Hidden Heritage (3 page)

Estelle Simpson came up to the door. Her husband followed carrying a small suitcase. The two women hugged, wept, then Estelle led Maria to the sofa. Hugh Simpson removed his Stetson and held it across his chest. Large wet patches stained the underarms of his pearl-buttoned shirt. His oversized mustache drooped unevenly in the hot room and his tall body seemed too close to the ceiling. Deep pouches under his red-rimmed eyes said more about the depth of his grief than his mumbled “sorry for your loss.”

Estelle and Maria couldn't stop crying.

Hugh fidgeted and moved from one foot to the other. “Well, goodbye. Need to get some shut-eye. Got a big day tomorrow.” Then embarrassed by the crassness of words he couldn't take back, tears stung his eyes. “Shit.”

Estelle rose and gave him a quick hug. “Go on now. Try to get a couple hours sleep. We'll be just fine.”

“This never should have happened,” he mumbled.

Keith and I said goodbye and drove back to the feedyard. I leaned my head against the headrest. Keith kept his eyes on the road and I tried to recall what I'd heard about Victor's great-grandmother, Francesca Diaz. The legendary Francesca Diaz.

So Victor came from
that
family.

***

Sam waved to us when we drove up to the feedyard. Dwayne's pickup was no longer there. Sam wore latex gloves. I wondered what evidence he had found to collect. Our tiny county didn't have a team of criminalists on duty. Nor would we ever have the population necessary to sustain an effective crime laboratory. A couple of years ago, I would have said that was not a problem because there was so little crime. But our murder rate per capita has risen dramatically. We now compensate for our inadequacies by calling in the KBI right at the beginning.

In fact, I was thinking of putting them on speed dial.

“Something?” Keith asked.

Sam jerked his head toward a heel ridge in the dirt. “Maybe. I'll know when I compare it to Victor's boots.”

The print was slanted to one side. The stride was wide and veered from side to side.

Keith knelt and examined the prints. “There's blood here. Just a trace.”

Sam nodded.

“You saw something, Sam. When they removed Victor's body. That's why you had him sent directly to the district coroner. What did you see?”

“His throat. Someone tried to cut his throat. He didn't just drown in the shit pit. He ran for it and dove in to keep someone from killing him.”

“My God.” I pressed my hand against my mouth to quell the sudden surge of nausea.

“Jesus. Can't imagine anyone following him into it,” Keith stared at the filthy lagoon.

‘No, but I'm willing to bet they find a couple of bullets in his body, because he had to come up for air.”

“There's no way to trace other footprints or tire marks or anything else,” Keith said. “Not after everyone came to gawk.”

“Only reason I noticed those footprints is because they were made by a running man and ended at the edge of the pit.”

“And the throat.”

“I saw that when we turned him over, and covered his head right off before we put him in the body bag so no one else would see it. No one will look at him again until we get him to Hays and the KBI is there to observe.”

Exhausted, I stared toward the east and the bloody gauze of rainless clouds highlighted by the first rays of dawn. Soon the merciless copper sun would explode from the horizon, and beat down on our brave, struggling county filled with good people who knew how to outlast the devil.

We had always outwitted the damned sun bent on burning us up alive.

We were getting good at ferreting out murderers, too.

Chapter Four

Keith's voice woke me the next morning. I pulled on jeans and stumbled downstairs toward the coffeepot, then headed for his office and stood in the doorway listening to his questions. He was obviously talking to Sam.

“Anything?” I asked after he had hung up the phone.

“Yes. It's just as Sam suspected. There were a couple of bullet holes in Diaz in addition to that gash on his throat.”

“They were able to do an autopsy that quickly?”

He gave a wry smile. “Yes, they have a funny way of expecting the worst from out here by now.”

The KBI sends a couple of observers to our county right away for any autopsies of unattended deaths when Sam calls and even hints there might be trouble.

“God, I don't want to go through this again. But we can't
will
this away. We can't control something like murder.”

Keith glanced at me. I knew I looked like hell and he didn't look any better. Our jobs were killing us. “Neither one of us can keep up this pace, Lottie. I want us to get together with Sam next week and do some serious planning. I have some ideas for overhauling the department.”

“Yeah, well good luck with that.”

He laughed. “Stonewall Sam will come around. You'll see. He knows we're overwhelmed.”

***

We were interrupted by a car coming up the lane. I went to the kitchen and glanced out the window. “It's Zola,” I called. “Today isn't her day. What is she doing here?”

Zola Hodson is my cleaning lady. She had come in answer to an ad when I realized I could no longer keep up my household while holding a job at the historical society and serving as the undersheriff of Carlton County. Now I couldn't do without her managing the house.

“Forgot to tell you,” he muttered, “she's going to work for me a couple days a week.”

“Zola?”

“Yes. Turns out her estate work included animals.”

