A Violent End at Blake Ranch Read online

I’m aware that Maria is looking at us like we’re speaking in tongues. “Maria, I know you were trained in Houston, but where are you from originally?” I ask.

  “I grew up in San Antonio. In the city,” she adds in a dry tone.

  “So you’re not up on cattle,” I say.

  “That would be correct.”

  I grin and turn back to Truly. “Is the trailer that brought the cows gone?”

  “No sir, I told the man driving it that it was the wrong lot and told him to go over to Town Café and get a meal, and I’d come and get you to sort it out.”

  “Give me a few minutes, and I’ll come back to the house and take a look at the cows.”

  “Yes, sir.” With one more furtive look at Maria, he scoots out the door.

  “Now,” I say to Maria, “what’s up with you?”

  “I’m mad at myself for doubting you. The coroner says you’re right, that the one-inch difference could have to do with the position of the body when the measurement was taken.” Her face is ferocious.

  Good Lord, I’ve had to deal with two women in the last half hour with a bee in their bonnet. At least I have some knowledge of Ellen’s background. “Maria, what led you to become a law enforcement officer?”

  “What? Oh, that. I always wanted to be a cop. And I don’t think of ‘cop’ as a bad word, either,” she adds fiercely. “I can’t tell you why, but it always appealed to me.”

  “Good. I expect there are all kinds of reasons for people wanting to be lawmen . . . and women,” I add hastily. “We’ll try to get you broken in right.” I realize that she doesn’t know who “we” are, so I fill her in on Bill Odum and Zeke Dibble, since she hasn’t had a chance to meet them yet.

  She nods when I describe Zeke. “I’m familiar with Officer Dibble’s career. When they told me I’d be coming here, I looked up the people I’d be working with, and I checked out his law enforcement career in Houston and thought I could learn something from him.”

  I’m beginning to feel the slightest bit defensive around Maria Trevino. I’m a little jealous that she thinks she can learn something from Zeke and not me. I suspect she won’t admire what I’m about to do. “You okay here for a little bit? I need to go take care of the situation with those cows.”

  “And leave me here, as new as I am?”

  “Maria, this is a small town. I’d be real surprised if anything comes up that you can’t handle. But if it does, call me on my cell phone. It’ll take me three minutes to get here. And it’s nearly noon anyway. Bill Odum will be in soon and you can rely on him.”

  I feel like a scalded cat and get out of there as fast as I can. As I drive away I remember that I still haven’t hired anybody to come to headquarters to clean the place up.

  Not only are the cows I’ve been sent the wrong ones, but they are a motley trio of heifers.

  “I have to get on back,” the driver says in an aggrieved voice. “I went and got some lunch like your man told me to, but I don’t have time to hang around here all day. I’ll come back to pick these cows up when it gets sorted out.”

  I know better than that. Once he leaves here, I’m stuck with the wrong cows, so I have to deal with it now. “You need to stick around while I call the seller.”

  As I listen to the phone ring, I say, “By the way, Truly Bennett here is not ‘my man.’ He’s an independent contractor.” Because Truly is black, I know he gets talked down to by some people, like this temporary driver, and it irritates me.

  The phone number of the seller on the bill of sale has been disconnected, so I call the auction house. It takes a while, but eventually I track down the agent for the auction house who arranged the sales. At first he doesn’t want to admit there was an error.

  “Let me remind you,” I say, “that discrepancies in cattle sales have roots in cattle-rustling laws. I know the laws don’t involve hanging like they once did, but they still carry some pretty heavy penalties. The descriptions of the cows on this bill of sale don’t match. But even more important, I bought a bull, and if my eyes serve me, none of these three has the equipment you expect in a bull.”

  Truly is trying to get my attention. “Hold on a minute,” I say. “What is it, Truly?”

  He holds up his cell phone. “Chief, you might tell him I got pictures of the cows we bought.”

  I do tell him, and that changes the conversation. “I hate to tell you this,” he says, “but we’ve had a few other complaints arising from this sale. Why don’t you go ahead and load up those three cows . . .”

