The Fruit Cellar by Barbara Owens

© 1997 by Barbara Owens


“I keep being drawn to write about small towns,” says California resident Barbara Owens, “perhaps because I was raised in one. I can’t seem to resist burying volatility under those seemingly placid surfaces.” In her new story Ms. Owens reaches back eighty years, to a time when a small town really was, usually, a safe and placid place.



The bones were unearthed on a July afternoon so hot that nothing alive moved if it didn’t have to. Even trees drooped, stoic, waiting for a breeze that might or might not come.

Sheriff Carroll Farmer slid gingerly onto the vinyl-covered seat of his county car, cursing softly at the need to haul himself out into the open. But one of the honchos brought in to run the new automobile assembly plant was putting in a swimming pool, and the excavation crew had uncovered human bones. Resigned, Farmer adjusted his sunglasses and kicked the A/C into high.

The small town of Wayside cooked under its blue metal sky. Its rolling southern fringe, where the new upscale development lay, looked deceptively green and cool under tall old trees. The house in question was an imposing white brick, and near the foot of its sweeping back lawn was a large raw hole. The sheriff recognized all the work crew lounging in the shade. Laid out carefully on a tarp in the grass was a display of yellowish bones. Farmer and the crew foreman, Don Anderson, squatted beside them, wiping sweat.

“Well, they’re not recent, they’re old,” Farmer observed with some relief.

Anderson grunted assent. “Been there for years, looks like. Didn’t find any clothing. Prob’ly rotted away.”

Without touching it, the sheriff studied a skull crusted with dirt. “Not a whole body here.”

“I shut down soon as the scoop brought these up,” Anderson said. “Called you right away.”

“You did the right thing.”

“You suppose we’ve hit on an old cemetery?”

“I tend to doubt it,” Farmer said. “This was all King land out here. They’re buried in town.”

He took a pen from his shirt pocket and inserted it into an eyehole, tipping the skull slightly on its side. There was a round opening near its base.

“I’m going to call the coroner, Don. See that hole? What do you think?”

Anderson squinted. He whistled softly. “I think it looks like a bullet hole.”

“I think so, too. We’d better get Doc Ebenshaw out here before we do anything else.”

He radioed the coroner’s office from his car. Then he walked across the back lawn to introduce himself to the woman watching anxiously from the patio. Her name was Thorne, Virginia Thorne, she told him. She was his age, fortyish, a soft blonde with a worried frown.

“The county coroner’s on his way, Mrs. Thorne. I’ll know more once he takes a look. We haven’t got a complete body yet so we may have to do more digging. I hope you understand this is police business now.”

She sighed. “Just so it doesn’t take too long. My husband will be disappointed if he doesn’t get his pool in as soon as possible.”

Farmer gave her a smile. “We’ll try not to inconvenience you more than we have to.”

“I understand,” she said, trying to look like she meant it. “I guess I’ll just have to get used to the Midwest. We don’t usually find bodies in our backyards where I come from.”

The sheriff expanded his smile and made it kindly. “Well, ma’am, I’ve lived here all my life and this is the first I’ve found. I don’t expect it to happen again.”

Doc Ebenshaw arrived, pushing his barrel belly before him as he strolled across the lawn to the pool site, pungently assessing the weather with every step. He examined the bones for several long minutes.

“I’d say fifty years, maybe longer, they’ve been in the ground,” he announced finally. “I’ll have to have them tested before I can venture more. But that’s a bullet hole in the back of the skull for sure, so we’re talking murder. You’re not going to try to solve it, are you?”

“Pretty late in the day, I guess,” Farmer agreed. “But I’ll have to take a crack at it, won’t I? That’s my job.”

Ebenshaw snorted. “It’ll be interesting to see how you plan to go about it.” He wrapped the bones carefully in the tarp and tucked them under his arm. “I’m off. I’ll let you tell the lady of the house that we’ll be digging up most of her backyard.”