He felt my hard look. We talked most things over. Hiring Zola without so much as a word to me had a sneaky feel to it. As though he thought I might object to his working with a woman. Chagrined, I knew I had won a major victory. When we first married, Keith's sense of men's work and women's work was seared into his brain. It took a while to get him to forget gender and give competence a chance.

“That's wonderful. I'm just shocked, that's all. I shouldn't be. There's nothing she can't do.”

“You think you were shocked. She answered my ad in the
High Plains Journal
for a part-time ranch hand and of course, when she showed up, I knew there was no way I could do better.”

“You've needed more help for a long time, Keith. We've both needed to say ‘uncle' and get our lives straightened out.”

But I didn't appreciate his hiring Zola without a word to me. Did he think I would throw a hissy fit? He had run the same kind of silent maneuver last spring, when he became a deputy sheriff behind my back. I had been livid over the underhandedness of his move. It was a done deal, made by him and Sam without discussing it with me. Worse, I knew he had made the move simply to protect me. His wordless hiring of Zola brought back memories of my week of bewildered rage before I settled down and began to appreciate his quiet assistance.

We watched her come up the walk. Today she was dressed in light blue coveralls and work boots. Zola Hodson is the Eighth Wonder of the World. When she first came into the historical society office in a dazzling white shirt with starched crisp jeans and wearing black boots with silver tips that matched her silver hand-tooled belt buckle, I thought she looked like a model. She was whippet-thin and the answer to my prayers. I was drowning, going under from overwork. Her coal black hair was cut in a polished wedge. But it was her high-handed Mary Poppins attitude that set her apart.

She had nearly refused to work for me. In fact, I felt like I had to audition to get her to agree. She required nearly total control over my household including consent to call in outside persons to take care of a problem. Provided, of course, it wasn't a very minor plumbing or electrical problem. Those she took care of herself.

Slowly but surely, all the maintenance issues of our large three-story house were being corrected. Loose floorboards on the front porch were repaired. She found an excellent carpenter and a painter. When we'd first hired her, she'd said her English grandfather was an estate manager in Northumberland, the northernmost county, and he had let her follow him around when she spent summers there as a small child. Her great-great-grandparents had helped colonize the little town of Studley, three counties over from Carlton.

I opened the door before Zola could knock. “Come right on in. Keith is pulling on his boots.”

She stepped inside carrying a bouquet of marigolds. “From my aunt's garden,” she said. “If you don't mind the odor.”

“I love it.”

“I didn't have time to tell Lottie you would be working here for me a couple of days a week,” Keith called from the back porch. “When she saw you pull up, she thought she had gotten her days mixed up.”

“I like working here. It's a challenge,” she said carefully.

“You mean a mess,” I laughed.

“Not a mess. Please don't misunderstand me. It's that both of you have taken too much on.”

“It's not our nature,” I said. “In fact, it's making us both miserable.”

“I know that. I've seen the way Keith manages his vet supplies and the way you file material. You are both organized by nature.”

“It all came apart at the seams when we got involved with law enforcement. And that was accidental.”

She raised her eyebrows in disbelief and walked over to the stove and turned on the teakettle with a disapproving glance at my coffeepot. Although she had never commented on the contents, she clearly disapproved of my brew, a cross between espresso and battery acid.

“And how can a decision to become deputy sheriffs be accidental?”

“Well, when I was working for the historical society and collecting family histories, I needed access to criminal databases to solve a murder quickly before a young man's political career was ruined. Then later, when I became an undersheriff, Keith became a deputy to protect me. He was afraid I'd get hurt.”

Her large gray eyes widened. “And you both stayed in
why
?”

“I've stayed in just long enough to see a case through,” Keith said. “I didn't want to abandon Sam. Or my daredevil wife here.” He shot me his look. “We had just finished recruiting enough reserve deputies to put the department on a sensible schedule, until Victor Diaz's murder.”

“I understand Sam Abbot is seventy-six?”

“Yes, but don't underestimate him. He's the sharpest law officer around anywhere. He can no longer win footraces, that's all.” I was always quick to set people straight about Sam's abilities. “The KBI got involved immediately this time, though, so we will soon wind up our responsibilities in the investigation.”

“Good. It's best to stay away from that family.”

“Why?” Zola was not a gossip, and consequently, I put a lot of stock in any information she passed on.

“They are so unhappy. It's like a curse that hangs over them. They've all been quarrelling forever. I mean forever.”

“Over what?'

“Same thing everyone quarrels over out here. Land.”

“If I stayed away from families angry over landownership in Western Kansas, I would have to reconcile myself to a life of isolation.”

“The Diaz family's lawsuit is different. Truly. It's gone on forever. Suing and countersuing.”

“Over land?” Keith asked.

“I don't know all the ins and outs.” She went to a cabinet, found a vase, and began arranging the marigolds before she continued. “Have either of you read Dickens'
Bleak House
?”

“No.” I couldn't imagine what an old English novel had to do with a man murdered in the twenty-first century.

