Cast a Blue Shadow (5 page)

7

Friday, November 1 9:00 P.M.

ON THE front steps of Martha’s dorm, her Amish friend, Ben Schlabaugh, said, “That boy’s not treating you right, and you’d better believe it.”

Martha stood shivering with the door propped open and said, “How many really nice things do you have, Ben? What’s wrong with wanting nice things?”

“You shouldn’t be smoking that silly weed,” Ben said. He buttoned his denim jacket, turned up his collar, and put on his black hat.

Martha let the door close a little and took a step back.

“When can I see you?” Ben asked.

“You don’t approve of me,” Martha said matter-of-factly.

“You know how I feel about you, Martha,” Ben complained. “Always have, and you know it.”

“You saved my life once,” Martha said. “I’m grateful, really I am. But that doesn’t mean we’re going out.”

Schlabaugh drew gloves out of his hip pocket, put them on, and slapped his palms together. He tipped his hat and said, “I’m not giving up.”

8

Friday, November 1 9:20 P.M.

IN A PEACH and rose evening gown, Juliet Favor descended the grand staircase to the foyer and was greeted enthusiastically by several guests holding drinks. She tarried among them, enjoying their attentions, as she inquired about each professor or administrator. On passing through the parlor, she picked up several more people in her train and moved casually, chatting amiably, into the spacious dining room. There, a large oval table was set for dinner. Daniel stood formally, immaculate in his tuxedo. With him were six Amish children, hired as servers for the evening. The children were dressed in plain Amish garb, denim trousers and vests for the boys, and matching dark plum dresses with white aprons and prayer caps for the girls. They were “pin” Amish, from an Old Order sect that eschewed buttons, fastening their clothes with straight pins. They lived on a farm adjoining the Favor property, across the road from a family of “Knopfer,” or button Amish, who held neither conversation nor fellowship with their backward neighbors.

At Daniel’s signal, the children took up positions evenly spaced around the oval table. Favor stood at the middle of the table, with her back to a large bay window. Floodlights outside reflected off the snow and cast a white, high-key light into the room.

The president, dean, and their faculty, almost all of them chair-persons of an academic department or program, found their seats by consulting place cards on the dinner plates. When Juliet sat, they all sat.

With her back to the west, Juliet had Daniel behind her, standing before serving tables that lined the long curve of the bay window. Harry Favor had added the window and its built-in tables when he enlarged the room some years ago so that Juliet could entertain on a grand scale. The food was laid out in chafing dishes on these tables. As the servers finished pouring wine and water, Favor lifted her glass to make a toast. The guests lifted their glasses with her.

“To a new era at Millersburg College,” Favor proclaimed. “To new things and new ways.”

Around the table, the guests collectively made their responses, some enthusiastically, others murmuring. As President Laughton rose to make a toast, Favor signaled for him to take his seat. He missed her signal and started to talk, at which point Favor said, “Arne, please. Let’s save that sort of thing for later.” Red-faced, the president sat down.

Annoyed, Favor cut short her remarks and brought business to the fore. “You will each find,” she said, “an envelope at your plate. These are my responses to your various funding proposals to the Harry Favor Trust Foundation. Some of you will be pleased, but, I’m afraid, in most cases, we’ve had to make significant cutbacks. You each have an appointment slip for tomorrow, when we can negotiate your cases individually.”

Favor stopped and watched as most of the guests at the table began to open their envelopes. She saw that only Michael Branden and Dean William Coffee refrained, and she smiled.

“Please,” Favor said. “You can read those later. For the moment, Daniel has prepared an excellent meal. Please indicate your choice of entrée to the waiter assigned to you.”

