Stars for Lydia

by P. L. Gaus

  Branden stepped up to the side of the wagon. “You didn’t know we were out here?”

  Junior shook his head. “Father told us to cut some more of the field corn. We were coming out to attend to that.”

  “He didn’t come with you?” Branden asked. “You know, to help with the corn?”

  Junior shook his head. “Father has his troubles. We can’t get him to talk to us.”

  “Can we help?” Branden asked. He glanced back briefly at the approaching ambulance and turned around to Junior again. “Do you need us to come help?”

  Junior shrugged his shoulders. He formed a tentative smile. “The bishop is coming. I sent Micah to fetch him earlier. Because of father.”

  Branden said, “Why don’t you let me ride back with you?”

  “It’ll be fine,” Junior said, slapping his reins to turn his team on the broad lane. “He’s sad because Die Maemme left us. She took our little sister Esther with her when she left. So, he’s having another bad spell, is all.”

  Surprised, Branden asked, “Can I visit with you and your father, when we’re done here?”

  “I suppose, Mr. Branden. It’s up to you. We’ll all be back at the house.”

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  With labored back-and-forth maneuvers, the ambulance was turning around on the muddy lane. Once it was positioned backwards on the lane, Missy directed it to within fifteen yards of the body. The paramedics pulled the wheeled gurney out through the back doors of the ambulance, and they carried it up the bridle path with its legs tucked underneath the bed, to put it down flat on the muddy ground beside the body. With Missy’s instructions, they lifted Lydia’s body onto its back. As they were carrying Lydia back to the ambulance, the professor said to Missy and the sheriff, “I’m worried about this Yost family.”

  “Oh?” Missy said.

  “The oldest son Junior said his father is having some trouble again. Or he’s incommunicative. Something like that. So, he says. There’s a history of depression. I’m not thinking too clearly. Sorry. Anyway, they can’t get him to talk to them. I’m going to walk around the lane there, to see about them.”

  As the ambulance pulled away, Robertson’s phone chirped. He checked the display and answered the call, saying, “Dan?”

  Chief Deputy Dan Wilsher said, “You’re still out on 606, Sheriff?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’ve got Baker and Johnson out there. Somebody called in a suicide. I gather it’s near you, because Baker says he can see the lights on Niell’s cruiser, down the road from his position.”

  “Got a name, Dan? Wait, I’m going to put you on speaker.”

  The sheriff made the switch to speaker phone and said to Wilsher, “OK, Dan. Who?”

  “Meredith Silver, Sheriff. It’s her sister who called it in. Louise Herbeck.”

  “We were just talking with Meredith Silver,” Robertson said, looking at Missy and sounding perplexed.

  “She’s dead, Sheriff,” Wilsher replied in the speaker phone. “Her sister says it’s a suicide.”

  “How would she know, Dan?” Missy asked.

  “Evidently there’s a note. I sent Baker and Johnson out there. They’ve got the Herbeck woman out of the house. She was rather a problem. Refused to leave. Really shook up. They have orders that no one else is to go in, until you get there.”

  “My people just left in the ambulance with the Lydia Schwartz body,” Missy replied.

  “I’m sending Stan Armbruster out to Silver’s place, for forensics, Missy. Plus, you’ve still got Niell and the sheriff, right? That ought to be enough for now, with Baker and Johnson already over there.”

  “We’re going to need another transport, Dan. I need my ME’s van to stay over here, while I process the scene of this accident.”

  “I know,” Wilsher replied. “Stan Armbruster is driving the Medical Examiner’s wagon. That should be enough for the Silver body.”

  Robertson said, “Just a minute,” and he put his phone on mute. Addressing his wife, he said, “You about done, here?”

  “Not really,” Missy said, shaking her head. “I want my people to take some measurements. And photographs, while the light is still good.”

  Off-mute again, Robertson said to his Chief Deputy, “I’m taking Ricky Niell over to the Silver place, Dan. Missy isn’t finished here at the Yost farm quite yet. And like I said, we were just talking with Meredith Silver. This is just too weird to be a coincidence.”

  Chapter 4

  Monday, August 28

  7:20 PM

  Robertson and Ricky Niell tried the Crown Vic, but it was sunk too deep into the mud to be moved. So, they walked out to 606 and took Niell’s cruiser west for about two hundred yards to a gravel driveway where Deputy Ryan Baker was standing in uniform, out by the road to wave them in.

  “We’re around back,” Baker said, and he led the two men past his cruiser, past a black Chevy Nova, and around the side of a brick ranch house, to a picnic table on a small back patio. A petite and frail woman of about fifty years, in hand-me-down clothes, sat crying there. She was dabbing fretfully at her eyes with an old handkerchief, and she was muttering as she shook her head. She looked exhausted by grief, and the haggard appearance of her clothes testified to a difficult life.

  “I can’t believe this,” she was saying, eyes cast down. “There can’t be that much blood in the whole world.”

  Baker said to Robertson, “Sheriff, this is Mrs. Louise Herbeck. Meredith Silver’s sister.”

  Louise Herbeck looked up at the big sheriff, and she lamented. “Oh no. This can’t be true. Are you really the sheriff?”