Farmer glanced across at Virginia Thorne waiting impatiently on her patio. No more kindly smiles. It was time to put on his law enforcement hat.


Dee Farmer had prepared a supper of cold fried chicken, potato salad, and homegrown sliced tomatoes. They ate it in the cool of the screened back porch where Carroll popped a beer to toast his wife’s wisdom and saintly soul.

“Just tell us about the bones,” Dee said. “Everyone’s talking about them. We’re dying to hear.”

The life of a sheriff in a small town was usually a quiet one. People there were the kind who married high-school sweethearts, as he and Dee had, raised their children, went to church on Sundays, and managed the best they could. Dee often joked they were poster images for the family values that Washington politicians treasured so. Even so, Carroll rarely discussed his work at home. But this was an ancient and harmless event. It wouldn’t hurt to share it.

Raney poked his arm. “Come on, Dad, tell. All the kids want to see those bones.”

He grinned at her. “You included? They’re just dirty old bones.”

“No, I don’t want to see them but I’d like to know what happened. I heard there was a hole in the head the size of a fist.” Raney Farmer had turned thirteen that summer, red-haired and freckled like her mother but with the Farmer soft brown eyes. With her older brother off at college, she and her father were getting to know one another better this year. So far he liked everything he learned. It was a little sad for him to watch his skinny-legged tomboy beginning to look like a woman. Life was knocking at her door and he sometimes found himself wondering if he and Dee had done everything they could to prepare her for it. But Raney surprised him more often than not with a maturity of outlook that seemed to come from nowhere. He guessed maybe she was going to do all right.

“Well, if you’ve got a fist the size of a teeny bullet then I guess you heard right,” he teased her.

Her eyes popped. “A bullet hole? No kidding! What else?”

With the reminder that nothing she heard was to travel outside the house walls, he told them everything he knew, next to nothing.

“And I don’t know how much more we’ll ever find out,” he finished over strawberry shortcake. “It happened too long ago.”

“I’ll bet love was part of it,” Raney said. “There’s a doomed romance in it somewhere.” She was heavily involved with tragic loves that summer, another sure sign she was growing up.

“I tend to doubt that,” Farmer answered indulgently. “If it was on Vern King’s land it was probably more business-related than love.”

“How come?”

“How much do you know about the old King ranch, Raney?”

“Just that one man used to own like most of the county, and that some of our family worked for him.”

“That’s right. Only almost everybody worked for him in one way or another. His spread was several thousand acres. They say he ran it like a king, too. Hard man to work for, hard man to do business with. He liked to get people indebted to him so he’d have the upper hand. His place wasn’t a real ranch like they have out west. It probably got its name because of its size, but it was quite a place. Had a dairy herd, field crops, chickens, a truck farm, orchards. If folks wanted to buy anything or get a job, Vern was the man they had to go to. The town of Wayside proper was just a bump in the road back then. Few little hardscratch farmers. The King ranch was about all there was.”

“Pretty easy to take advantage,” Dee observed.

“Well, he did, didn’t he? You’ve heard the stories same as me. It was my great-grandmother Dodd who was raised there,” he told Raney. “In the early nineteen hundreds. She grew up in one of Vern’s tenant houses.”

“And the bones go back that far?” Raney asked.

Farmer pushed away from the table. “Don’t know yet.” He reached out and gently pinched her sunburned nose. “I’ll keep you informed, okay?”


On the following morning, the sheriff was visited bright and early by Roger Thorne. Thorne was not pleased that his new pool would be delayed.

“Is there anything I can do about this?” he inquired. “Workmen were out there at first light today, digging all over the place. You people are ruining my yard.”

“Believe me, I’m sorry to trouble you,” Farmer assured him. “We’ll be out of your way as soon as we can.”

He knew it was an inconvenience, both for himself and for the Thornes. A lot of fuss over very old bones.

He got a mid-morning call from the coroner’s office. Preliminary testing suggested the bones were male, adult, probably close to six feet in height. At least fifty years old, possibly closer to one hundred. Ebenshaw would keep him posted.

