Cast a Blue Shadow

by Gaus, P. L.

  “You missed the poison?” Bruce teased.

  “No. By the time I tested the mixture, the small amount of water had hydrolyzed the poison. Nothing was left but side products.”

  “You missed the poison!” Bruce said, and started tickling Melissa in the ribs.

  AFTER lunch, Bruce dressed in slacks and a sport coat, no tie.

  Missy asked, “Time to dress, already?”

  “I have plans for us, Missy. Several stops to make before dinner and the concert. Better suit up casual for now.”

  Missy dressed in a comfortable skirt and blouse outfit. Under the portico, Bruce asked for a certain doorman, tipped him twenty dollars, and winked. The doorman blew three short blasts on his whistle, and a black limousine pulled forward. Missy gawked at the long car, and said, “Bruce?”

  Bruce held the rear door open, and motioned Missy in. As they drove off, he said to the driver, “You got the itinerary?”

  “Yes, Mr. Robertson. It’s all taken care of.”

  Missy looked wide-eyed at Bruce, and the sheriff smiled mischievously.

  Missy said, “Does this have something to do with why you insisted we keep this date in the middle of a murder investigation?”

  “That investigation wasn’t going anywhere without Martha Lehman’s statement. Since we’d be waiting for that for quite some time, I see no reason to have changed our plans.”

  “Oh is that right, Sheriff Robertson?”

  “Yes it is, Coroner Taggert. Besides, I have plans for this day.”

  The first stop was the Sears Tower. On the observation deck, Bruce walked beside Missy as they slowly moved from one side to the next, gazing out over the vast city below. When they had circumnavigated the deck, Bruce produced a card with a single pink carnation on the cover. Inside, Missy read:

  It seems like you can see the whole world up here, Missy. I’ll never grow tired of it. This view is special for me because I first saw it with you. But, with all of the world laid out before me, I see nothing here that I don’t see always in your eyes. There, I see all my dreams on the far horizons, the journey there certain in your eyes.

  The next stop was Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium. On the steps that face back toward the city, Bruce showed Missy the entire Chicago skyline. From the breast pocket of his long overcoat, he produced another card, the front a single red rose.

  This is our skyline, Missy. It has been for me at least, since you first brought me here—on our first trip together after my burns had healed. You showed me this skyline at night, sparkling with a million city lights. You called those lights the promise that I could come through the burns. That I could come through the depression that has stalked me all my life. The promise that we could always love each other. It was that night that I started taking my medicine again. That night, that you showed me a life that could be whole and unblemished. A night of lights and stars. And promise. It was the night when I first knew that I loved you.

  The last stop was the Art Institute of Chicago. They checked their coats after standing in a long line, and Bruce led Missy past dozens of masterpieces to a room where a bench sat in front of two giant canvases by Gerhard Richter. They sat on the bench for a long time, Bruce quiet, Missy wondering.

  When Bruce did finally say something, he spoke haltingly at first. His voice cracked, and he had to clear his throat and start again.

  “These are my favorite paintings, Missy, these Richters. Of all the ones we have seen together, these two speak to me the most. I love the way Richter has put a thousand magnificent hues on the canvas, as if the facets of countless perfect diamonds had cast their brilliance into the paint. That’s you, Missy. All wonderful color, brightness, and life. Then that pale over-smearing of white is me. I thought, at first, that Richter was crazy. The overlay can’t be meant for the colors underneath. The second obscures the first. Diminishes it, somehow. But, it’s there, Missy, and it works. A masterpiece. Like you and me. You the thousand brilliant colors. Me the clumsy, gaudy smear. I figure these paintings give me hope for us. Hope that I can find a way to overlay my life with yours, without quenching your beauty. That, perhaps, you wouldn’t find it too odious to blend your life with mine. That you’d consent to hold your beauty against my plain and simple canvas. That, perhaps, if art is ever glorious, and miracles still are possible, that you’d consent to be my wife.”

  46

  Monday, November 4 7:30 P.M.

