Ada Unraveled (17 page)

Hannah said, while drawing air-quotes around
certain phrases, “I did some research. Ada was found buried in a
‘legally recognized family plot’ right behind her house. A ‘family
doctor’--who I’m pretty sure was connected to the rich and powerful
side of the clan--materialized to say that he had been treating Ada
for a serious heart condition.”

Gerry made a disgusted noise. I looked at
her questioningly. Hannah’s eye contact was…sharper. Definitely not
zen.

“It’s just…that whole cliché about the rich
and powerful being evil…it just upsets me, that’s all.”

Hannah squared her shoulders. “I didn’t say
they were evil.”

“No. You implied it.”

“So who do you think is busily covering up
the circumstances surrounding Ada’s death? Who do you think rushed
her off to the incinerator…?”

Hannah caught herself and stopped.

Uh-oh. More friction.

Gerry said, “I have no idea, Hannah.
But…frankly, from what my brother tells me sometimes, the
petty-politics in police departments is capable of covering up a
multitude of sins.”

“So police in-fighting over climbing the
career ladder is why Ada was cremated so quickly after being
found?” Hannah snapped. She began gathering her things and pushing
her chair back.

Gerry said, “Maybe it was the condition of
the remains. Maybe she was so deteriorated there was little to be
told….”

Hannah turned to me and said, “
Tell
her
, Rachel. Tell her how even bleached-out bones can be used
to explain the cause of death. At least, sometimes.”

Bones. I raised my eyebrows in sympathy but
remained silent. I was hardly a forensic anthropologist.

I watched the chocolate-voiced homeschooling
mom slump back in her chair and take another deep breath. In a
tired voice, she said, “I’m sorry Gerry. I’m just very angry about
what happened to Ada. It makes me sick. Anyway, to finish my
comments, the medical examiner was quoted as saying his autopsy was
inconclusive. And Luke was charged with ‘failure to report an
unattended death’ and ‘unauthorized burial.’ Both misdemeanors. I
mean, think of it. No one questioned why he was out in his backyard
digging holes to stash his wife in?”

A couple of tea-sipping neighbors to our
small table turned to stare.

“Backyard?” I mumbled.

“That’s where the legally recognized family
plot is. Right behind her house. I’m willing to bet it’s an open
field with no markers.”

An idea surfaced in my mind.

Hannah raised her hands in a gesture of
peace, and resumed more quietly. “Luke was fined $1,000 for the
latter, and I don’t know what happened to the former charge, but
I’m willing to bet it got dropped.”

My brain was scrambling for the latter and
former, and found them; the latter, for which Luke was fined, was
the unauthorized burial, the former was the unattended death.
Whatever that meant.

I said, “But who paid the fine? Luke and Ada
couldn’t have, could they?”

Gerry, who had been fiddling with her tea
cup as if looking for patterns and clues among the leaves, said,
“What? Oh, no, I don’t think so. As far as I know they were dirt
poor. Luke was a handyman, doing odd jobs wherever they could be
found. Like his dad. Jake.”

I was thinking how helpful Hannah’s research
had been, when she said, “Even my sources at the newspaper were
surprised.”

“You mean Peter’s sources?” I said.

“No. I was a reporter there before we
started our family.”

Perfect!
My idea grew.

I switched tracks. “Do either of you think
Luke killed Mark?”

“What?” Hannah was wide eyed. But Gerry had
finally stopped studying her tea leaves. She looked directly at me
and smiled.

“I didn’t think you’d gotten that far
yet.”

“Where?” Hannah.

By way of explanation, I said, “Mark died in
nineteen sixty-five, at least according to the genealogy. And Ada
and Luke were married within a month. A Cleveland County Times
newspaper report said the boys were involved in a bar fight that
resulted in Mark’s death. But that was all. I found a cached copy
of a news report online.”

They were clueless.

I continued. “What I’m suggesting is maybe
Luke killed Mark over Ada in a fit of jealousy. Did you notice how
they were listed on Victoria’s quilt? The boys’ names at the top of
the path, and Ada Stowall down the bottom of the path? I mean,
which one did she marry? So I’m thinking, maybe she married Mark.
Then Luke got drunk and killed Mark in the bar fight. Then Luke
married Ada. ”

“Why would Ada marry Luke if he’d just
killed her husband, the man she loved?” Hannah said.

