The Riesling Retribution wcm-4

by Ellen Crosby

  “It’s his handwriting.”

  “Thank you.” He took the letter and refolded it.

  “If Beau drove up here to see Leland and never returned, there must have been a car.”

  “We’re looking on your property, in case it’s still there,” he said. “But even if it’s not, he could have disposed of it elsewhere. He would have had plenty of time.”

  In the poignant silence that followed, I wondered if Bobby believed I had lied to him all along.

  “I’m not hiding anything, Bobby.”

  “I never said you were. But it’s over now.”

  “I still don’t understand why Annabel isn’t a suspect since she wanted Beau out of the way, too. And not to point out the obvious, but Leland didn’t leave my mother for her, did he?”

  “Annabel claims to have guessed what had happened and was so scared she’d get dragged into a murder as an accomplice that she ended the affair,” he said. “Told your father it was over, left Richmond, and kept a low profile using her maiden name until she got a divorce on the grounds of abandonment and married Chastain.”

  “So she’s off the hook, too, isn’t she?”

  He heard the scorn in my voice and his jaw tightened. “Let me tell you something. When I was at the academy, here’s what I learned in Law Enforcement 101: The best approach to working a case is the simplest. Don’t make it more complicated or convoluted than it is and don’t read too much into anything. Most crimes are committed out of necessity or passion. Your father was motivated by both. He owed Beau money and he was messing around with his wife.”

  Then he delivered the coup de grâce. “Annabel agreed to take a polygraph test for us.”

  “And?” My mouth tasted like I’d swallowed nails.

  “She passed.”

  Quinn found me sitting on the wall after Bobby left.

  “I saw the cruiser,” he said. “You want to talk about it?”

  I took some deep breaths until I could steady my voice. “They’re closing the investigation. Bobby says they have enough evidence to conclude Leland killed Beau.”

  He sat down and put his arm around me, pulling me to him. “I’m sorry.”

  I swallowed. “He says it may have been self-defense or not. But they’re not going to look any further since they’re satisfied he’s guilty. Dominique put Beau at our house the day I was born, which corroborates Annabel’s story. Plus Annabel produced a letter Leland wrote asking her to leave Beau. She and Leland were having an affair right before I was born.”

  His arm tightened. “This storm will pass. You’re tough. You’ll get through it.”

  “I don’t believe he did it.”

  “I know, I know—”

  “I’m serious. Leland did not kill Beau.”

  “It’s probably hard to think straight right now. Give it some time.” His voice was gentle. “It happened a long time ago. Who knows what the circumstances were?”

  I lifted my head from his shoulders.

  “That’s a good question.” I stood up.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To talk to someone who might know exactly what the circumstances were.”

  He stared at me for a long time. “Be careful.”

  In the sweet, nostalgic memories of everyone who pines for the bygone days of small-town America, there is always a General Store. An old-fashioned place that doesn’t necessarily have what folks need, but it does have what they wantsomeone who remembers their brand of tobacco and the kind of motor oil they bought last time, and who asks to see pictures of the new baby or the wedding without being prompted. The inventory is never computerized because it’s erratic and, besides, no one computerizes bloodworms or tomatoes fresh out of the garden of a local farmer. Our General Store had Thelma Johnson, who’d owned the place since God was a boy.

  I parked outside the white clapboard building with its hipped tin roof and large picture window with the neon “Open” sign that now read “Ope.” Thelma had tied sleigh bells that sounded like Christmas every time someone entered or left through the front door, and that was her version of security. As always, the place smelled of coffee, baked goods, and some pleasantly undefined essence that came from the patina of age rather than an atomizer of canned wildflowers or spring rain.

  In the cramped back room where she did her paperwork, she also kept her soap opera magazines piled high around the recliner where she sat to watch her shows. Talk shows, game shows, reality shows—but her favorites were her soaps because she always fell in love with the good-looking young hunks on the screen.

  The bells jangled as I opened the front door. From the other room a quavery voice called, “Coming!”

  Thelma was the caricature of a sitcom grandmother with her overdone makeup and too-young clothes. Today she was dressed completely in Robin Hood green—sleeveless polyester sheath dress that fell two inches above her knobby knees, sequined stiletto sling-backs, and star-shaped faux emerald drop earrings. Her eye shadow, which I could see behind her thick trifocals, matched her dress. Her carrot-colored blush and lipstick were the same startling orange as her hair.

  “Why, Lucille,” she said. “What a treat! I haven’t seen you in an age! Glad you stopped by. What can I do for you?”

  “Just thought I’d come by and say hi. Get a cup of coffee and one of your muffins.”

  She placed her hands on her hips and considered me. “Child, my momma may have raised ugly babies but she sure didn’t raise stupid ones. You came by for a lot more than just how-de-do. Why don’t you just set a spell and tell me all about it? I presume you want the usual.”

  Thelma knew everyone’s usual. Mine was a fifty-fifty blend of whatever coffee she was brewing in the pot labeled “Fancy” and what she called “Regular.” Enough milk to turn it caramel colored, one sugar.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You’ll be wanting a blueberry muffin. The berries are fresh from the farmers’ market in Frogtown.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Help yourself. The Romeos were in this morning extrahungry so you’re lucky I got anything left other than the paper to wrap ’em in.”