It was a slow day for law enforcement, so Farmer drove back out to the site after lunch. Another steam bath had set in, humidity plastering clothes to skin and making it hard to breathe. When Farmer arrived, ducking under the yellow police tape, the crew was stretched out in the grass under the trees. They were all working barechested. The hole was significantly wider and deeper, and another tarp held new bones. Don Anderson rose to greet him.

“Tried to call you but your office said you were already on the way. Got a surprise for you.”

“What’s up?”

“Come over here.” The two men stood over the tarp looking down at the yellowed bones. Anderson pointed. “See that one? Unless the guy we dug up yesterday had three legs, we’ve got part of another body. That’s a femur, and we’ve already got two of those.”

“My God,” Farmer said. “Maybe we have gotten into an old cemetery or something. Even a murder victim had to be buried somewhere.”

“Then where are the coffins?” Anderson reasoned. “We’re coming across a few rotten pieces of wood, but they’re not right for a coffin. Come on. They’re piled over here.”

Farmer followed him to take a look. “You’re right. That’s heavy timber, more like support beams or something.”

“That’s what I thought,” Anderson agreed.

“Okay, I’ll give Ebenshaw another call. Better look into the court records, too, see if I can find some trace of this guy.”

There were no signs of Virginia Thorne that day. She was probably already packing to return to more gentle surroundings.


Raney started in as soon as they sat down to eat. “Know what I did today? I went to the library and Mrs. Beecham showed me a book that the county historical society wrote a long time ago. It’s all in there, Dad, all about the Kings. Lots about them, because they were so important, I guess.”

“Yes, they were. Important and powerful.”

“There were pictures, too, of the ranch and the people. That place was big! But there were only the two of them — Vern and his daughter, Elizabeth. The book said Elizabeth’s mother died when she was born. I saw a wedding picture of Elizabeth and a man named Wesley Burdette. She wasn’t much to look at, but she sure was rich. I’ll bet that’s why he married her, huh?”

“As a matter of fact, I seem to remember there was talk of that,” her father acknowledged. “But that could have been all it was, talk. I don’t know much about this Burdette.”

“That’s because he died young. The book said he was hurt in an accident not very long after they got married. Then he fingered for a while and died. That’s what the book said, ‘fingered.’ ”

Farmer eyed his daughter’s flushed face. “Hey, babe,” he said gently, “you’re getting pretty caught up in this, aren’t you?”

“Sure. It’s fun. A real murder in Wayside, even if it happened in the olden days.”

“Well, since I expect you’ll hear it anyway, I might as well tell you. The men digging out there found parts of another body today.”

His wife stopped eating with her fork halfway to her lips. “Another? Was it murdered, too?” Raney grinned wide.

“Don’t know yet. Have to find the rest of it. But this is getting a little weird. They found some rotting timbers, too, and that’s got roe thinking. Looked like the kind of shoring my grandmother had in her fruit cellar.”

Raney leaned forward. “What’s a fruit cellar?”

“A lot of the old-time houses around here had them. That was before refrigeration, kid. You dig a room underground, usually under a building, just dirt packed solid. Then you store fruits and vegetables down there. The building on top protects it from the sun and the cool dirt underground keeps things fresh longer. But you’d have to shore it up to keep it from caving in, and that’s what those pieces of wood reminded me of today. Besides, who’d tear down a building and bury the lumber? Now I remember when the big house was still standing; it was just about where the Thornes’ house is now. As much produce as Vern King had on that place, he must have needed a fruit cellar. So it seems to me that might be an easy place to bury a body, under a plain dirt floor.”

Raney laughed. “I knew you’d figure things out. Two bodies — cool! Now all we have to know is who did what to who?”

Farmer glanced helplessly at his wife. She shrugged. It was hard to stop Raney once she got started.


