Behind the Bonehouse (19 page)

“Charlie said it was when you two was talkin' about how Seeger had got himself fired for stealin' a formula from Equine.”

“I 'member tellin' him that.”

“Charlie said something like, ‘Then there was justice in Esther havin' a key when Carl wouldda been real upset. He treated her like she'd be one to steal, when he was a thief himself.'”

“Okay. Yeah, I guess that's about right.” Buddy could feel the heat in his skin starting to die down, and he took a big breath and let it out, because Frankie D'Amato hadn't entered in.

“Did you tell anybody about that key? Anybody at all?”

“Why would I?”

“I don't know, but did ya?”

“I don't recall.” Buddy had finished his chicken breast and was holding his hot buttered cornbread in one hand, staring at the kitchen wall. “I didn't give it much thought, and I can't see why I'd tell anybody. Gossipin' when you're in the horse business can not only get ya fired, it can hurt a lotta folks.”

“Did ya tell Becky?”

Buddy raised his voice and said, “Honey, could you come here a minute?” He wiped crumbs off his mouth with a paper napkin and swallowed half his iced tea.

They could hear Becky skipping down the stairs, and then she was in the living room, standing in the middle of the floor, six feet from the dining room doorway, a rag doll in her hand. “Buddy?”

“Did I tell you about a key bein' in that guy Carl Seeger's garage?”

“Yeah. You did. Last fall, I think.”

Earl asked Becky if she'd told anybody else.

“No, I never did.”

“Buddy?” Earl asked again, holding his glass in both hands.

“Nope.”

Becky said, “I thought I heard you say somethin' to Jo.”

“Me? When?”

“Few weeks ago. She was telling you 'bout Carl getting the IRS guy to come pester them after he finished with Mr. Harrison.” Becky was short and thin, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, a blue-and-white checked shirt tucked into her denim skirt, her blue eyes looking nervous. “I thought you said somethin' like ‘If ya ever want to leave a dead rat in his kitchen, there's a key in his garage.' You were just kiddin'. I mean you were just—”

“Me?” Buddy's hand had frozen with a forkful of coleslaw halfway to his mouth.

“You were pickin' me up at Jo's after I'd watched Ross, when Mama had the twins, and you'd been helpin' Toss out at the barn. Sometime this spring. March maybe. Or early April?”

“Okay. Maybe. Somethin' like that.”

“You both sure of that?” Earl was holding his notebook, his ballpoint pen poised above the paper, his black-framed glasses sliding down his large nose, his eyes studying theirs.

Becky said, “That's the way I remember it.”

“I guess, yeah. You're making it sound important, Sheriff.” Buddy was beginning to look worried, like a minefield might be opening up right underneath his feet.

“Don't know that it is, but it could be. Ya mention it to anyone else?”

Buddy said, “Not that I can think of. I wouldn't a said a word about a key to some folk's house unless I thought whoever I was talkin' to could be trusted not to break in. Jo and Alan? They'd never do somethin' like that. Never in a million years.”

“Did ya know Seeger, did ya?”

“Nope. Never met him.”

“You know anything else about him, maybe something from Esther, or the Munros?”

“Just that he was real hard on Esther, and what he did with the formula at Equine made me think of him as a no account. The IRS business too.”

“Well. If ya think of anything else connected to Seeger, give me a call at the office.”

“I will.”

“I'll arrange to get a deputy to take a statement later.”

“Sure.” Buddy got up and walked him out the door, then sat down on the stone stoop and lit himself a Marlboro with a kitchen match as he watched Earl drive away, thinking,
How am I gonna tell Jo and Alan?

Excerpt from Jo Grant Munro's Journal

Tuesday, April 28th, 1964

It looks as though Blue Grass's burning must've been something electrical. The insurance folks have been investigating forever, and though the final report isn't in, they've said it doesn't look like arson. Which Spencer hadn't expected, of course, but the insurance money will be critical, and I'm sure it's been hard waiting to hear what they think.

