The River Widow(23)
She had to cross over the rafters on her haunches, crablike, to reach the bag. Inside was a small brown box full of letters, all of them addressed to Betsy Branch, Les’s first wife and Daisy’s mother. Adah pondered whether or not to take them. Why were the letters up here? Quickly thumbing through, she found that almost all had come from the same woman, Doris McNeil. Perhaps Betsy’s mother or a dear friend? Adah slowly closed the box, taking it with her when she descended the stairs. Perhaps one day when she was older, Daisy would want to read the letters.
Back outside, Buck was nowhere to be seen, but Jesse helped her retrieve the cradle and basket of fabric scraps from the attic. He put them in the truck bed, where he had also placed some things from the barn.
While Daisy played on the porch, Adah and Jesse waited for Buck.
“What’s in the box?” he asked her. Adah had placed the small wooden box full of letters inside the larger basket of scraps.
“Nothing,” she lied. “But it’s a nice box. I think it belonged to Daisy’s mother, and so I’m taking it for Daisy.”
Jesse asked “Where’d Les keep his money?” as he shaded his face with the flat of his bearlike hand, watching Buck walking back toward them. Obviously Jesse had conducted a search inside for cash but had come up empty handed.
“I don’t know,” Adah answered. Jesse had no idea that she’d found another box—the cash box—and had hidden it from them.
Jesse harrumphed. “Figures that my brother would have kept it from you.”
She ignored that, and as Buck moved closer, she asked, “What now?”
Jesse stared out over the farm. “We’ll have to come back and clean out all the junk, then you can scrub the place down. House is still in one piece. Once it gets aired out, someone could probably live here again.”
Someone? Adah sensed an opening. Maybe she could negotiate with Jesse. As awful as he could be, he did seem the most reasonable. Adah said, “Do you think Daisy and I could ever come back here?”
He stared at her hard, eyes turning to slits. “You and Daisy?”
“This was our home. Her home. If the house becomes livable, of course we’d want to come back.”
Jesse lifted his head, and his lips curled in contempt. “You best put thoughts like that out of your head. You think we’re going to let his murderer live in Lester’s house?”
Murderer? It was the first time any of the Branches had actually spoken the word. The sound of it like abject terror. Just ignore it, she told herself. They have nothing on you. But hope fell from Adah’s chest into her gut. Bringing up ownership of the farm with any of the Branches was out of the question now. Even so, a small sense of promise surged through her. Jesse thought the house could be lived in again.
She followed Jesse’s gaze as he looked past her then. Buck was approaching, carrying some things. As he drew closer she could see that he’d found a saddle and, in his other hand, something that chilled her blood. The shovel.
“Found these caught up in a tree over there near the property line,” Buck said as he heaved the saddle into the truck bed and then slid in the shovel.
“Anything else?” Jesse asked while Adah tried to slow her breathing and squelch the panic tightening the skin all over her body.
Buck said, “Not a damn thing.”
The drive home was tedious and tense, and it seemed no one had the urge to speak, not even Daisy, who fell asleep in Adah’s lap.
As soon as they arrived back at the Branch home, Mabel lurched down the porch steps. Her face tear-streaked and pinched, she scurried to the driver’s side of the truck as they pulled up.
“What happened?” Buck asked through the open window.
“Lester,” Mabel said with a sound like a moan. “They found Lester.”
Chapter Eight
The morgue door opened, and the first thing to hit Adah was the smell. Beneath the antiseptic overlay was the unmistakable scent of death and decay, one she had never smelled before, but she recognized it for what it was. She stifled her gag reflex and forced herself to step inside the cold green-tiled walls of the morgue, which was located in the basement of police headquarters. Bright lights overhead hurt her eyes, and a buzzing sound seemed like a warning.
Jesse and Buck followed one step behind her.
As Lester’s wife, she could have identified the body alone, but her brother-and father-in-law had both wanted to come and do so as well. Adah could’ve let them do it without her, but her survival instinct drove her to attend. If anything came up about Lester’s death, she wanted to hear about it firsthand and be there to defend herself. As dangerous as it felt to go with the men, it was better than drowning in fear, waiting for them to return without knowing what had transpired.
They had ridden to town in total silence, Buck’s eyes never leaving the road ahead and Jesse staring out the passenger-side window intently, as if even one glance at Adah would amount to agony.
As she moved farther inside the morgue, her eyes were drawn to only one thing. On a metal table, the contours of a man’s body lay covered head to toe with a white sheet, that body as still as the tile floor beneath her feet.
The coroner, who wore a black suit and a concerned expression and exuded enough apprehension to make Adah’s worse, waited for her to approach. When she stood before him, he introduced himself, and then he addressed only her: “Because the body spent so much time in near-freezing-cold water, it’s well preserved, considering. That’s not to say it’s a soothing sight. I have to warn you, Mrs. Branch, identifying a body in this condition can come as a shock. It’s not for the faint of heart.” He gestured to Jesse and Buck. “Are you sure you don’t want the male family members to identify the body?”