Over the next several days the sheriff went to the library and pored over the historical society’s book. The Kings and their ranch occupied a good portion of it. Vern was pictured in the hayfields, staring dourly at the camera from atop a horse, and posed stiffly in a rigid-backed chair on the big house’s front porch. Elizabeth and Wesley Burdette posed for a wedding portrait. Wesley had a round face and bushy moustache; Elizabeth was a younger version of the big-boned, plain woman he remembered from his youth. As Raney observed, not much to look at. One picture drew his special attention — a group of men standing in front of a shed sitting under a huge catalpa tree. On one side of the shed a slanted doorway could be seen at the base of the wall, leading underground. He’d bet his hat it was a fruit cellar. Didn’t prove a thing, but there it was.

Nothing turned up in the county court records regarding a murder or trial connected to the King ranch during that period. Nobody local reported missing. The trail was getting colder all the time.

Doc Ebenshaw called to say the bones had to be between seventy-five and one hundred years old. It was a man, all right, and he added a surprise. That third femur might belong to a woman, and he’d wager she was a young one. He’d be back in touch.

One morning Farmer was buttonholed by Roy Cullen on his way out of the office. Cullen had been Wayside’s only banker back in the old days. Retired now, he was still sharp in his late seventies, and after inquiring after Farmer’s family, he said, “I hear you’ve got a problem on your hands with those bones found out on the old King ranch.”

“Afraid I have,” Farmer said. “It all happened too long ago.”

“You know, I’ve been remembering some of the stories my Uncle John told me when I was a boy. He worked out there for years, you know. I recall a man named Murphy he told me about. Came through here about nineteen ten, nineteen fifteen, and hired on with Vern. Lots of fellas did that back then, worked a season or two and drifted on. Uncle John said Vern took to Murphy and pretty soon set him up as a kind of foreman. He was a good worker, Uncle John said, but slick as a snake. Some of the men thought he was stealing from Vern — tools, money, anything he could get his hands on — but no one said anything. They figured Vern deserved it. Well sir, one morning Murphy simply wasn’t around anymore. Vern said he’d moved on and that’s all there was to it. But my uncle always kind of wondered if Vern caught Murphy at his game and did away with him. Uncle John said Vern always swore he’d kill any man he caught cheating him and to hell with the law.”

“You don’t say,” Farmer said.

“It’s only a story, you understand.”

“Anyone know where this Murphy came from?”

“Not that I know. Things were different back then, Carroll. People could come and go and not leave a trace.”

“Doesn’t give me much to go on, does it?”

The older man smiled. “That’s a fact. But I thought I’d tell you, maybe set your mind at ease. Could be whoever those bones belong to, it isn’t to one of ours.”

“You know,” Farmer said, “I only remember the place when it was going downhill. Wish I’d seen it in its day.”

“It was a big operation. You had family out there, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, my great-grandma Berniece Dodd worked in the kitchen. Her little sister Callie did, too, until Callie left town. I never heard too much about it, though. Just that it was a hard life.”

Cullen nodded. “It was that. Vern was hard on everyone except Elizabeth, and he spoiled her to death. Gave that girl everything she wanted without batting an eye. Never gave her any common sense, though. After he died she didn’t have a notion as to how to run the place. I don’t know how many times I called her in to the bank and tried to give her advice on how to handle her money. This was when she was older and was letting the place go piece by piece. But Elizabeth never listened to anyone. Went her own way until it was all gone, and that’s why she’s where she is today.” Farmer said, “Somebody told me the man she married died young.”

“Wesley Burdette. It was common knowledge he married her for the money. Uncle John said she had her head set on marrying him, though, so I suppose old Vern took care of it. Wesley fell off a haywagon. He might have been a son-in-law but Vern saw to it that he earned his keep. They hadn’t been married but a year or so when it happened. Wagon ran over him and mashed him up pretty good. Paralyzed him from the neck down. He hung on a few years after, Elizabeth waiting on him hand and foot. Not a good way for a man to go. I don’t believe Elizabeth ever got over it.”

