Flight of the Stone Angel (11 page)

There were no curtains on any of the windows, yet Charles Butler wondered if he had been misinformed. Cass Shelley’s house should be vacant, but wasn’t the dog a sign of residency?

The black Labrador had come loping from behind the house, favoring one hind leg with a limp. Some of his front teeth were broken and others were missing. Hanging from his graying muzzle and his ears were tags of flesh on strings of skin grown awry in the aging process. The Lab didn’t look directly at Charles, but turned his head to the side to study his visitor with the eye that was not clouded by cataract.

Perhaps this was only a stray, or maybe it was Augusta Trebec’s idea of a guard dog.

Though Charles knew it was the conceit of humans to see their own emotions in other creatures, he perceived a great disappointment in the dog’s aspect and his one good eye. Had this poor beast been expecting someone else?

The animal lowered his large dark head, limped back to the house and disappeared in the bushes at the rear of the yard.

Henry Roth was nowhere in sight. Charles looked at his watch. It was still a quarter to the hour when the artist had agreed to meet him with the keys.

He stood back to admire the elaborate woodwork on the porch of the old Victorian building. The turret rooms on either side had rare barrel glass in the windows. Augusta might be slack with her own house, but she had spared no expense in keeping this one in good order, even to replacing the red shingles and applying a fresh coat of blue-gray paint to the walls.

Charles walked up the short flight of stairs to the front door and tried the knob. The house was unlocked. Henry Roth must have come early and left it open for him. He stepped into a foyer of hardwood floors calling out, “Hello? Mr. Roth?”

No answer.

He stood at the foot of the staircase and glanced at a set of doors which should open to a wide drawing room. If he correctly recalled the architecture of this period, he would find a narrower servant staircase at the other end of the hall, and that one would lead from the kitchen to the attic. He opened the last door off the hallway and entered an enclosed, airless space. A window at the second-floor landing provided a generous amount of light, and he climbed past it, heading toward the attic, hoping that door would also be unlocked.

More light came flooding down the steps from a top-floor window. As he neared the final landing, he could see the attic door standing open to a darkened room. When his eyes had fully adapted to this space he could see that all but one of the dormer windows were obscured by trunks and furniture. A film of dust had been allowed to settle on every surface. He turned around to see that he had left footprints on the dark wood floor. Nothing had been disturbed in a very long time, but someone had taken care that Cass Shelley’s personal papers should be preserved. Clear plastic boxes were stacked up against one wall. Each bore a carefully printed label. At the base of the stack was a doctor’s Gladstone bag.

He wiped the dust from a box marked ‘Business Correspondence,’ and through the plastic he could see a packet of letters with surprisingly little yellowing. He opened the box and held the first letter to the light of the only clear window. It was addressed to Cass Shelley, the town doctor and parish health officer. And now he found the label for her journals on a lower box. Twenty minutes later, he was deep into her personal notes on Ira Wooley, the boy’s progress reports from the age of two years to five. She had also written lengthy impressions of his talents. It was nearly poetry, and in every line there was deep respect for the small child who had been her patient from birth.

Dr. Shelley’s appointment book had not been packed in one of the boxes, but rested in a plastic bag bearing an evidence tag from the sheriff’s office. Inside the cover of the book, he found a faded carbon of the receipt signed by the executrix, Augusta Trebec. He turned to the last entry, seventeen years in the past, and found Ira’s name. But the six-year-old was expected for a piano lesson, and not a medical appointment. So Cass Shelley was the one who had taught him to play. The entry was dated to the last day of her life.

Suppose Ira had witnessed the murder?

That would explain the block in his progress, the withdrawal and lack of articulation. With seventeen years of ongoing therapy his speech skills should have improved, not declined. Even after the traumatic loss of his primary mentor – there should have been improvement. But if he had seen her murdered, what then?

