by Donis Casey
Alafair handed Scott the baby, who went to him with alacrity. None of her children had been shy babies. Being held and fussed over by extended family and even strangers had never been anything but a pleasant adventure for any of them.
“What brings you into town this fine afternoon?” Hattie smiled. “I don’t often see you twice in one week.”
“We’re canning snap beans,” Alafair told her. “I need more quart jars—had a bunch of them break since last season. A case, maybe. And maybe a half-dozen or so pints. Listen, Hattie,” she added, “why don’t you and Scott and the boys come for supper this evening after you close up? I’m not fixing anything fancy, but I don’t expect you’d go hungry.”
Hattie and Scott looked at one another, passing a visual signal, before Hattie nodded at Alafair. “I’m always happy not to have to cook. I’ll bring a couple of pies.”
After Hattie had disappeared into the storeroom, Alafair turned to Scott, who really was dandling a squealing Grace on one knee. “You taking them boys you have in the jail over to Muskogee today?”
“Not yet,” Scott managed, over the baby’s laughter. “Their lawyer will be in to see them this afternoon, then we’ll probably transfer them sometime Monday. They’ll be up for trial in a few weeks, I expect.”
“They admit they did it?”
Scott’s sharp blue eyes slid her a glance. “What do you think? They’re innocent as the day is long, to hear them tell it. They got quite a tale. But it’s up to the lawyers and the judges, now.”
“Me and Grandma Sally ran into Ned Tolland yesterday morning, Scott,” Alafair began. “Remember how I told you I had met him out by the cemetery a while back? Well, we talked to him out there again yesterday. Had a pretty odd conversation…”
Before she could finish her comment, Mary, who was gazing out the store window into the street, said, “Look, Ma, here comes Nellie Tolland, in a big hurry, too.”
Nellie burst into the store and paused, blinking while her eyes adjusted to the dim interior. She looked over at Mary. “I hear the sheriff is here,” she said without preamble.
“Yes, ma’am,” Mary affirmed, nodding toward the cracker barrel, just as Scott said, “Here I am, Miz Tolland.”
He handed Grace to Alafair and stood up. “What’s the matter?”
Nellie walked over to where Scott was standing, still puffing a bit from her hurried walk from the jailhouse. Alafair could see that Hattie had emerged from the storeroom and was standing at the far end of the counter, her ears practically quivering. Scott wasn’t a tall man, but Nellie was so small and dumpling-like that she barely came up to the star pinned on his suit coat. “Your deputy told me you might be here,” she began, looking up at him. “My husband has heard that one of the boys you arrested for my sister’s murder is Billy Bond. Is that true, Sheriff?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Scott said. “Billy Bond and his cousin Jeff Stubblefield.”
Nellie bit her bottom lip, distressed. “So it’s true,” she said to nobody in particular, then looked back up. “Why do you suspect that they killed Louise?”
“Billy was seen leaving the road house with her. Several people seen him, so we know it was him she was with. Then he went to ground. Him and Jeff had been holed up together for months, but we were waiting. We got them the first time they stuck their noses out.”
“Mercy, Sheriff, I didn’t know that you suspected the Bond boy. I figured you was just looking for a drifter that nobody would ever see again.”
“I wasn’t,” Scott said.
“Well, what makes you think those boys went ahead and killed her, then?”
“Billy admits that he took her home,” Scott said, “and there are signs that your sister was killed in her own parlor, then hauled on out and dumped into Cane Creek by two people.”
“Yes, signs!” Nellie exclaimed. She looked eager. “What happened to them signs?”
Scott’s eyes narrowed. “Why? Do you know something that you haven’t told me, Miz Tolland? It’s a crime to withhold evidence, now.”
Nellie hesitated, still chewing on her bottom lip. She glanced at Alafair blankly, hardly registering her presence, while she considered what to say next. “Why would Billy Bond want to kill Louise?” she reasoned. “His intended and my sister were both ill-used by that man.”
“What man?” Scott asked.