  I look over at the cows. Their heads are hanging down like they’re pretty sure things are not going to go their way. I feel bad that they’ll have to be loaded back into the trailer and hauled back to Navasota.

  “Wait,” I say. “Any chance I can buy these three cows in addition to the ones I bought at auction?”

  Hearing my words, Truly rolls his eyes at me, then turns his back and walks a few feet away.

  “I’m going to make a couple of phone calls and get right back to you.”

  “I don’t mind telling you, I don’t have time to while away with this,” I say. “I need to hear from you now. I’m chief of police here and I’ve got a big situation I’m trying to handle.”

  “Chief of police?” he says, his tone flat. “I wasn’t aware of that. I’ll tell you what. I’ll get back to you fast.”

  As soon as I’m off the phone Truly says, “Mind if I have a word with you?” He glances in the direction of the driver.

  “No need. I know what you’re going to say. These cows aren’t worth a dime. But I can’t load them back up. They need some recovery time.” The cows are looking at me, and I swear they understood what I said and they’ve begun to look hopeful.

  “All right. I might have known you’d have a soft spot. I’ll put them out into the back corral.” That’s the small enclosure where we put a cow if it needs to be quarantined. It’ll be close quarters, but they’ll only be there a day or two while Truly makes sure they aren’t carrying any contagious diseases.

  The auction agent calls me back a lot faster than I thought he would. “The owner said he mixed up a couple of orders and if you’ll throw in a little money for the three you’ve already got, he’ll send the two cows and the bull right away.” He mentions a figure I can live with.

  “I’ll send this man here who has the trailer to pick them up this afternoon, if he’s willing.”

  “I expect that will work fine. The seller was eager to make amends.”

  Back at headquarters I explain to Maria Trevino that I’m off to Dallas tomorrow and tell her I’d like her to take on the case of the missing flowers.

  “Is that really important?” she says with her perpetual scowl.

  “Is it as important as murder? No, but sometimes things that wouldn’t seem important to somebody in Houston is a big deal in a small town. Besides, it will give you a chance to meet a few people. Pay attention to Loretta. She knows everybody and she’s the source of a lot of information that can help you from time to time. And she’s a good person.”

  Trevino rolls her eyes. “You mean she’s like a small-town CI?”

  It takes me a second to realize that she means an informer. “Something like that.”

  CHAPTER 18

  I spend the afternoon securing a warrant from a judge in Bobtail to see the records Rollingwood has on Nonie Blake. “You understand,” he says, “up in Dallas they may tell you that I don’t have any jurisdiction. If that happens, call me and I’ll see if I can locate a judge to fix you up.”

  I keep hoping that Ellen will call to say she’s changed her mind, but by the end of the day, I realize that’s not going to happen.

  Before I leave work, I consider whether I ought to call the Blakes to tell them I’m going to Rollingwood to get to the bottom of things there, in case they have anything else they want to tell me. But I decide I don’t want them to know I’m going.

  The next morning when I get on the road before eight o’clock, I reali
ze that it’s probably best that I’m alone. I don’t know Ellen well enough to know how punctual she is, but I wouldn’t have wanted to wait around. The psychiatrist I arranged to meet with said he’d have time at one o’clock. I want to be on time.

  The drive to Dallas is only a few hours long, but it’s boring. Mile after mile of scrubby land punctuated with a small town every now and then and a lot of billboards. I stop in Waco for coffee and a cinnamon roll that doesn’t come close to the ones Loretta makes and am in the Dallas suburbs by noon. Rollingwood is on the west side of the city. Doctor Delphine said he’d meet me there.

  The long gravel drive is lined with a boxwood hedge overhung with graceful trees. It’s so elegant, you wouldn’t know this is an institution. The front entrance is colonial style, with a white porch and impressive columns. Only the bars on the windows indicate this is anything other than a stately old building.

