“That must have been hard.”
She gave me a sardonic look. “You’d think, wouldn’t you? By the next spring, Stan had sweet-talked his sisters out of their share of the farm, got it put in his name only, and sold it to a man he’d found from downstate who had big dreams about turning the property into some kind of ski resort. Stan took off for Florida with the money and his sisters never talked to him again.”
My jaw went slack. “Stan stole the family farm from his sisters?”
“That’s not the way he looked at it. He said he’d pay them back. With interest.”
“Did he?”
“Eventually.” She made a gesture that suggested frustration, sadness, and tolerance. “He always needed more money, Stan did. Another property he needed to buy, another building with great potential, another whatever. By the time he got around to repaying his sisters, he had buckets of money to spare, but the damage was permanent. They took the money, of course,” she said with a twisted smile, “but they wouldn’t talk to him. Not even after he bought them houses and who knows what else.”
Just as Caroline had said. “Did you go with Stan to Florida?”
Her merry peal of laughter filled the porch. “No, I didn’t go to Florida. Stan was a good-looking son of a gun, but I got over that two weeks into the marriage. And once he sold the farm? I was done. Smartest thing I ever did was divorce that man and find my Bill.”
“How did Stan take your divorcing him?”
She snorted. “The way I heard it, he found a second wife before he’d unpacked his suitcase down there in Florida. If a man gets money, he can get a wife, easy enough.”
“You weren’t interested in his money?”
She gestured to the stupendous view. “I’ve woken up to this every day for almost fifty years. How could I get any richer? And Stan came back to this, in the end. Who’s to say which one of us was more successful?”
I looked at the green hills and the arching blue sky above, felt the peace and the calm, breathed in the clean air, heard nothing except birds and the rustle of leaves on the trees. Who indeed?
“So,” I said, “the feud started when Stan sold the family farm?”
“I wouldn’t call it a feud, really.” Audry considered her lemonade. “More of an ‘us against Stan’ attitude. His sisters all hated him and taught their children to hate him.”
“And unto the next generation?”
“I imagine.” She sighed.
Up until that point, I hadn’t considered her as old, but she suddenly looked every inch of her seventy years. I knew I should leave, but there were questions I needed to ask. “Are his sisters still alive?”
“Goodness.” Audry squinted at the horizon. “Four of them moved either downstate or out of state years ago. The other two . . . ? I really have no idea. One moved to Petoskey, the other down to Traverse City.”
I studied her, wondering if she truly didn’t know or if she was protecting a friend. “Do you know anything about Stan’s nieces and nephews? The great-nieces and nephews? Do any of them live in Chilson?”
She gave a small shrug. “I know almost nothing about that group. About all I know is that whole family tended toward having lots of children, and they liked naming the children all with the same first letter. Don’t ask me why, it’s just what they did.”
I blinked. “You mean all the sisters had names starting with S?”
“Sarah, Shirley, Stella, Sadie, Sylvia, and Sophie,” Audry recited, smiling faintly.
“There’s a niece named Gwen,” I said, remembering the friend of Aunt Frances.
“One of Sarah’s, as I recall. She had boys named Gordon and Gerard. And one of them used names that started with K. Kevin, Kyle, Karla, and Kendra.” She frowned. “Or was that the next generation down?”
As she’d said, lots of children, all of whom turned a year older every twelve months. Was this the definition of multiplicity? I found it hard enough to keep track of the ages of my brother’s children, and there were only three of them.
“But there is one thing that’s been bothering me,” Audry said slowly.
The weight she was giving to the words made the insides of my wrists tingle. “What’s that?”
“The farmhouse where you found him? That was where he and his sisters grew up.”
Chapter 15
I left Audry’s house with one thought and one thought only: Find the closest Tonedagana County sheriff’s detective.
I drove straight to Chilson and parked in the empty sheriff’s office lot. It took a little bit of doing, but I eventually convinced the deputy on duty that tracking down either Detective Devereaux or Inwood would be in everyone’s best interest.
He hung up the phone and looked at me with a schooled expression of blankness. “Detective Inwood was at the grocery store. He said he’ll stop by in about five minutes.”
“Inwood. He’s the short round one, right?”
The deputy actually laughed. “Nope. Devereaux is the short, round one. He looks like the letter D, see? And Hal Inwood is the tall, skinny one. He looks like the letter I.”
Clouds parted and the light shone down. “That’s brilliant,” I said sincerely.
He waved me off to a plastic chair, but he was smiling as he did so, and a few minutes later, Detective Inwood walked in. “Ms. Hamilton. What can I do for you?”
I stood, but didn’t move much closer. He was too tall (like the letter I) to make a face-to-face talk much of a reality. “Sorry to bother you on a Friday night,” I said, “but I just found out something.”
“Yeah, what’s that?” He put an angular elbow on the front counter.
“Well, it’s a couple of somethings, actually.” I gave him a quick summary of the origin of Stan’s fortune. “His sisters were furious when he sold the farm, I was told.”
“Who told you about this?” While Inwood’s pose remained casual, the expression on his face was sharp.
“Oh. Well.” I mentally fast-forwarded through the next part of the conversation and decided it was best to tell the truth now rather than have it dragged out of me later. “Audry Brant. She was Stan’s first wife.”
Inwood reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a small pad of paper. “His first wife, you say.”
I winced. Audry was going to get a police visit and it was all my fault. Sorry about that, I told her silently. “She had no reason to kill him, though. They were divorced about fifty years ago. And anyway, that’s not an important something.”
Inwood used the pencil he’d pulled out of the memo pad’s spiral binding to dot a period. “What is?”
“The farmhouse where Stan was killed? That was where Stan grew up. That was the farm he sold out from under his sisters.”
“Now that is a something.” Detective Inwood nodded, a faint smile lurking around the corners of his mouth. “Ms. Brant give you that bit of information?”
“Yes, so I was wondering. Have you looked at Stan’s sisters? I mean, with him being killed at their old farm, it makes you think there’s a connection, right? They were all older than Stan, but it doesn’t take much strength to pull a trigger.”
But the detective was shaking his head. “All six sisters are accounted for, either passed away or moved out of state decades ago.”
“Oh.” I deflated. “The ones still alive, they have alibis? I mean, I’m sure you checked, but . . .”
“Of the three,” he said, “two are in nursing homes. The other is living in Arizona, and according to the golf course manager, she hasn’t missed her daily game of golf since she moved there fifteen years ago.”