa. She sat down, took a Virginia Slim from an elegant gold case, and lit it. She put up her feet, laid her head back, and took a deep drag. She looked at me silently, as though I were a specimen under a microscope.
“I suppose I should have told you,” I looked at the floor, drew circles with my foot. “All the details. About the suicide, I mean.”
She blew a perfectly formed smoke ring, watched it dissipate toward the ceiling.
“I really, really wish you didn’t smoke,” I said finally.
“And I really, really wish you’d never married the dirt farmer.”
“How can you say that? Think that?”
“Are you crazy, Lottie? I don’t care how great you think he is. I’ll admit that he’s a different man than I thought he was, but there’s enough baggage in this family to fell an ox. Which you are not. You have a much frailer personality than you would like to believe.”
“That simply is not true. You’re the one who’s hung back, protected yourself. Fiddled while Rome burned.”
She quietly shook her head. “Your insistence on jumping into the middle of everything is because you cannot, cannot, bear not fixing things. Making them right. Think a minute, Lottie. You kept calling this woman over and over to get her to change her story. Couldn’t let it go. Couldn’t stand the friction between the sisters.”
“Oh, must we fight? I wanted everything to be perfect when you met Elizabeth and Bettina.”
I laughed ruefully, hearing my own words in the light of her lecture.
“Do you have some decent scotch, Lottie? I don’t intend to drink your husband’s vile home brew ever again.”
“That’s the only sensible idea I’ve heard all night.”
I went into the kitchen and mixed us both drinks.
Keith and I had met when I was working in the library at Fort Hays State University. Forsyth Library has priceless holdings of material about Germans from Russia, known as Volga Germans. Persons using this room always had to be under the scrutiny of university personnel. I had done my dissertation on ethnic groups, and eagerly volunteered for the monitoring job as it gave me access to the collections. Keith came in one day, asking for material on his family.
Before then, I would have scoffed at the notion of love at first sight. But it happened. Happened to me. An old maid of thirty-one. I loved his grave sense of honor. Gravitas, the Romans called it. He was not a light man.
I carried the drinks back into the living room.
“How did it happen?”
“She hanged herself. Elizabeth found her.”
She took a long drag, closed her eyes for a moment.
“Do any of them know about Mummy,” she asked. “Our own Lady Macbeth? I should think our own sunny childhood would be enlightening to your resident Queen Elizabeth. She who holds the patent on hard times.”
“Keith knows Mom was an alcoholic, but I don’t think he realizes how much it affected us, or how well I understand how living with Regina’s instability scarred his kids. And him. But Keith’s a rock. Like Daddy was.”
“Bingo.”
I scowled. “Oh, go to hell.”
“Be forewarned, Lottie. Queen Elizabeth is the kind of person who doesn’t like to be at a disadvantage. She may resent your seeing this side of her.”
Tosca yipped, like she was in agreement. I started, spilled my drink, and hustled off for towels. “Back to the Ladies,” I said when I returned. “The Rubidoux girls. I’ll show you the story.”
She smiled at my quick change of subject. I went to my briefcase and pulled out the working copy of Zelda’s story. She read it quickly. Her eyes widened. “My god, Lottie. I can’t believe anyone still thinks like this. It’s despicable.”
“Confederate thinking,” I agreed. “Old South.”
“May I take this back with me? I have a friend who does a lot of work with handwriting. There’s some shapes here that intrigue me.”
“Of course.”
“Bludgeoned.” Stroking Tosca, Josie speculated on the night’s events. “Sounds like an unreliable way to kill someone. I would just bet the person didn’t go in intending to kill her. There’re smarter ways. I don’t know anything about profiling, but there are some things here that are very obvious. This murder was impulsive and the murderer had to be a strong person.”
“Not necessarily. Zelda was frail. If the fir
st blow landed just right and managed to crush her skull, it wouldn’t have taken much strength at all.”
“Did the St. Johns keep money around? Jewelry? Antiques? Any chance they would be singled out by a thief?”
“No. Rumor has it they were very hard up.”
I jumped when a stick snapped in the fireplace. It did not seem possible we were sitting in my living room calmly discussing macabre details as if Zelda St. John were some anonymous distant person.
“Sam Abbott. You seem to be bosom buddies.”
“We are. We did our horses together.”
She quirked an eyebrow.
I laughed. “Carlton County has its own carnival. When we got our carousel, volunteers painted all the horses. Sam and I just happened to be working at the same time. We talked a lot.”
“No Mrs. Sam?”
“Nope. He’s a widower. He lost his only son in Vietnam.”
We talked for hours. About her work. About my work. But we kept coming back to Zelda St. John over and over again until we were exhausted. We finally gave it up and headed for bed.
She turned on the staircase. “I have one more question.”
“Yes?”
“The horses. What was his, what was yours?”
Miffed by her playing psychologist, I sulled up.
“Come on, come on, come on,” she teased. “Pretty please?”
“Mine was Princess Di. Jewel colors and feathers. Sam’s was a patriotic Desert Storm horse.”
Her laughter pealed through the house.
***
Bettina volunteered to go with me to the St. Johns for my traditional death-in-the-family call the following afternoon. I placed my usual food offerings in a wicker basket in the back of my Tahoe. A meat loaf for those who needed something solid and real to stomach death, and a custard pie for those who had a hard time getting food past the lump in their throat.
The radio was tuned to our local station, and I listened to the account of Zelda’s death for the second time that day.
“Zelda St. John, wife of local businessman Maxwell St. John, was murdered last night. St. John was the aunt of state senator, Brian Hadley, who is campaigning for the United States senate seat now held by Pat Roberts. Her body was discovered at approximately nine o’ clock by her husband, Maxwell St. John, who had returned from a meeting at the local Lions Club.
Deadly Descent Page 3