  JUST three days after Juliet Favor’s murder, Dr. Evelyn Carson sat at Mike and Caroline Branden’s kitchen table with a mug of coffee. Caroline had chosen the mug for her, and said it was her favorite, a New England scene of a historic dockside town, with seagulls perched on harbor buoys.

  “She’s doing much better,” Evelyn said. “Talking about Sonny Favor, today, was a good start. As I was leaving her room, Ben Schlabaugh came in, wearing a new suit and tie, flowers in hand. He had a short haircut and a fresh shave. Looked handsome.”

  “Was Martha happy to see him?” Caroline asked.

  “Seemed to be,” Evelyn said. “I only stayed a minute.”

  “It’s funny,” Caroline said. She halted, thought, shook her head. “Well, it’s just kind of strange, that’s all. To think Ben Schlabaugh could be this good for her, now.”

  Evelyn said, “She needs someone who understands her. Someone who won’t be scared off by the hard times to come.”

  “Does Schlabaugh understand that?” Caroline asked.

  “I think he does,” Evelyn said, optimistically. “Now, tell me, Mike,” she continued. “Where did Pomeroy make his mistake?”

  “Oh, it was a lot of things,” Branden said. Caroline nudged him in the ribs, and he said, “OK,” with a groan.

  “I guess the first thing was the spigot on the ultra-pure water system. Pomeroy swabbed that out with a Q-Tip. Problem was, he shouldn’t have swabbed it with anything. I took a few chemistry classes in college, and as hard as it was, then, to get pure water, one never introduced a foreign object to a sample.”

  “You didn’t suspect Pomeroy before that?” Evelyn asked.

  “Well, actually, I did. When I was in Missy’s lab, she had one bottle of DMSO up on her shelf. It came from Favor’s place. I had to wonder. Why only one bottle? Daniel Bliss put me onto that one, Sunday night. He said Juliet Favor had two empty bottles Friday night, and Pomeroy was supposed to have brought her one more. Favor actually used the third bottle before dinner, so there couldn’t have been any poison in that one. But that would have been three DMSO bottles, anyway.

  “I figure Pomeroy went up the rear staircase before he left that night, and put a doctored bottle in Favor’s medicine cabinet, or somewhere. Then, he had to take all the other bottles with him to make sure she would use the doctored one. He would have known, from past intimate experience, that she always went to the medicine cabinet to brush her hair at night, or at least that is what I infer from what Mr. Bliss said. But, Pomeroy could have gone up or down either the front or the rear staircase without drawing attention to himself. My guess is that Missy Taggert is going to say she found the fourth bottle in the bathroom. Favor dismissed her guests, went upstairs, brushed her hair, dabbed on the poison, put the bottle back in the cabinet, stumbled to the end of her bed, and died face down on the covers. That’s how Sonny found her.”

  Caroline asked, “But what made you suspect poison in the first place? Especially if Missy couldn’t detect any poison in the one bottle she had?”

  “Juliet Favor was a workout nut. Even Bobby Newell, who has muscles ‘out to here,’ thought her routine was rigorous. She should never have had a simple heart attack.”

  “OK,” Caroline said. “What made you think it was Pomeroy? It can’t have been just the swabbing thing with the water spigot. After all, Missy couldn’t detect poison in the DMSO.”

  “Pomeroy told me himself. At the faculty meeting. He made a big speech about the hydrolysis of pesticides, as a means of making them biodegradable. That’s what I remembered when I finally
figured out about the water. He put precisely enough water in with Favor’s DMSO to hydrolyze the poison slowly, but not so much that the concoction would lose its potency too fast. Pomeroy could not resist making a speech about the one clue that, correctly understood, would prove him a murderer. And it proves my rule about faculty meetings.”

  Caroline and Evelyn waited.

  Branden explained. “Faculty meetings last way too long, because professors love too much to hear themselves talk.”

  47

  Thursday, November 7 7:30 P.M.