While three of the children served the first course, the other three circulated to take orders. Favor sat quietly for the most part during the meal. The several questions put to her about budgets she deflected adroitly, keeping the conversation light. On her side of the oval, to her immediate left sat Sonny Favor, who said nothing during the meal. On Favor’s right sat Dean of the Faculty William Blake Coffee, in his position long enough to know better than to discuss business with Juliet Favor over dinner. Next to Coffee, around the table to Favor’s right was Henry DiSalvo. At the right end of the oval sat Kathryn Aimsworthy, chairwoman of the sociology department and the anthropology program. Opposite her, at the far end of the oval, there was Walt Camry, chairman of the English department. To his right sat President Laughton, who was on Sonny’s left. Facing Juliet Favor from left to right on the other side of the oval sat Dick Pomeroy, chairman of the chemistry department; Michael Branden, history chairman and founder of the Millersburg College Museum of Battlefield Firearms; Phillips Royce directly opposite Favor; Carol Jenkins, chairwoman of economics; Elizabeth Williamson, women’s studies chairwoman; and to Aimsworthy’s right, Rebecca Willhite, physical education director. In all, then, twelve guests sat at the table with Juliet and Sonny Favor.

Food was served from the tables lining the curve of the large bay window. Light came from several candlesticks and from the window, reflected from the snowfall. Polite discussions in genteel voices were the rule. Juliet gradually withdrew from the conversation, the back of her neck and head giving her obvious discomfort. By the end of the meal, most guests knew to take their envelopes, make a graceful exit, and go home to read in private of their department’s fate.

Among the last to leave was President Laughton, who was politely rebuffed. Phillips Royce, who intended to stay, was also refused. As Daniel saw him out the back door, Favor went up the rear staircase holding the back of her head. Soon after that, the Amish servers finished clearing the tables, and they left together to walk home in the snow. And by 11:30 P.M., Daniel Bliss had dismissed the kitchen staff, plowed one more time, and retired to his quarters at the back of the property, in a ranch-style home behind a four-bay garage.

9

Saturday, November 2 7:30 A.M.

CAROLINE Branden was out with the sunrise, bundled head to toe against the cold, filling her backyard birdfeeders. At the back of the lot, near sheer cliffs overlooking a wide Amish valley blanketed in white, she filled two finch feeder tubes with black thistle seed. At several stations in the middle of the yard, she put out whole sunflower seed and cracked corn. On a pole near the kitchen window, she tied on a new strip of raw suet and replaced a cake of commercial peanut suet in a square wire cage. Pulling her bags of seed and other supplies on a green plastic toboggan with yellow rope, she trudged through the deep, soft snow to the door at the side of their full-length back porch. One at a time, she lifted the heavy bags up the steps, and stacked them inside, with the rest of her winter stores.

She brushed off snow and stomped her feet before crossing the length of the porch to a sliding door. There, she stepped into the Brandens’ family room, slipped out of her yellow-and-black hooded ski parka, and sat on the couch to unlace her high snow boots. Black snow pants came off last, and she laid the whole outfit out on the carpet to dry. Down to blue jeans and a sweatshirt, she put on fluffy green slippers and found her husband, Professor Michael Branden, in the kitchen, still in his blue cotton pajamas. He had a mug of freshly made coffee waiting for her at the kitchen table.

Caroline Branden was a tall, slender woman with long, light-auburn hair. Her husband, equally trim, was half a head shorter, with brown hair graying at the sides.

“No self-respecting bird is going to be out in this weather,” Branden remarked as his wife sat down opposite him at the large maple table, the gift of an Amish friend.

“Six kisses says you’re wrong, Michael,” she said confidently, sipping her coffee.

“I’ll take that bet,” Branden replied and smiled. “Get bigger feeders and you wouldn’t have to go out every morning.”

The phone rang, and he got up slowly to answer it, as Caroline remarked, “I like things just the way they are.”

As he spoke on the phone, Caroline watched her first customer arrive, a male downy woodpecker, with his black and white coat and a small patch of red at the back of his head.

Branden motioned her to the phone and whispered, “It’s Evelyn Carson.”

Caroline queried him with her eyes as she came up beside him, and he cupped the receiver and said, “Martha Lehman” as he handed her the phone.

