A Violent End at Blake Ranch Read online

  When I walk back, Adelaide hasn’t moved. With a sigh, she says, “She didn’t have a chance to get back into life.”

  “It’s a shame,” I say.

  I stand there with her a few minutes longer. I’m thinking that although Skeeter brought Nonie out of the water here, she may have gone in anywhere along the shoreline of the pond.

  I hear vehicles crunching up the gravel driveway, more than one. When I hear doors slam, I say, “Mrs. Blake, it would be best if you go inside. I’ll walk with you.”

  “All right, then.” We head toward the house. She goes inside, and I walk over to talk to Bill Odum and the ambulance drivers, who arrived at the same time.

  I tell the drivers that things aren’t as straightforward as they seemed when I called them, and it’ll be a while before they can take the body, so they may as well settle in.

  Then I tell Bill Odum to come with me. “I want you to take a look,” I say.

  At the pond, he crouches down to get a closer look. “Uh-oh,” he says, seeing the way the skull is damaged. “We’re going to have to notify the state.”

  “I already put in the calls.” I tell him I’m going to go back to the house to talk to the family, and I want him to walk around the pond and see if he can figure out where Nonie’s body went in. “And keep a look out for a weapon. I don’t know whether somebody hit her here at the pond and shoved her in, or if they might have done it somewhere else and dragged her body here. You know what to look for.”

  I’m wishing we could put a sheet or something over the body, but the last time I did that, I caught hell from the coroner for interfering with the body temperature and making it harder for them to determine the time of death.

  Odum looks out over the pond and shudders. “Snaky kind of place. I’m going back to the car to get me a tire iron to poke around with.” He doesn’t move right away. “I went to school with Charlotte. I don’t remember her very well, but I do remember my mamma was pretty shook up by what happened. She wanted to keep me out of school, but luckily Daddy convinced her that didn’t make any sense. You don’t suppose Charlotte did this, do you?”

  “It’s a little early for that kind of speculation.” I start toward the house, Odum walking beside me. “By the way, Doc Taggart’s going to be here soon. Would you ask him to come to the house when he arrives?”

  CHAPTER 2

  Les Moffitt answers the Blakes’ door. He is jowly, with pale-blue eyes and high color in his cheeks. His smile is a little uncertain, as if he’s been left to his own devices and isn’t sure what his place is. “Charlotte is upstairs putting her son down for a nap,” he says. “She asked me to hold the fort until she comes downstairs. This is a hell of a situation.”

  “Where is Adelaide?”

  “She’s checking on John. She’ll be down soon, too. Why don’t we go on in the living room?”

  I’m struck by the contrast between the starkness of the house’s exterior and the sumptuous living room. A plump sofa and armchairs in rich colors are grouped around a massive fireplace. Elegant side tables in some kind of antique European style—French? Italian?—hold all manner of expensive-looking knickknacks. The walls are covered with art in the same style, elegant scenes of boats in harbors and quaint villages and pastoral paintings. Knowing something about art, I note a couple of fine bird watercolors and a large oil painting that could be an Onderdonk. Not my taste, but a handsome representative of his landscape paintings. I don’t know that I’ve ever been in a home around here that displayed such splendor.

  I can’t help wondering how they keep things intact with a five-year-old in the house. But then I see that one large corner of the room is given over to a play area—an elaborate train set is the centerpiece, with boxes of plastic building blocks and toys shoved up against the wall. There’s an entire bookcase filled with children’s books.

  Moffitt seems at home in the setting and gestures for me to take one of the armchairs. I sink into its plush cushions and think how nice it might be to get something like this chair in my house. I can imagine Loretta’s reaction if she showed up one day and I was taking my ease in it.

  “Can I get you a soft drink or a cup of coffee?” He looks anxious, as if he feels like he ought to ask but hopes I won’t request anything he can’t lay his hands on easily.

  “Thank you, but I’m fine.”

  When Moffitt sits down, I say, “What’s your connection with the Blakes?”