  THREE days later, the Brandens rented the fellowship hall at Cal Troyer’s church building and invited all of the officers and staff of the sheriff’s office to a party for Ricky and Ellie Niell, and for Bruce Robertson and Melissa Taggert. The gathering served as an opportunity for a belated wedding shower for the Niells and an engagement party for the sheriff and the coroner. Simple refreshments of cake and punch were served, and the greatest attention was given to the gifts for Ricky and Ellie. Several toasts were made, congratulating either one or both of the couples. As the party moved along, Bruce Robertson found the professor at one of the back tables, and he took a seat there, next to his friend.

  “You had it all wrapped up for us, Mike, by the time Missy and I got back from Chicago,” Robertson said.

  Branden sipped punch, nodded, and smiled.

  Robertson said, “Now, how’s ’bout filling me in on the motive.”

  “The motive was secondary,” Branden said. “I figured out the ‘how’ first. Remember, we said early on that motive wouldn’t solve this one.”

  “Right. Too many motives,” Robertson said. “It could have been anyone, for nearly any reason.”

  “So, the motive was actually fairly obscure,” Branden said. “Plain enough, once I had the facts, though.”

  “Enlighten me,” Robertson said.

  “First, Phillips Royce had Juliet Favor convinced that the sciences got too much money compared to the humanities. That’s been his big kick for some time now. So, she was thinking about pulling out of grant support for science projects like Pomeroy’s.”

  “I hope you’re gonna tell me there was more to it than that.”

  “She was also going to sell him out on his industrial connections. Pomeroy had a sweet deal under the table with several firms, but the biggest was with her Yabusan Pharmaceuticals, in Tokyo. He was pulling down something like $70,000 per year by sending them processed natural products he found in Peru. He’d do all the key extractions in his lab in Peru—and that was paid for by Yabusan Pharmaceuticals, by the way—and ship the pasty extracts back here for analysis and workup.”

  “What can you do with something like that?” Robertson asked.

  “It’s a standard method, Bruce. How do you think they found Taxol, penicillin, all that stuff?”

  “Seventy thousand a year for plant goo?”

  “If you want to look at it that way, yes. He’d separate all the compounds and then screen each batch for undue toxicity. No point sending out toxins for drug testing. That he did with rats. Things that weren’t toxic got sent to Tokyo for further analysis.”

  “Sounds like a tough way to do business.”

  “Like I say, it’s a standard method. You know, the race to test the rainforest before it disappears. Anyway, Favor was considering two or three moves that would have put Pomeroy out of business. Mostly, she was going to shut down his lab in Peru. And she had started negotiations to sell Yabusan Pharmaceuticals, so Sonny Favor wouldn’t have so much on his plate when he came into the family businesses.”

  “So, Pomeroy was takin’ it on the chin,” Robertson said. “How’d he know about it all?”

  “He was on the board at Yabusan, but my guess is Favor told him outright. They used to be lovers, and she would have found some special satisfaction in watching him squirm. More, though, I think she really bought Phillips Royce’s pitch for the humanities. She wanted to be chairperson of the board of trustees, but Arne Laughton had successfully blocked that appointment. So, instead, she saw a chance to change the nature of the institution another way. By changing her donations.”

  “Mike,” Robertson teased. “I don’t get the impression you liked her plan too much.”

  Branden shrugged. “People with a lot of money are accustomed to power and privilege.”

  “No doubt a reason,” Robertson said, “why you and I are still making car payments each month.”

  “Don’t get started on that one again, Bruce,” Branden said, while trying to manage a frown.

  Robertson laughed and held his hands up, surrendering. “Now, watch this,” he said, and winked.

  Getting up from the table, Robertson came forward to stand next to Missy. He clinked a fork against a glass to get everyone’s attention. “Thank you all,” he said, “for this party. It’s real touching, and all, but Missy and I plan to get married in Las Vegas, so none of you can torment me at our wedding.”

  There were raucous protests and catcalls.

  “You’ll get over it,” Robertson said.