He held the sheriff’s receipt in his hand. The same thought must have occurred to Jessop. Had he interrogated the boy? Depending on how such an interview was carried out, that might have done even more damage.

He was so preoccupied with his thoughts, he never heard a sound until the footsteps were almost on top of him. He was turning to say hello to Henry Roth, but he found himself staring into a barrel of blue-black metal a few inches from his face. He never moved and scarcely breathed for all the time it took the sheriff’s eyes to adjust to the dim light.

The weapon was returned to its holster. “Afternoon, Mr. Butler.”

“I
do
have a letter of permission from Augusta Trebec.” Charles was reaching to the inside pocket of his suit.

“No need for that. Sorry if I frightened you.”

The sheriff did seem genuinely regretful – and relieved. He was working on a smile when his eye fell on the appointment book in Charles’s hand. Now his lips were set in a tight line, and he stood a little straighter as though he were bracing for a blow.

“I was expecting Henry Roth,” said Charles. “He was supposed to meet me here.”

“Henry’s probably out in the yard feeding the dog. He does that every day.” The sheriff was staring at the stacks of cartons, perhaps looking for other worries in the printed labels.

Charles stood up, dusting off his pants with his free hand. “So you took me for a burglar?”

“Light’s so bad in here. At first, all I saw was a shadow bending over the boxes.” Now the sheriff was pointing at the book in Charles’s hand. “Find anything interesting?”

“I know Ira had an appointment for a piano lesson the day Cass Shelley died. I assume the lessons were part of Ira’s behavior therapy.”

“You don’t need to mention Ira’s appointment to anyone else.”

“Does his mother know?”

“I never ran that past Darlene. Her husband was alive then. I asked him about it. He said he’d canceled the piano lesson. He had a falling-out with Cass. Said he was planning to change doctors.”

“But Cass Shelley didn’t mark it as a cancelation. She’s done that with other entries, but not this one. So you never asked Darlene if – ”

“I don’t think we need to mention this to Darlene,” said the sheriff, as though explaining something to a child for the tenth time and getting damn sick of it.

“Why the secrecy? The mother has a right to know. If the boy was here when – ”

“Well, maybe the boy was here.” The sheriff’s voice was on the rise. “
So what?”
Jessop pressed his lips together tight, damming up his words for a ten count. His tone was lighter, lower, when he said, “Mr. Butler, you’ve met Darlene. She wouldn’t like it much if she were to find out – at this late date. She’d be back in my office shooting off her mouth, and then everyone would know.”

“If Ira saw his doctor die, that would explain the problems with his – ”

“He’ll have more problems if you tell Darlene. No one in Dayborn would ever hurt Ira. Most of those people have known him since he was a baby. But I got all that trash in Owltown to consider. Ignorant fools might take it into their heads that Ira could be dangerous. You know how Cass died?”

“Yes, but Ira was only a little boy when – ”

“Ira’s a mimic, echoes everything you say. Maybe they’ll see Babe’s murder as another kind of echo because he was done in with a rock – just like Cass.”

Charles thought that was a bit of a stretch.

“All right, you got me.” Obviously, the sheriff was adept at reading incredulity. “Let’s say Ira’s a witness to an unsolved murder. Suppose one of the killers goes after him? Maybe more than one. Remember, it was a mob that stoned Cass to death.”

“I understand.” Charles paled at any possibility, however remote, that Ira might be harmed. “Augusta tells me you never established a motive for the crime.”

“Well, it wasn’t a crime of passion.” The sheriff picked up a box and stared at the label. “It was a quiet kill – more like an execution.”

How was that possible? “A mob killing – with no passion?”

Jessop tilted his head to one side and looked at Charles as though he might be a bit slow. “That’s what I said.” Disinclined to elaborate, he turned his back and perused the rest of the box labels.

Charles thumbed through the previous entries in the appointment book. He found another familiar name. “Babe Laurie was one of her patients?”