“That man,” she spat, suddenly livid. “That Walter Kelley. It was him, Sheriff. It was him killed Louise as sure as he plunged that knife into her chest with his own hands!”
Scott grabbed the little woman by the shoulders and forced her to look at him. “Calm down,” he ordered. “Miz Tolland, do you know who killed Louise Kelley? You’d better tell me.”
“It was him!” Nellie cried, nearly hysterical now. “He was going to do it when he came home that night, I tell you! But he got delayed or something, so he must have arranged the whole thing while he was in Kansas City, I just know it! He paid two ruffians to stab her and leave her laying there in the middle of the floor. There was footprints all around, sheriff, and some of his things. Why didn’t you see? He did it, he did it!” She collapsed into sobs. Grace, alarmed at the fury and drama, began to wail. Alafair motioned to Mary, who whisked the baby outside.
Scott took Nellie’s chin in his hand and forced her to look at him. “Miz Tolland,” he said, “what are you talking about? You know we didn’t find your sister’s body laying on the floor. There weren’t any footprints in her house. You know where we found Louise, now, don’t you?”
Alafair and Hattie were rooted to their spots in tingling anticipation. Every hair on Alafair’s body was standing on end.
Nellie Tolland stopped howling and gazed at the sheriff for a long moment, wide eyed. She snuffled and wiped her nose on her sleeve before she replied. “Well, it’s common knowledge, ain’t it?” she managed. “Them Tucker boys found poor Louise hid under some branches in the creek.”
“Why did you say ‘in the middle of the floor’?” Scott demanded.
“I got mixed up.”
“How did Louise get in the creek?”
For the first time, Nellie looked frightened. “I don’t know,” she whimpered.
“You and Ned own a couple of little jackasses, don’t you? I think we should go on out to your farm right now and check their shoes, see if any of them have a triangle nick on the right rear. What do you think?”
“Sheriff, I…” she began, but her breath failed her before she could form the sentence.
“Miz Tolland, did you kill your sister?” Scott demanded.
“No!” Nellie exclaimed, aghast.
“Did your husband?”
“No, no, not Ned! It was that husband of hers, I swear!”
“He couldn’t have done it himself,” Scott explained patiently, as if to a child. “So, if he paid somebody to do it for him, it had to be Billy and Jeff, and if it wasn’t, who was it?”
“I don’t know. But it wasn’t Billy and Jeff. It was somebody else.”
“Why are you so sure it wasn’t them?” Scott persisted. Alafair could tell he was exasperated because Nellie wouldn’t come to the point.
“I don’t want no innocent boys hanged for something they didn’t do. I know why Louise met up with those boys that night,” Nellie admitted reluctantly. “She was going to ask them something.”
Suddenly Scott was all attention again. “Still could have been them.”
Alafair guessed what the sheriff was doing. He was trying to get Nellie to admit that her sister had attempted to pay Billy to kill Walter.
Nellie was gazing at the floor, now.
“You don’t know anything,” he challenged. “You’re just trying to implicate Kelley because you hate him. You have no idea why Louise left with Billy.”
“I do,” she assured him weakly. “She told me. She was going to try and pay him money to punish that man for the way he treated her for ten years.”
Alafair saw Hattie’s jaw drop.
“
To kill him?” Scott asked.
Nellie began to cry again. “No. To beat him up. To scare him. To make him change. I don’t know,” she sobbed.
But she does know, Alafair thought.
“Miz Tolland, did you or Ned kill Louise?” Scott asked again.
Nellie shook her head without looking at him.
“But you know who did,” Scott stated. It wasn’t a question.
Only a moment passed before Nellie nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
“I think you better come on back to the office with me and tell me what you know.”
Alafair came within a hair’s breadth of yelling “No!” The tension of being this close to a revelation and not hearing it was too much to be borne. But Nellie Tolland saved her from making a fool of herself.
