Colors of Blood, page 24
“God damn,” Freddy muttered. “Why now?”
Bart said, “It seems to me this is a South Carolina problem. A body—possibly that of Frank Dupain—was found there and Soire disappeared from there.”
“But,” I said, looking at Freddy Lombard, “You said Soire came up here with the grooms. The Feds go wherever the investigation takes them. No boundaries.”
“Yes, I told her to go with them,” Freddy said, “but the lads who rode the bus told Andy, my brother-in-law, that she did not get on it. They were pulling a four-horse trailer that day and there was some confusion that led to their being no room for her.”
So smooth.
“Still it began with Carolina, and that’s where it should be. She never came here,” Bart said, looking at me as if that were the end all.
With Bart smirking, Freddy said, “If you’ll excuse us, I need to grab a sandwich, do a little on the computer and get back to the track for the late breezes.”
Bart was on his feet, nodding, making his way to exit the parlor. Freddy hung back. “I hate to see you leave before you’re satisfied here,” he said. “Meet me at the Oklahoma Track this afternoon and I’ll show you around. I’ll leave word with Security at the Backside Gate. That’s at the track’s stretch run. You can ask your questions then.”
“Thanks, Mr. Lombard, but I’d just be following in the FBI agents’ footsteps. I’m going to have to take another tack—to use a sailing expression in equine territory.”
“Well, then—”
He hand-gestured toward the door.
“Perhaps Mary Celeste can help me.”
“How?” he asked, forgetting his engaging manners. “If the FBI is on the case, why do you need to be on it, too?”
“As I told you, I spoke to her guardians, they want me to find her.”
“They don’t trust federal agents?”
“I don’t know the answer to that.”
“Mary Celeste knows nothing that can help you.”
“I know that she and Evangeline Broussard were fast friends with Soire. I’m wondering if there aren’t others in the community who might know more about Soire and her life away from the farm.”
“Far’s I know she didn’t have one. Soire would not be hob-nobbing in town with Mary Celeste. She was too young for Soire to be paling with. Abigail and I forbid it.”
He’d just told me he knew Soire’s actual age. I said, “A fourteen-year-old often idolizes a twenty-year-old.”
He breathed in; good for him he was not going to feign surprise.
I said, “When did you find out she wasn’t sixteen, but twenty?”
“She told me a month or so after she began working for me.”
“But not Mary Celeste?”
Canting his head, he looked ready to be honest. “There was no reason to. Soire was a very private girl.”
He apparently wanted that statement to be it; satisfied to let me make my own prurient deduction, but that wasn’t the way it was going to be. “No talk; no gossip?”
He apparently realized that being disingenuous was not going to go unremarked. “None whatsoever.”
Not according to Webdog’s account of Annalie’s and his flirtations.
He folded his arms self-protectively across his chest. “My affairs are my affairs. I pay well to keep it that way.”
Let’s see: the nanny over the cliff; one female exercise rider missing, another dead from a fall? Hmmm. The suave man standing before me was apparently unaffected by the women’s misadventures—whether by their deeds or not. . Could he really be a murderer? If he was, he had found a way to keep the guilty reek from leaking through his pores.
His semi-amused lips broke into a grin. “I see by the look on your face that we shall not have an intimate moment or two before we go back to our routine lives?”
“How did you end it with Soire?”
“I did not end it. She disappeared just as Mary Celeste and that nosy-body friend of hers said. She jettisoned the boots and took off. I think the leaving of the boots was her up-yours farewell to our family. That French touchiness made her peculiar about sharing.”
“Why did you insist she was in New York and working at other barns when your boys said she wasn’t with them? You knew that lie had to come out.”
“I am telling you the truth. I asked Cici to go to New York with the grooms. That’s the last time I saw her. I thought she did, but once I realized she’d not gone with them, I kept up the story for Mary Celeste and that friend of hers. I thought they would finally accept that the girl wanted out for reasons unknown. Mary Celeste knows barn people are hinky and unreliable. They are itinerates by nature.”
I know he wanted that to be the last word, but somewhere in my head a thought tried to push its way in, but just as quickly backed out. “Mary Celeste would not let it be. She knows you too well,” I said.
He shook his head no. “Just as I know my daughter too well. She was fine until that dark haired savant started talking murder. She persuaded Mary Celeste to investigate the horses’ cemetery and the neighboring cemetery for God’s sake.”
“Do you have any idea who they thought killed Soire?”
“I think Otis. But that’s impossible. He’s gruff but he’s not murderer.”
“Did you know anything about Soire’s interaction with the Aiken community?”
“She liked to go to the convenience stores.” He twitched his nose in disdain. “I can’t imagine anyone hanging out at convenience stores.”
“Maybe there are no convenience stores in France and she thought it a novel experience.”
“And she liked country music clubs. She wanted me to take her—a real date. That was out of the question. These young girls, they have no notion of decorum.”
But you do, you bastard.
I asked, “Were you Eugene Roup’s guardian?”
“I was and am still responsible for his well-being while he works for me, so yes. He’s a half-wit, you know.”