“Well,” the sheriff said, “thanks for telling me, Roy. Gives me something to go on.”

“You’re more than welcome.” Cullen smiled. “So are all these new people moving in for the auto plant keeping you busy?”

“Not too bad so far. I expect it’ll pick up.”

“I don’t like to see the old town change, do you? I kind of liked it the way it was.”

Farmer grinned. “I used to know every face I met. There was just us and that seemed right.”

“The price of progress,” the older man said.

“Yeah, right.”

He got a call on his car radio a few minutes later. Another skull had been found, crushed by heavy blows, several of them, it appeared. Also the remains of a pair of shoes, women’s shoes.


Raney was delighted with all the news. “I knew it! There’s a doomed romance somewhere. What if Elizabeth and this Murphy fell in love? But Vern wouldn’t allow it so he killed Murphy. Dad, we’ve got to find out!”

Her father cocked an eyebrow at her. “We? I don’t remember appointing you deputy, kid. This is my job.”

Raney shrugged it off. “I figure if I help you crack the case you’ll give me a medal or something. I’ll go over very big at school.” Farmer appealed to his wife. “ ‘Crack the case’? What are you teaching my daughter? Shouldn’t she be learning to bake cookies or something?”

Dee was deep in thought. “Two questions,” she said. “One, why weren’t the bones all together? Why were they spread out?”

“Slippage,” he told her. “Don Anderson explained that ground shifts some over long periods of time. But everything was found close enough together to indicate they were buried about the same place and about the same time.” He shot a grin at Raney. “What does that do to your doomed romance theory, hotshot? How does the woman figure in?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet,” she responded airily. “Give me time, I will.”

“Okay, second question,” Dee said. “Why bury them both in the fruit cellar? With all the open land on that ranch, why not somewhere away from the main buildings?”

“I thought of that,” Farmer said. “And I don’t have an answer. Maybe ‘open land’ is the key. That was a working spread, dug up and replanted all the time. Bodies might get uncovered. Even animals could do it. Who’s going to dig up a fruit cellar?”

Dee nodded. “Okay, I’ll buy that.”

“This is so great,” Raney beamed. “I wish I could tell someone. I know,” she added quickly as both parents opened their mouths. “I know I can’t. I just wish I could, that’s all.”

That night, in bed, Dee said, “You’d really like to solve this thing, wouldn’t you?”

“Sure I would. But I know I won’t. Nothing to go on. Just old stories and opinions.” He was quiet for a moment. “Maybe I shouldn’t have let Raney in on so much. Maybe she’s too young. Might leave a bad impression on her.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” she assured him. “She’s exposed to worse things in the movies and on TV. She doesn’t know those people, Carroll. And it happened so long ago. She’s just caught up in the mystery of it. Like solving a puzzle.”

He was almost asleep when she said, “Why don’t you talk to your mom about it? Maybe she remembers some of the stories handed down from Berniece.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. I’ve already heard them all, as far as I know, but I guess it’s worth a try.”


Ruth Farmer was on her hands and knees weeding her vegetable garden when the sheriff arrived. They retired to the back porch for iced tea.

“I’d like to ask you something, Mom,” Farmer said after a few minutes of casual conversation. “You know about the bones found out at the old King place?”

“Yes.” His mother sipped her tea. “A terrible thing.”

“Now I know nobody expects me to find out what happened that far back. I’ll have to close it unresolved. But I can’t help feeling curious. Do you remember anything Grandma or Great-grandma Berniece ever told you that might shed some fight?”

His mother’s rocker stopped rocking. “Why, Carroll, that was years and years ago.”

“I know that. But I could use your help if you’ve got it to give.”

She looked at him for a long minute, then at her lap, finally into the sunny backyard. “When do you think this happened?”