  Inside, it’s cheerful—the walls a soft yellow, hung with bright art. As soon as I walk into the spacious entry, I see a central garden courtyard that has places for patients to sit outdoors with visitors. I go to the front desk and am ushered into the administration office. Mrs. Lannigan, the director, whom I talked to on the phone, greets me. She’s a large, imposing black woman with a cordial smile. “Dr. Delphine said he might be a few minutes late and asked me to make you comfortable.”

  I ask her if she’ll show me around, and she does so with the eagerness of someone trying to close a real estate deal. You’d think she personally knows every patient; an attitude I’ll bet serves her well. This place can’t be cheap, and I expect most of the people who pay to have their loved ones here won’t stand for anything but the most attentive service. An exception being the Blakes, who don’t seem to have cared one way or another.

  “Did you ever find out what the mix-up was with Winona Blake?” she asks. “Why everyone thought she was still here?”

  “Apparently back when she got out, she only let one family member know, and he didn’t want to talk to her.”

  “That’s a shame. I didn’t know her, but it’s always a disappointment when the family of a patient shuns them for being institutionalized. It isn’t as if anyone wants to have a mental illness. And yet some people seem unable to get past the notion that a person with mental problems should know better.”

  A wiry man with a head of bushy hair bustles up, carrying a briefcase. “You must be Mr. Craddock. I’m Doctor Delphine. Maureen, is there a room where Craddock and I can talk?”

  She says we can use her office; that she needs to make rounds of the facility. Delphine rushes ahead of me almost at a sprint. As soon as Maureen Lannigan closes the door behind her, he hoists his briefcase onto her desk, opens it, and takes out a file folder. He doesn’t waste time on small talk.

  “I looked over this last night after we talked. I didn’t work with Ms. Blake myself, but the doctor who did, Dr. McBride, is retired, so I had to bring myself up to speed. What is it you want to know?”

  He doesn’t mention a court order to look at the files, so I don’t either. “I told you that Nonie Blake was murdered and that I’m chief of police in Jarrett Creek, so I’m trying to find out what happened. I discovered that she might have been blackmailing somebody. I wondered if she ever mentioned anything like that in her talks with the doctor.”

  He’s nodding. “According to the notes, she had a narcissistic personality with paranoia.”

  “Can you explain that to me?”

  “It means that she had a pretty grand idea of herself. People like that think others are out to get them and that they are able to see through people’s schemes—that’s where the paranoia comes in—and that they have the right to be judge and jury.”

  He shuffles through the paper some more, reading here and there. “She talked a lot about people not being who everyone thought they were . . . you know, people pretending to be good people and finding out they have wicked secrets. That isn’t unusual for her type of illness. And it may not mean she actually had information about anybody—it’s a paranoid fantasy. I also see that her doctor said she showed signs of being a pathological liar.”

  “Signs?”

  “It’s not a very secure diagnosis. Very few patients are full-out pathological liars. Most of them lie when it’s convenient, and some find it comes more easily than others. I gather that Winona was able to lie when it suited her and make it convincing.”

  “What kind of diagnosis did he give? There was some mention of her exhibiting signs of being a sociopath.”

  “That’s a label that gets attached a little too freely, in my opinion. It’s a harsh diagnosis, and I guess Dr. McBride didn’t see any reason to go that far. He said she was somewhat disassociated, but his diagnosis was more in line with a borderline personality trait.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It can have a variety of manifestations. Like I said, Ms. Blake had a narcissistic streak and a bit of paranoia, and she was a liar. But what set her apart from the full-blown sociopath is that she did have a conscience.”

  “Did she ever seem sorry about what she did to her sister?”

  “Not exactly. Dr. McBride indicated that Winona Blake thought she was doing the family a favor. I don’t mind saying that’s a little far-fetched, but it isn’t the mindset of a sociopath.”

  “Any idea where she might have gone when she left here?”

  “Dr. McBride noted that the Blake girl had made friends with someone who was here at Rollingwood the same time she was. Woman by the name of Susan Shelby.”