You don’t hear words like half wit any more. “I’d like to talk to the young man.”
I didn’t quite know what to make of his ferreting eyes. He said, “The lads’ work is usually finished by five in the afternoon, but I think it best if you speak with him in the morning between breezes. The lads take a break then. Visitors are not allowed in the backstretch area unless invited by an owner or trainer. You’ll need to meet me for the breezes if you want to talk to Eugene.”
“See you then. Thank you, Mr. Lombard,” I said, heading for the door.
His smile was alluring. “It’s still Freddy.”
He let me out the door and I stood on the steps. I must talk to Marley and tell him that he is to bring up the nanny’s death with what he’s learned from the sheriff. I couldn’t find an opening.
Running the conversation around in my head, I slowly walked down the brick steps when Mary Celeste came from the side of the house. She put her finger to her lips in a shhhh motion. I got in my car and she slipped into the passenger’s seat.
32
“Hurry. Before they see us. I need to talk to you more,” she said.
I sped up but not so much that gravel jumped from under the wheels. “Will you be talking out of school?”
“Talking out of school? What does that mean?”
“It means you’ll be saying things your father and mother most likely will not want you to talk about.”
“I know their secrets, but I don’t tell people.”
“What about to Evangeline Broussard?”
“E? She can keep a secret as good as I can.”
“Has Evangeline ever talked to you about her mother?”
“Some. She said she found her.”
“Yes, she did.”
“She said you helped a little. Evangeline exaggerates, you know. She thinks you’re pretty cool.”
Unaccountably I felt a twinge of guilt for my feelings about Princess Pita. Actually, I admired her. “One day we’ll hear about her many accomplishments. I would appreciate it if you don’t tell anyone that you knew who I was before I came on the scene here.”
“E finally told me who Dennis Caldwell was, too.” She laughed. “Webdog.”
“You don’t need to lie if your parents ask—”
“Why would they?”
“Okay, now that we’ve established who I am in relation to your good friend Evangeline, what do you need to talk to me about?”
“Can you drive us to the ridge?”
“The ridge at the split or whatever you call it?”
“No, the ridge behind our farm. It starts way up from the Gush. It’s at the faults where Annalie fell into the creek.”
“So your nanny, Annalie Ericsson, fell off the cliff into the creek below.”
“She hit the rock faults.”
Ouch. This girl was so very matter-of-fact. I tried to remember myself at her age. I think I might have been like her—emotionless. Like most kids, we’re invincible. Things like falling off a cliff into a creek happens in the movies or on TV or to other people, and it’s best if we don’t like those people.
She pointed at a grassy lane that ran diagonally off the gravel road on which we traveled. The lane was not much wider than my car and I recalled how the farm workers, including Freddy, liked to drive golf carts all over the Carolina farm. Long grass blades were flattened. “Where does this go?” I asked. “Besides the ridge above the Gush Fault.”
“It goes to pastures we used to use when we had foals here, but none this year. We’ve got all the horses we can handle right now, Daddy says. The road winds up at Uncle Bart’s place. Then the woods.”
“Your Uncle Bart said the horse business was in decline.”
She shrugged. “He goes to meetings. He needs something to do besides lose money.”
“He and your dad could be twins.”
“Uncle Bart disapproves of Daddy.”
“Lot of brothers get sideways of each other.”
“Oh, turn here, then we’ll be parallel to the ridge.”
“What am I supposed to see at the ridge?”
“You’re a private detective, you tell me. Evangeline said you’re the best.”
“Besides herself.” I laughed. “I bet she said that, too.”
“She’s smart. See that swing ahead?”
I did. It was an old-fashioned tree swing with a white-washed tractor tire hanging vertically by a thick rope from a stout branch of an old gnarled red maple tree, making it impossible to see how someone got out on the limb to rope it since no ladder I’d ever seen was that tall. Perhaps whoever did the deed was a nimble arborist or the swing was just that old and grew with the tree. It was on an uphill grade and so would get plenty of height and width all the way to the edge of the ridge.
“Don’t tell me your nanny was swinging on that—out and over the ledge.”
“She liked to swing on it, but not high. Just, you know, in a summer hat looking glamorous when daddy or someone was around. I like to swing high. You go out high enough you can look down and see the river.”
In my imagination, I saw the young blond woman swinging happily at first, then frightened as a man in silver and scarlet silks pushed her higher—and higher.
“How did it happen?” I asked. “Her fall?”
“No one knows. I want you to figure it out. You know, by footprints, skid marks, loose rocks.”
It was rather rocky at the spot where she told me to park beside the swing. It had not rained since I had been in the area and the ground beneath the swing was dry. There were no fresh shoe marks, but a wide groove had been dug into the soil from years of them dragging the ground. On past the swing sat a wooden picnic table. “Has it rained since you came up from South Carolina?” I asked.
“Don’t think so. Daddy was hoping this summer wouldn’t be a drought. It costs a lot of money to irrigate.”
I canted my head toward the picnic table. “Does your family have picnics here?” I asked.
