PW02 - Bidding on Death (20 page)

Gene
glared at him. “Call Sam Wallis,” was all he said.

Sam Wallis. Attorney at law. Luther stood, eyes narrowing. “Well, okay then,” was all he said. While ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is the ideal, demanding a lawyer when asked for an explanatio
n sort of negates
the ‘simple misunderstanding’ theory.

More dust and gravel and Helen Maguire joined us.
“What’s going on here?” she asked.

Luther lowered his voice, but we could still hear him. “Miz Rayburn here says that Mister Abernathy killed Rose Jackson and that he pulled a gun on her.”

“And Abernathy?”

“He’s just asking for a lawyer.”

Helen took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said briskly. “Get him down to the sheriff’s department. Oh, with regulation handcuffs if you please.”

Luther helped Gene
to his feet, untied my hasty handiwork and gave me back my
clothesline. He handcuffed Gene
an
d lead him toward the car. Gene
seemed to have lost that boundless energy that made him the county’s principal mover and shaker. He walked like a condemned man. At the open back door of Luther’s vehicle, he turned back to me and finally spoke. “Don’t you see?” he asked pleadingly. “It wouldn’t perk!”

TWELVE

We watc
hed Luther drive away with Gene
. Helen turned back to Craig and me. “I could haul you two in for statements,” she said thoughtfully. “But I think the sheriff’s department is going to be a madhouse in a few minutes. Can I trust you folks to
stay here and be ready to make
statement
s
when I get back?”

“We’ll be right here,” I promised.

She drove off and silence descended. “I’ll be right back,” Craig said. He limped off toward the vineyard.

“Craig!” I called after him. “Where are you going?”

“Be back,” he called back and vanished among the vines.

I went into the kitchen, where I found Paco trying to tunnel through the door. That would require a paint job, at the very least. Polly was pacing and whining. I gave everyone treats, and started the coffee.

I was just pouring myself a fresh cup of coffee when there was a perfunctory knock on the door and Craig came in. He was carrying a manila envelope and grinned when Paco raced up to him yipping. Craig dropped the envelope on the table and scooped Paco up.

“Miz Rayburn, you shoulda seen him!” he said. “I was out at the fenceline and he came running up yipping at me, then making little runs back toward the house and looki
ng back to see if I got the mes
sage. It was clear as could be that he wanted me to follow him. Damn, it was just like an old Lassie episode!”
He gave Paco an exuberant smooch on the top of his head.

“He’s definitely smart,” I said, and gestured at the envelope. “What’s that?”

“Take a look,” Craig said. “I found it in that box you gave me, under the books.”

I slid out the contents of the envelope and there it was, a certificate from the Nat
ional Registry of Historic Places
. “This is it!”
I said. “This must be what Gene
was looking for at Julia’s and Amy’s houses. And we had it all along!”

Craig placed Paco on the table. “Think he’s okay?” he asked worriedly. “That kick really sent him through the air.”

“But he’s light, so he wouldn’t land hard,” I pointed out. “But let’s see.” I felt Paco all over, watching for yelps or twitches that would indicate injury.
He seemed fine. And happy for the attention.

The back door opened and Jack breezed in. “Three new restaurants and two possibles!” he said on the way to the coffee pot.

Then he turned and saw us at the table. After a moment of silence, he said, “If this were a formal dinner, the dog would more correctly be on a trivet.”

I recognized the caption to an old George Booth cartoon and laughed rather hysterically.

“Dog’s a hero,” Craig said defensively.

Jack slowly lowered himself into a chair at the table. “I’m guessing I missed something.”

“Gene
Abernathy killed Rose,” I told him.

“And pulled a gun on Miz Rayburn,” Craig amplified.

“But Paco bit him and Craig and I tied him up,” I finished.

Jack cleared his throat. “Do you think you could, uh, flesh out this story
a bit? Why on earth would Gene
kill Rose?”

We heard the crunch of gravel and through the window saw Helen return. “Time for our statements,” I told Craig. To Jack I added, “Stick around. All will be revealed.”

“He’s all lawyered up and not talking,” Helen said, with nods to the assembly and a weary smile of thanks as I handed her a cup of coffee. She took the fourth seat at the table. “Before we get into the formal statements, can I just ask – what the HELL?”

“I know!” I said sympathetically.

“
And that last remark
as he was leaving here, was that raving, or is it another ‘chicken necking’ thing? Does ‘it wouldn’t perk’ make any sense to anyone here?”

“Okay, now that I figured out,” I said proudly. I picked up the newspaper and opened it to the illustration of the Beaumont Farm, AKA Passatonnack Gardens. “Look here,” I said
. “This is what Gene
planned to build on the property he bought.”

Everyone leaned forward and studied the map. I pointed
to the spot where the house was now and traced the route of the current
driveway. “But what if he couldn’t tear the house down? What if this big chunk right in the center is closed off from development?” I grabbed the grocery
list pen and drew
the house and driveway
back onto the map
and drew a line around them
.

“Oh!” Jack said, as enlightenment struck. “I see! It wouldn’t perk!”

“Well, I don’t see,” Helen complained. “What does that even mean?”

“We’re not on a sewer system out here in the county,” Jack told her. “We have septic systems.”

She still looked puzzled.

“When you put in a septic system,” I amplified, “there has to be a drain field. There has to be a piece of land that can handle the disposal and recycling of the – you know, the liquids. So before you can build a residence on a piece of property, it has to pass a perk test.”