  Not an alias, then. A different person altogether. “Can you tell me anything about the Shelby woman?”

  He shakes his head. “I’ve stretched the limits of legality by telling you what’s in the Blake file, but even if I knew anything about Susan Shelby, I couldn’t break that patient confidentiality. I can tell you she left here a few months before Winona Blake did.”

  I haven’t been back to the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth since before Jeanne died. We used to come up here together every couple of months when Jeanne’s mother was still alive, and then a couple of times a year afterward. As soon as I walk in, I’m glad Ellen Forester isn’t with me. The memories that come rushing back are so strong that I have to take a deep breath before I can go up to get my ticket.

  I’ve never let our membership lapse, so when the young woman who takes my card sees the membership level, she jumps off her stool and says, “Sir, let me get the curator. He’s going to want to welcome you.”

  “That’s not necessary. I was in the area and thought I’d stop by. I can’t stay long.”

  She’s already around the desk and she comes up close and says, “He’d have a fit if he knew you’d come and he hadn’t had a chance to talk to you.”

  “I understand.” What she means is he wants to find out if I’ve got any more money so he can move me up to a higher donor level.

  To my surprise, I recognize the man who hurries up, hand extended. “You remember me?” he says. “Cole Hamilton.”

  “I certainly do. Cole, you’ve come up in the world.”

  “Yes, and I love this job.” When Jeanne and I knew him, he worked at a big gallery in Fort Worth. “I went back to school and got a master’s in museum curation and went to work at one of the smaller museums. Then I moved over here. I got this promotion last year. How’s your lovely wife?”

  I tell him she’s been gone a while and that I haven’t had the heart to come back since then.

  “I am so sorry to hear that. She was a wonderful woman . . . and her mother, of course. They both had an intuitive eye.”

  And a big wallet. Jeanne’s mother, as I recall, spent a lot of money at the gallery where Hamilton worked.

  “You’re going to have to let me buy you lunch and then show you a couple of things I know you haven’t seen.”

  I had planned to sneak in, look around, and sneak out, but I find myself really glad to spend some time with Cole Hamilton. He’s a natural for the jo
b, remembering that Jeanne and I were partial to the California School artists. So we spend a little time in that section, which I realize now has been superseded by more contemporary work. But there’s a Motherwell that I still think is one of his finest. And they have a Diebenkorn I’ve always liked. Then he takes me to the newest wing. Most of it doesn’t appeal, but there’s a piece by a man named Hodgkin that I’m not familiar with that I like very much.

  Before I know it, it’s late afternoon and I’m running behind. Before I head for Jacksonville, I call Truly Bennett, and he tells me this time the cattle that arrived were the right ones. “So that’s one bunch he can’t sell twice,” he says. He hates a cattle cheat.

  CHAPTER 19

  I arrive at dusk and spend the night at a motel outside of Jacksonville, an unsatisfactory place that seems to be a rendezvous for various rowdies who keep me awake until the early hours. So I’m grumpy and badly in need of coffee when I pack up and leave the place at 7 o’clock. If I were so inclined, I’d crank up my radio and blast everybody out of bed before I wheel out of the parking lot, but my radio hasn’t worked in years, so I have to make do with slamming the door of the truck, which doesn’t yield me the same satisfaction.

  The morning is redeemed by a diner that serves a loaded cup of coffee and a good plate of eggs. Then I’m off to find out what Nonie Blake and Susan Shelby have to do with each other.

  Jacksonville is an old town in a beautiful setting among pine trees and surrounded by rolling hills. There’s a big lake here that Jeanne and I visited a long time ago, but I won’t have time to get out to see it.

  I’m pulling up to the address I got from my Internet search for Susan Shelby when my cell phone rings. It’s Maria Trevino. “Chief Craddock, I have something I need to tell you.” I hadn’t noticed in person, but Maria has a slight accent.

  “What’s up?”

  “You might not like this, but I saw Doctor Roland Taggart’s name in Winona Blake’s file and I decided to go ask his opinion about the autopsy report.”