The River Widow

by Ann Howard Creel

  “Feel free,” Adah said and then regretted her tone. She lowered her voice. “For your information, I don’t have anything to hide. Do what you think you have to do. I hate the idea of my husband’s battered body being brought out of peaceful slumber and getting cut into pieces, but do what you have to do if that’s what Buck and Mabel want. In fact, it will prove my innocence, once and for all.”

  Drucker took the steps down two at a time, then turned and set his heavy gaze back on her. With a sinister grin he said, “We’ll see about that.”

  The rest of the day, Adah was close to useless, thoughts braiding together into a complex web. How much influence did Manfred Drucker have at the sheriff’s department or with the police? What could he really do? She didn’t even know his rank. She didn’t know if it was the police department or the sheriff’s department that had jurisdiction. But the image of Drucker followed her now, a shadowy form that could not be shaken off. His words as menacing as Buck’s had been. We’ll see about that. She had no one to consult, no one to turn to. She had the money from Lester’s cash box, but for the moment it was useless to her. What good was money to a prisoner?

  She still had to return Jack Darby’s laundry, and Adah hoped he would be gone. Since her disastrous request and his denial, she’d had no want of making any small talk with the man. But as his farm came into view, she saw his truck. Not seeing him anywhere about, however, she moved quietly, aiming to place his basket on the front porch and then turn around and leave.

  Instead he opened the door and came outside as soon as she reached the bottom step, as though he had been watching her approach. His mysterious appearance and the way he held her gaze made Adah feel uncomfortable. She waited for him to speak; time was suspended. Expectancy dangled in the air.

  He never said hello or greeted her. Instead he spoke slowly. “You’ve made me curious, Mrs. Branch.”

  She had no idea what he was telling her or how to respond.

  “If you still want my help, I’m now offering it.”

  She gulped as she looked into his face. Hatless today, he appeared older, wiser. His forehead was shades lighter than the rest of his face and tracked with deep horizontal lines.

  Taken aback, she was eventually able to answer, “Of course I still want your help.”

  “Then you have it.”

  His change of heart touched her. She wasn’t as alone now. And with Manfred Drucker on her trail, she was even more in need of help, and a friend. “Thank you, Mr. Darby,” she managed to say.

  He gave one nod of his head.

  She finally breathed in. “What made you change your mind?”

  “Nothing made me,” he said a little tersely. But the kindness in his eyes came back just as quickly. “I couldn’t get it off my mind. Figured the only way to do that was to tackle this thing.”

  “I’m sorry if I’ve been a . . .” Adah searched for the right words. Obviously her situation had been disconcerting to him, but she was thrilled it had worked in her favor. “A bother.”

  “I didn’t say it was a bother. I just had to work it through a bit. I’ll take your letter to an attorney in town, if you really want that. No need to use the mail.”

  Adah placed the basket down, took a step back, and stared down at her feet. The concern in his gaze had embarrassed her. “Well,” she said, “I thank you. Thank you so much. More than you know. I don’t have any money on me now.”

  “I won’t take any money.”

  Adah looked up. “But you do need some money to give to the attorney, right? Do you have someone in mind to talk to?”

  “Yes,” he said simply. “And I don’t think he’ll be asking for money just yet. When he does, I’ll let you know.”

  “Do you have some paper and a pen, so I can write a letter?”

  He nodded and ushered her into the house.

  Inside was a center hallway flanked on either side by a high-ceilinged dining room and living room. The white walls and wood floors were unadorned, and the furniture was simple and functional. Everything looked tidy and clean, but there was a fine drift of dust in the air. Plaid drapes on the windows had been opened, letting in bright wedges of light. All in all, it was a tight ship of a house.

  He motioned her into the living room and pointed to a writing desk facing the two front windows.

  She sat at the desk, took the stationery and pen he offered, then wrote a letter identifying herself and asking for information about a possible insurance policy, her rights to the land, and rights to Daisy.

  Jack handed her an envelope, but she shook her head. “You might as well read it. You were right. I was a fool to ask for help and also not confide in the person I’m asking.”

  She stood up. Adah was having a hard time meeting his firm, studious gaze. This was a crazy thing to do, to place her trust in a man she knew almost nothing about, and one who had already changed from refusing her to now wanting to help in only a few days’ time. But she couldn’t dismiss the feeling that a broad door was opening for her.

  He read the letter and then handed it back ever so slowly. He looked disturbed. And yet there was something like sure knowledge emanating from this man. He knew things he would not say. What was in his eyes? Pity or promise or both?

  “Leave it there on the desk, Mrs. Branch. I’ll take it to town tomorrow.”

  Obviously he wasn’t going to give up on formalities and call her Adah, as she’d once asked. He walked her back outside, and she squinted up to the sky, where a single shaft of sunlight was searching its way through the firmament like a god leaning in with his luminescent arm.

  He stood in front of her on the porch, and she thought he had something else to say, that he wasn’t quite through with her yet. She glanced at his face. The scar over his left eyebrow had turned from white to pink. Now that they had plans together, a sense of hope came to her. She made no move to leave or to hide.

