I lit a cigarette. Everyone looked pained but Sonny, who reached for my pack.
Ray reached for the door to the deck.
I took up the tale. “I managed to get up and dragged the presumed corpse up the trail to the creek. I laid him down near the water where it was exceptionally muddy, as if he had slipped, fallen and hit his head. I went back to the house, got the rock and placed it by his head. I then took off the gray blazer they insist I was wearing and hid it somewhere. They have not found it yet, Johnson says.”
Taking a sip of beer, I continued. “There are numerous shrubs and some blackberry bushes along the way. Johnson says his deputies found fibers on them that will match McCurry’s chino shirt and pants plus some gray ones that will match my blazer. I do own such a jacket, but it’s in Massachusetts. I had just arrived back at the cabin from wherever I went to hide the blazer, when Mickey staggered down the path, muttering to himself.”
“Ever helpful,” Cindy said with a smile, “I ripped off a big old green coat I had found in the mudroom and had worn as I policed the area for blood or anything. I gave it to Alex to keep blood from his head wound off her clothes, and she began to support Mickey as they went down the path toward where the creek goes under the main road.”
“I don’t remember any green coat in there,” Ken interrupted.
“There wasn’t one in the cabin, that part was all Jeffie, I’ll explain later,” I answered. “Anyway partway down the trail there’s a crushed bush which tells Jeffie that Mickey fell into it, and from here on, I carried the hundred-and-eighty-pound babbling corpse down the hill and placed him by the creek. Jeffie says either I put him where he would breathe some water, or he moved. Anyway, I then remembered the bloody rock with hair stuck in it, went up the trail, got it, came down the trail and put it beside him and went up the trail past the house. Nearly at Blackstone Farm, I shoved the green coat under a rotting log, where it was found, covered in leaves, dirt, etc—plus a splotch of blood. They also found a footprint they say matches my sneakers near the first place Mickey was laid out.”
“As Jeffie then said: Case closed.” Cindy gave a little bow from the sofa.
“Funny, Alex,” Vonley said, “you don’t look like an Olympic wrestler.”
Ray laughed. “I’m not sure even one of them could have done all that. You say he weighed one-eighty, Alex?”
“Close to it. He was almost exactly my height, but square-built and very muscular. I imagine he worked out a lot.”
We gravitated toward the deck. Ken went to the kitchen and came back with crackers and a slab of Stilton we had bought. We all refreshed our drinks. Swallowing a sizable bite, Vonley muttered, “Okay, ladies what really happened?”
I began.“We were at the Bromfield with two friends we had made here in town. Later I ran into Branch Redford and had a drink with him in the bar. He had had a few, but wasn’t really drunk. He was upset about Mickey’s actions and obviously afraid of what else he might do. Mickey was particularly, Branch told me, angry at Clay and Sara and us for putting a wrench in his works. Branch got a phone call from a woman called Mildred at the Dew Drop Inn. He had hired her to ‘be nice’ to Mickey, hoping that would keep him entertained overnight. I judged from the call she was refusing to go to a motel with him; he had already slapped her around and got bounced out of the Dew Drop, and she was scared of him.”
I grabbed the last morsel of Stilton and talked around it. “Branch said Mickey was a loose cannon, and he was the only man left holding a rope. He wished for Marines. He had begged Jeffie to arrest Mickey on any kind of charge and hold him till this morning, but Jeffie said he had no reason to. Then Branch squared his shoulders and said something like, ‘Here goes St. George to find the dragon. Wish me luck.’ Well, when St. George found the dragon, he killed him.”
“That’s not proof of anything!” Vonley exploded.
“I know, but it’s indicative of how he saw himself: he had to save Mickey’s would-be victims. Also add this—two things I finally remembered. Branch was wearing a gray blazer and, I think, gray pants. He also had on sneakers of the same brand and design as mine. I had noticed them once before. And that night, dancing with him, I noticed them again. What particularly got my attention was how small his hands and feet were—almost delicate. He’s about Cindy’s height, but his hands and feet are small, even for a short man. And if you find the sneakers, I think one of them will have a worn spot on the edge of the sole.”