  She tottered across the room in her stilettos and poured my coffee. I got my muffin from the glass cabinet that held all her fresh-baked pies, cakes, and breakfast items.

  “What’s the coffee of the day?” I asked.

  She winked. “I couldn’t decide between Jamaican Me Crazy and Sinful Delight, so I made both. How about Sinful Delight for you? A little sinning never hurt anybody every now and again, if you ask me.”

  At least we were on the same page. I wanted to talk about a big sin. We sat facing each other in her cream-colored spindle-back rocking chairs. Thelma’s chair creaked comfortingly as she rocked and watched me drink my coffee.

  I balanced the muffin in its white glazed paper wrapping on my knees. “These are great.”

  “Lucille, honey,” she said, “you’ve been eating my muffins since before you knew how to walk, when Lee or your momma would bring you in here. You don’t have to make small talk with me. You can just cut right to the chase. I can see you’re dyin’ to.”

  Thelma liked to boast that she had a mind like a steel trap—or, as she said, a steel trapdoor, which was probably more accurate. I was under no illusion that I would even make it home before everyone in two counties knew about our conversation. It would take either an elephant tranquilizer or direct threats to keep Thelma from reaching out all the way to the smallest roots of her thick grapevine and sharing what she knew—and I had neither.

  “I came about my father,” I said. “You probably guessed that.”

  “I do seem to have a special way of knowing what folks are thinking. A kind of extrasensible psychotic perception.” She smiled and smoothed her dress. “And of course, my God-given ability to talk to folks’ loved ones after they’ve passed.”

  I tried not to look nonplussed at her description of her special powers and nodded. Thelma did have moments where she
became temporarily untethered from the real world, especially her conviction that she could get in touch with those who now resided in “the Great Beyond” as she called it, via her Ouija board. Would she really remember events from nearly thirty years ago, or was I grasping at straws?

  “I don’t want to talk to my father,” I said. “Just about him.”

  “Now don’t you give me a look like you think communicating with the spirits is a lot of hokeypokey.” She wagged her finger at me. “I heard you were over to Ball’s Bluff yesterday. If you didn’t feel the presence of the spirits on those grounds—”

  “You know I was at Ball’s Bluff?”

  “Course I do. That nice young man, Chancellor, was in yesterday evening. Buys a little something for his dinner on his way home from your vineyard at least once or twice a week. Good-lookin’ fellow, if I do say so. Got a smile that lights up a room. He always has time for me, you know?” Thelma blushed like a teenager and I wondered what made Chance turn his considerable charms on her. “He’s always asking questions about folks around here. I like a person who tries to fit in when he’s new to a place.”

  “He’s very personable.”

  “Yes, indeedy. You’re lucky to have someone like that working for you.” She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs, surveying me. “Ask me about your poppa, honey. What is it you want to know?”

  “You know everything about everyone, don’t you, Thelma? You remember a lot of things.”

  She smiled, slyly pleased. “You don’t need to butter me up, although I’m sure you’ve heard some people think of me as sort of a local Orifice of Delphi. The orifice was a special person in ancient Greece who talked a lot and answered everyone’s questions. She was supposed to be quite the fountain of wisdom.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of her…it.” Just how clear was her memory? “Bobby Noland told me he has enough evidence to conclude that Leland murdered Beau Kinkaid.”

  It was news to Thelma. She stopped rocking and placed both hands on the arms of her rocking chair. “Where’d he get a damn-fool idea like that?”

  “Dominique remembered Beau being at our house the day I was born, which fits with the information his ex-wife gave Bobby about the last time she saw him.” I shrugged. “Plus Leland was having an affair with Annabel Chastain. Opportunity and motive.”

  “Phooey.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Gives her a motive, is more like it. I remember her. Annie Kinkaid in those days. Now she’s”—Thelma waved a hand like she was mixing something in the air—“Annabel Chastain. All high and mighty. A real legend in her own minefield.”

  “You know her?”

  “I never actually met her,” she said. “But I know all about her. Chasing after your father when your poor mother was expecting you. It about broke your mother’s heart.”

  I wrapped my half-eaten muffin back in the paper and set it down. “How do you know all this?”

  “Your mother and I shared confidences in those days, Lucille. Especially because both of us were…”

  She stopped and laid two fingers lightly on her lips. “Well, we talked a lot.”

  “So my mother told you that Annabel—Annie—was the one who was pursuing the affair with Leland?”

  She nodded. “I told Bobby this the other day, but of course he didn’t believe me. Aside from it being secondhand information and no way to transubstantiate it. That’s legal talk for proving it.”

  “Annabel passed a polygraph test and she had letters from Leland.”

  Thelma’s eyebrows knitted together. “Isn’t that interesting she kept hers all these years? Wonder what happened to the ones she wrote your father?”

  “He had letters from her?”

  “Oh, my yes. Your mother got hold of a couple of ’em.” Thelma folded her hands in her lap. “I’m sure one of your parents burned them years ago if you haven’t turned up anything by now.”