  “Uh, I . . . well, that is, I’m a friend of the family.” He nods again. “You know, good friends. I’ve known the family a long time.”

  “You live around here?”

  “Over in Bryan.”

  “What kind of work do you do?”

  “I’m an investment counselor. That’s how I met the Blakes. I help them with their investments.”

  You don’t hear much about people in Jarrett Creek needing the services of an investment counselor. Most people are more the type to let what money they have collect interest in a savings account. It’s another way in which the Blakes set themselves apart.

  “Were you here when Skeeter found Nonie’s body?”

  “No, I happened to get here right after they called you. I was going to take Adelaide out for an early dinner.”

  “Not John?”

  He frowns. “You’re not aware of the situation with John?”

  “I heard he has some dementia. It’s gone too far for him to go out with you and Adelaide?”

  “That’s right. Matter of fact, that’s what Adelaide and I were going to discuss, whether or not it’s time to have him sign over a power of attorney to her.”

  “I see. So when Skeeter said things were in an uproar . . .”

  “John gets a little agitated. He . . . uh . . . needs a lot of care.” He narrows his eyes and speaks almost in a whisper. “If you ask me, he’d be better off in a facility somewhere so he could get away from . . .”

  “Here you are,” Charlotte is smiling, but her eyes are tight as she zeroes in on Moffitt.

  He leaps to his feet. “Did you get Trey to sleep?”

  “Not yet. Skeeter’s reading him a story. Soon as he goes to sleep, Skeeter will come down.” She’s still standing and turns to me. “Did Les offer you something to drink?”

  I tell her he did. “Is your mamma coming down soon? I’ll need to talk to her, too.”

  Charlotte frowns. “Trey riled Daddy up with his noise, and she has to get him settled down. It might be hard for her to join us right away.”

  With Charlotte here, Moffitt edges toward the door. “If you don’t need me, I think I’ll be on my way.” He hands me his business card. “This is where you can reach me if I can help with anything. Charlotte, tell your mamma I’ll call her in a day or two to reschedule.”

  Charlotte sits down on the sofa, tucking her feet together primly. “Now what were you telling Skeeter—something about a head wound?”

  “Charlotte, did you get a close look at Nonie’s body?”

  She shakes her head. “Makes me queasy just thinking about it. I don’t know how Skeeter could stand to . . . to touch her, much less pull her onto the shore.”

  “It looks like Nonie was attacked before she went into the water. It’ll be up to the medical examiner to find out if she died before or after she went in, but the blow she sustained to her head was substantial.”

  “That means . . .” She shivers, although it’s warm.

  “It means somebody killed her. I don’t know an easier way to say it.”

  “That’s absolutely crazy. Who could have . . .” She manages a wan smile. “I guess that’s the question, isn’t it. Who?”

  “You have any idea?”

  “Do I have an idea? No, not at all. I mean, I guess one of us would be the obvious suspect, but . . .”

  “We’ll discuss that directly. Let me get a few details straight. Exactly how long has Nonie been back?”

  She puts a hand to her chest. “She came August tenth, to be exact. And today i
s the eighteenth? Is that right?”

  “Yes, it’s the eighteenth. Remind me how long it was since Nonie went away?”

  “Too long. It would have been twenty years this fall. I hate that phrase ‘went away.’ Like she was on vacation.” She’s twisting her hands and she sounds like she could cry any minute. “I don’t know why people feel the need to tiptoe around the matter and sugarcoat it. We’ve all lived with Nonie’s situation for a long time—too long, if you ask me. I thought she ought to come home, but my parents didn’t agree with me.” She tilts her chin up a little, defiant. I remember suddenly how young she is, probably late twenties. Somehow, she gave the impression of being in charge of things, and it made her seem older.

  “I’m surprised you were willing to have Nonie back given what she tried to do to you.” Nonie had tried to kill Charlotte by hanging her. Nonie was fourteen and Charlotte was eight.