  He shook her hand, and the silence between them was filled by the wail of a distant train whistle.

  With his right eyebrow lowering, he said, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  She thought for a moment; his question was, in a way, a warning. But he didn’t know how driven she was to succeed. “Yes.”

  His gaze never left her face. “How much do you know about the Branches?”

  The question took her by surprise. “I know a great deal. I’m living with them.” She shifted her weight from one leg to the other. “Is there something I should know?”

  “You best sit down,” he said, gesturing to the chairs.

  She did as he asked and then stared at the front lawn as he began to talk.

  “Most of the time I make it a point to mind my own business, but I can’t help overhearing what people have been saying in town.”

  Adah tried for patience. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

  “Do you know anything about how your husband’s first wife died?”

  Adah’s head jerked in Jack’s direction as her breath halted. She’d anticipated that this talk would be about Lester’s death or, if she was lucky, something about the Branches in general. This, this had never entered her mind. “Betsy?”

  “Yes, Betsy Branch. I remember her. I remember when she died.”

  “Why . . . yes. She fell off a horse.”

  Jack locked his hands together in between his knees and leaned forward. “That was the story. But I don’t believe it.”

  “Why not?” she gasped.

  “Just sit and listen for a spell.”

  Adah sucked in a deep breath.

  “Thing is, supposedly it happened on the very farm you’re now living on. Story is, she and Les went for a ride. Betsy was on their pretty chestnut mare with the white socks, and that horse went wild and tore through the woods, knocking Betsy around and then throwing her and killing her.”

  “Yes? That’s what I was told, too.”

  “Trouble is, I saw Lester go by in the truck that day. He was heading for his folks’
house alright, but there weren’t anyone in the truck with him. He was driving crazy, kicking up a cloud of dust—that’s why I looked up. He was alone, or maybe he had the baby with him in his lap. But if Betsy had been in the truck that day, she was lying down . . . or already dead.”

  Adah gazed back at a pastoral view suddenly turned dismal and full of confusing green dips and swells. “What are you saying?” she urged out.

  She became aware that he’d lit a cigarette, and then he said, through the smoke he exhaled, “That wife of his was all banged up. Talk is, she looked like she’d been beaten to death, but with three eye witnesses—your husband, Buck, and Mabel—telling the same story, that made for no investigation. But I know that horse. That’s the one I sold to the Branches and never got fully paid for. That horse wouldn’t hurt an ant on the ground.”

  “I-I’m not following . . .”

  “What I think and what lots of folks think is that Lester Branch killed his wife on his farm, and then in a panic brought her body down yonder to his folks’ place, where the three of them concocted a story to tell the police.”

  Adah’s vision went hazy. The world slowed to a crawl, and her heart clenched in her chest like a fist. “Are you saying . . . ?”

  “Yes,” he said just above a whisper, gently, as if he knew what the information he was imparting could mean to her, how it could scare her out of her mind. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but the way I see it, your husband was a cold-blooded murderer. And the people you’re living with made up a story with him to cover up the crime.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The air froze around her, and the ground vaporized beneath her feet. For a moment, she felt like she was floating. But she could not escape this, and she breathed in the cool air in silent gulps and worked her way back to what was real.

  Of course. It made perfect sense. Lester had killed his first wife, and his family had helped him hide the truth. Now she knew the nefarious secret that Lester had held on to the entire time they were married, and now she knew the Branches’, too. And these were secrets blacker and bleaker than she could have ever conjured up, even during her most imaginative moments.

  The silence was deafening, screaming in her ears, and yet she forced herself to take in the impact of what she’d just realized. She could not turn away from the truth. And then she thought of Daisy. How had such a sweet little girl been born into such a family? How could she have come from such wretched people, and now they had her in their grasp? Everything about it seemed at such odds with her innocence and purity. Adah almost couldn’t believe it.

  Adah said, “My stepdaughter,” and then her voice failed her again. She gazed away and wiped her nose with the dusty bandanna she retrieved from her pocket. “Maybe I was better off not knowing.”

  Jack waited for a moment. “I’m sorry, but I disagree. You’re much better off knowing.”

  She laughed pitifully. “So . . . what else is there?”

  He leaned back. “They never did put down that horse they say killed Betsy. Do you know of her?”

  Jack Darby was a rather attractive man, but she hated the sight of his face just then, and this was beginning to feel like foreign soil, some kind of weird dreamscape.

  Adah’s voice cracked as she answered, “Yes, she’s Mabel’s prized possession, although she rarely rides her. A beautiful chestnut with white socks. Mabel calls her Miss Socks.”

  “Now . . . just think about it for a minute.” Sympathy evident in his expression, Jack went on, “Don’t you think if that horse had killed Betsy, they’d have put her down or at the least gotten rid of her?”

  Adah glanced about furtively. She said, “Okay, I agree you have a good point. So what did you do about it? Did you go to the police with your suspicions?”

