by Allen Kent
I shrugged loosely, liking this woman just for being willing to play along with my awkward weirdness. “Also Norse. It means ‘a settlement of swarthy people.’ I don’t think that will help us much.”
She laughed lightly. “Swarthy? Not a word I hear in everyday conversation.”
“It’s more descriptive than ‘dark-skinned.’ And those are loaded words now days.”
The laugh deepened. “This is going to be an interesting assignment, Tate. I’ve already learned more than in any other ten minutes this month.”
“I’ll try to control myself. But do I hear a little Saint Louis in your voice?”
She raised a brow. “Pretty well-trained ear! University City. My family’s part of the old Jewish community there.”
“Welcome to the buckle of the Bible Belt,” I said. “But you have one thing working in your favor. No one else down here knows Mara Joseph sounds Jewish.”
She shrugged lightly. “I’m not concerned. Now, to get to a little business.” She handed me a brief report. “Death by suffocation. The victim appears to have attempted to fight off her assailant and had traces of blood and skin beneath the fingernails of her right hand. Bruising on the wrists indicate she was being tightly held by an assailant who pinned her in the chair in which she was found and forced an object over her mouth and nose.” Pretty much the way I’d read it when I checked the body.
Mara Joseph was a one-person forensics team. While I dusted for prints, she systematically worked her way through Nettie’s house and scattered belongings: photographing, picking up and cataloging samples, taking notes, and sketching diagrams. For a dilapidated doublewide in the woods, the trailer looked like it had been surprisingly neat before the perp tore it apart. Spare on furnishings and clothing, with only a dozen pots and pans, and absent the kind of knickknacks you expect to find lining shelves and stuffing glass-fronted cabinets in a single old lady’s living space. She had an apartment-sized washer and dryer, almost new, and a four-burner stove connected to a propane tank behind the house. The ancient oak bed, dresser, and rocking chair summed up the furnishings in the bedroom. The other spare room had been converted into what you might call a study: a straight-backed chair of the same native wood, open-faced desk, and two-drawer gray metal filing cabinet, all dumped onto the floor. What looked like a handmade bookshelf of white oak had held three narrow shelves of books: a worn Bible and a collection of works by early American writers that looked like she’d bought them as a set maybe thirty or forty years ago: Hawthorne, Cooper, Longfellow, Twain, and a dozen more that now littered a room-sized area rug. Joseph spent the better part of two hours examining every scrap of paper and thumbing through every book.
“Any idea how this woman made a living?” she asked after re-shelving a final volume that contained Jack London’s White Fang and Call of the Wild.
I sent the last fingerprint I’d lifted and photographed to the crime lab via my cellphone and squatted on my haunches to stretch cramps from my back and thighs. “Recently? I really have no idea. When I lived here before, she worked part-time in the cafeteria in the elementary school. All the kids called her Aunt Nettie. Why do you ask?”
Mara waved a hand over the papers she’d placed on the desk and filing cabinet. “I’ve gone through every file and piece of mail in this house and there’s nothing related to money. No bank records. No Social Security reports. Not even Medicare or Medicaid information. I’d think a old single woman living out here would be getting some kind of benefits.”
That made sense to me. I’d read recently that government transfer payments were the single largest source of income in the county, which struck me as ironic at the time since everyone I know here is so anxious to keep government out of their lives. I glanced about the room. “Maybe that’s what the search was for. Someone wanted those records. Or there’s a file somewhere we haven’t come across.”
“If there is, it’s not in the trailer,” Mara said emphatically. “Maybe in that little shed out back.”
I scribbled a list of notes in my pocket pad. Check with Doc Waterman about how Nettie paid her bills. See what Jerry knows at Family Market. Stop by the branch bank to check on accounts. Find out where Nettie purchased her washer and dryer and how she paid. It was then my phone buzzed with the expanded pathology report. I read it while Mara added to her own notes.
