Earth Colors (31 page)
Authors: Sarah Andrews
“So they were getting kind of rough with her?”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘rough.’ When one member of a family tries to do things differently, not follow the script, the others can feel … er … rejected. Abandoned, even. I work with this all the time as I’m trying to help families sort out what they want to do with their assets.”
“It becomes a power play,” I said, thinking of Agent Wardlaw’s bullying older sister.
“I suppose. And ‘drama’ is the right word. They get to playing roles. You get your martyrs who think they’ve earned their place in heaven, so to speak—think they deserve more than their siblings. And then there’s the lost child who never quite measures up, and the victim who’s supposed to absorb all the crap.”
“Sounds like Hector’s vocation as an actor was well chosen. Too bad he got cast in the role of the lost child. Or is that Cricket?”
“No, Cricket was the victim, the hold-still-and-take-it cute thing—or that’s what Hector told us, anyway. And she had the audacity to take off and try to make a life separate from the tribe.”
“That’s quite a mouthful coming from a heritage freak. Isn’t heritage all about family?”
Jenny laughed. “That, and it’s a good rallying-cry to use when I’m trying to do business with family-oriented people. Between you and me, what I really like is open space and the natural world. To each her own.”
“So Cricket came back,” I said, getting back to the point. I was turning off the highway onto farm roads, and wanted to get both hands free to steer as soon as possible.
“Yeah, something just under a year ago. Thing was … Well, she was pregnant. It had prompted her to try to … I think Janice said ‘reintegrate. ’ She’d been out in California. God knows what kind of ideas she picked up out there. But it sounded to Janice like Cricket was looking at
family from a new angle and wanted to try one more time. Or maybe she just needed the money.”
family from a new angle and wanted to try one more time. Or maybe she just needed the money.”
“Is she still there?”
“No. Janice said Deirdre sent Cricket to live in a mobile home down on that family property in the serpentine barrens. Janice phoned her once or twice, but then she quit answering phone calls. Janice went down there to see her over Christmas but she wasn’t there.”
“Where’d she go?”
“Janice didn’t know. Some other family was living there, and they set their dogs on her. She figures Cricket hopped off somewhere else to have her baby and raise it in peace.”
I didn’t like hearing about another woman put in the position of raising her child alone. And there was something about Cricket’s story that did not fit. If she had a baby coming, why didn’t she stick around and pick up her inheritance? But perhaps she was in touch in some way, and preferred to have it sent to her. An inheritance, but not a heritage.
“Anything else you need?” Jenny asked. “This is kind of fun, using my networking skills for detective work.”
“Yeah. What color were Mr. Krehbeil’s eyes?”
“Deirdre’s father’s? Gray. Why?”
“Oh, nothing. Just sorting out a little genetics puzzle.” I thanked Jenny and ended the phone call. Wardlaw and I were just reaching our objective, namely the last turn Tert would make as he drove Faye and the baby home to the farm. It was a beautiful place surrounded by nice, old farmsteads. A tractor growled halfway across the nearest field, turning over the soil for this year’s planting.
I parked the car, got out, and wandered over to where Wardlaw was picking himself a blade of grass to chew on. I said, “Murder. Not your gig, right?”
“Not on the whole, unless it’s on federal land. It’s usually a local jurisdiction thing. People have to defraud the federal government or cross state lines to get me interested.”
“What if someone managed to pull the trigger in Pennsylvania and the bullet struck in Wyoming?”
“Now, that’s a firearm I’d like to see,” said Wardlaw. “What are you thinking?”
“Aunt Winnie. What did she die of?”
“Give me the particulars,” he said.
“Give me a sec.” Thank God for cell phones. I got onto Directory Information and called Frank Barnes. Luckily, he was in. “I’m sorry I left Cody without getting together with you again,” I told him. “But something came up.”
“That’s my Em,” he said evenly.
“Yeah, well, I’ve got a favor to ask of you. You remember you told me about the Krehbeil ranch out west of Cody there?”
“Yeah.”
“And the owner died recently?”
“Winnie Krehbeil. Yeah.”
“What did she die of?”
“Lung cancer,” said Frank. “But you know … I mean, you know how people talk … .”