  “We were children when all that happened,” Charlotte says. “Mamma and Daddy sent her to a psychiatrist, and he seemed to think she did it deliberately, but I don’t care what he said, I don’t believe she really knew what she was doing.”

  “Why did they release her after all this time?”

  “Mamma said there was some new medication she was taking and they didn’t think she needed to be there any longer.”

  “How did you feel when you heard she was coming back?”

  She gets a funny look on her face. “The fact is, I didn’t know she was coming back. She showed up here out of the blue and Mamma said she knew she was coming.”

  “Why didn’t your mamma tell you? Seems like she would have, given the history between the two of you.”

  Charlotte shakes her head. “I know it sounds crazy. Mamma said she didn’t know how to break the news to me. She should have known I’d be okay with it. I’ve made my peace with what happened.”

  “You have?”

  “Maybe not as much as I thought I had. It’s been a little strange with her here.”

  “Your brother seemed pretty upset. Had he gotten friendly with Nonie since she got home?”

  “They hit it off. I don’t think they spent a lot of time together, though.”

  “Did anybody else come here in the past week to see her?”

  She shakes her head. “Les is the only person who has been here this week. He came by one day, but they didn’t have any conversation. He’d just met her. So we’re the only people she saw, unless . . .”

  “Unless what?”

  “I suppose somebody could have visited her after we went to bed.”

  “Did she ever go out?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  We hear footsteps on the stairs at exactly the same time the front doorbell rings. Charlotte jumps up and heads to the door. I hear Doc Taggart’s voice. “Craddock here? He wanted to talk to me.”

  I go into the entry at the same time Skeeter comes down the stairs. Charlotte goes over and grabs Skeeter’s arm and brings him to the front door.

  “How you doin’, Skeeter?” Taggart says, stepping inside. His demeanor is too hearty, given the situation.

  Skeeter grins.

  “I’m doin’ okay. Except, you know.” He points outside.

  I tell them that I’m going to confer with Taggart and that I’ll be right back with them.

  “We’ll wait in the living room,” Charlotte says.

  “What in the hell happened?” Taggart says when we’re alone. “How did she manage to drown?”

  “You didn’t look at the body?”

  “Bill Odum intercepted me and said you wanted to see me.”

  “You’d better come take a look. Somebody bashed her head in before they threw her in the pond.”

  Taggart and I head for the pond. The west is full of threatening clouds and heat lightning, and in the late afternoon sun, with shadows from the trees beyond the pond, the air is almost lavender. The mosquitoes are in full force when we get near the scummy water. I slap at my arms and legs.

  Taggart stoops down and examines Nonie. “Oh, my Lord.” He blows out a breath. “I guess if it’s a homicide, they’ll have to take her body over to Bobtail where T. J. can take a look at her.” T. J. Sutter is the county coroner and justice of the peace.

  “I already called him and the Rangers.”

  “Okay then.” He sighs. “This is a mess. I had heard they let Nonie come back. What made them decide to bring her home now?”

  “I’ll have to ask them that.”

  “I’ll bet it went over big with Charlotte having her back here.”

  “Charlotte said she wanted to bring her home.”

  “After what Nonie did to her?”

  “Yes, she said they were just kids and she didn’t believe Nonie knew what she was doing.”

  “Charlotte doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about. Nonie was crazy. Flat out. I wouldn’t have trusted her.”

  I have no idea how he knows this. He’s a country GP, and as far as I know he wasn’t trained in psychiatric care. “Did you have a hand in assessing her after she tried to kill Charlotte?”

  “No, of course I didn’t. They left that to the big cheeses. I forget where they took her. Houston, probably. But I was the family doctor and you could tell from the time she was little that there was something not right going on with her.”

  Taggart has always irritated me as being a know-it-all, and this sounds like one of those things he’s pontificating about that may or may not be true.

  “Who found her?” he says.

  “Adelaide’s younger son, Skeeter.”

  “Poor kid. Has to be a shock.”