“Yup. She was suffocated but not strangled,” I said. “She’d been dead about forty-eight hours. It looks like both arms were restrained. Whoever killed Nettie should have scratches on skin that would have been exposed during the struggle. They’re typing and running a DNA profile on the tissue.”
Mara gave a quiet humph under her breath. “We can’t assume the scratches will have been on exposed skin. She might have forced a hand up under a shirt or blouse or scratched at a shin. Hard to guess. But a DNA sample might be all we need. There’s no sign of forced entry, and it’s very likely this was someone she knew. We just need to start watching for scratches and getting cheek swabs of everyone who might be a possibility.”
“I wouldn’t put much weight on the forced-entry. No one here locks their doors.”
“Even out here in the woods?” she asked as she led me out to take a look in the shed.
“Especially out here. Who’s going to bother an old trailer this far off the road?”
“Yeah. Right,” Joseph said cynically. “That’s why we’re here investigating her murder.”
“You’re right. Dumb thing to say,” I conceded. “But there’s a general philosophy around that if someone’s going to break in, they’ll break in. If the door’s unlocked, at least your door and windows won’t get damaged.”
“Makes perfect sense,” Joseph snickered.
The shed was one of those pre-fabs, built on skids and sold in parking lots at feed and hardware stores. Nettie used it as a tool shed. It was as neat and spare as I’d imagined the inside of her trailer to have been. Rakes, hoes, and shovels hung on hooks along one wall. Two weed-eaters on the other. A small tiller and gas push mower filled most of the floor. Two five-gallon gas cans stood in a corner, one with “50:1” written on the side with a black marker. A shelf across the back held a Poulan chain saw with a sixteen-inch bar and a gallon of chain bar oil.
Joseph stepped in between the mower and tiller. “No place in here that she might have had something hidden. If they checked in here, they didn’t even have to move anything. What’s this 50:1?”
I couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “They didn’t teach you that at U. City High School? That’s a gas-oil mix for the weed-eaters and chain saw.”
She grinned over at me. “I’m sure our gardener would have known.”
I didn’t grin back. Maybe the Jewish part wouldn’t bother people down here, but a comment like that would. “When we’re visiting with the folks around,” I cautioned, “that’s the kind of remark I’d keep to myself.”
Joseph’s cheeks flushed. “Yes. You’re right. My dumb thing to say. I’ll be more careful.”
We exited the shed, did a thorough walk-about of the small yard and garden area without seeing anything helpful, and went back to the cars.
“The closest neighbor’s a local artist who works out of a cabin up on the other side of the valley,” I told her. “In the winter, I think he can probably see Nettie’s place from his and can hear everything that goes on down here. Too grown-over now, but he may have heard cars coming down the hill. Let’s grab some lunch, talk over what we have in our notes, and we can go see Darnell. He’s worth a visit, even if he doesn’t know anything.”
4
What Darnell Budgeon called a cabin was more a long, cedar log studio with a small kitchen and bedroom cobbled onto one end. The kitchen looked out onto the studio over a waist-high bar made of a couple of two-foot wide sycamore slabs, joined along one edge so the halves mirrored each other. Darnell used the kitchen side of the bar as his eating table and the studio side to mix paint, clean brushes, and stack assorted pieces of equipment h
e used to stretch canvases and make frames. The place smelled of raw umber, burnt sienna, and turpentine. He came to the door wiping both hands and a sable brush on an apron that looked like a Jackson Pollack and would probably stand on its own if he hadn’t had it strapped about his neck.
Darnell’s a wiry bit of a man with a body-full of nervous tics that cause head, feet, and every member in between to be in constant motion unless he’s standing in front of an easel. Then he’s still as a setter holding point on a covey of quail.
“Well, I’ll swan, Tate!” he said, talking to me but bobbing and nodding appreciatively in front of Joseph. “Haven’t seen you in a coon’s age. What brings you and this . . . “His eyes locked on the patch on Joseph’s jacket, “. . . this fine representative of the law out here this morning?” He danced aside and let me usher Joseph into the studio.