“Yes I do, Frank, and that’s what I’m asking you to do.”
“Well, my sister’s kid’s a nurse up at the hospital these days, and she said the X rays looked real funny. Blank spots, like she’d been inhaling metal filings. But she was real sick by the time they diagnosed, so they just did what they could to keep her comfortable as possible. And then, well, there wasn’t no autopsy, because everyone knew it was the cancer, y’know?”
“Right … Anything else?”
“She got real batty toward the end.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “She thought someone was poisoning her. She made accusations.”
Frank made a small chuckling sound. “You always were a smart ’un, Em.”
I rang off and turned back to Agent Wardlaw, who had taken a seat on the trunk of my car. “Lead chromate,” I told him. “It’s a paint pigment called Baltimore yellow, the same color as the Krehbeils’ front door. It’s what the family’s fortune was built upon.”
“And you say it does what?”
“Inhaled, it’s a carcinogen. Causes cancer and leaves radio-opaque spots on the lungs. Ingested, you can deliver the dose over a long time, and you get lead poisoning. The first symptoms are fatigue and loss of appetite. Eventually it causes nerve damage, even mental illness, and, finally, death.”
“And it would be hard to prove that the dose had been maliciously administered,” he pointed out. “So, how you gonna prove this?”
“We’re usually not exposed to it anymore. Baltimore yellow was a color of the nineteenth century. One hundred fifty years ago. A private citizen couldn’t get it anymore, not even as artists’ materials. It’s just not used, precisely because it’s too toxic.”
Wardlaw’s face bent into a nasty grin. “But if it was the family heritage, you might have a sack of it lying around … .”
“You got it, Brucie. He could have mailed it to Aunt Winnie as a Christmas present. He could put it in a nice box of talcum powder for the bath, or something. She goes in for her daily ablutions and puff-puff-puff, she gets her daily dose. And sending it in the mails puts it in your jurisdiction.”
“But you say she’s already dead. What if she was cremated? And do you really think anyone’d be dumb enough to leave a dose like that lying around after she was gone? Nah, they’d toss it down the toilet when they came around for the funeral.”
I laughed and pointed at a row of gravestones that rested against some trees at the edge of the nearest field. “Look over there: These people bury their loved ones right out here in the field. Dollars to doughnuts says she’s planted in some nice graveyard out there in Wyoming, maybe right next to her last five poodles. And the really good news is that heavy metals stay with a corpse longer than poisons. You can test for them in the hair and fingernails. Hell, the bones turn from calcium phosphate to lead phosphate.”
A cloud seemed to have settled over his face.
I said, “Sorry to call you Brucie. Is that a sensitive matter?”
He shook his head, not looking at me. “No. I was just thinking of my father and my uncles working in those mines. Their lungs …”
“Yeah.”
He straightened up and stretched, pushing his gut out even farther over his belt. “So, you think your pals’ll come right past here.” He glanced at his watch. “Won’t be long. Eleven o’clock. Kinda early for lunch.”
“Yeah, and I wonder what’s going to show up in the cuisine.”
“You think he’s sprinkling it on the canapés?”
“Well, Deirdre said her mother always seems to get sicker after ‘Precious William’ visits. Poor old dear, she won’t go to the hospital. He must
be counting on that. Either that, or maybe he doesn’t know that it would leave a blank spot on X rays.”
be counting on that. Either that, or maybe he doesn’t know that it would leave a blank spot on X rays.”
Wardlaw made a face that suggested that he had glue on his teeth. “So we got us a serial killer. Dad, Mom, Aunt Whosie, and who else?”
“His sister Deirdre: peripheral neuropathy. Can’t feel her hands or feet. It’s another symptom of lead poisoning. Maybe he put it in the home-made jam.”
“Lovely. And Hector’s just gonna drink himself to death. He got any more brothers and sisters?”
“Cricket.”
“What’s he got in mind for her?”
“Well, she’s gone missing, but no one thinks anything of it because it’s a habit of hers. But last time she showed up she was pregnant. We don’t want another heir, do we? So she’s easy. She’d been sent to live out there where your pals the pooches live. You don’t even have to do it slowly with her; you can just walk right up to her and get it over with and bury the body somewhere out in the greenbriers. Everybody will figure she just wandered off again.”