Gerry agreed. “Yes. And, if Luke killed
Mark, wouldn’t he have been placed under arrest?”

I added, “Not right away. Not if it wasn’t
obvious what had happened. But the dates on the genealogy support
this theory. I’m still researching this because I ran into a
problem with the archives of the Cleveland Times. They’re
incomplete. About two months of them are missing from the online
archive. And when I called the Pinto Springs library they said
their microfiche copies have gone missing, too. I’m going to look
in San Diego County next. Maybe there aren’t as many Stowalls
living there.”

I decided to go forward with my idea.

“Okay, look, I have a different goal for the
rest of the afternoon than discussing genealogies and quilts. How
would you feel about going to Ada’s house to see what we can find?
I believe both Luke and Eddie are in some way involved in Ada’s
demise. What do you say, ladies? Are you up for working with me on
this?”

They made more furtive eye contact with each
other but didn’t immediately say no. I persevered.

“And if so, here’s a contract to place you
both under underpaid employment--a little private investigations
protection for your help.”

I placed a dollar in front of each of them,
knowing full well this was at best a questionable way to employ
them and an even more questionable way to offer them protection
under the legal umbrella of Lyons Investigations and Research, Inc.
But I also needed to know the fullness of their intent. Would they
help or would they just do lunches with me where they reluctantly
eked out tidbits of info?

Hannah said, “I thought several courses in
the field had to be completed before we could be hired.”

She’d been researching PI work?

“
Apprenticed,”
I corrected. “You can
still be hired as contract employees for the purpose of research.
You certainly qualify, Hannah. And Gerry, you might, too. Because
of your special police connections.”

Hannah smiled another of her Buddhist
smiles, and slowly reached forward to lift her dollar bill. I heard
Gerry gasp. They did more eye contact. Gerry looked down at her own
dollar while
Hannah put hers in her wallet.

I was amazed. I’d expected at least a little
resistance. The wind was threatening to lift Gerry’s faux-contract
off the table, so she quickly slapped her hand down on it. I
noticed her new nails for the first time. Long and tapered, and
very red, with one pink rose on her right ring finger. I’d already
taken in the multi-carat diamond on her left. She slid her dollar
into the logo purse.

“Okay, now that you’re employees, I have a
question, Gerry. When I got home from the bee Sunday morning, Matt
opened Ada’s quilt on top of our spare bed and a diary slipped out
of it. In the diary was your retainer check, thank you very much.
But what I’m wondering is, where did you find the diary?”

She thought for a moment then said, “I
didn’t. Andrea produced it. It was so late I didn’t think to ask
any questions, I’m afraid.”

“Right, it’s on the list. I know where Ada’s
house is and I assume you do too?” They nodded in unison. “So I’ll
meet you both there in, say, half an hour?”

They agreed.

I watched them walk away, almost arm-in-arm,
buddies. I let out a sigh of relief. Then Hannah tossed over her
shoulder at me, “Just so long as you know I’ll probably be looking
for a raise somewhere down the road.”

But of course.

The fuzz arrived. He stood in his basement,
swaying under the effects of the one beer he’d had. After the fires
it had rained. Hard and long. Luke had disappeared during the rain.
Gone off into the night again. After a while, without those drugs
Luke made him take, Eddie thought it might be okay to drink one of
Luke’s beers. So now he was swaying. Eddie half expected Luke to
return with another drunken woman but instead, a couple of deputies
arrived. They were wearing brown uniforms. One of them stopped just
a few feet away from his back window and Eddie listened.

The first deputy said, “The 911 caller
reported she smelled something. I don’t smell nothing.”

“Anything.”

Eddie followed their gaze, toward the
neighbor’s house, up to the second story.

The second deputy said, “We better check
further out.”

“Come on. She’s just a nosy old bitch.”

Eddie watched the two uniforms move their
bickering back toward the end of the yard.