Caroline took the phone, and the professor remained at her side. She said hello, listened, and said, “Oh no, Evelyn! Have you got her there? Not at the hospital?”

Then Branden heard her say, at intervals, “Of course. You’re sure she’s not bleeding? Why not? OK, keep her there with you. Of course. No. I’m coming down.”

Caroline hung up the phone and headed directly for her boots in the family room. As she sat on the edge of the couch to lace them up, she said, “Martha’s over at Evelyn’s office. She’s got blood on her apron. And it’s not fresh blood, Michael. I mean, it’s . . . I don’t know. Evelyn says she’s not bleeding. And there’s a Lexus with its front end smashed in, parked in the alley. Does Martha have a car?”

“No,” the professor replied, “but her boyfriend has a Lexus.”

“I’m going down to Evelyn’s office.” Caroline said.

“I’ll go with you,” Branden said.

“No. Better idea would be to call down to the sheriff’s office first and see if anything’s been put out on the radios about a car crash. Some kind of accident.”

“Take your cell phone,” he said, and turned back to the kitchen.

PAST a silent and deserted courthouse square, Caroline Branden turned right on the Wooster road, and drove north through plowed slush to a pink Victorian house south of Joel Pomerene Hospital. Here, several large Victorian homes on the left side of the road had been renovated to hold offices for doctors, lawyers, and other professionals. In an alley beside the pink house, Caroline pulled her Miata to a stop in deep snow, wedging the front of the sports car into a snowbank, next to a silver Lexus with its front end smashed into a light pole. Caroline got out of her car, brushed snow from the driver’s-side window of the Lexus, and saw a deflated airbag hanging from the steering wheel. She followed tracks through the snow to a side door, climbed the stairs to the second floor, pushed in through one of the heavy office doors, and found Martha Lehman sitting on a couch beside Evelyn Carson.

Pulling off her coat, Caroline sat in a recliner near the couch. Martha turned her head toward her old friend, but her eyes registered no reaction.

Evelyn Carson eased Martha Lehman back from the edge of the couch and let go of her hand. She motioned for Caroline to follow her to a small office bathroom, where she washed blood from her hands.

Taking a seat at a desk in a far corner of the office, Dr. Carson said, “I found her curled up outside my door there, when I got in around 7:00. She’s not hurt. The blood’s only on her apron, plus her hands and whatever she’s touched. At first I couldn’t get her to move. Once I did get her inside, she wouldn’t talk.”

Caroline asked, “Won’t talk or can’t talk?”

“This is trauma,” Evelyn said, “so it doesn’t matter right now whether it’s ‘won’t’ or ‘can’t.’ She’s mute again, just like before.”

“You got her through this once, Evelyn. She’ll pull through again,” Caroline said.

The phone rang and Evelyn answered it and handed the receiver to Caroline, saying, “It’s Mike.”

Caroline took the phone and said, “It’s not good, Michael.”

“It may be worse than you think,” the professor replied.

“You talked to the dispatchers?”

“Juliet Favor has been murdered,” he said flatly, “and an inebriated Sally Favor is being questioned at the scene.”

10

Saturday, November 2 8:00 A.M.

MIKE Branden climbed the snow-covered front steps at the Favor home early Saturday morning in bright sun, and heard Sheriff Bruce Robertson’s booming voice inside. Under different circumstances, the professor would have smiled, familiar as he was with Holmes County’s colorful lawman. But, the professor had not seen Robertson since late in August, when Branden’s involvement with the sheriff’s office typically diminished with the start of the fall semester at Millersburg College.

The preceding summer had been a peaceful one, a year since Robertson had nearly died in a fire at a roadside accident. Robertson’s long recuperation from the burns and subsequent infections had forced a hiatus, and, in the year and a half that he was out, the operation of the small-town sheriff’s office had been in the hands of Administrative Captain Bobby Newell and Chief Deputy Kessler. Several promotions had taken place, most notably Lieutenant Dan Wilsher to Patrol Captain, and the odd corporal here and there to sergeant. By the time Professor Branden had taken chalk in hand for the fall term at Millersburg College, Robertson had assumed full-time command again, keeping the peace among the many Amish and Mennonite sects of rural Holmes County, Ohio.

