Jude Devine Mystery Series (21 page)

“I guess we’ll be wanting to ask Mrs. Epperson who they are,” Tulley said while Jude was taking photographs.

“Indeed.”

“Some of the males are just kids.” Tulley noted darkly. “Wonder how many of them got hit by cars.”

Jude shifted her focus to a man who still had a face, if you could call it that. The mouth was horribly twisted. And that wasn’t his only problem. She asked Tulley, “Does this guy look like a hunchback to you?”

“Sure does. And what’s up with his face? You think maybe he had a stroke?”

“Seems a bit young for that.” Jude called to mind Sergeant Gossett’s comments about birth defects. She had a feeling they were looking at a case of spina bifida and who knew what else. The guy certainly looked like a poster child for dental issues.

Tulley read her mind. “You’re thinking Mr. Snaggletooth?”

“Could be. And if he’s still got his face, maybe that means he’s still around.” She pointed at a white-haired patriarch at the epicenter of the painting. He was taller than everyone else and bathed in a golden glow, arms raised above his head. “Wild guess—Nathaniel Epperson?”

Tulley grinned. “I see how come you made detective.”

“Yeah, well, let’s find out if I’m any damn good.” Jude unfastened the Eppersons’ wide steel gate. “We’ll leave this open. I don’t see any livestock around, and we might want to expedite our departure.”

Tulley looked sideways at her. “You think they’ll do something crazy?”

“The deal in this type of situation is to take precautions, just in case.”

The approach to the Epperson’s house was a long, red dirt road. On either side, a few sad junipers eked out an existence amidst the pigweed and silvery scrub that clung to the hillside. An assortment of barns and outbuildings cluttered the front of the property. Beyond these lay a sprawling, whitewashed stucco structure with various additions that lacked windows.
L
-shaped, it extended back into what looked like several different dwellings interconnected by walkways.

“Well, it’s not Tara,” she remarked, earning a quick, puzzled glance from her colleague. “That’s the plantation from the movie
Gone With the Wind
. Just thought I’d flaunt my age.”

“I keep meaning to rent that,” Tulley said in a tone of polite deference. “I’d like to know more about the Civil War.”

“Uh-huh. Where are those binoculars?”

He reached into the backseat. “Got ’em.”

“Okay, take a look around and see if you can spot the search party. We could do without them showing up in the middle of the proceedings.” She halted behind a barn that screened them from the house, and turned off the motor. They got out of the car.

Tulley pointed north and handed the binoculars to her. “That’s gotta be them over there on that hill.”

She aimed the binoculars northwest. Sure enough, twenty or more tiny figures were fanned out across the hills a few miles away. Hopefully Nathaniel Epperson was among them, running his unwilling child bride to ground. With any luck it would be a while before the posse returned to the house. She gazed up at the sky. A delicate cloud cover diffused the sun’s harsh rays, a small blessing for the missing kids. Rain looked unlikely, and she wondered if the runaways had access to water. In this heat, they would not last more than two days if they didn’t.

They were about to get back into the car when a young, heavily pregnant woman emerged from the barn, pushing a wheelbarrow. She stopped and lowered her barrow at the sight of them, staring with startled deer eyes. Like most teenage girls in this neck of the woods, she wore a homemade dress down to her ankles and long braids bound into a bun at her nape. A wisp of snowy hair fluttered from these confines and tangled across her eyes. She tucked it discreetly away and dropped her gaze to a spot somewhere in front of Jude’s feet.

Tulley spared her the immodesty of speaking first to a man she’d never met. “Morning, ma’am. I’m Deputy Sheriff Virgil Tulley, out of Montezuma County, Colorado, and this here is Detective Jude Devine. Would this be the Epperson ranch?”

The girl snuck a disconcerted look at Tulley’s face. A handsome man was almost as much of a novelty in these parts as a woman in pants. And tall, dark, lean Tulley would make any straight woman look twice. Which is exactly what the girl did before blushing wildly. Jude dug her colleague in the ribs. An impressionable young female who mistook him for a Greek god was exactly what they needed.

Tulley caught his cue and flashed a movie-star smile when the girl glanced up again a millisecond later.

“Outsiders are not allowed here,” she asserted, but her tone lacked conviction, and this time she did not lower her eyes, instead gazing transfixed.

Tulley cocked his head slightly and managed a look of such unadulterated country-boy charm that Jude wondered if he practiced it in his bathroom mirror. This certainly worked on the girl, who babbled a breathless justification of her previous pronouncement.

“The gentiles mean us harm, so we are not permitted to talk to anyone that does not share our beliefs.”

“We’re not here to harm you, ma’am,” Tulley said softly. “We need to speak with your father.”

“My father doesn’t live here.”

“Do you know a Nathaniel Epperson?”

“That’s my husband.” Her voice held an odd mixture of pride and defensiveness.

Tulley shot a look at Jude, who refrained from saying:
Congratulations on being some dirty old man’s sex slave.
Instead she said, “Would you please inform him we’re here to speak with him.”

Silence.

“If he’s busy right now, we’ll wait.” Tulley hit her again with the matinee session smile.

The girl shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “He sleeps in the afternoon.”