  “You know anything about John Blake? He seems to be giving the family some problems.”

  “He’s been going downhill for several years. They used to bring him to me, but they’ve started going to a specialist in Houston. I told Adelaide they needed to get him into a facility, but she said she married him for better or worse, and she was sticking with it. Poor devil.”

  When he says “poor devil,” I don’t know whether he means Adelaide or the old man.

  He sniffs. “Parkinson’s is a rotten disease. I guess you have to admire Adelaide for wanting to take care of him. I knew John when we were kids. Never could figure out what he saw in Adelaide. She never had much to say and when she did, it didn’t mean much. She must have been a tiger in bed, is all I can say.”

  I’m not quite sure how to reply to that.

  “Unless you need me for anything else, I’ll go on home now,” he says. “I can’t do anything. It’s up to the medical examiner now.”

  When I go back into the house, Adelaide has joined the others in the living room. She looks like she’s at the end of a long, hard day. A couple of strands of hair have escaped from her bun and are trailing over her shoulder, and her face is practically gray. I remind myself that it’s her daughter lying out there dead, even though Nonie hasn’t lived under her roof for a long time.

  “I’ve had a few words with Charlotte,” I say to Adelaide and Skeeter, “and I need to talk to the two of you as well. But first, I’d like to take a look at the room Nonie was staying in.”

  CHAPTER 3

  The room where Nonie Blake spent her last few days is small but nicely furnished with an old-fashioned rag rug on the polished oak floor, a double bed with a carved mahogany headboard, and a flowered bedspread. There are a few more antique pieces in this room—the dresser topped with a mirror, a carved nightstand, and a spindle-back rocking chair. The top of the dresser contains a few personal items: a hairbrush, a small photo of a young girl in a cheap frame—maybe Nonie when she was very young—and a cup with a little dark liquid in the bottom. I sniff it and it smells like chocolate.

  On the bedside stand there’s a worn paperback romance novel called Heart of Stone. The cover shows a bare-chested man with a mane of blond hair holding his hand out to a woman dressed in a tight skirt with her chest almost busting out of her bodice. I open it and see a penciled marking that indicate
s the book was used and cost fifty cents. Next to the book there’s a small tube of Jergens hand lotion and a box of tissues.

  The closet is tiny but plenty big for the few clothes hanging there—two pairs of slacks, three blouses, and a dress. There are a pair of sneakers and a pair of sandals on the floor.

  The top dresser drawer contains underwear, a nightgown, and a couple of T-shirts. There’s a small zipper case with a thin chain with a cross on it. The other drawers are filled with household items—linens, candles, stationery, and framed photos, which means the room was used for storage before Nonie came home.

  I step into the center of the room and try to figure out what’s troubling me. Then I realize her belongings are sparse. Even being in a mental institution, she would have accumulated more in the way of clothing and personal items over twenty years. Maybe she left some items at the facility with the idea of having them sent. I feel like I can’t really get a handle on her from the small impact she made on this room.

  The bathroom is down the hall from her room. There I find minimal toiletries—toothbrush and toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo and mouthwash, and a few cosmetics. In the medicine cabinet, in addition to aspirin and Tums, I find a prescription bottle, but it’s not Nonie’s prescription. It’s for someone named Susan Shelby, filled at a pharmacy in Tyler, Texas. That’s the only medication I find.

  I go back into the bedroom and look in vain for the medication Charlotte mentioned that supposedly got Nonie out of the hospital and back into normal life. Maybe Adelaide can tell me.

  I consider closing off the room with crime-scene tape, but there’s really nothing to see here.

  “That’s strange,” Adelaide says when I go back downstairs and ask her if she knows where Nonie’s medication is. “I don’t know that I ever saw it. I assumed she would take it if the doctor said she had to, but I never asked.”

  I address Charlotte and Skeeter. “Did either of you ever see her take any pills?”

  “Let me think.” Charlotte pauses and then shakes her head. “I don’t believe I did.”