“We can’t pin it down too close. Maybe about nineteen fifteen or so, close to the time Callie left. I know I’ve heard all the old stories, but—”

“No,” his mother said. “Not all of them.” Slowly, she began to rock again, her eyes on him. “Some of the stories I was told swore me to secrecy, Carroll. Nobody but my grandmother, my mother, and I knew. You never heard those stories.”

He stared at her. “Do you know what happened out there?”

Her mouth set. “I know what I was told. In nineteen sixteen Grandma Berniece worked in the kitchen at the big house, along with her sister, Callie. Grandma was twenty-one and Callie was seventeen.”

“Callie, the black sheep,” he said to prompt her.

His mother shook her head. “Let’s say she was foolish.”

She paused for so long he thought she had changed her mind and was not going to tell him. Then she drew a deep breath. “Grandma never knew for sure what happened, understand. Nothing she could prove. But she had a pretty good idea.”


On the following morning, Sheriff Farmer shut down the digging on the Thorne place and promised the family that the county would cover the cost of repair. After conferring with Doc Ebenshaw, he marked the case officially unresolved. He took his wife out for lunch, explained the situation, and received her cooperation. That night he told Raney at supper. His daughter’s face paled with shock.

“You’re just giving up?”

“It’s a waste of my time, Raney. I have other things to do. It’s too late to find the answers. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it has to be.”

“But look at all we’ve found out so far!” she protested. “You can’t give up yet. If you’re busy I can ask around, talk to people—”

“You won’t do anything,” he interrupted sharply. “I don’t want you nosing around bothering people. You’re too young to understand, honey, so you’ll have to trust me. That case is over.”

Raney was on her feet, eyes blazing. “I’m not too young! And I’m not a quitter, either. That’s what you are, just a damn quitter!”

She was gone before he could answer, slamming out of the house. The sheriff looked across the table at his wife.

“That hurt. My daughter thinks I’m a quitter.”

“She doesn’t understand, hon. She’ll get over it.”

“Maybe.”

“There’s only one other way,” Dee said after a long silence.

“Is it that important? Would it be right?”

“You have to decide that, Carroll. But I’ll go along with whatever you say.”


Raney was polite but cool as she and her father headed out of town in the family car. The weather had turned kinder, providing them with a light breeze that rippled through green fields as they passed.

“It would be nice if I knew where we were going,” she said after a while.

“Well, I’ll tell you where we’re going,” Farmer said. “We’re going to see someone, and after that I’m going to tell you some things. You say you’re not too young to tackle hard stuff so I’m going to take you up on that. Your mom and I talked it over and it’s okay with her.”

She couldn’t hide the spark of interest. “Who are we going to see?”

He watched her while he told her. “We’re going to visit Miss Elizabeth, Vern King’s daughter.”

Her head whipped toward him, eyes wide. “That Elizabeth? Is she alive? I didn’t know she was still alive.”

“She’s alive. She’s ninety-seven years old and lives in a nursing home outside Durbin. That’s where we’re headed.”

Raney broke out in a sunny smile. “Well, why didn’t you say so before? She can tell us, we can find out—” Suddenly she broke off. “Ninety-seven? That’s old! Is she yucky like Mrs. Miller? I don’t know if I—”

“Yes, she’s old, and I don’t know what you term yucky. But you will be polite and act as though you had a decent upbringing. And Miss Elizabeth won’t tell us anything because her mind is failing. I talked to the head nurse yesterday and she tells me Elizabeth has days she remembers things and days she doesn’t. Besides, we’re not going there to ask her any questions.”

“Then why are we going?”

“Because I want you to see her before I tell you some things,” Farmer said. “Then I hope you’ll understand.”

His daughter settled back, muttering, “I don’t know why nobody told me she was alive.”

“I didn’t think it was important till now,” Farmer said. “She’s lived here for a long time, Raney — over twenty years.”

She was silent for several miles. “Twenty years is a long time.”

“It sure is.”