  “I’m Sheriff Bruce Robertson,” he said. “Is it your sister who is dead?”

  “What?”

  “Is your sister Meredith Silver?”

  Herbeck nodded. “She’s just lying in there on the linoleum. Why would she kill herself?” Suddenly excited and wide-eyed, Louise pleaded further, “Check, Sheriff. Please check. Maybe she’s not really dead.”

  Robertson looked to Johnson. Dave Johnson shook his head and said, “Yes, I’m afraid she is dead, Sheriff. But you need to see this for yourself. There’s a problem.”

  Robertson sat backwards on the end of the picnic table bench beside Herbeck, and sideways to her he said, “I’m sorry, Louise. My deputies tell me she is in fact deceased.”

  Herbeck moaned and shuddered in grief, and she cried out, “Please, no. This can't be happening.”

  “Are you the one who found her?” the sheriff asked.

  “What?” Herbeck said. She began to breathe rapidly, jerking frantic breaths, and casting tormented eyes about as if searching for lost souls.

  To Johnson, the sheriff said, “Hyper-ventilating,” and Johnson immediately produced a bandana.

  Robertson formed it into a cone-shaped cloth, and he held it in front of Herbeck’s face. “Breathe into this,” he said, “like you’re blowing into a paper bag to pop it.”

  Herbeck grabbed the bandana, held it over her mouth, and blew in and out until her anxiety had passed. When she was breathing more normally, she dropped the bandana to her side, folded her forearms over the top of the picnic table, and laid her forehead down onto them. “She’s just lying there,” she moaned.

  “I know,” Robertson said. “Can you manage it, if we stand you up? I want you to walk around to your car with Deputy Johnson. I want you to try to walk around a little bit out front and try to calm down. We’re going to go inside and check on Meredith.”

  Dave Johnson stepped forward, and he took Herbeck’s arm to lift her gently to her feet. Robertson stood up beside them, and Herbeck reached out for the sheriff with trembling arms. She put her arms around him, and he embraced her carefully and briefly, he large and round, she thin and frail. When she released him, she took a step back to look up into Robertson’s eyes.

  “Please don’t leave her lying there like that,” she implored. “I can’t stand to see her like that again.”

&
nbsp; “You won't have to,” Robertson said, handing Herbeck over to Johnson. As Johnson started walking Herbeck to the front of the house, Robertson added, “I promise you, Louise, you won’t have to see her like that again.”

  Then the sheriff turned directly to Baker and said, “Take me in, Ryan.”

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  Meredith Silver was lying out straight on her back, her head in a pool of shiny fresh blood. Her hiking boots were still muddy, and so were the cuffs of her jeans. Her blue checkered work shirt was still wet from the rain. Her left arm was flung out on the linoleum of the kitchen floor, and her right arm lay at her side. She had a single entry wound high on her right cheek, and she had a much larger, ragged exit wound at the crown of her head. Behind her and off somewhat to the side, there was a spray of blood against the kitchen wall and ceiling, and surrounding her head there was the red blood that her heart had pumped briefly until she had died.

  Baker said, “There’s a note, Sheriff, but do you notice the problem?”

  Robertson studied the scene and arched a brow. “Have you searched for it, Ryan?”

  “Yes. It’s not here.”

  “Changes things a bit, doesn’t it,” Robertson said.

  Baker nodded, frowned.

  The sheriff then turned back to the kitchen table and leaned over to study the note that Baker had mentioned. “Anything on the back of it?” he asked Baker, and the deputy replied, “I haven’t turned it over, Sheriff.”

  Robertson straightened up, looked sadly at his deputy and said, “I hate this kind of thing, Baker.”

  Ryan nodded wordlessly, and Robertson bent over again to read the short note. In hasty scrawl was written:

  I’m sorry we were running in the rain

  I was angry with her Lydia sweet Lydia I am so very sorry

  It was slippery in the rain I was upset, and I shoved her in the back as we ran, and she fell forward an accident

  this should never have happened we should never have started any of this

  Mary forgive me for breaking our promises to you

  Lydia, please forgive me I’d take it all back if I could

  “What do you think that means, Sheriff?” Baker asked as Robertson straightened up.

  “I don’t know, Ryan. If Lydia was shoved, Missy should be able to tell us that. But ‘never started any of this?’ I don’t know what she means by that. And, take all of what back? What does that mean?”

  Baker shrugged his shoulders. “There are shoe prints, Sheriff. Flat soles. Not the boots that Silver is wearing.”

  Robertson walked a wide circle around Meredith Silver’s body, studying the faint blood prints of flat-bottomed shoes leading across the hardwood floor of the living room, toward the front door. “Photos, Ryan. Photos of everything. But don’t touch anything until Missy takes charge of the scene. You can dust for prints after Missy has finished with the body.”

  At the screen of the back-kitchen door, Detective Stan Armbruster spoke. “I’ve got the forensics kits here, Sheriff.”