Wardlaw sucked his teeth. He looked at his wristwatch. “They’ll be along any minute now, so I should get out of sight. So, come on, tell me: What’s your plan for getting a confession out of him?”
“I don’t have one,” I said.
Wardlaw jumped to his feet. “Wha’? Then what the fuck are you going to do!”
“I don’t know. Not much, probably.”
His brows came together in a knot. “I been willing to go along with you this far because—”
“Because you thought I was going to finger my own client. Sorry, Wardlaw. I’ve given you everything I have, but I don’t have a magic wand. I have no idea what’s going to happen. You think Tert’s going to drive up and see me and just throw up his hands and say, ‘Ya got me’? Or you think I’m going to invite myself to lunch where they’ve got guess-what on the menu? Or maybe they’re going to dispense with the daily dose and just stand in a circle and point at the killer? Huh? If they’re anything like the family I come from, they’re going to clam up around any strangers. To tell you the truth, I got hardly anything out of Deirdre the other time I was here, and when she sees me again and finds out my name
isn’t the one I gave her last time, she’s going to shut up tighter’n a tick.”
isn’t the one I gave her last time, she’s going to shut up tighter’n a tick.”
He leaned toward me, his face strained with anger. “What am I supposed to do, then?”
“That’s your problem.”
“You could blow a year’s work for me, Hansen!”
“I’ll do what I can for you, but I’ve got my priorities.”
He threw up his hands, his fingers hooked with rage. “Then I’m gonna put you under arrest! You’re not going in there and mess up my—”
“Mess up what? I’m just going to crash a luncheon party and get my friend and her baby out of there; that’s all the messier I intend things to get.”
“Shit, I should have known better than to go along with some chick Jack Sampler came up with! That asshole always was too full of tricks!”
Now, that was getting personal. I leaned into his face and roared, “I don’t answer to you and I don’t answer to Jack Sampler!”
Wardlaw’s face popped with surprise. His mouth closed. He said nothing.
My ears echoed with the words that had escaped my lips.
A flight of blackbirds rose from a tree and decorated the sky. Somewhere a dog barked.
I turned and walked a ways down the road. I felt the breeze against my cheeks. I smelled the first scents of spring. After a moment, I returned to where Agent Wardlaw waited. He was leaning on the hood of his car with both hands as if he had just collapsed onto it after a long run.
I said, “Listen, I want to jail William Krehbeil the Third because I am concerned that he’s got the bad habit of murdering his relatives, sure. But mostly I want him out of action because I don’t want him trying to fill Tom’s shoes. I’m sad for Faye—
really
sad—because there never will be a replacement for Tom Latimer. And I’m almost thirty-nine and not married because I keep picking men like Jack Sampler, who can only love a woman from the other side of the world where she can’t bite him. So I keep finding rodeos to ride in to keep my mind off my loneliness, and this is just the latest. Shit, I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this!” I wrapped my arms around myself and looked away in embarrassment.
really
sad—because there never will be a replacement for Tom Latimer. And I’m almost thirty-nine and not married because I keep picking men like Jack Sampler, who can only love a woman from the other side of the world where she can’t bite him. So I keep finding rodeos to ride in to keep my mind off my loneliness, and this is just the latest. Shit, I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this!” I wrapped my arms around myself and looked away in embarrassment.
Wardlaw grunted, “So this has all been a sham. You don’t have a plan to collar my guy.”
“Nope, sure don’t. I’m no help to you.”
Wardlaw gave me what he probably thought was a seductive look. “You could be good, Hansen. You could be one of the best.”
I raised both hands to my head in exasperation. “Wardlaw, get it straight! I can’t prove a dang thing! I’d need a warrant so I could exhume the bodies and analyze hair and fingernail samples for heavy metals, or something like that. And you know what? It’s finally occurring to me that I don’t have to solve—or resolve—every bit of chaos that gets tossed in front of me. All I really have to do is what’s good for me and for the people I care about. Small, simple actions, like making sure the baby doesn’t bite into a poisoned cookie.” I spread out my arms, palms up, and stared into the sky. “And that, Mr. Wardlaw sir, is the whole and only reason I am here!”
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