How could the neighbor smell things from so
far away? But the breezes were coming from the west, and there’d
been the hard rain.

And Luke wasn’t a good gravedigger. Eddie
had known that the bodies should be buried deeper. But he was still
weak, and Luke was still an ugly monster.

Suddenly the deputies came hustling back
from the field, one of them with a phone to his ear. He was calling
something in.

Eddie wondered whether they’d found his
mother or one of the drunks. The brown-shirts moved around the
house, their voices growing smaller as they went. Eddie climbed the
stairs, tiptoed, stood listening. Nothing. He opened the kitchen
door...nothing...stepped quickly toward the back exit. He would
spend tonight away, maybe in his grandma’s truck.

I arrived before Hannah and Gerry and parked
a distance north of Ada’s house, attempting discretion by situating
myself at the end of the street concealed by a small wooded area of
mostly pine trees.

In fact I was parked at the end of the only
street in this entire neighborhood, one that wound its way down the
top of the western slope of Applepine Ridge in a series of S turns.
It wasn’t lost on me that this continuous road mimicked a
snake.

Ada’s house was just a mile and a half south
of Victoria’s house, where we’d sewn the night away.

Our target sat at the end of a decades-old
working class neighborhood. To the left of Ada’s two-story home was
another boxy structure pretty much identical, with a privacy fence
and an unkempt band of shrubs separating the two. I noted there was
a good thirty feet between them. The right side of Ada’s house—the
north side--was bound by a vacant lot with the pines.

Lots of folks would value the privacy
afforded this house, by the large separation from the only adjacent
home, but also by the road out front and the two sides with nothing
but fields as far as the eye could see. But for Ada Stowall, the
privacy had finally proven fatal. And only God knew what it meant
to Eddie Stowall.

The name of the snaking road was Mountain
Springs.

There seemed to be only three types of homes
in this development, two-story like Ada’s, one-story, and something
I remembered from the seventies called splanch. Split level ranch.
All of them were wood sided homes.

At the back of Ada’s house the slope
eventually leveled out on a plain of wild grasses as far as the eye
could see. As I’ve noted, in another neighborhood this sort of
privacy would be worth something. But this neighborhood was mere
steps above the isolated patches of dead-on-their-wheels RV’s and
tin roofed, Tijuana-style shacks hidden along some of the winding
country roads of inland Southern California.

Somewhere in all the grassy fields beyond
the rear of the house was a cemetery, according to my new
employees. But I couldn’t see any sign of it from where I now sat,
behind the small woods.

The wind had died down, probably tempered by
the weight of heavy rain clouds waiting for the temperature to drop
so they could weep. It was a weepy kind of neighborhood. Put me in
the mood for a dirge.

Impatient with my sinking spirits and bored
with waiting for Gerry and Hannah to arrive, I finally decided to
read an entry or two in Ada’s diary. I probably shouldn’t have.

The entries had misspellings and grammatical
errors scattered throughout, as would be true with any child’s
writing. But the mistakes didn’t lessen the poignancy of this
child’s memories.

Addressed to “any reader there may be” Ada
the child began with:

“
I’m writing all this down because I want
someone to know what is happening to me. Today is my eleventh
birthday and again mom and dad are drinking. Mom just gave me this
diary for my birthday. She told me I should write things down when
I’m young because I’ll forget it all when I’m grown. And knowing
your roots is the key to understanding who you are. Part of me
hopes I forget. Because I just don’t want to remember any of this.
But another part of me agrees with mom.

The other birthday present my parents just
gave me is I’m now an only child. My older sister Hazel is gone.
She was only eleven. Now I’m alone with them. And I’m so
scared.”

She signed this first entry, “Ada Marie
Stowall.”

The next entry, and all others from this
point on, was addressed to her sister Hazel.

I moved on.

“
Dear Hazel,

My second maybe-memory is of me staying home
from school to take care of mom. I don’t know where you were. It
was just me and mom. Daddy had to go to work so he told me to clean
up the house and to look for the little bottles of Southern
Comfort. You remember how she kept them hidden everywhere. We used
to search the house for the money she hid to buy it with, too.