Raney waited on a bench in the shade beside a small pond while the sheriff went inside. There were a few ducks skating across the water. She stood when she saw her father pushing a wheelchair toward her. Sitting in the chair was a slumped figure wrapped in shawls. Up close, the. figure bore no resemblance to the big strong woman in the historical society’s book. This woman’s face was filled with wrinkles, her bony hands gnarled and twisted. Only her eyes showed any signs of life.

Farmer stopped her in the shade beside the bench. “Miss Elizabeth, this is my daughter, Raney. Raney, Miss Elizabeth King.”

The old woman stirred before Raney could answer. “My name is Mrs. Wesley Burdette,” she corrected in a thin voice. She cocked her head back to glare up at him. “Who are you? I don’t know you.”

The sheriff smiled. “I came to see you, Miss Elizabeth. I’m a friend.”

She studied him suspiciously for a minute before turning her attention to Raney. “What are you standing around for, girl?” she queried sharply. A bony hand shooed her. “Get back to your chores. I don’t pay you to dawdle.”

Raney’s eyes rose to her father’s. “Does she think I work for her?” she whispered.

“It’s okay,” the sheriff said. He sat down on the edge of the bench and pulled the wheelchair close to him. “Miss Elizabeth?” he asked gently. “Look, they gave me some ice cream from the kitchen. They tell me you like ice cream.”

“I like ice cream,” she said, reaching for it. Farmer placed the cup and spoon into her hand.

“Can she eat it by herself?” Raney asked, still whispering.

“They say she can,” her father answered, and slowly the old woman began ladling the melting ice cream into her mouth.

Raney stood frozen to her spot. “Oh, Dad, she’s so sad.”

He nodded at the grass at the foot of the wheelchair. “Come sit over here.” Haltingly, Raney sank down cross-legged at Miss Elizabeth’s feet.

The old woman seemed to have forgotten them as she concentrated on her ice cream. Two ducks squawked in dispute out on the pond. She raised her eyes to watch them.

“Ducks,” she said.

Raney smiled up at her. “Yes. It’s a pretty day to be outside, isn’t it, Miss Elizabeth? The sky’s so blue. It matches your shawl. That’s a pretty shawl.”

The old woman glanced down sharply. “Do I know you? Who are you?”

“That’s my daughter,” Farmer said quickly. “Raney. Remember? I introduced you to her before.”

Miss Elizabeth didn’t reply. Her attention wandered out across the grounds, and in a few minutes her eyelids fluttered and closed.

Raney waited for several minutes before she spoke. “I still don’t understand why you brought me here,” she said softly.

“I wanted you to meet her before we talked,” Farmer said. “We’ll sit a few more minutes and then we’ll go.”

“Okay. I really don’t like it here much.” She flashed him a small smile. “I’d rather be back in Wayside.”

“Wayside?” Miss Elizabeth’s eyes were open, blinking. “Wayside is mine. I live there.”

“We live there, too,” the sheriff told her. “My daughter and me.”

“I don’t know you,” she accused him, her voice rising.

Farmer reached out to take one of her twisted old hands. “No, but you knew some of my family,” he said soothingly. “A long time ago. The Dodds. They used to live on your place. Berniece worked in the kitchen and—”

A tremor shook the shawls. Miss Elizabeth’s gaze sharpened and focused on him. She flung his hand away. “Berniece Dodd? I know Berniece. I know that Callie, too, but she’s dead because I killed her. Good riddance, if you ask me.”

Neither Farmer moved. The sheriff heard Raney’s quick intake of breath but he dared not risk a glance at her. Miss Elizabeth was staring directly at him.

“Why’d you do that, Miss Elizabeth?” he asked carefully.

“That girl tried to steal Wesley,” she said petulantly. She was looking at him, but she was gone somewhere all alone. “Comes to me, the little snip, and says they love each other, she and Wesley. They’re going to go away and get married, not a thing I can do about it. Tells me they’ve been meeting secretly all the time he courted me. Sassed me when I said I’d see her dead first. Out back, late one night. I was sitting on the porch steps, too hot to sleep, and she comes waltzing by, says she’s just left Wesley. So I picked up that big iron poker hanging there and smacked her with it, smacked her until she stopped moving.”