We haven't heard anything more from Earl, but Buddy called a week or so ago, and told us that Earl had asked him if he'd told anyone about the key in Carl's garage.

I've always thought you just tell the truth and even if somebody else isn't, it'll work out fine in the long run, so I never would've wanted him to hedge around it. But finding out Earl knows we knew about the key made my stomach turn over right then. Alan's too, probably, even if we didn't talk about it much.

There're been anxious silences every day when we've worried alone so as not to upset the other—interspersed too with feverish discussions of the circumstantial evidence Earl's got. That's when we weren't talking about Ross' diarrhea, and us not knowing how to make it stop.

But not hearing from Earl has eased us back into more of a routine—of Ross, and our work, and helping Toss some, of taking walks with Emmy, and me riding Sam and Alan riding Maggie (who seems to have gotten attached to Alan, which pleases him no end).

I've been praying every day that Earl's eliminated Alan as a suspect, and this is not just the lull before the proverbial maelstrom.

Thursday, April 30th, 1964

Ross was sleeping in his buggy late that afternoon, in the shade of a huge old maple, next to the sand riding area just past the south barn.

Jo was sitting on Sam at the south end watching Alan canter Maggie. She'd been asking Alan to pick up the canter from the walk,
and
the trot, then bring Maggie down to one gait, and then the other, to help him work on his position in transitions, and get quick responses from Maggie too, instead of letting her shuffle a couple of strides before she responded to his aids.

Jo said, “I'm glad you came home at five for once. It's too beautiful not to ride.”

“That's why I came home.”

“You've really learned a lot in two years.”

That made Alan laugh, before he smoothed a hand along Maggie's neck as she rushed a couple of strides, then settled into the canter. “Oh, yeah? Then why is this so hard?”

“You're both learning. Good transitions take a lot of hindquarter strength too, and Maggie's just getting back in shape after having that last baby.”

“Her canter's getting smoother.”

Jo nodded, and had just said, “And you're beginning to get more precise in the way you apply your aids”—when she heard a car coming toward them on the long drive from the house.

It was a white sedan, and when it'd gotten close enough for her to see the insignias on the front doors, her heart lurched against her ribs, and blood rushed to her face. “Alan!” There was worry and warning and misery in her voice.

And Alan brought Maggie down to a walk, and looked across his left shoulder to see what Jo had seen.

The car stopped just north of the barn, and Earl opened the driver door and squeezed himself through. Pete Phelps climbed out the passenger door and stood looking like an embarrassed egret, as he stared into the small paddock of mares and newborn foals.

Earl nodded at Jo, and squinted at Alan as he said, “I need to talk to you a minute.”

“Sure. Let me just get Maggie unsaddled and turn her out in her paddock.”

“Ya reckon Jo could do that for ya?”

Alan had climbed down and was leading Maggie toward Jo, who'd already dismounted and was walking Sam toward the back of the barn. Alan met her at the open door to the aisleway and handed her his reins, before he started toward Earl, who was pulling a paper out of his shirt pocket, without taking his eyes off Alan.

“I got no choice, Alan. I feel real bad, but I gotta ask ya to come with me. I got a warrant here for your arrest for the murder of Carl Seeger. I hate doin' it, but I'm gonna hafta handcuff ya too and take ya into the department. I can cuff yer hands in front. It don't have to be in back. But that's the procedure I gotta follow.”

“Earl!” Jo was white-faced and rigid, Sam and Maggie standing close together just behind her, her voice sharp, her hands gripped tight on both sets of reins, just as Ross started screaming. “He didn't kill Carl! You know better than that!”

“Can't ignore the evidence, Jo. County Attorney give me no choice. I gotta take Alan in and book him, but you go ahead and get you a lawyer, and work on makin' bond as soon as it gets set.”

“Do I get to change my clothes? I'm dirty, and sweating, and I need to get cleaned up.” Alan was glaring at Earl, as he peeled off his riding gloves and unbuckled his helmet.

“Sorry.”