“Now there, my good Captain, you have something!” Ken sounded very relieved.
“It’s enough for a search warrant, at least,” Vonley admitted. “How did the actual fatal blow come about?”
“I don’t know. But a good guess would be: Branch was driving up to his sister’s to see that all was well. He either saw something or just stopped on impulse to see if the cabin had been entered. Mickey was here and he wasn’t afraid of Branch, he held him in contempt. He would not have been leery that Branch would hurt him. Branch found opportunity to hit Mickey with the rock to stun him, so he could call the cops to arrest him for trespass. But for whatever reason, he thought he had killed him. Rather than leave him near the cabin, he dragged him up the trail to the creekside and placed the rock nearby. He probably went home, thinking Mickey was out of things for good.”
“It’s all possible,” Sonny agreed. “How did you get that black eye, by the way?”
“Later. It’s all Fargo’s fault.”
“The dog ate your homework, eh? Well, go ahead. How did this peripatetic corpse get down the trail?”
Cindy returned to the deck wearing a sweater and bringing one for me. As I put it on, she took up the narrative.
“The sheriff told us some story about people with head wounds suddenly regaining consciousness. They carry on conversations, sometimes walk around and sometimes even get back to their homes. I don’t know if there’s a word of truth in it. He says a Dr. Ellis told him about—”
Ray interrupted. “It’s quite true. And I’ve known Butch Ellis since med school. He could have been chief surgeon at any hospital you could name, but he married a nurse who didn’t like big cities any more than he did. So they opened a small clinic here. He is a fine doctor.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Cindy nodded. “Because what we think happened depended on that. We think Tommy Blackstone was walking up the trail. Why he was walking in the pouring rain while his mother had a perfectly good SUV we have not guessed. Anyway, at some point he met Mickey stumbling down the trail, and we think he was probably muttering something about getting to his car. Tommy supported him, headed down to the main road where Mickey’s car was found. Once again, cloth fibers were all over the place.” She took one of her rare cigarettes.
I wrapped it up.
“At some point we guess Mickey passed out and fell into the brush, and Tommy carried him the rest of the way to where he was found. He obviously had spotted either the wound or the rock or both, because at some point he brought the rock down, placing it near Mickey. He may have thought Mickey had hit his head and now died…maybe he had.”
“How do you know it was Tommy?” Ken asked. “I hate to see him mixed up in a killing. It will destroy Sara.”
“At the Bromfield Inn earlier, he was all dressed up,” I answered, “and his jacket was dark green with blue glints in it. Then a deputy found one that looks like it and seems to be about Tommy’s size.”
Cindy patted Ken’s arm. “Don’t worry about Tommy. All he did was try to help. If he hurt Mickey in any way it certainly was accidental.”
“Well.” Vonley grinned. “You’ve told a story somewhat more believable than Jeffie’s, if the evidence holds up. And you have accounted for everyone but yourselves.”
“Oh,” I felt myself blushing…damn, always at the most inauspicious times. “Oh, our night was frightening but uneventful except for my black eye. We left the Bromfield about midnight. It had finally stopped raining but was still wet as hell when we approached the cabin. We were
scared to death Mickey was around somewhere. I let Fargo out of the car. He made no fuss about anything. We explored the whole house inside and out…no Mickey.”
I said nothing about the pistol. It was so old I doubted it was registered, and we had not been forced to use it, so why mention it?
Cindy grinned at Ken. “We raided your good brandy and I made coffee to go with it. Fargo whined to go out and startled me. I spun around and clocked Alex with a mug.”
“So you say.” Sonny teased.
“I’m sticking to my story,” she fired back. “After ice packs and brandy the three of us piled on to the sofa. We tried to stay awake till daybreak, but kept dozing off until the police sirens woke Alex. We thought it was a traffic accident on the main road until Jeffie arrived on the doorstep.”
“And from there it was all downhill,” Vonley finished for her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
We were stuck in Beulaland until Tuesday late afternoon. I knew it was not a long time, at all, to wrap up a murder case; and God knows everyone involved was moving at top speed. But to those two of us who were prohibited from leaving, it lasted an eon.