“This is Inspector Mara Joseph of the State Police,” I said as she tried to chase one of Darnell’s weaving hands long enough to shake it. He nodded and grinned over at me as if to say, “You did all right to find this one, Tate. I approve.”
I jumped in quickly enough to keep him from turning his thoughts into words. “I hate to trouble you, Darnell, but there’s been some trouble down in the valley.”
“You mean them Greaves working their way into Nettie’s timber? I wondered if she’d be calling you in on that.” I saw Joseph’s eyes sweep the room, stop and widen when they fell on a six-by-ten-foot painting of a Civil War hospital scene. I decided to get business out of the way before introducing her to the unlikely prodigy that was Darnell Budgeon, so asked, “What have the Greaves been up to?”
Darnell twitched his way back to the open doorway, waving the brush in his hand down in the direction of Nettie’s trailer that was somewhere off to the right behind a screen of cedar and hardwoods.
“They been logging the back part of their stand, trying to get what they can cut and sold before the valley’s flooded. I can tell from the sound of their saws where they’re working. This last few weeks, they’ve been crossed over onto Nettie’s land.”
Joseph had joined us at the door. “Maybe they had her permission,” she suggested.
Darnell twitched a headshake. “No way. You know them Greaves, Tate. Now, I’m a guy who can say I never met a man I couldn’t see some good in. Even the worst kind’s got some little shred of decency, somewhere down deep. Except them Greaves. Not a single spit of human kindness between the two of them. That right, Tate? They even hates each other.”
“Not the most likable folks,” I agreed.
Darnell snorted. “I’d guess the least likable. Name one other person in the county who comes close to being as cussed mean and ornery as either one of them Greaves. Was you back in town when the one shot the other? Shot him in the back, right in the wing bone, cause they was fighting over who had to kill a chicken for dinner. Only worthwhile thing they ever did for this county was to set a bad example. Nettie can’t abide either one of them. She’d never let them take some of her trees.”
Joseph stepped out onto the porch and peered down into the valley. “Is this serious business? Cutting timber off someone else’s land?”
“Not quite up there with rustling someone’s cattle,” I told her. “But only a notch below. If you can prove it to a judge, he’ll award three times the estimated value of the trees taken.”
“And how much value do they have?”
“Right now? Some good straight walnut are bringing upwards of a thousand dollars if they’ve got size. And white oak is doing about as well this year.”
Joseph puffed a “whew” through pursed lips. “Maybe Nettie confronted them and threatened to turn them in.”
“A good place to start,” I agreed. “And you may as well meet the two human beings that don’t have a spit of goodness between the two of them.”
Darnell jerked even more nervously beside me. “She said ‘Maybe Nettie confronted them.’ Has something happened to Nettie, Tate?”
I kept my eyes on the trees across the road. “I’m afraid so, Darnell. We found her dead yesterday morning in her trailer. Looks like she was smothered.”
A stuttered groan welled up in Darnell’s chest. “Oh, Tate. Who would do such a thing? I didn’t ever see much of the old lady, but she was good people.”
I laid a hand on his shivering shoulder. “Yes, she was, Darnell. Have you seen or heard anything else that might be helpful?”
He seemed to calm for a moment as he thought. “In the last few days? Nothing, Tate. I haven’t even heard the Greaves cutting. It’s been quiet.”
I glanced over at Joseph. “We’d better go see why the Greaves decided to stop taking trees. But before we head out, I saw you looking at the painting Darnell’s working on.” We turned back into the cabin.
“It’s masterful,” Joseph murmured, walking over to bend close to the canvas. “I don’t believe I’ve even seen anything quite like it.”
Darnell danced over beside her and immediately calmed as he stood in front of the canvas. “Isn’t nothing like it. Just finishing it up for the old Ray House up at Wilson’s Creek.”
“The National Battlefield?”
Darnell forced an exaggerated nod. “The old house was the field hospital for the Confederates.”
Joseph looked the painting over more carefully and pointed at a blood-stained body stretched on a central table. “This must be General Lyon.”