  Armbruster had his usual parted black hair, a ruddy complexion, and a sturdy build. He was dressed in jeans, a sport coat, white shirt and red tie. His detective’s credentials case was looped into the pocket of his blue sport coat. Because his shoulder had not yet fully healed from the knife wound, he was assigned, much to his chagrin, to light forensics duty.

  Robertson waved Armbruster into the kitchen. “Blood everywhere, Stan. Start by bagging her hands. First, boot your shoes outside.”

  Through the screen, Armbruster asked, “Missy isn’t here, yet?”

  Robertson frowned and shook his head. “She’s still over at the Yost farm. It can't have been more than thirty minutes ago that we were talking with this woman.”

  Not pausing, the sheriff turned to Baker and said, “Ryan, bring Herbeck up to the front door. I want to ask her about our little problem here.”

  Baker exited through the back door. Soon he was ringing the front doorbell. Robertson was waiting at the door, and he opened it, but he did not open the screened door to admit Louise Herbeck. With the screen separating him from her, Robertson said, “Mrs. Herbeck. When you called our switchboard – I’ve just spoken to my dispatcher, Del Markely, about this point – you said that your sister had committed suicide.”

  Still dabbing her handkerchief at her moist eyes, Herbeck said, “What? I mean, yes I suppose I did.”

  “Why did you call it a suicide, Mrs. Herbeck?”

  Herbeck stammered with initial words, seeming to struggle for clarity of thought. Then she said, “Well, I suppose it was because of her note.”

  “Do you think your sister wrote that note?”

  “Yes. Who else?”

  “Anybody can write a note, Mrs. Herbeck.”

  “Well, can't you check the handwriting or something?” Herbeck said, frustrated. “It really looks like her handwriting to me.”

  “Of course, and we will. Depend on it, Mrs. Herbeck. But there’s something else that troubles me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What did you do with the gun, Mrs. Herbeck?”

  “Why, nothing. I didn’t do anything with a gun.”

  “Did you see a gun? Take it away? Put it somewhere?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “To conceal it, perhaps. You were in shock. You could have done almost anything by reflex. It’s common enough. A citizen comes upon a tragedy and picks up a weapon by reflex. Without thinking. Did you do that, Mrs. Herbeck?”

  “No. I wouldn’t touch a gun. That was Meredith. She likes guns. I don’t like guns at all. And I wouldn’t touch one.”

  “That’s the problem, Mrs. Herbeck. There is no gun in here. I’ve got a bullet wound in the head of your sister. I’ve got a suicide note. But I don’t have a gun. Can you explain that?”

  “No. You don’t think?”

  “I think you need to come in to clear this up. Maybe you’ll remember something, once your thoughts are calmer. We’ll just chat a bit, after you are calmer.”

  “I’d remember picking up a gun, Sheriff, I can promise you that.”

  “Still, I’d like you to come in with us to answer some questions.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t, Sheriff. I’ve got calls to make. People need to know.”

  “They’ll be time to make your calls, Mrs. Herbeck. I promise. But I’d like you to talk with us more about this, down at the jail.”

  Chapter 5

  Monday, August 28

  7:25 PM

  While Niell and Robertson were first arriving at the Silver residence, the professor had walked around the bend in the muddy Yost farm lane, to enter the barnyard from the rear of the property. He passed a tall milking barn on his right, a livestock shelter on his left, and he entered the barnyard at the back of the house.

  The barnyard was covered with loose gravel, rutted by ancient iron wagon wheels and peppered with the hoofprints of the Yosts’ massive Belgians. It was a space wide enough to allow a team and a long wagon to turn a complete circuit around a water well that sat in the center of the yard. The tall, long-handled iron pump on top of the water well was boxed around by a platform of rough-hewn boards, unpainted, and sitting on the platform was John Yost Junior. He was holding young Rose Yost on his lap. Junior’s face was slack with sorrow, and Rose had been crying.

  Branden approached slowly and bent over to address the girl. “Is this little Rose?”

  Rose pulled herself in tight and pressed herself closer to Junior, hiding her face in her hands. Junior spoke a line of Dietsche to her, and she popped off his lap and ran up the back steps, into the mudroom of the house.

  Branden took a quick moment to survey the barnyard and the buildings, reacquainting himself with the layout. Behind him and to his right stood the hay barn with its milking stalls. It had no doors. Inside, there was a wide avenue down the middle, with milking stalls to the left and antiquated iron farm implements to the right. Outside to his left sat the
horse stables, with thick wood doors that rolled open and closed on wheels grooved to an overhead iron rail. Beside the stables stood an outhouse with a pit toilet.

  Before him was the water well, and across the wide gravel patch, there was the back of the white clapboard house. It was two stories tall, with a basement. Long and heavy purple cloth curtains covered all the windows inside.

  As little Rose disappeared into the house, Branden said to Junior, “I am sorry for your loss. I know Lydia was special to you.”

  Junior gave a sad nod of his head. “She was smarter than the rest of us,” he said with a soft voice that was crackling with emotion. He scooped tears away from his eyes with the flats of his fingers and added, “Sometimes I wish I could have followed her, but Father says it’s a sin. Our grandparents are really upset with her. The bishop has been trying to get her to come to her senses and come home.”