“That ain’t necessary, Sheriff,” Nellie said, calm again. “Louise killed herself. Stabbed herself right in her broken heart. I know because me and Ned found her in her house that night, stabbed and dead. There was a note. She was in misery, you could tell by how she had scribbled that note. I could hardly read it. I finally made out that she had written that she was such a sinner, and evil, she didn’t want to live. She said she was going to take a big old knife and run against the wall.
“Louise had come out to our place the day before, for the Fourth of July. She told us that she was meeting Billy Bond the next night, Friday, at the road house. She chose Billy because they both had such a grievance with that man. I had told Louise a hundred times she should divorce him. Just divorce him. She sure had grounds. But she didn’t want to. She kept telling me she still loved him. But after that little gal showed up at her door, she finally saw the light. He’d never change.
“She told me she was coming by our place afterwards, to let me know what happened, but she never showed up, and once it got past eight o’clock, I started to worry. So me and Ned finally went into town to check on her. It was real late, maybe nine-thirty on Friday night. The house was dark, and we found her, lying dead on her back right in her own parlor, with that knife in her chest and her arms flung out to her sides. So you see, that awful man may not have stabbed her hisself, but he drove her to it and he should be made to pay. Somebody should make him pay!”
Scott had a hold on the woman’s upper arm, as much supporting her as preventing her from running away. He suddenly looked weary. “She stabbed herself,” he repeated, as if to clarify. “Held that big old knife against her chest and ran at the wall.”
“Yes,” Nellie murmured.
“She did this at home. You and Ned found her at home.”
“Yes.”
“Did you clean up the blood? There must have been blood spattered on the wall. A dent, too, where she ran against it.”
Nellie looked up at him. “Well, there wasn’t much blood, except on her clothes. I expect she died straight away, and never bled much. There was a little crack in the plaster where she hit the wall, like you said. There was a chair knocked over.”
“What happened to the note?” Scott asked.
“I took it with me. Burned it up in my kitchen stove later.”
As he listened to Nellie’s admission, Scott looked as amazed as Alafair felt. “Well, why in tarnation would you do that? Why would you destroy the evidence, and then stuff your own sister into the creek?”
“No, no, Sheriff, weren’t you listening? We didn’t put her in the creek. I don’t know who did that. When I saw Louise laying there with that look on her face…” She choked back a sob, then continued. “I reckon I hardly saw anything after that. There was blood all over her clothes, I remember that.”
“Then how did her body end up in the creek?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Nellie told him yet again. “We didn’t do it. I cried quite a spell when we found her, before Ned said to me that it was too bad her unhappy life had drove her to this. And he was right, too. All of a sudden, I like to went up in flames. It was like she had decided the only way she could be free of him was for one of them to be dead. I was so angry, Sheriff. I wanted Walter Kelley to pay for it. I went into the bedroom closet and got a pair of that man’s shoes, then I dipped my hand right into my poor sister’s blood and smeared the soles. Then Ned put the shoes on and made footprints all around, then left them right there in the middle of the floor. Quiet as we could be, ’cause I didn’t want the neighbors to hear. I traced a “W” on the floor with her blood, right up near her hand. And I left some of his barber things near her body.
“You were right, Sheriff, I wanted everyone to think that he killed her. I didn’t want it to seem possible that Louise done herself in. I took the note, but there was still that place on the wall. I was afraid somebody would figure it out. So we moved the sideboard over to cover the crack in the plaster. I knew Louise’s rotten husband was out of town, but he was supposed to be back that very next morning. I expected he’d be the one to find her, and then you’d think he walked right in from the train and killed her. Then he didn’t come home that day after all, and Louise’s body disappeared right out of her house. I didn’t know what to do. After she got found in the creek, I was hoping you’d decide her husband sneaked back into town, murdered her, and then hightailed it back to Kansas City.”
She paused and looked at him, but Scott was not inclined to explain his investigation to her. “You destroyed the suicide note, and changed the crime scene in an attempt to incriminate your brother-in-law,” he summarized.
Nellie nodded as though this were the most logical thing in the world. “It made me sick to hear somebody had put her in the creek after what we did. But I couldn’t let those innocent boys hang for killing her, and me knowing they didn’t do it.”