  “Sure I did. But they had questioned the three Branches who told of the accident, talked to them separately, and they all had a story and they stuck to it. They were so slick they gave the police nothing. Seems to me some of the police suspect what might have happened, but it would’ve been near impossible to prove in a court of law. There was no evidence. The police who arrived first on the scene found that Lester had already carried his dead wife back to the house after he supposedly found her, and they never did go look in the woods for where she had, according to the Branches, gotten all beat up by trees, and they never checked the horse’s hooves for mud or anything like that. Guess it just didn’t occur to them. Police around here aren’t used to investigating murders. They botched the case real bad.”

  “And the Branches have at least one good friend in the sheriff’s department.”

  “No doubt.”

  “So they got away with it.”

  “Seems to me.”

  Adah gulped and looked at the sun-washed land before her, so at odds with the blackness permeating her from within. “Now what am I supposed to do with this information?”

  “That’s up to you, but about that letter . . . I wouldn’t send me to town with it.” He leaned closer. “Hear me out, I really want to help you. I don’t know what lawyers to trust; even the one I have in mind is a stranger—just a hunch as to who to approach—and if word got back to Jesse and Buck what you’re up to, no telling what they’d do.”

  “Kill me, too?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past them. And besides, I know a little bit about the law. If your husband died without a will, then the case goes to probate court. You’ll probably get a percentage of the farm, about 25 percent is what I heard widows usually get, and the court won’t give you custody of Daisy unless you had adopted her or the blood family doesn’t want her. The way I see it, that letter isn’t going to do you a bit of good and might cause you more trouble. You go ahead, and you might be throwing a rope over the barn rafter and preparing your own noose.”

  Adah stared blankly ahead. “I never adopted Daisy.”

  “That’s what I figured. And so you’d have to prove the Branches aren’t fit to take care of her and you’re better for her. One of the first things they’d ask is if you have a home for her, if you have a job to support her, if you have something to show that the Branches aren’t good to her—all things I’m willing to bet you don’t have.”

  “How do you know all of this?”

  “I spent more than two decades on the river and on the docks. You learn all sorts of things. Everyone has a story to tell. I just listened and soaked it all in.”

  She took a hard look at Jack Darby then. Yes, she could see he was the kind of man who desired knowledge the way that others yearned for success and money. And he was clearly on her side now. She gulped. “So . . . you tell me this horrible information and then expect me to do nothing with it.”

  “I didn’t say do nothing.”

  “What do you think I should do?”

  “Get the hell away from there.”

  “Right.”

  “I mean it. Walk away and never look back.”

  Of course that’s what he would say. It was what anyone would say. But no one else loved Daisy the way Adah did. It was an impossible situation, and now she had Jack Darby to deal with on top of everything else. She had somehow sought out the help of the one man who had seen Lester that fateful day his wife died and could tell her this story. How strange and fragile were the connections that bound people together. The tendons in her neck tightened, and she hauled in a ragged breath. “Funny you tell me about Betsy’s death only after you’d read my letter and knew what I wanted.”

  At first, Jack didn’t respond. Finally he said, “I didn’t know you. Now I think I do.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m worried about you.” He paused, then said, “But it’s still up to you to make this decision. Your call. I just wanted you to have all the information at hand. So . . . what do you want me to do?”

  Blood drained from her cheeks as she realized she still had a decision to make. One that was hers and hers alone. Something that could have huge ramifications. “I don’t know. I jus
t don’t know.”

  “I’m sure this has come as a shock.” Jack looked at her as if he wished he could take it all away. He was like a geode, hard and scrabbly on the outside, but now she was beginning to see some lovely particles inside. “Did you have any idea?”

  She sat statue still as a slow dawning settled over her. “No,” she answered, realizing how ignorant she had been. “People sometimes get thrown from horses. Sometimes people die that way. I had no reason to doubt the story, which was relayed to me briefly and only once, soon after I met Lester. I never mentioned it again, not wanting to bring back sad old memories.”

  Jack looked up at her cautiously, and Adah could see the question on his lips. He wanted to ask if Lester had ever hurt her, too. A shiver coursed through her, one so powerful she feared it would show, the way sometimes a horse’s shiver rippled down its flank.

  She said, “I have to think about this. Then I’ll come back. Tomorrow,” and she stood up and bounded down the steps.

  As she walked away she had to mentally pull herself back into the present day despite carrying a knot of new and terrifying knowledge that had formed in her head and a fiercer and even more terrifying fear in her gut. Over her shoulder she said a quiet “Thank you,” but she was almost sure Jack Darby didn’t hear.

  She took one look back just before she turned from the driveway onto the road, and Jack was standing there, as still as the air around him, watching her with wide-open concern as she left his place and went back to hell, alone.

  After returning to the farm, she sat on the back stoop with Daisy, staring into the night as if it could give her some answers. A late-afternoon thunderstorm had passed over quickly, during which Adah had had to quickly rescue sheets and clothing on the wash line, but now it was gone, leaving the air so still she could hear Mabel clanking dishes in the kitchen and running water in the sink, snippets of Buck and Jesse’s conversation floating out of open windows—they were discussing tobacco prices and the farm’s ledger—and the building song of grasshoppers. Sounds of ordinary domestic life seemed so far from the story she’d heard today, and Adah doubted herself for a moment. Could Jack Darby’s theory be true?