  Branden stood up in the back of the room and started clapping. Soon, everyone had joined him. Robertson, embarrassed, slipped his arm into Missy’s and headed for the door.

  As they were putting on their coats, three people eased into the room, unobserved by most, and stood along the wall. Cal Troyer saw them, and motioned to Branden. The professor caught Caroline’s eye, and they met Cal with the three newcomers. The whole group of six ducked circumspectly through a door into the quiet sanctuary of the church.

  Evelyn Carson took down the hood of her coat, and Ben Schlabaugh and Martha Lehman unzipped their coats and stood awkwardly, waiting for someone to talk.

  Caroline took Martha’s hands in hers gently and asked, “How are you, Martha?”

  Martha checked Evelyn Carson’s expression and said, “We’re going to keep the baby.”

  Ben Schlabaugh nodded his agreement, and watched Caroline’s eyes for a reaction.

  Caroline looked first at her husband and then at Evelyn Carson. She studied the resolve in Schlabaugh’s expression, smiled, and said, “Congratulations, then.” She looked down to Martha’s left hand, saw a diamond ring there, and added, “On both counts.”

  Branden saw relief in Ben Schlabaugh’s eyes. To Martha, who was smiling, he said, “When you’re ready to go back to school, your scholarship will still be there.”

  Evelyn said, “See, Martha, I told you so,” and Martha teared up.

  “I thought I had blown it, so bad,” Martha said.

  Caroline reached out for her, embraced her, and said, “You be happy, Martha Lehman. You just make sure you can be happy.”

  Back in the fellowship hall, Professor Branden made the announcement of the Lehman-Schlabaugh engagement, and many congratulations followed.

  Martha took Caroline aside and spoke softly. “Ben is good for me,” she said. “Don’t worry. He’s helping me remember.”

  Caroline started to speak, but Martha cut her off. “In all my dreams, nightmares really, there has been a man from whom I could not escape. I am a child, maybe five years old, and he is fast, strong, cruel, and dressed in blue and black. He is the blue shadow of my nightmares.

  “Now, I understand that this man was real. I had forgotten about what he did to me when I was so young, because I was too young to face the truth. The nightmares are real, Caroline. They really happened. I know that, now. I can face them. Dr. Carson says I can.

  “And that’s what we’re working on. Ben is there to hold me, when I wake up screaming in a child’s voice. He is there, in sessions with Dr. Carson, to help me remember. Now, Dr. Carson says I have remembered only some of the times that man hurt me, but I have to be able to remember them all. It’s going to take time. The last things I remember will be the worst. But, that’s how I’ll get better. By remembering, so that man can’t hurt me anymore, in my mind. God has given me the meaning of the blue shadows now, so that I can be free of them for good.”


  Sometime later that evening, Martha found the professor, seated by himself at a back table. She sat next to him and asked, “What will become of Sonny Favor?”

  Branden thought for a long time before answering. “He has been asked to withdraw from Millersburg College.”

  Martha seemed neither surprised nor sad. “What about all his money?”

  “He has to stay in school to keep it.”

  “But, where?”

  “Oh, there are plenty of schools where someone with his means would be welcomed.”

  “I feel sorry for him, Dr. Branden.”

  “I know,” Branden said.

  “Ben says he has a hole in his heart. Says it is money that put it there. Calls it a pierced heart.”

  Branden saw genuine sorrow in Martha’s expression. “I think that’s probably right, Martha,” he said.

  1

  Friday, July 23 7:45 A.M.

  SARA YODER drove her black buggy in bright sun up to the high ridgeline at Saltillo and stopped the Standardbred horse on the blacktop at the intersection of county roads 407 and 68, southeast of Millersburg. It had been two and a half years since she had entered her wild period, her Rumschpringe, quitting school on her sixteenth birthday. Just a week ago she had crossed this ridge in a red Firebird, heading north for the weekend out of her little Amish valley along Township 110 to the bars in Wooster. Dressed English and running wild. Freed from the everyday constraints of Old Order Amish life by the Rumschpringe.