“And you left that bloody rug in her parlor?” Scott persisted.
Nellie blinked. “What rug? You mean that rug she was laying on? We found her laying right up next to the kitchen door toward the back. She must have flung herself against the parlor wall and fell back onto the rug. I don’t know what happened to it.”
Scott glanced over at his wife, perplexed. “You and Ned didn’t put her in the creek?” he asked Nellie yet again, apparently unable to believe his ears.
“No, sir. I’d never.”
No one seemed to have anything else to say for a long minute, but finally Scott turned Nellie around and ushered her out of the store and down the street to the Sheriff’s office. Neither Alafair nor Hattie could manage to move. Mary stepped back into the store with Grace in her arms.
“What on earth happened?” Mary asked, breaking the spell.
Alafair’s knees practically buckled. “Lord have mercy,” she exclaimed. “I got to sit down!”
“Miz Tolland told Scott that Louise Kelley killed herself,” Hattie told Mary excitedly.
“What?”
“It’s true, sugar,” Alafair affirmed. She sat down in the chair that Scott had vacated and began fanning herself with her handkerchief. “Nellie said that Louise had told her she was going to try to get the Bond boy to kill Walter, or at least to put the fear of God into him. Louise was supposed to go out to their place that night, and when she didn’t show up, Nellie and her husband went to looking for her and found Louise in her own house with a knife in her chest. There was a suicide note that said she was going to stab herself for being so low-down. I guess she felt bad for trying to have her husband killed.”
Hattie took up the story. “Then, it seems that Nellie and Ned destroyed the note and generally tried to make it look like Louise was murdered. She claims she doesn’t know how the body got into the creek where the boys found her.”
“Why on earth would she want it to look like her sister was murdered?” Mary asked, aghast. “My goodness!”
“She told Scott that she wanted to make it look like Walter murdered her. Said they took a pair of Walter’s shoes, smeared them with Louise’s blood, and made footprints on the floor around her body so it would look like he was there. Sounds like she wasn’t in her right mind when she thought up th
at scheme.”
“Do you suppose it’s the same shoes we found in the road, Mama?”
“I expect so, Mary. Walter told us he was missing a pair. Nellie said she left them in the middle of the floor, but maybe Ned took them later and buried them beside the road.”
Walter’s shoes and Ned’s feet. As she explained to Mary what had transpired, Alafair was thinking of Buttercup snuffling around Walter at Easter, and Crook’s interest in Ned’s shoes at the cemetery. She wasn’t going to doubt the hounds’ noses again.
“So who put her in the creek?” Mary asked.
Alafair gave an exaggerated shrug. “Nellie said she didn’t know, and I believe her. Somebody found her dead in the house and hid her. Maybe it was Billy and Jeff, fearing they’d be blamed.”
Mary put her hand on her forehead as though she was getting dizzy. “But why did she kill herself?” she asked. “Because she felt guilty for trying to get her husband murdered? Heavens! If he was so bad, why not just get a divorce? I don’t hold with divorce, but it’s sure better than murder or doing yourself in, either one.”
Alafair leaped to her feet, startling Mary and Grace, who yipped in surprise. Alafair took the baby from Mary’s arms. “Because she couldn’t see any way out of her horrible marriage that wouldn’t make her even more miserable, I’m thinking,” Alafair said. “She probably wanted to make him feel bad, too, but that don’t seem to have worked.” Alafair’s face had paled, and she was quivering with outrage. “I’m telling you, Mary, that man is trouble. I don’t care how friendly or handsome or well off he is. Alice can’t marry him, she just can’t! Maybe she’ll listen to your daddy.”
With that, she rushed out of the store with Grace in her arms, leaving all her purchases on the counter and her daughter standing in the middle of the floor, stunned.
Mary looked over at Hattie for guidance.
Hattie came out from behind the counter, picked up the boxes of Mason jars, and handed them to her. “Don’t worry, honey,” Hattie soothed. “You know how your mama is about protecting her kids. She’ll calm down by and by.”