“When we were little. We never all eat at the same time any more, but my cousins, Uncle Bart’s jerk-head sons, bring their beer and dope up here at night.”
“His two boys go to college, right?”
“They’re home for the summer.”
“Where were they when Annalie went over the cliff?”
A wily gleam shone from her eyes like she knew what I had in mind. “In Albany, at a concert. They didn’t get home until after the police came.” She sounded disappointed.
“They spend a lot of time by themselves, don’t they, when your uncle travels?”
“I guess. They have girlfriends. They sleep over. Makes Mama really mad.”
“You’re mother doesn’t seem like a lady who gets mad.”
Mary Celeste focused on the swing and shook her head. “Mama’s sweet.”
I said, “Did Bart’s boys come on to Annalie? She’s not that much older than they are.”
“They would have liked to. They had a fight over her when she first came. Uncle Bart declared her off limits. It was her fault, too. She teased them. It was right here.” Her finger pointed toward the swing. “She was on it.” Then she shrugged. “But that was a long time ago.”
“When?”
“Last year. Last summer.”
She looked at what I took to be the spot on the ridge where Annalie went over. Mary Celeste appeared at the moment older, wiser and pensive. “She would be easy to push.”
“I’m sorry, you must have cared for her.”
“Oh I’m glad she’s gone.”
“Surely not the way she left you.”
“She didn’t leave me; she left daddy.”
“You don’t think she jumped on purpose, do you?”
“No, she had other plans, and I want you to find out who pushed her.”
“Why is it important to you?”
“It just is?”
“What other plans did she have?”
“You’ll be able to tell, won’t you, if she was pushed?”
“The police and the coroner should be able to.”
“They talked to Daddy. Mama was too distraught to talk. They didn’t talk to me. I could have told them some stories. Uncle Bart did not like Annalie at all. He called her a gold digger. But he didn’t tell the police that.”
A feckless family closing ranks.
I said, “The police will ask about friends and family quarrels, you know.”
“Forensics ought to find the clues.”
“Forensics tells them a lot, but not everything.”
“You know what I thought you could do. Get some luminol and come back after dark and spray all over here. I watched what all the police did. They didn’t spray anything.”
I was once again reminded why I preferred searching for children rather than working with children.
“How did they retrieve—get her body out of the river?” I asked.
“There’s a river road right under the cliff. If you get close enough to the edge you can see part of it. They took her out and put her in a bag.”
I walked over to where I thought it was safe and no further.
Mary Celeste spoke from behind me, giving me a chill. “We used to fish in the Gush Fault. I never will again.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said, backing from the edge. “When I was a police officer—Well, I saw a lot of floaters.”
“You were a police officer, too?”
Her beatific look of wonder intrigued me. “Now I know you will find out who threw Annalie off the cliff.” I smiled at her. “I don’t much like Uncle Bart, but I don’t think it was him.”
“Wasn’t he in Florida
“Not that night. He was here. He left for West Palm Beach the day after.”
“Tell me what happened. You and your mother had flown from Aiken, isn’t that correct?”
“Yes, Annalie was with us. We got here in time for Mama to get dressed for her meeting with the BET board. What a deal she made over being late. She didn’t have to be there except to sign the checks.”
“Okay so Abigail goes off for her meeting. What time.”
“She left at a little after one, I think.”
“What did everyone else do?”
“Unpacked and stuff like that. We ate lunch late and Mama said we were all on our own for dinner.”
“When did you last see Annalie Ericsson?”
“I don’t remember seeing her after we got here and went up to our rooms to unpack. I was going to finish the book I started on the plane. I love vampire stories.”
“Did she have lunch with y’all?”
“No. Hattie offered to take her a bowl of soup, but Mama said no, she was ill.”
“How did you know she went for a walk?”
“Mama said before she left for her meeting.”
“Did she often go for a walk?”
“Sometimes. She’s been feeling bad. She was at the doctor’s the day before we left. She had to go to one in Augusta.”
“When did your mother come home?”
“It was after seven. She brought back pizza and said she couldn’t eat any because of her touchy tummy.”
“Was Annalie around?”
“No, I don’t think. Uncle Bart came in. He and Mama had a drink in the study. Then he left to go home and I went back upstairs.”
“So nobody saw your nanny since you got to the house from the airport.”
“We knew she didn’t feel good, so nobody asked about her, I don’t think.”
“What finally prompted someone to look for her?”
“Mama wanted her to get my bed ready at eight. I have to go to bed at nine o’clock up here. When I couldn’t find her at places where she walked, I called Uncle Bart if she was there. She was not so he went out and found her in the Gush Fault.”
“Why would she go to your Uncle Bart’s?”
“She did sometime. They played chess.”
“What time did you call Bart’s home?” I asked.
“About nine o’clock. It was dark.”
“When did Uncle Bart leave for Florida.”
“Uncle Bart left yesterday on our plane when Daddy got in from Loblolly Farm, after, well, after he heard.”
“Where does your Uncle Andy live?”
“On Lake Street, near the track. He can walk there. He prints and sells tout sheets to the gamblers. He has a show with some other touts on television.”