“Short for ‘percolation test’,” Jack added.
“Whether or not a lot will perk depends on a lot of things, elevation, soil composition; it measures the rate at which the site can absorb water.”

“And without being able to use the center of the property…” I looked at the map.

“The house is on the highest point,” Jack said. “Considering the elevation and position of the river, I’d guess that without that bit in the middle,
you’d have to move the houses further down, and what you have left for a drain field is down here -
these lots wouldn’t perk. Certainly not well enough to get permits for house
s the size Gene
was planning to build.”

“So there we are at the auction,” I said. “And I’m just guessing here, but I saw Rose talk
ing pretty emphatically to Gene
, so I’d say he was just then learning that he wasn’t going to be able to build on the land he’d spent a lot of money on.”

“Still doesn’t make sense,” Craig protested. “Isn’t he a rich guy?”

But as we learned in the days following, ric
h is a fluid concept. Yes, Gene
made a lot of money and spent a lot of money. Huge (by Queen Anne standards) sums would go out and come in. But sometimes income and outgo don’t sync up, and t
hat was the situation with Gene
at the time of the Beaumont auction.

Jack reported on the
Latest Word from Buddy’s. Gene
had just made substantial money from the strip mall out on the main road
when Lacey Beaumont decided to sell up; the opportunity was too good to pass up
and
Gene
used that
strip mall
money to buy the Beaumont land. But he also had outstanding loans for the construction of the mall. To pay those back, he needed to get a quick approval on Passatonnack Gardens and get new construction loans, some of which would go to pay off the old ones.

Rose Jackson’s inconvenient memory threw a monkey wrench into that delicate balance.

Luthe
r brought me the news that Gene
’s guilt wasn’t going to hinge on my testimony alone. Once they had a suspect, the evidence was there, just waiting to
be collected. The trunk of Gene
’s car yielded blood stains and several hair strands that proved to belong to Rose
, from when he’d carried off the sad iron to toss in the river
.
State forensic accountants were taking the money motive apart and putting it back together until it ran like a fine Swiss watch.

We were having a kitchen table conference. Julia was there; she’d seen Luther’s car pass her house on his way here, and immediately set out in pursuit.

“Going to that auction was my idea,” she pointed out when she unapologetically horned in on us. “And it was my house that got broken into, so if anyone has a right to know what it was all about, I do.”

She poured herself a cup of coffee, and took a seat defiantly. I wasn’t going to argue with her.

“What I don’t understand,” I complained to Luther, “is how nobody knew the house was registered. Nobody!”

“Well, nobody but Rose,” he reminded me. “And it was listed in the National Registry. It just didn’t get into the county records.
Martha Dooley in Records was before my time, but all the old-timers are telling me what a scatterbrain that woman was.
And nobody here followed up
on the registry
because honestly, nobody cared.”

“What about Lacey?” Julia asked.

Luther shook his head. “Did you see the date on that Registry notice?” he asked. “1978. The application was submitted by Grandpa Paul. He was the one who was interested in the house’s history, called it a unique example of ante-bellum farm architecture, something like that. Grandma says she just sorta humored him but didn’t pay much mind to it. She remembers him filling out those forms and all. But the registry showed up six months after Grandpa died.  I asked her the other day if she remembers receiving the notice, and she says she sorta vaguely remembered it. Says she thought ‘huh’, and put it on the bookshelf.”

“If it weren’t for Rose’s inco
nvenient memory,” I said, “Gene
would have torn down that house and he would have gotten away with it. I wonder if anyone would ever have noticed?”

“Couldn’t he have torn the house down anyway?” Julia asked. “Maybe filed some additional paperwork, resubmitted his proposal to the board?”

“Maybe he could have,” Luther said. “I don’t know all the ins and outs of it. But once that registry became known, it would have added time to the process. Months if n
ot years. And time is what Gene
didn’t have.”

“So that was the motive?” Julia pressed. She sounded dissati
s
fied.

“To keep from going bankrupt?” I said. “To keep from being disgraced in the home where he’s been a big man his whole life? Murders have been committed for a lot less than that.”

“I suppose,” Julia said grudgingly.

“Remember,” I told her, “We’re come-heres. We’ve lived other places and though we’d like to stay here, we can imagine living somewher
e else. But Queen Anne was Gene
’
s whole world.”

By that standard, the whole world showed up at Passatonnack Winery for our Harvest Open House, just ten days afte
r Gene
’s arrest.
In addition to our usual wine crowd, most of the county managed to find time to visit us that day. T
hey seemed to think “Where Gene
Abernathy got arrested” ought to be a stop on the winery tour.

Amy was there, reveling in her new title of winery Sales Manager (which was a 20 hour a week job, manning the gift shop, filling orders, and giving tours and wine tastings). The remaining members of the Board were there. They were talking weightily about
a special election to fill Gene
’s seat; he’d submitted his resignation from the board about the time the blood was found in his car.

Everyone else was talking about the murder. I must have heard a hundred reenactments as I circulated through the tasting room with trays of munchies.
People were disappointed that they didn’t get to meet Craig. He’d made himself scarce, and took Paco with him.

There was talk of hero awards, for both man and dog. (Later, when I mentioned the idea to Craig, he vetoed it in no uncertain terms. He had enough medals, he told me, and ‘medals don’t buy beans’.)

We sold more wine in that one day than in any day in the winery’s history.