Vonley, who had gotten around to telling us to call him Lewis, decided to make his headquarters the cabin instead of the town jail. The jail was small and crowded, he explained, and any questions asked or information given would be all over town in an hour. And anyway, it didn’t have Cindy’s great coffee. Actually, I felt I was the coffee expert, but I was glad to let her accept this election.
The captain then got Jeffie on the phone, chewed him out for not reporting the murder—if it still was one—and told him to get a search warrant for Branch’s quarters at Clay’s house. The search warrant was to be carried out by the two female deputies—specifically looking for a gray blazer, gray pants and Champion sneakers. Two other deputies were to find and arrest Branch for assault and bring him to the cabin. Johnson was also to send Deputy Spitz—and only Spitz—to find Tommy Blackstone and request his presence at the cabin. He was also to offer to bring along Tommy’s mother.
He had the speakerphone on in the dining room, and I could hear Jeffie sputtering and “but…but…but-ing” like a faulty outboard. Lewis simply said, “Stay where I can reach you,” and hung up.
Earlier I had suggested to Vonley that Johnson not be included in Tommy’s interview. “Tommy and Sara would in all probability talk to you,” I told him, “and would doubtless feel reassured if Ken were present—or even me, if Ken wants to stay well clear of this mare’s nest. But Jeffie has the unreciprocated hots for Sara, and neither mother nor son particularly like or trust him.”
Lewis nodded thoughtfully. At least he was a good enough cop to listen!
Ray had a joyous telephone reunion with Butch Ellis and took the rental car to go to the clinic and assist with the autopsy.
Ken called Gertrude’s Delly and ordered enough food to provide dinner for a regiment, plus sandwiches to have later for snacks. He also made out a list for the Bromfield bar that would have the owner smiling for several days. I offered to pick up the orders, but he insisted on doing it himself, saying that if he were in town and didn’t say hello to Gertrude she would never forgive him. He did, however, sheepishly ask to borrow my car to make his rounds.
While the phone was temporarily free, I called the Bromfield Inn and got them to add up the various checks we had signed. I then wrote out my check for Ken and tucked it in the corner of his desk blotter. I wondered why we still have desk blotters, when we no longer write letters that need to be blotted? Then I wondered why I cared.
Vonley pried Cindy loose from the coffeemaker and they walked down the trail to get some air and to see where McCurry had last been laid to his uneasy rest.
During their absence, a call came in from Jeffie. Sonny took it in the kitchen—not bothering to explain he was Detective Lieutenant Peres from Massachusetts, and learned that Branch had been found, very drunk, in a bar over on the state road. Did they want him at the cabin or let him sleep it off? He was really plowed.
“Why not bring him over?” Sonny answered. “In vino veritas, right?”
“No,” Jeffie replied. “They were over on the state road, like I said…in the Hillside Restaurant and Bar…not in the Vino, wherever that is.”
Sonny actually took the phone from his ear and stared at it. “Oh—uh—good! Very good. Bye,” he managed to say before he burst into laughter. “Oh, boy,” he said, “I can’t wait to tell this one to Lewis.”
Lewis came in as if on cue and laughed dutifully at Sonny’s anecdote. Then he held up a plastic bag with a glove inside it. The glove had tiny sharp metal points sticking out of the palm and the bottoms of the fingers. “Either of you know what this is for?” he asked us. “Cindy spotted it beside a bush near the bottom of the trail. It looks like a medieval torture device.”
Sonny shook his head. I nodded mine. It was one of those minor little inventions you wondered why you hadn’t made yourself. It would never make you famous, nor particularly rich…but it came in awfully handy when you needed it.
“I don’t know the proper name but you use it scaling fish. You put the fish on a wood table, or board, put on the glove and rest your hand on the fish’s tail. It keeps your hand from slipping on the slippery fish so it doesn’t skid off the table when you scale and gut it. Also prevents cut hands, I imagine. It could be Tommy’s. I saw him using one the other afternoon.”
“Ah! We’ll have to ask him when we find him. Any news on that?” Vonley inquired.