“I'm going to take my chaps off, and wash up with the hose. You can come with me and watch if you feel the need.” Alan was unbuckling his rawhide chaps without looking at Earl, his face hard and angry, his green eyes, when he took off his sunglasses and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, hot and pinched and focused on the tack room door as though nothing in this world could have made him turn aside.

Earl watched him pull the handle up on the pump in the tack room and drag the hose out behind the barn, and wash his face and hands. Jo and Earl were staring at Alan's back when Alan said, “Jo, get Bob Harrison's lawyer. Then call Bob at home and tell him what's happened.”

While they took his mug shot and fingerprinted him again in the Woodford County jail in Versailles, Alan told himself to calm down and watch his mouth.

This is nothing compared to France.

Demolition before D-Day.

Setting up local army governments.

You dealt with nothing but deceit.

Use what you learned then.

Listen. Read between the lines. Don't aggravate Earl.

Earl walked him into the Sheriff's Department next door to the jail, past the old scarred counter in the front room, where a plump deputy looked up with ill-disguised hostility as they passed into Earl's office.

The brown linoleum was old and cracked, the desks—Earl's facing the door, Pete's against the wall on the left—were banged-up metal under chipped tan paint. There were gray metal chairs with red plastic seats sitting in front of Earl's desk, and Earl sat in one, and waved Alan to the other. Pete swiveled his desk chair toward them, and folded his arms across his bony-looking middle, while he stared across at Alan.

Earl pulled a stick of Juicy Fruit from his shirt pocket and peeled off the silver paper, folding it into his mouth, before he held the pack out to Alan—who shook his head and leaned back in his chair, his hands spread on the arms.

Earl sat and watched Alan for a minute with his thumbs hooked in his belt. “As you know, we got circumstantial evidence against you, and we gotta go through it again.”

“You think I'm stupid enough to do it the way it was done?”

“Meaning what?”

“Use a toxin that could only come from my own lab. Leave my pen at the scene. Leave a syringe and a surgical glove. I figure there must've been a glove, or a piece of one, of the type we use in our lab there too, since you took samples from the lab. And with you taking the Selectric ball, and samples of Equine paper, there's a good chance that the note Carl left didn't match his typewriter, or his typing paper either. How dumb would I have to be to make mistakes like that?”

“Can't ignore it though, can I?”

“No, I know that, but—”

“What other explanation can you offer for the evidence? No alibi neither. Your car seen just past his house close to the time he died.”

“And if I were going to go to his house, would I do it so my car would be seen? No! I'd plan it a whole lot better!”

“You gotta admit you got motive.”

“What motive? That he tried to steal my formula, and he got the IRS to hassle Jo and me? I would not
murder
somebody over an IRS audit! And he didn't get
away
with stealing my formulas. He got fired. He got stopped. It means I think he was a dishonest son-of-a-pup, but it doesn't mean I'd kill him.”

“There's more evidence besides what I've mentioned before.”

“What? Anything new from the autopsy?”

“I'm not obligated to reveal our evidence, not at this stage of the proceedings.”

“Earl, it's me. Alan Munro. Remember the murderer I helped you arrest, when I could've killed her with my bare hands for what she did to Jo! You know in your gut I didn't do this.”

“I wouldn't a thought it, but the County Attorney he don't know you from spit, and he's the one weighing the evidence and asking the judge for a warrant so he can take you to District Court.”

“Do you have any evidence placing me inside Carl's house?”

“I can't answer that.”

“You don't. You can't. I've never set foot in his house! You don't have my prints on the vial
,
or the syringe, or anything else. You can't!”

“Well, you cain't tell me you wouldn't a worn gloves.”

“Right. And I wouldn't have been dumb enough to make all the other stupid mistakes!”

“The question I cain't answer, and I don't figure you can either, is why would Carl kill himself just to set you up? Unless you got some other suspect.”

“I don't know. I admit that that's a serious question. And I don't have another suspect. But I'm not giving up on finding one.”

“Fine.”

“Do you have Carl's appointment calendar?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, it seems like maybe what he'd been doing, and who he was meeting, might give us some kind of clue.”