Blood Relations (21 page)

Carol Klein

I opened the file and up came a photograph of
The Phantom,
with the crew and passengers posing along the railings. She was definitely loaded flat, even if it wasn't the same run as the one when she sank. Maybe it was Eli Thibeau's habit to load her as full as he could.

I sat back and tapped my pen on my lip. My gaze landed on a sticky note on my telephone from Sylvia. It read: “Torie, do you have all the info together for the
Phantom
memorial?”

When would I have done all of that? Most of the things I wanted to say for the memorial plaque, I already knew. I even had a photograph of the boat, thanks to Carol Klein, showing what the steamer looked like before it sank. I thought about what Kyle had said out on the sidewalk—that they were going to go shoot some footage out at a cemetery. A Lutheran cemetery. He had to be talking about Granite Lutheran. And I supposed it made sense that Bradley Chapel would want footage of the tombstones of the seven dead passengers of
The Phantom.
If I were shooting a documentary or a spot for the news, I would want the tombstones as part of my footage.

I think he and Bradley Chapel have struck a bargain.

Those words sort of meandered in and out of my head without form at first. And then I remembered. I had sat in the booth across from Krista and we were talking about how Bradley and Jacob Lahrs had struck a bargain because Jacob was letting Bradley film his dive. What if Bradley had decided that he wanted the story of Jessica Huntleigh and Eli Thibeau? He was probably smelling Pulitzer for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

“I worked my ass off on this project”—that's what Justin had heard one of the men say the night Jacob Lahrs was murdered.

I logged off the Internet and stared at my computer screen for a moment. I flipped through my Rolodex and found the number for Baxter Monument Company. They were the closest and largest monument company in Granite County. What's more, they were family-owned and had been in business since 1901. I dialed and waited for somebody to answer, tapping my pen on the edge of my desk the whole time.

Tom Baxter answered the phone. “Baxter Monument.”

“Tom, this is Torie O'Shea over in New Kassel,” I said.

“Yeah, hi, Mrs. O'Shea. What can I do for you?”

Tom knew who I was. I'd called him many times to ask for his assistance. “I need you to check and see if you guys made the tombstones for the seven unidentified bodies of
The Phantom
wreck in 1919.”

“Well, it may take a minute, since they were unidentified. I'll have to check by year,” he said.

“It happened in January, so it should be at the very beginning,” I said.

“You know, I think we did do them. For some reason, I think I remember my grandpa talking about it. Let me check, though.”

“Thanks.”

While I was waiting, Colin came in and motioned for me to come to the kitchen. He must have found the VCR and actually gotten it hooked up. I handed the tape back that he'd given me earlier. “Hang on just a second,” I said to him.

He nodded and went back to the kitchen. In a moment, Tom Baxter came back on the phone. “Yeah, Mrs. O'Shea. We sure did do the tombstones.”

Normally, monument companys have information like next of kin, surviving family, that sort of thing. Not all monument companies keep records like this, but a lot do. In fact, such records often contain the name of the funeral home and the cemetery, and sometimes even a clipped obituary. I had found the names of all of one of my ancestor's brothers and sisters that way. And once I had found the burial place for another ancestor, someone I'd looked for high and low. Turned out he'd been buried in the next county over. Funeral home and monument records are a great, albeit often overlooked, source of genealogical information.

But in the case of the seven unidentified bodies of
The Phantom,
I wanted to know only one thing. “I'm doing a memorial for
The Phantom,
and I'm trying to come up with different tidbits of information. You know, how it affected the town, et cetera, and I was just wondering who paid for the tombstones.” I said to Tom.

“Uh … William Wade.”

I almost choked on the cap to my pen. “D-did you say William Wade?”

“Yeah, William Wade. And he picked them up,” Tom added quickly.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the records indicate that he picked them up. So I'm assuming he placed the stones on the graves himself. Not an unusual thing to do back then. Especially since these particular tombstones were made out of limestone and pretty lightweight.”

I knew exactly what he meant. Those old limestone monuments all but melted in the elements. Nowadays, the stones are far too heavy for the average person just to pick up and place on a grave without any help.

“Thank you, Tom,” I said. “Thank you very much.”