  I shook my head. “Unfortunately not. I’ve been through my mother’s papers and you know Leland. He wrote down as little as possible. The fire destroyed what few things remained.”

  “Now you listen to me, Lucille.” Thelma sounded stern. “Your father had his faults. We all knew that. He was a rogue and a rascal and he put your sainted mother through ten kinds of hell with some of the things he’d get up to. He may have had his secrets, but he was no murderer. Your mother…well, she would have known. And she couldn’t have lived with it.”

  I wanted to kiss her. It was the vindication I’d been seeking somewhere…anywhere. If Thelma believed it, then I knew I was right that Leland hadn’t killed Beau.

  “I’m glad to hear you say that. Thank you.”

  “It’s the truth.” She regarded me and frowned. “Are you going to eat that muffin? I swear, child. You look like you’re about to blow away in the next strong wind. Probably don’t weigh more than a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. Tiny just like your mother was. You look just like her, too, Lucille. Such a beauty she was.”

  I opened the paper again, blushing. “You’re very kind. I miss her so much sometimes.”

  “I know you do. So do I. My Lord, so do I.”

  “What was it that you started to say about the two of you…that you were both something. What was it?”

  Thelma took off her heavy glasses and looked away. The silence that fell between us seemed to weigh her down. Her sharp shoulders rose and fell as she brushed a fingertip under one eye.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to pry—”

  “Pregnant,” she said. “We were both pregnant.”

  I had been reaching for my coffee and almost spilled it. Coffee sloshed from the mug onto the little table.

  “I’m so sorry. I had no idea—”

  I sopped up the liquid with a napkin, embarrassed for both of us.

  “No one does. The only person I trusted was Charlotte.”

  My mother’s name was Chantal but Thelma always called her “Charlotte,” just as I’d become “Lucille” and Eli was “Elliot.” Thelma knew the history of almost everyone in Atoka, but who knew anything about her?

  “Do you have a child…I mean, did you…”

  Had she given the baby up for adoption? How had she hidden her secret all these years?

  Her smile was full of sadness and remembrance. “I lost my baby before anyone ever realized I was in a family way. Your mother guessed, though. Came in one day and found me sick as a dog, throwin’ up in the bathroom. She recognized right away that it was morning sickness. Knew I didn’t want to see a local doctor because I was too scared that folks around here would find out. So she drove me all the way to Washington to see someone from out of town.”

  “Why didn’t the baby’s father help you?”

  “Pfft!” She waved her hand. “Gone with the wind, darlin’. Back to his wife.”

  “Oh, Thelma.”

  “We’ve all chosen the wrong man at one time or another, haven’t we?” Thelma put her glasses back on and fixed her gaze on me with the haunted eyes of a woman who has never known what it was like to wake up each morning with a man who loved her.

  She knew my track record with men as well as I did. Maybe better. I wondered if, when I was her age, whether I, too, would have a string of broken relationships, and that would be it.

  “It’s the first time I’ve spoken about this since the miscarriage,” she said. “But I thought you should know. You’re exactly the same age my daughter would have been.”

  Her smile wavered. “Every time I see you I think of that. Wondering what color hair and eyes she would have had. If she would have been smart or musical or an athlete. Course I couldn’t have kept her, so I wouldn’t have known either way, now would I?”

  My throat closed. I couldn’t answer.

  “I didn’t mean to make you sad, child.”

  “I’m afraid I’m the one who made you sad.”

  She stood up and began cleaning imaginary fingerprints on the glass cabinet. “It’
s all right. I’ve learned to live with it.”

  I wanted to hug her but I was afraid she’d lose whatever shred of dignity she was hanging on to if I did.

  “I hope you know I’ll respect your confidence just like my mother did,” I said.

  “Of course I do,” she said. “I trust you like I trusted Charlotte. And Lucille, what you told me today, that stays here, too. You have my word.”

  I nodded.

  She finished cleaning the cabinet. “Well, now. At least you finished your coffee. How about another cup?”

  “No, thanks. I’m fine. But could I get coffee and a donut to go for Quinn?”

  “Course you can. I know he likes those chocolate-filled donuts with chocolate icing. I got one left. Lordy, I wonder what that man’s cholesterol is. How he manages to stay so fit and good-lookin’ considering some of the stuff he eats.”

  I reddened. “I don’t know. How about Jamaican Me Crazy for him? It kind of fits the way things are going between us at the moment.”

  She smiled. “I’ve been having a lot of those days lately myself.”

  The routine of fixing the coffee seemed to restore a kind of normalcy between us. But our relationship had nevertheless changed as though we’d shaken a kaleidoscope, rearranging familiar pieces of colored glass to make an entirely different picture.

  “About your father.” She waved away the money I tried to give her for the coffee and bakery goods. “If I think of anything else that might help, I’ll let you know.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “And don’t you fret over what folks are saying, either. You know the truth about your daddy and that’s what counts. Like I always tell myself, it’s just a case of mindlessness over matter. You just can’t mind because that kind of talk doesn’t matter.”

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  She winked. “Just call me the Orifice.”

  This time I did give her a small hug and she patted my shoulder.

  “You’re a good girl, Lucille.”

  I drove home with a lump in my throat.