The sheriff seemed almost bored now. “Yeah, but Cass had to drag him in off the street to treat him.” Jessop stood beside Charles and glanced down at the page. Then he sat down in an armchair, suddenly appearing very tired. A cloud of dust rose all around him. “That was the day she discovered Babe’s syphilis lesions. I told you about the clap party that went on for three days. Babe was just nineteen, and I swear he had no idea what venereal disease was. He was an ignorant little bastard – never went to school a day in his life. I remember once, when he was maybe fifteen, Cass dragged him in to stitch up a head wound – flap of skin hanging loose from a fight. Nobody in that useless family of his ever thought to get him to a doctor.”

The sheriff’s hand grazed the Gladstone bag, and he smiled at some more pleasant memory. Back in the present and more serious, he said, “There were times when I actually felt sorry for Babe. I suppose Cass did, too. She was the only one ever showed him any kindness and didn’t have some more practical use for him.”

“So he’s not a likely suspect in her murder investigation?”

“I didn’t say that.” He eased himself out of the chair and walked to the stairs. “I don’t know that Babe was all that grateful. She had to chase him down to treat him, and he didn’t appreciate that much. Swore at her, as I recall.”

Charles walked down the stairs behind the sheriff. They had emerged in the hallway at the back of the first floor before Charles thought to ask, “And what brought you out here, Sheriff?”

“The prisoner broke jail this morning.” Jessop walked down the hall, heading toward the front door.

Charles kept his silence, reasoning that if he did grab the sheriff by the lapels of his blazer, if he demanded to know if Mallory had been hurt, it might indicate something more than a passing interest in the erstwhile prisoner. “You were looking for her here?”

The sheriff seemed almost sheepish when he turned around to face Charles. “Maybe you saw that old black Lab outside?”

Charles nodded.

“That was Kathy’s dog. I had this silly-ass idea that she might come back for him.” He shrugged and smiled. “Well, I’m that kind of a fool.”

Charles suspected the sheriff was many things, but not that. However, he had never suspected Mallory of harboring any sentimental feelings for dogs. She was compulsively neat, and dogs left hair on the furniture, didn’t they? But now he toyed with the ludicrous idea that the dog had also been expecting Mallory to come back.

“She’s armed and dangerous, Mr. Butler. So I’d rather you stayed out of her way if she does show up. And the jailbreak is one more thing I wish you’d keep to yourself. I don’t need these woods full of vigilante Lauries and guns. Wouldn’t be so bad, but half of ‘em can’t shoot straight, and they might wipe out an innocent tree.”

“Why can’t you just let her go? You really had no right to hold her.”

“Like I said before, she’s a material witness to her mother’s murder. It’s all legal.”

“So it was the mother’s murder, not Babe’s. I rather doubt that she could have been here when her mother died. Why would the mob let her go if she was a witness to the stoning?”

“I
know
she was here that day. She was supposed to be on
a
riverboat trip with every other kid in her school. But they crossed her off the boarding list as a no-show. Her teacher said she’d had the sniffles on Friday. So Cass probably kept her home with a cold.”

“Mallory could have been truant and elsewhere. You can’t know that she was in the house when the murder occurred.”

“Oh, yes I can. You need a guided tour, Mr. Butler. You can’t really appreciate what happened here, not looking at the house the way it is now.”

The sheriff opened the double doors to the drawing room and pointed to the side window. “The stoning happened outside the house on that side of the yard. That’s where the bastards left her for dead. But she wasn’t dead – not yet.”

He opened the front door and pointed down at the floorboards. “Seventeen years ago, Cass’s blood was all over those front stairs and the porch.” The sheriff looked down at the floor of the foyer now. “Where the old carpet used to be, there was a blood trail. You could make out her handprints as she dragged her body into the house.”

The sheriff moved over to the banister. “The blood trail led up the stairs – handprints and smears. She was mortally wounded, but she managed a flight of stairs. And do you know why? She was trying to get to her little girl.”