This is a brief excerpt from Well of Deception, a new novel from Stoney Creek Publishing. “Everyone knows who killed Maggie Schneider. But why? Inspired by true events, novelist Cynthia Leal Massey weaves an intricate tale that spans the decades from the Great Depression to the crippling drought of the fifties. This is not a whodunnit. The mystery here is more profound: Why did he do it?”
January 1959
In a form-fitting gray skirt and jacket over a white collared blouse accentuated by a pearl necklace, Mabel Klepper was the quintessential female columnist of the era and the only woman on the San Victorio newspaper staff. In her early forties, she wore her shoulder-length blonde hair in waves that softened the faint wrinkles around her mouth and eyes. She wore ruby red lipstick, peered through cat-eye glasses and smelled of cigarette smoke.
After several tries, she’d finally snagged an interview with Leta Becker. Mabel knocked on the door of a two-bedroom bungalow in a subdivision in San Victorio called Woodlawn Hills.
She was shocked when Mrs. Becker opened the door. The woman who stood before her looked so frail, so small. Mabel had seen pictures of her in early newspaper accounts of her husband’s disappearance. She was slim, but not like this. Now she was gaunt. Looked like she had lost a good twenty pounds.
The columnist recovered and after a few pleasantries, they settled in the small living room furnished with a gold-colored sofa and olive-green chairs that looked fairly new, Leta on the sofa, Mabel in an armchair. On the coffee table between them sat a tray with her best porcelain cups ready for the coffee percolating in the kitchen.
“Mrs. Becker…” Mabel opened her notebook and pulled a pencil from her pocketbook.
“Please call me Leta.”
“Leta, thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me…. I know this must be hard for you.”
Leta, her hands folded on her lap, simply nodded. “So how are you getting along?”
Unexpectedly, Leta burst into heart-wrenching sobs.
Mabel opened her pocketbook, pulled out a handkerchief and rushed around the coffee table, kneeling by Leta. “Here you go, dear.”
Leta pulled off her glasses, took the handkerchief and wiped her eyes. “I’m so sorry!”
Mabel patted Leta on the shoulder and then stood. “Nothing to be sorry about.” She returned to her chair.
“I’m not sure I’m up to talking.” Leta wiped another tear streaming down her cheek.
“Sometimes that is exactly what is needed,” replied Mabel. “Living alone with no one to share with must be difficult, especially considering the circumstances. The thing is, the investigation into your husband’s disappearance is still very much active, and anything you tell me would be helpful to solve the case.”
Leta nodded.
“So, let’s begin at the beginning,” said Mabel. “I understand you and Amos have been married twenty-four years.”
“Yes, but I’ve known him pretty much all my life. We courted for fifteen years.” Mabel raised her eyebrow. “That’s a long time.”
Leta gazed out the window. “I had to take care of my parents.”
Sitting with Amos on the front porch swing of the family homestead on a cold day in February 1923, Leta tried to keep her roiling emotions in check. She wasn’t sure which bothered her more, her father’s decision to exclude her from the division of property or Amos’s lack of concern that she’d be moving more than twenty miles away. When Amos attempted to put his arm around her, she jumped up, walked to the edge of the porch, and leaned on the rail, her back to him.
“Don’t know what you’re upset about, Leta. Your pa is right about the land. It should go to your brothers. And he ain’t givin’ it to ’em. They’re each paying him for their portion, splittin’ the value of the six-hundred acres three ways.”
“It’s not fair.”
“Mebbe not. If he had to split it four ways, one portion for you, you’d have a hundred-fifty acres. How would you pay for it?”
She frowned. “I don’t know.”
“I’m sure your parents are goin’ to do right by you in the end.” She gazed at him.
He looked down. “I think you’ll like livin’ in town. You’ll have electric lights, indoor plumbing, a gas stove. It’ll be years before we get those conveniences out here.”
A tear slid down her cheek, and she quickly wiped it away. She turned around, her eyes resting on the windmill in front of the house, its rusted blades rattling and whirling with blasts from a Texas norther.
The swing creaked as Amos got up and stood next to her, putting both hands on the porch railing.
“Leta, honey, I promise I’ll still come see you every weekend.” He paused, waiting for her to respond. When she didn’t, he continued. “You told me yourself you couldn’t leave your ma.”
Leta sighed and pulled her wool jacket tighter around her. “I know. It isn’t your fault, Amos. I just wish… I don’t know what I wish.” She turned to look at him. At thirty-three, he was in the prime of his life. Even in denim overalls over a heavy flannel shirt and a cap with fur earflaps, he was strapping and handsome. In the four years they’d been seeing each other, he’d treated her well. Sometimes, he’d get irritated with her. That was to be expected, but it did bother her that little things agitated him.
Once they were sitting at the counter of a soda fountain in a San Victorio drugstore. She accidentally spilled a soda, and some of it splashed on one of his boots. She laughed and said, “Oops!”
He muttered, “Goddammit” under his breath. He didn’t like her mirth one bit.
“I’m sorry, Amos.” She pulled a handkerchief from her purse. When she bent down, he pushed her away, and not gently, almost knocking her down. “I’ll do it myself.” He pulled his own handkerchief out of his pocket. After he finished wiping his boot, there was a tense silence, and then he said, “You ready to go, darlin’?” as if nothing had happened.
Such behavior happened infrequently, but when it did, it blew over so quickly she decided not to ponder over it. They saw each other once a week or every other week, sometimes more often if there was a wedding or funeral. He seemed content with the way things were.
Theirs was not a passionate relationship. Not her doing, but his.
She had told him that her parents needed her. In their sixties, they were simply tired of working the land. Farm life had taken its toll. Her ma had severe arthritis and sometimes could barely flex her hands. Her pa had a back injury that wouldn’t heal. In San Victorio, they’d be closer to medical facilities, and the doctor had all but told Leta her parents couldn’t manage alone. She often found herself ruminating over a disturbing thought: would her parents have to die before her life could really begin?
Amos put his arm around her. This time she didn’t move away. She leaned into him, breathing in the musky outdoor scent on his shirt.
“It’s gonna be all right,” he said. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere. You’ll see.”
Amos was true to his word, driving his Ford truck into town every Sunday after church.
By that summer, Leta had settled into a small two-bedroom house with her parents in San Victorio, not far from downtown. When the school year started, she began work as a cafeteria cook at the closest high school. Leta’s one consolation was that they lived near her cousin Ethel, then a young mother of two small children with a ne’er-do-well husband. She’d worked as a cook at Main High School before she got married and had gotten Leta the job there. Despite the circumstances they both found themselves in, or perhaps because of them, they were able to commiserate and enjoy each other’s company.
Leta looked at Mabel. “My mama needed to be near a good hospital, which is why we moved to town in 1923. She died eleven years later, in January 1934, and then Papa died two months after that. They’d been married for fifty years.”
“And Amos kept up the courtship all that time.” Mabel looked up from her notebook. “He came and saw me almost every weekend like clockwork.”
“And you got married a few months after your father died?”
“Yes. I hope you don’t think I was being disrespectful. I suppose some people thought it was too soon when we married in June.”
“Heavens, honey. I think what you did for your parents was beyond the call of duty.”
Excerpt from Well of Deception (Stoney Creek Publishing)
by Cynthia Leal Massey. Used with permission.