Darnell’s face spread into an appreciative grin. “You know your Civil War history.”
“I wish,” Joseph said with a chuckle. “I had family down from Saint Louis two weekends ago and we toured the battlefield.”
“You got a good memory then. Yep. That’s General Lyon. This should be hanging up there next time you visit.”
“It’s amazing,” Joseph said. “Another reason to take people over there, now that I’ve met the artist.”
Darnell beamed. “You’ve helped me finish it up. I’ve been worrying over this one nurse’s face.” He pointed with his brush at a partially completed figure beside the wounded general. “I wanted this nurse to be someone kind of strong, but angel-like. Then she walks through my door this morning.”
Rather than flushing, Joseph’s face seemed to darken, her mouth tightening. “People tell me I could use a little more compassion. So you’ll have to improvise.”
Darnell’s smile softened. “I’m an artist. And I see what I see.”
Back in the Explorer, Joseph sat silently while I drove along the ridge toward the Greaves place.
“Quite a talent,” she said finally. “How does he paint like that with whatever his disorder is?”
“You saw how he settled down when he was with you by the painting. He’s that way when he’s working. Hand’s as steady as a watchmaker. Amazing thing to see.”
“I hope he wasn’t serious about painting me in.”
“I think he was. Darnell isn’t much of one to joke around.” I glanced over as I turned off the ridge and slowed to a crawl, carefully guiding the cruiser down the rutted dirt track that descended into what locals call Blackjack Holler. A hand-painted sign nailed to a thick hickory warned “No Trespassers—and that means YOU.”
“And I’d have to agree with him. He’s got a good eye for what will look right in his paintings.”
Joseph sniffed. “Most of the people who know me would hardly say I’m the picture of the angel of mercy.”
“Sounds like he’s been looking for a face that shows compassion, strength, and courage,” I suggested. “I can’t imagine a tougher job than being one of those Civil War nurses.”
She shook her head dismissively. “Anyway, he’s pretty incredible. Not who I expected to run into out here in the hills.”
I chuckled. “He’s one of the richest guys in the county. He gets six-figure commissions for each of those paintings and probably averages three a year.”
“What does he do with the money?”
“Supports his parents who are both at the assisted livi
ng center in town. Sponsors a pretty active art program in the school district. The rest he just squirrels away. The guy’s got everything . . .”
Before I could finish the thought, the air cracked with a report from a large caliber rifle. The trunk of a small sassafras six feet beyond my open window exploded in a shower of shredded bark and wood.
5
While doing village sweeps in Iraq, I’d seen guys move fast, driven by fear and instinct. But I’d never seen anyone move faster than Mara Joseph when the shot shattered the sassafras. The ruts had slowed my descent into the holler to a rocking crawl. With what struck me as a single motion, Joseph swept her weapon from beneath her jacket, threw open the door, and rolled from the squad car into heavy brush that clogged the runoff ditch. Something of a Deputy Ritter move, but with a practiced precision that suggested she’s learned it somewhere other than in her back yard.
The shot had jolted my own heart into high gear, but just as quickly I’d recognized it as what it was—the Greaves way of letting us know no one was welcome in their mean-spirited corner of the world. I braked the Explorer to a halt and stepped cautiously out behind the open door. Two angry dogs snarled up from somewhere below.
“Verl,” I shouted. “It’s me. Sheriff Tate. I need to talk to you and LJ.”
“I know who it is,” a voice I recognized as Verl’s called back from beyond a turn in the lane. “You ain’t welcome here, Tate. Can’t just come onto a man’s property any time you damn well please.”
“I can get permission if I need to, Verl. But I don’t think you want that. I just need to talk to you. May as well not send me away and have me come back all pissed off and bringing some extra firepower. And you know you’ve already given me cause. You can’t be firing at law enforcement, or anyone else, for that matter, just because they crossed your property line.” I was shouting down at the tree line, but could see no one. There was no sign of Joseph on the other side of the car.