“Nothing on Tommy.” Sonny pulled a beer from the refrigerator. “Branch is on his way in, as you know.”
I looked at the glove again. “You know what?” I asked the air. “I’ll bet that’s what made the scratches on the murder weapon! For some reason Tommy must have been wearing the glove when he picked up the river rock.”
Vonley looked at me seriously. “Whose job are you after? The sheriff’s, mine or your brother’s?” He grinned. “You probably could have your pick at this point.”
“Flattery will get you many things, sir, with a few exceptions. But unfortunately, three cars are pulling into the parking area as we speak.”
Dave Spitz was the first, advising us that Tommy and Sara would be along as soon as they had fed the horses. “I offered to wait,” he added, “but Ms. Blackstone said they preferred to bring their own car. And I had a definite feeling I should not put any pressure on them, so I just thanked them and left.”
“You done good,” Lewis nodded. “They are a prominent family, and we don’t believe Tommy was out to hurt anyone.”
The second car held Ken and a bunch of goodies—both solid and liquid. I went down to help him carry them in.
The third, of course, held Branch and two deputies. As I went down the steps from the deck, one deputy almost lifted Branch out of the backseat. He was not his usual natty self. Unshaven, uncombed and generally grungy and bedraggled, he tried to throw himself into my arms, but the deputy held on to him.
“Oh, Alex,” he cried, “I’m so glad you’re here! You can tell them my heart was innocent. It was all Mickey, every bit! He was going to kill you and Cindy.”
I had been feeling a combination of pity and humor, but his last sentence took me instantly back to the terror I had felt at the cabin door Saturday night. A cold sweat popped on my neck and I began to shiver.
Afraid my voice would break if I spoke, I simply waved and turned toward my car, which Ken was starting to unload. I managed to hang on to the bundles he handed me, and staggered up the steps.
Had Branch truly saved our lives, or was he now simply trying to save his own? But how did a chubby, short, out-of-shape guy like Branch manage to kill a taller, heavily muscled Mickey—with a rock, of all things—if he were not genuinely desperate? A bullet, maybe a golf club, even poison—but a rock? Up close and very personal for a nonviolent man!
Had this ineffectual little fellow indeed become St. George just long enough to slay the dragon? I knew fr
om experience that fright, for yourself or a loved one, could sometimes bring to the surface a courage you didn’t know you had. I found myself betting on Branch and hoping very hard that I was right.
Lewis was using the living room as his “office.” So we set out Ken’s buffet dinner in the dining room. It gave Lewis and anyone with him the illusion of privacy, although the sound of normal conversation carried into the dining room quite clearly.
Lewis had provided Branch with some food and a mug of coffee, which seemed to restore him—if not to sobriety—at least to coherence. They spoke of inconsequentials while he ate and then turned to serious interrogation.
Branch succinctly went over the Advantage plans for a mountaintop development, his difficulties in obtaining easements for even one road to reach it, McCurry’s appointment as closer and his deliberate misunderstanding of how he was to approach prospects. Branch had not seen McCurry commit any of the vandalism that accompanied his arrival, but strongly suggested he was guilty. McCurry was drinking heavily and Branch was almost certain he was on steroids or some other drug.
Branch had several times asked the sheriff to arrest McCurry for disturbing the peace or some equivalent minor infraction of the law and “let him cool off” until Branch could get help from Advantage, but Johnson said he had no cause. Advantage finally recalled McCurry and Branch, when they received the letter from Clay’s attorney, and Branch was trying desperately to keep McCurry under control until their ordered return to Knoxville on Monday. Branch smiled ruefully and added, “It was like telling a six-year-old to put a runaway Newfoundland on leash.”
I was called in when they began to speak of Saturday night and Branch’s time at the Bromfield Inn. He had known that Clay, Sara, Tommy, Cindy and I would be there where he could, for a time, keep an eye on us. We were his main worries. Clay and Sara for retaining Attorney Minot. Cindy and me for giving them the idea to get a lawyer and for giving his macho ego a bad bruise in the Delly. Tommy as a sort of hostage for Clay and Sara.
Murder Takes to the Hill Page 19