She stopped. Farmer didn’t move. Then slowly, Miss Elizabeth began to smile.

“Now I’d just seen all that new dirt dug up in the fruit cellar a few days before. Papa caught a man named Murphy stealing and he said he ran Murphy off. He said he’d been digging in the fruit cellar because there were moles down there and he was burying poison. Well, I thought I knew better. Papa said people who steal from you ought to be killed, so I thought he probably killed Murphy and buried him down cellar. That’s why I took Callie there, where the ground was already soft. I dug almost all night to get her deep enough so she wouldn’t smell. Thought she could steal Wesley from me, what an idea.”

The old woman stopped again, but still neither Raney nor her father dared move. Gradually, the old woman’s face softened.

“Poor Wesley. I told him I sent Callie packing so he’d see no more of her. He cried, Wesley did, said he was sorry, he’d lost his head, but that I was the one he truly loved and wanted to marry. So I forgave him.” Somewhere deep in the folds of shawl a small rusty cackling rose. “I used to think about it sometimes when he was working in Papa’s toolshed. He didn’t know he was walking on Callie.” Quick tears welled in her eyes. “My poor Wesley. Taken before his time, but it was me he loved to the end, not Callie. It was me.”

This time when she paused she did not continue. Her gaze went out across the pond and into another time.

Farmer reached for Raney and she wasn’t too old to let him put his arms around her. Together, they walked to the bank of the little pond.

“Are you okay?” he asked her.

“I guess so,” was the faint answer. “I never expected that, did you?”

“Not in a minute, or I never would have brought you here,” he said fiercely. “Honey, I’m sorry. I wanted you to see how she was before I told you what I suspected.”

“Was that it? What you suspected?”

“Yeah, but I only had guesses. See, I found out that Callie told her sister, Great-grandma Berniece, about her and Wesley, but it was a secret. Then when Callie supposedly took off, Berniece was afraid to say anything. She thought Miss Elizabeth had found out and done something to her but she couldn’t prove it. All she knew was that Callie wouldn’t just go away without telling her.”

Raney glanced back at the old woman sitting quietly in her chair. “They were all awful people, weren’t they? Vern and Elizabeth, even Wesley. He never loved Elizabeth, he loved Callie.” She managed a small grin. “So I was right, after all. It did have to do with a doomed romance.”

Farmer hugged her. “Yes, I guess it did.”

“What are you going to do now?”

This was the conversation he had been waiting for, but he’d come to it from a different direction than planned.

“You have to help me decide that, Raney. See, there were two murders out there at the King ranch and now we know who did them. But everyone’s gone except Miss Elizabeth, and look how she is. Raney, this has been a secret in my family for three generations. And I don’t know how we’d track this man Murphy down. I guess I’m wondering what good it would do to get this out in the open now. How will it help anyone? You understand what I’m saying?”

She thought about it for a long while. “I think I do,” she said finally. “We still don’t have any proof. Just Miss Elizabeth’s word, and she probably won’t remember it again tomorrow. And you couldn’t very well send her to prison, could you?” She glanced up at him. “Maybe someday we can tell, after she’s gone.”

He nodded down at her. “Maybe.”

She managed a faint grin. “And maybe not. Callie was ours, after all, and now we know what happened to her. It’s really nobody else’s business, is it?”

“My feeling exactly,” her father said. “It’d just stir things up. Raney Farmer, you’re going to be okay.”

“But you know what?” she said. “I got hungry watching her scarf up that ice cream. You think we could stop on the way home and get some of our own?”

“Not a bad idea. I’ll even buy.”

A sound from the wheelchair behind them. Miss Elizabeth was beckoning.

“You there!” she called in her scratchy voice. “You come over here and take me back to the house. I’ve got things to do. My Wesley will be wanting his supper.”

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