By Branden’s reckoning, in the year and a half since their last major case together, there had been, in all of Holmes County, only five assaults and twenty-two burglaries or thefts, a crime rate typical of a single day in Cleveland, some seventy miles to the north. Ominous, then, Branden thought in the cold morning light, that murder had once again found sleepy Millersburg. Even more so that it had invaded the repose of one of Ohio’s several dozen small colleges.

Branden crossed through heavily tracked snow on the front porch, took off his gloves, and pushed the front doorbell. As Sergeant Ricky Niell opened the heavy wood and glass door to him, Branden slid back the hood of his winter coat and stepped into the large foyer of the house.

Ricky Niell was dressed in a neatly pressed brown and black uniform, his black hair and thin mustache trimmed fastidiously.

Sheriff Robertson stood opposite the front door, at the top of the grand staircase, in a gray suit, with his red tie loosened over a white shirt whose collar seemed a size too small. He bellowed, “Mike, wait there!” and started down the staircase, careful to side-step yellow plastic number markers that had been laid in several places on the beige carpet.

Branden turned to Niell, offered his hand, and said, “Congratulations, Ricky.”

Niell fingered the sergeant’s stripes on his left sleeve and said, “Thanks.”

Branden eyed the insignia and said, “Well, yes. That too, but I meant on your marriage to Ellie Troyer.”

Niell nodded and smiled. He looked down at his shoes, and again said, “Thanks.”

“You’re going to hear from Caroline about this,” Branden teased.

Ricky watched the sheriff descend the last few steps and said, “We eloped. Thought that was best.”

“Yeah, I know,” the professor said, “but that didn’t give anyone a chance to throw Ellie a shower.”

Niell shifted his weight nervously.

Branden said, “You got out of the wedding, but now you’re going to have to sit through a couple of wedding showers. You and all those women. It might have been better to have had a nice little wedding and get it all over with at once.”

Niell chuckled and said, “She’s worth it, Doc.”

Robertson crossed the entryway to them and asked, “Who’s worth it?” He hitched his pants up and pulled on the front of his ill-fitting suit coat to align it as best he could.

“You’ve put on some weight, Bruce,” Branden observed.

“It’s nothing,” Robertson said, sounding annoyed. “Who’s worth it?” he repeated.

“Ellie Troyer-Niell,” Branden answered.

“Don’t I know it!” Robertson blustered. “She’s got me broke in about where I like it.” He pointed to Niell’s sleeve and added, “Did you see these sergeant’s stripes, Mike?”

“Yes,” Branden smiled. He moved away from the front door to look at an area that had been marked off with crime scene tape on the black marble floor. Eric Shetler, Robertson’s photographer, was kneeling there, taking low-angle photos of the small area.

“Some significance here?” Branden asked, looking back at Robertson.

“That’s gonna be where Juliet Favor died,” the sheriff said. “There was a fight here, and you can see where she cracked her head on the floor. Then, someone carried her up the stairs, and there are blood drops on the carpet, leading up to her bedroom.”

Staying outside the tape, Branden got down on his hands and knees and studied a small star crack in the black floor. If it hadn’t been marked, he would not have seen it. He got back on his feet, took off his heavy coat, and draped it over an upholstered chair in the corner of the large entryway. “What else do you have?” he asked.

Robertson led the way up the stairs to the hallway outside Juliet Favor’s bedroom. Looking in, Branden saw Coroner Missy Taggert and two lab technicians bent over Favor’s body, studying a small patch of blood at the back of her skull. Favor was lying on her side, head on a pillow, as if she had simply fallen asleep there. The covers were pulled up over her shoulders.

Back downstairs, in the front foyer with Ricky Niell, Branden asked, “Have you talked with any witnesses, people who came out, that sort of thing?”

