Unfortunately, Trinksie seemed to be the only one in at the moment. She was delighted with the crumb cake, however, and I watched as she helped herself to a large piece and gobbled it down right in front of me. When I asked where the others were, she said that Snake had run to town to get some lightbulbs, and that Mr. Zeb would probably be coming in anytime. Danny had stopped by for a visit earlier, but he had gone back to work in the orchard nearby.
Trinksie seemed eager to gossip and I let her talk, knowing that anything she said might lead to a break in my case. I could tell that the mummy in the apples had gotten her quite worked up, and it interested me to listen to her conjecture. Apparently, rumor had spread that the mummy was probably the body of Enrique Morales, the missing migrant man.
“He was such a nice fellow too,” Trinksie said. “I’d hate to think he ended up that way.”
“Did you have many dealings with him?” I asked.
“Not really,” she replied. “I got six kids, but Snake’s the only one who’s still around to keep me company. I’d say that counts for something in this crazy world.”
Trinksie talked about Snake, about his physical and mental condition. He had a very low IQ, she said, which meant he could do odd jobs and read and even get a driver’s license, though he would probably never live on his own and had trouble handling money and making important decisions.
“Oxygen deprivation,” Trinksie pronounced matter-of-factly. “The cord was wrapped around his neck when he was born.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That must’ve been very difficult for you.”
“Not really,” she replied. “Heck, I got six kids. Snake’s the youngest and the only one who’s still around to keep me company. I’d say that counts for something in this crazy world.”
“It sure does.”
“And he’s a good boy. Everyone sorta treats him like their little brother.”
“I’ve noticed that.”
“He’s got a good life. He cleans the parking lot over at Ingles on Thursdays and Fridays, he goes to Sunday school on Sundays, and he’s even in a bowling league every Wednesday night.”
“That’s great, Trinksie.”
When it became apparent to me that Zeb wasn’t coming into the office after all, I finally extricated myself from the office and told Trinksie I would see her around.
I pulled the door shut behind me and gave a little start to see Snake in the parking lot, leaning against his blue Impala, smoking a cigarette. He was wearing a dark shirt and a baseball cap, and instantly I thought of the person I had seen running through the woods on Sunday night. Certainly, he was the right height and weight. But was he capable of stabbing someone? He seemed so sweet and innocent.
Chills running down my back, I stepped out further toward my car.
“Hi there,” he called out to me with a wave. “Y-you have a nice day now.”
I waved back and kept walking to my car. Before driving away, I picked up the phone and dialed Detective Sweetwater.
“It’s Callie Webber,” I said when my call went into her voice mail. “I’m not sure, but I think I may have figured out who the person was that I saw running through the woods on Sunday night.”
Thirty-One
My phone rang almost immediately after I hung it up. I answered to find that it was Dean, calling to tell me that the preliminary autopsy report on the mummy was in, and that it was definitely Enrique Morales.
“Listen,” he said, “the medical examiner is a friend of mine. I told him you were investigating things for us, and he said he’s willing to talk to you about the full report, if you want.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Nope. I’ll text over his name and number and you can give him a call.”
I thanked Dean profusely before hanging up. Soon his text came through. I made the call, and then I was talking to the Webbers’ old friend, Dr. Grant.
He was a nice man, very down to earth, and he said he would be happy to bring me up to speed on the mummy. “This will all be in the autopsy protocol,” he added, “but Dean seemed to think you might want a verbal report ASAP.”
He went on to talk about the body and his examination, and as he spoke I realized Dean may have fudged a bit. Apparently, this man thought I had some legal right to this information, either as the lawyer of record or as some sort of official investigator. Feeling just a tad guilty, I kept my mouth shut and let him talk.
And what he had to say was quite informative. Yes, the body was that of Enrique Morales; the dental records proved it quite conclusively. The body had been in apple storage for approximately four months, as suspected, and the unusual conditions of the room had served to mummify the corpse as it decayed. Cause of death was fairly certain at this point, though there were some abnormalities that were of enough concern that the body was being sent to Quantico for further examination and testing.
“What kind of abnormalities?” I asked.
“To put it bluntly, parts of the esophagus, the lungs, and the stomach are gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean?”
“I made the standard Y-shaped incision, and when I cut down to the heart, those things weren’t fully there.”
“Were they surgically removed?”
“No. There was no incision front or back, and no other sign of external entry, either through the chest, the shoulders, or the throat.”
“Could it be a deformity of some kind?” I asked, feeling stupid even as I said it.
The doctor chuckled.
“Darlin’, I’ve seen my share of irregularities, but I don’t think anybody could live without lungs.”
“So what’s your conclusion?”
“Best I can figure, everything sort of dissolved postmortem.”
“Dissolved?”
“Yes. I’ve been puzzling on this all morning. There’s a little tissue damage to the lips, the tongue, and the soft palate, then more extensive damage to the esophagus, lungs, and stomach. I’m thinking this man died after ingesting some sort of caustic fluid in his lungs. Over the course of time, the fluid dissolved tissue away as it evaporated. By now, of course, the fluid has all evaporated away.”