“This is important,” Tulley persisted winningly. “We’d sure appreciate it if you’d let him know we’re here.”

“Before you do, could you take a look at this photo for us?” Jude moved a little closer, took Darlene’s picture from her shirt pocket, and held out it.

Without touching the photograph, the girl darted a quick look at it and made a tiny, fractured sound like a suppressed whimper.

“Do you recognize her?” Jude kept her breathing shallow in the face of the wheelbarrow piled high with horse manure.

The girl shrugged and slid a hand over her big, round belly. Jude guessed that by staying silent, she was avoiding an outright lie.

Tulley took another step forward and murmured like he was coaxing a timid cat from a hiding place. “It’s okay. We know you can’t tell us. But, there’s something I want to ask you.”

The girl dared a look at him from beneath her blond lashes.

“Did Diantha ever do anything to hurt you?”

Before she could stop herself, the girl began to shake her head. Flustered, she immediately suppressed the giveaway movement.

“She was a friend to you, wasn’t she?”

After a long moment, the girl nodded very faintly and Jude realized that by enabling her to remain silent, they could get some answers. On a hunch, she asked, “Is it your sister they’re out looking for?”

Another small nod.

“She’s what—fourteen?”

Again, an affirmative. This time her brow creased in worry and she looked close to tears. She rubbed the small of her back and Jude was abruptly conscious that they were keeping a very pregnant teenager outdoors in fierce heat. Shrouded in that all-encompassing pink dress, she had to be miserable.

“I think Mrs. Epperson would like a bottle of water from the car,” Jude told Tulley.

The girl gave her a grateful look. Jude wasn’t sure if that was for the water or the respectful use of her married name. She held out the photo once again, and said, wanting to gauge the reaction, “Diantha is dead.”

The hand resumed its caress of her belly, this time in an agitated tempo. She looked completely terrified.

“You didn’t know?”

She shook her head emphatically. Tulley returned with the water and the girl took it and drank.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

She wiped the excess water from her lips and vacillated for a moment. “Summer.”

“Summer, that’s real pretty. My name’s Virgil but everyone calls me Tulley.”

A nervous smile.

“How about if I wheel that for you?” He indicated the barrow. “Where are you headed?”

She pointed at a fenced-off enclosure twenty yards from the barn, out of sight of the house. They started walking, Tulley pushing the manure.

He said, “I grew up on a pig farm. Eleven kids in my family.”

A quick little nod. A platoon of siblings was obviously something Summer could relate to. She opened the gate and they entered the enclosure. Large piles of horse and chicken manure festered in the heat. Tulley emptied the barrow on the mountain the girl pointed out.

“I used to shovel the pig shit, so I know all about this. Some days I’d skip my chores and go hide out behind the barns to read books.” He grinned and Summer seemed to fight off an answering smile. “My ma always caught me and beat on me with the pig paddle.”

Also something Summer could relate to. She cast another look toward the house, then returned her attention to Tulley, transparently eager to listen. Jude kept silent, intrigued by her colleague’s instincts. He was finding a way to reach out to this girl. She guessed something in his own life enabled him to put himself in her shoes. It was more than Jude could do.

“Oh, boy. She whipped me good,” he said. “Beats me how she knew what I was up to.”

“Sister Naoma always knows,” Summer disclosed in a mumble. “That’s the head wife.”

“Bet you’re in a load of trouble on account of your sister,” he said ruefully.

Her shoulders tensed. “Mmm-hmm.”

They left the foul-smelling enclosure and headed back to the barn.

“I sure hope they find her,” Tulley said. “You must be pretty darn worried.”

“My husband forgave me.”

Jude counted to ten so she wouldn’t say exactly what she thought about that magnanimous gesture.

“Sounds like he’s a real fine man,” Tulley said earnestly.

Apparently taking that at face value, Summer shared, “People say he is one of the most Christlike men they’ve ever met.”

Jude didn’t recall ever seeing it mentioned in the gospels that Jesus Christ married a bunch of schoolgirls and ordered his wives’ tongues to be cut out. But what did she know? She said, “I need something from the car,” and left them talking about what a prince Epperson was.

Back in the car, she located the plaster teeth and slid them into her pocket. She knew Summer would instantly clam up if they pushed their luck, and she wondered how to broach the subject of Darlene’s “silencing.” The girl had to have seen it happen. According to Zach, the whole family was forced to watch. No doubt the example was intended to terrorize anyone who might be tempted to disobey rules. Summer knew she shouldn’t be talking to them, that much was obvious. Yet, despite her well-grounded fears, she was responding to the interest of a handsome young man as any normal teenage straight girl would. Summer was not so completely lost to herself that she functioned as an automaton—not yet, anyway.

Thankful for this, Jude closed the car door and strolled back toward the pair, formulating a plan. “I was thinking about your sister,” she said in a sympathetic tone. “I know you’re worried about her, but maybe it would be easier for you if they didn’t find her.”

Summer clasped her hands together. “Adeline will always be a problem.”

“Are you worried she’ll come back and make things difficult for you?”

A reluctant nod.

“Well, you have to think about your baby.” Jude glanced at the pregnant belly. “When are you due?”

“Next week.”