“At the heart of the book is a legal case that went on for generations.
Jarndyce versus
Jarndyce
. Same thing with the Diaz family. I hear they have all been suing each other or the government for time out of mind. My grandfather said things would start to die down, then some cousin would rile them up again.”

Keith was all ears. Then he glanced at his watch. “Guess we'd better start worming cattle,” he said reluctantly. I knew he would rather be in town telling Sam about this latest bit of information.

“Do you have everything under control for this weekend?” Zola was heading for the back door. “Anything extra I should be thinking about?”

“Just one thing. Keith and I want you to come as a member of the family. We insist. After the kids start arriving, you are not to turn a hand.” I smiled. “Let the girls take over. Needless to say, I'll run you ragged until then.”

“With pleasure!”

“I'll take over for Sam at about two.” I called after them. “What about lunch?”

“Don't bother,” Keith said. “We'll grab some sandwiches. You need to focus on anything the KBI discovers.”

Zola really was part of our family now
, I thought as I went upstairs and changed into my summer uniform of a blue short-sleeved shirt and knee-length twill shorts. But things were a bit complicated between Zola and Keith's oldest daughter, Elizabeth.

Zola and Elizabeth. Godzilla versus Tyrannosaurus Rex. Should make for a fun weekend.

Zola had majored in archeology at Montana State University. But after graduation, she answered an ad seeking a property manager for the estate of a wealthy film family. She left for California at once and landed the job. One day after she started working for me, she drove up in a brand new van and when I stood there admiring it, she said she was paying for it through her royalties.

She laughed at my astonished look, then explained that she had created a comprehensive checklist of estate managing techniques, organized all her routines, then wrote a book. It was exquisitely detailed down to applying the right fertilizer for irises, and the right way to polish silver.

It became an immediate best seller among a rather elite circle of readers. Frustrated actors and directors now had a tool by which they could judge the competence of their help.
Zola's Way
was the bible for property management.

I'd never asked her why she hadn't applied her degree in archeology to more lofty employment, but Elizabeth did. My ste-daughter was immediately suspicious that any woman with a superior education would stoop to doing the kind of work most people considered blue-collar.

Elizabeth hadn't phrased it quite that blatantly, but she could have and usually did. Zola crisply informed Elizabeth that she was doing the work she loved, and that she found digging for bones under a hot sun quite boring.

When Keith married me—a woman twenty years younger—Elizabeth didn't hold back her outrage. Of Keith's four children, she is the only one who has not overcome negative feelings toward me. She sometimes refers to herself as “the suicide's daughter” like she's contaminated with defective genes. I think she hopes—prays—the wind and the isolation out here will get to me, too, but all her yearning is misspent.

For a historian, Kansas is the mother lode, and for someone who lives in Western Kansas, it's paradise. No one else wants to write about this region of the state, yet it's filled with enough people and stories to fill a million books.

So I gritted my teeth. No, darling stepdaughter, I'm staying. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. And yet sometimes I find myself loving the contradictions of Elizabeth, this turbo-charged girl, whose own education as a lawyer is not used to convict corporate scoundrels but to tackle horrendous women's issues.

All of Keith's children would be home for the Fourth of July parade. It was Gateway City's biggest event. Keith and I have been married eight years and although my sister Josie had been around Keith's three daughters, Elizabeth, Bettina, and Angie, her exposure to his only son, Tom, consisted of a hasty “hello, pleased to meet you” when he had been passing through.

Tom is a geologist who spends a lot of time overseas searching for oil. He's an independent contractor and if there ever were an adored older brother, he's it! His three sisters flock around him like they've never heard of women's lib. They court his approval by bringing him beers, baking him cookies. If darning socks were still in vogue, they would do it.

The first time he showed up after Keith and I were married, we both stopped in our tracks and stood studying each other. He's the second-born after Elizabeth and only a couple of years younger than I. For an instant, I thought he looked like a red-headed reincarnation of the ill-fated movie star, Jimmy Dean. Tom had stood at the edge of the patio door, carrying a duffel bag and his guitar case. I'd heard all about him. It was Tom this, and Tom that. I knew he had Keith's musical ability and also his father's carefulness. But his pictures couldn't capture the something else. A winsome achy-breaky heart that came from what I knew about his mother's legacy.

Although any mention of Keith's first wife's death was taboo, once in a while her life comes up in the form of “Mom used to string popcorn for our Christmas tree…. Mom used to braid my hair…. Mom used to embroider. Have you seen her handwork?”

It would have been unthinkable to live anyplace but Fiene's Folly—as our homestead is called—but after so many “mom used to's,” one night I fled to the patio. Keith followed and put his arms around me and patted me like I was an injured little animal. He didn't speak and I didn't explain. I sat there seething until I got a grip.

But it was only through Tom that I had a glimpse of this hidden side of Regina. Tom and the few paintings she had actually finished. She had a unique style yet one reminiscent of impressionists. Tom was an engineer grounded in science, but there was a brooding quality about him that unsettled women. Made them want to fix him.