“Incredible.”
He went on to say that, preliminarily at least, the opinion would show manner of death as homicide.
“If he’d been found with his head in a bucket of Drano,” he said, “I might be inclined to believe it was an accident or even self-inflicted. But this body was buried in a box of apples. If I can figure out a way that a man could suck up enough caustic fluid to kill himself and then hide away in a bunch of fruit, I might change my opinion.”
“Do you have any idea what the fluid was?”
“Oh, gosh,” he said, “the list is endless. Could be acid, insecticide, bleach, detergent, you name it. ’Course, the sparkles only add to my confusion.”
“Sparkles?”
“I’m sorry, did I leave that out? In what’s left of the lungs and stomach, there are tiny flecks of sparkles, almost like glitter. I’ll be analyzing them, of course, but it sure does seem odd.”
Glitter. I tried to think where I had recently seen glitter. At Go the Distance, I realized. In the art room.
“Is there any way to narrow down what the liquid might have been?” I asked.
“We’re working on it. We should know in a few hours.”
“Have you written the report up yet?”
“I’m almost done. Shall I read you the opinion?”
“Please.”
I could hear the click of a few computer keys, and then he started reading.
“It is my opinion that Enrique Morales, a thirty-eight-year-old Hispanic male, died as a result of the inhalation and ingestion of a caustic fluid. The cause of death was drowning. The mechanism of death was asphyxiation. The manner of death was homicide.”
“Unbelievable,” I said. “He drowned in something that ate away his insides.”
“I have to say, this has been one of the most intr
iguing cases I’ve handled in a long time.”
I thanked the doctor for his help, hung up the phone, and looked out the window at the gathering darkness. Poor Enrique, I thought sadly. What a way to go.
Thirty-Two
Lost in thought, I pulled onto the road and tried to decide what to do next. I remembered what Pepe had told me last night, that on the day his father disappeared, he had talked about going to speak with Lowell Tinsdale about something important. I decided to follow through on that and talk to Tinsdale myself. I toyed with the idea of talking to Pete Gibson instead, but something told me to go straight to the main man.
Enrique didn’t know whom he could trust?
Well, neither did I.
It wasn’t easy getting in to see Lowell Tinsdale. I had to stand my ground with a very stubborn nurse who insisted that the man had been worn out by the stream of police and reporters and other interested parties related to the processing of the crime scene and that my seeing him now was out of the question.
“Tell him I’m a friend of Karen’s,” I said, hoping that might do the trick.
With a huff, the woman told me to wait. A few minutes later she returned, much more subdued, and said simply, “He’ll see you in the study now. Come this way.”
I followed the nurse to a dark room with heavy furniture and drawn blinds. The only light came from a single lamp next to a low chair. In the chair was Lowell Tinsdale, his eyes closed, his head resting back against the seat. Strapped to his face, under his nose, was a clear plastic tube connected to an oxygen tank next to his chair. I sat across from him on a stiff leather bench and waited until the nurse left us alone.
“Can I help you?” he asked in a tired voice.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “My name is Callie Webber, and we met yesterday, out by the storage—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know all of that. What do you want?”
“I have a question about the day that Enrique Morales disappeared. I need to know—”
“What does that have to do with Karen?”
I blinked, embarrassed.
“Nothing, sir. I said I was a friend of Karen’s. I didn’t say that had anything to do with why I wanted to see you.”
He grunted but knew that, technically, I was correct.
“Are you a cop or something?” he demanded. “A reporter?”
“No,” I said, hesitating. “I’m an investigator. A private investigator.”
“A private investigator?” he said. “Who’s paying you?”
“It’s kind of complicated,” I said. “I came here to research an organization, but my investigation ended up overlapping with this murder.”
He opened one eye, peered at me for a moment, and then closed it again.
“Murder, huh?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. “I just got off the phone with the medical examiner. He’s definitely calling the death a homicide.”
I cleared my throat, trying to compose my first question. Before I could speak, however, he started talking.
“First of all the name’s Lowell, not Mr. Tinsdale. Secondly, I’ve spent my whole day answering questions about Enrique Morales. What do you want me to say? He was a hard worker. He came back here year after year, always did the job, always stayed till the very end. Do I know why someone would want him dead? No. Have I got a clue how he ended up in storage? No. Do I know who killed him? No.”
I scooted forward in my seat, wishing Mr. Tinsdale would sit up and look at me.
“Sir, some new information has come to light about Enrique’s last day. As far as we know, the last person to see him alive was his son, Pepe. According to Pepe, when his father left him at lunchtime on that day, he was on his way over here to talk to you.”
His eyes popped open.
“Me?”
“Yes, sir. Enrique was upset about something. He said he knew ‘something he wasn’t supposed to know’ and that he was coming here to talk to you about it. The last thing he said to his son was, ‘I’m not sure who I can trust.’”
“Well, I’ll be.”
Lowell seemed genuinely surprised.
“So did he? Did he come and talk to you that day?”
Lowell closed his eyes again.