“We’ve just started,” Robertson said and frowned. He turned to Niell and quietly said, “Niell, put one of your deputies on each of the doors. Nobody gets upstairs except us.”

Niell nodded, “Yes, sir.”

On reflection, Robertson added, “Look, Ricky, this one’s going to be a mess. There’ll be a regular stampede out here once word gets around. Anyone who insists on staying, you send around to the kitchen door in back. Have Armbruster take them all into the dining room from there. They can each wait there until we get statements. I’ll want to know what they’re doing here this morning. Why they came out. And whether they were here last night. How many’s that going to be, Doc?”

“Probably a dozen at dinner. Kitchen staff makes for more.”

“Get a list started, Ricky,” Robertson said. “We’re gonna do this one by the book.”

“I’ve got one for the staff already,” Niell said. He took a spiral notebook out of a creased uniform breast pocket. “The butler already gave me the staff on duty last night.”

“OK. Good,” Robertson said. “Let’s get Armbruster started making a list like that for this morning. The whole campus will probably be out here before the day’s over.”

Robertson said to Branden, “You’ll be an asset on this case, Mike, with so many college people involved. Without you, we’d need a program and a scorecard to keep all the players straight.”

“You might consider me a suspect, Bruce.”

“Get real, Doc.”

“Hey, I was out here last night like everyone else.”

“I’ll kick you off the case as soon as you screw up. But maybe you don’t like the idea of working a case during the school year.”

“Doesn’t bother me.”

“OK, then. I can use your help on this one.”

“I hoped you’d say that,” Branden said.

“Why don’t you and I go interview the butler?” Robertson asked. He glanced back to Niell for a name.

Niell flipped a page in his notebook and said, “Daniel Bliss.”

BLISS was seated at his small desk, wearing a trim blue blazer and matching bow tie over a white shirt. He made a show of rising slowly to greet the sheriff and the professor.

“Daniel Bliss, butler to the Favors,” he said formally. “Sheriff, I see no reason for your captain to have detained young Miss Sally, much less to have subjected her to a grueling interrogation.”

“Actually,” said the sheriff, “there is good reason to question Sally Favor, Mr. Bliss.”

“She has admitted to spending the night, nothing more.”

“We haven’t detained her yet,” Robertson said. “Not officially. We’re really just waiting for her to sober up, as I understand it.”

“I’ve told your captain that Sally will say nothing more until the family lawyer arrives.”

Robertson changed the subject. “I understand there were quite a few people out here last night.”

“I’ve already given your sergeant a list of the staff.”

“I’ll need a list of the guests, too,” Robertson said.

Bliss turned to his desk, took a handwritten list from the blotter, and gave it to Robertson. “This is the invitation list. I’ve been working on it for you just now. So far as I remember, everyone attended. Perhaps Professor Branden could verify the list.”

Robertson handed the list to Branden without looking at it.

Captain Bobby Newell entered the narrow room from a door to the kitchen and said, “Lawyer’s here.”

Newell was dressed in gray sweats, as if he’d been summoned to the scene from the gym. He was stocky and well muscled. His habit of flexing the muscles in his body builder’s arms and shoulders made him seem constantly agitated.

Branden asked him, “Didn’t get much from Sally?”

“No,” Newell said. “She’s still pretty wasted. Her girlfriend up in the back bedroom is the same. They say her mother was drunk last night, too.”

“That’s not possible,” Daniel countered.

Newell ignored the butler. “I’ve collected several champagne bottles out of Sally Favor’s room and elsewhere, and enough gin was served here, last night, to keep ten people drunk,” he told Robertson. “Gave all the bottles to Dr. Taggert already.”

“You’ve no right to search through people’s rooms,” Daniel complained.

“Oh, I very much do, sir,” Newell answered. “At any rate, the young lady is still inebriated. It’s going to be a while before we get anything coherent out of her.”

Robertson tapped the list Branden held and said, “Now, Mr. Bliss. For the record, do you consider that anyone on your list there will have had a motive for murder?”