“I can only tell you what I told the police. I was in respiratory failure at the time. I wouldn’t have been willing or able to talk to anyone. Especially not one of the workers. I very nearly didn’t make it through that bout alive.”
I thought about that, decided to verify it, but assumed also that he was speaking the truth. Closing my own eyes, I tried to envision Enrique coming here to talk to Lowell and getting turned away at the door. Where would he have gone next? To see the foreman, Pete?
“I just never thought it would come to this,” Lowell said softly. “Poor Enrique, murdered on my own property. When I kicked him out of here at thirteen, I should’ve told him not to come back ever.”
“Sir?”
“Twenty years ago, when I found that boy kissing my daughter in the barn, I sent him packing. But he and his family showed up the next year for harvest, and he swore he’d stay away from her, so I let him stay. She was gone by then anyway. But he’s been coming back every year since.”
My head was spinning. The boy, the migrant that Lowell caught in the barn with Karen so many years ago, was Enrique Morales?
“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I knew that you caught Karen in a compromising position with a migrant. But I didn’t realize it was him.”
“Compromising position? Who told you that?”
“Excuse me?”
“They were just two kids. Fooling around. It’s not like they had their clothes off or anything. Just innocent kisses behind the hay.”
“Then why did you react the way you did?”
He thought about that for a moment.
“I was seeing red,” he said finally. “Back then things were different. It wasn’t considered proper for a white girl and a Mexican boy to be together…”
He let his voice trail off.
“You were afraid of what other people might think?”
“Hey, I’m not proud of it,” he said. “But people weren’t very openminded, to say the least. Whites, blacks, Hispanics, there was no mixing. Especially not with my daughter on my property. It was one thing for her to play with those children and quite another for her to start some kind of romance.”
“So you kicked him out and sent her off to boarding school.”
“Don’t think I haven’t come to regret it. She would have gotten over that boy soon enough if I’d just let things take their natural course. Instead, I got all crazy, jumped the gun, and lost my daughter in the process.”
He looked into my eyes, the true cost of his actions clearly evident. Judging from the pain and misery I saw in his face, this was a man who lived with a lot of regret.
Mustering what looked like the last bit of strength he possessed, he sat up, leaned forward, and pulled aside the curtain to look out at the sun setting over his apple trees. I could hear him breathing, even and hard, sucking the oxygen from the tube as if his very life depended on it—which it did.
“Zeb Hooper’s been trying to buy this place from me for years,” he said finally, dropping the curtain and falling back in his chair. “If I’d had any sense, I would have sold it to him and been done with it a long time ago.”
Thirty-Three
A wave of exhaustion washed over me as I opened the door and stepped outside into the fresh air. Poor Lowell was so sick, it hung in the air around him like a damp, thick cloud. I had said goodnight and seen myself out, and now I simply stood on the stoop, taking in the last tiny glimmer of the sunset and trying to pull myself together.
Truth was, I liked the old guy. Despite his crankiness, despite his misguided past, I thought he had a sharp wit and a way of cutting through to the core that probably cost him a few friends but made for a straight-from-the-hip kind of fellow.
Taking a deep breath, I headed
for my car, but before I got there, I heard a strange noise coming from the side of the house. Glancing around, I realized that the place was deserted, though a big spotlight mounted under the eaves kept the driveway from being too dark.
Whoosh! There it was again—an odd sound, like the breathing of a mechanical dragon. Senses alert, I took a few steps toward the noise to see if I could figure out what it was.
I didn’t have to go far. Beside the house, next to the broken-down tractor, a man was standing in a circle of artificial light, welding a piece of metal with a blow torch. I couldn’t see the man’s face because of the dark protective face gear he wore, but I had a feeling it was the orchard foreman, Pete Gibson. I hesitated, wanting to speak with him but fearing he might in some way be dangerous.
“Callie?”
The torch fire disappeared as he flipped back the protective cover to reveal a red, sweaty face.
“Hey, Pete,” I said, stepping closer. “You fixing the tractor?”
“Trying to,” he said. “This has ended up being a major ordeal.”
He put down the torch and removed the headgear completely.
“Were you in the house?” he asked. “With Lowell?”
“Yes.”
“How is he?”
“Tired. Very tired.”
He nodded, looking upset.
“How about a cold drink?” he asked. “I know I could use one.”
Without waiting for my reply, he started walking away. Confused, I wasn’t sure where he was going or if I should follow. I wanted to talk to him, but I had had something a little less isolated in mind—for example, in the middle of the day, surrounded by other workers. Here, we seemed to be the only ones anywhere around. Twilight had settled over the farm, and beyond the bright lights on the side of the house, it was getting quite dark.
Fortunately, I soon saw where Pete was going. There was a big white building about fifty feet away, some kind of oversized shed with a long, low porch across the front. On the porch, against the wall, was a red “Coca Cola” cooler the size and shape of a top-loading freezer. With a quick glance back at the house, I walked over to the cooler. Pete held the heavy lid open for me while I peered at the selection and finally chose a bottle of water. He grabbed a soda for himself and then lowered down the lid.
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