Branden was surprised by the direct question, and from what he saw in the butler’s expression, so was Bliss. Newell instinctively moved a little closer and sat on the edge of Bliss’s desk, crowding the butler somewhat. Robertson held Bliss’s eyes and waited.

Bliss sighed as if his integrity had been impeached by imbeciles, and said, “Any of them.”

“And why do you say that?” Robertson asked.

“They all were taking cutbacks in their budgets.”

“Hardly seems a reason to kill someone,” Robertson said.

“There were to be wholesale changes in the disposition of the Favor estate. Mr. Henry DiSalvo was to come out here today to help Ms. Favor meet with each department head from last night’s banquet. There was to be another banquet tonight, with the rest of the academic department heads, and meetings with them on Sunday. Everything was going to be changed, even the children’s trusts.”

“I see President Laughton’s name is on your list. Do you consider him a suspect, too?” Robertson asked.

“He had more reason than most,” Bliss replied flatly.

Robertson stared wordlessly at Bliss, waiting for an explanation.

Said Bliss, “The college budget, as a whole, was to be reduced, and he and Ms. Favor had had a disagreement over leadership of the college board.”

Robertson eyed the butler for a long thirty seconds and said, “Thank you, Daniel. That’ll be all for now. I want you to stay in your room here for the next several hours.”

Bliss blanched indignantly. “That will be quite impossible.” The sheriff stepped eyeball-to-eyeball with the butler and raised his voice to say, “Stay here, Bliss. Talk to no one. Am I understood?”

Daniel sputtered a few syllables and backed up against the edge of his desk, displacing Bobby Newell.

Robertson said, “Captain Newell will take your statement now.”

Newell nodded and took a notepad out of his waistband.

Robertson asked him, “Sally Favor?” and Newell pointed toward the kitchen door.

BRANDEN followed the burly sheriff through the swinging door, and the two found Sally in a white terrycloth bathrobe, her short hair disheveled, hovering over a cup of coffee at a small round table in the corner of the large kitchen. Henry DiSalvo sat next to her in an old-fashioned three-piece suit. His long winter coat was draped over his knees.

As soon as he saw Robertson, DiSalvo rose to his feet, laid his coat over the back of his chair, and said, “Miss Favor is not answering any more questions, Bruce.”

“You’re an estate lawyer, Henry,” Robertson said. “Sally, from what I’ve seen upstairs, you’re gonna need a criminal lawyer. I’d be happy to recommend someone.”

“I’m sure you would,” Sally muttered, cradling her head. She took a cautious drink of her coffee and said, “Henry has been our family’s lawyer for twenty years. Besides, I don’t need a trial lawyer. Didn’t kill my mother, you see.”

“Don’t say anything,” DiSalvo said.

Robertson sat next to Sally at the table and said, “I understand you didn’t get along very well with your mother.”

“Don’t respond to that,” DiSalvo said.

Robertson, impatient, shot back, “We’ve already got that from her brother!”

“She’s not going to tell you anything more today.”

“My mother was a high-society phony,” Sally said, rubbing her temples.

“That’s enough,” DiSalvo said forcefully. “Sheriff Robertson, you do not have my permission to question my client further.”

“We’re going to talk to her, Henry,” Robertson said calmly.

Branden offered, “Sally’s a former student of mine, Bruce. Perhaps she could come down to your office later today.”

Robertson looked pensively at Branden, seemed to smile, and then said to Sally, “Would that be all right with you?”

Sally whispered, “Whatever Henry says.”

To DiSalvo, Robertson said, “If she’s innocent, it’d be better for her to tell us what she knows.”

DiSalvo said, “I’ll let you know, Bruce. Maybe sometime Monday.”

“It has got to be today,” Robertson countered. “Preferably this morning.”

“We’ll see,” DiSalvo said.

Robertson glared at the lawyer, and then turned to Sally. “I’ll see you down at the jail, later this morning, Miss Favor. Don’t forget,” he added, and stood up. “Better yet, we’ll all go in together.”