I hung up the phone and wandered in a daze into the kitchen, where Colin was waiting for me. He took one look at me and could tell I'd just made an amazing discovery.

“What?”

“It can wait. Show me what you've got.”

“You look like … well, you look like you've just been hit with a brick,” he said. “Are you sure it can wait?”

“Yes, but not for long, so show me what you've got.”

“Well, it's more like what I don't have,” he said. He pushed the play button and footage of the Murdoch Inn came on. “This was taken by Kyle, Bradley Chapel's cameraman, the night of the murder. You'll notice the Murdoch Inn and its parking lot.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“This is Jeremiah Ketchum's car,” he said. “That's Danny Jones's car, and this is the Channel 6 van. They are all present and accounted for. Now, if you'll notice the snow—”

“What about it?”

“There's the same amount on all of the vehicles,” he said, stopping the tape and then rewinding it. “Meaning all three of those vehicles had been in the same place since the snow began. Which was about four that afternoon. Maybe four-thirty.”

“What's that mean?”

“It means that if any of those three men killed Jacob Lahrs, he managed to get away from the crime scene and find a way back to the Murdoch Inn, undetected, without using his own vehicle,” he said.

He let the tape continue to roll, and I saw all the commotion as Elmer and Collette tried to pull me up the bank of the river. I could just see the top of my head bobbing up over the snow-covered embankment, and then I'd slip back down. I saw Collette get behind me finally and push, and I was up. It was weird watching myself on video footage. It was one thing to be filmed when you knew about it, but it was strange watching footage of myself that I hadn't known was being shot. It was almost like having an out-of-body experience.

“Now, what news did you have?” he asked.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “What about that ticket? If the cars were there all day, then how did Jeremiah Ketchum get a ticket on that day?”

“Good question,” he said. “I'll check first thing when I get back to the office and see what Duran came up with on the ticket. Now, what did you find out?”

“Well, Kyle mentioned this morning that he and Bradley Chapel were headed out to the cemetery to film the tombstones. Then just now, I was poking around, trying to find different tidbits of information about the wreck and how it affected the town. And I just wondered who had paid for the tombstones of the victims. So, I called the monument company and asked.”

“And? Torie, what did you find out?”

“Well, I had expected it to be one of the richer patrons in town—you know, like Mr. Gaheimer, or maybe a charity organization like one of the Rotary clubs or something.”

“Torie. What did you find?”
he asked again, exasperated.

“I think I know where the diamonds are hidden.”

He dropped the remote control for the VCR.
“What?”
he said, bending over to retrieve the remote.

“William Wade, also known as Eli Thibeau, paid for the seven monuments. Why would he do that?”

“Because he felt guilty, since he was the captain of the boat?”

I shook my head. “I don't doubt that was part of it. But he also picked them up and erected them himself. I think that's where he hid the diamonds. For whatever reason, we may never know, but I think that's where the diamonds are.”

Colin picked up his radio. “This is Brooke. Have a car meet me at Granite Lutheran Cemetery.” With that, he headed down the hallway.

“Hey, wait,” I said. “I'm coming with you.”

“No, you're not.”

“I'll stay in the car,” I said.

“You're not going,” he said, twirling around to face me.

“Look, I found the darn things.”

“
If
they're there.”

“Whatever, I found 'em, and I'm going.”

Rolling his eyes, he motioned for me to follow him. “Okay, but if I so much as see one hair on your head outside of that car, I'll throw you in jail.”

“No big deal,” I said. “You've done that twice already.”

“Fine, then this time I'll just shoot you.”

Twenty-six

Riding in the front seat of the sheriff's official car was pretty cool. It was a lot like riding in a fire truck, this exotic place that is normally off-limits. “Ooohhh, what's this button for?”

“You touch that button and I'll break your finger.”

I withdrew my finger quickly and looked around. “Is that gun loaded?”

“Of course it's loaded. You think the bad guys are going to let me take time to load it?”

“No, guess not.”

Colin picked up the radio and contacted the other squad car headed out to the cemetery. “Yeah, Duran. Wait on the other side of the covered bridge for me to arrive. I don't want to interrupt Mr. Chapel if he's about to incriminate himself.”

“‘Incriminate himself'?” I asked.

“You said that Danny Jones and Jeremiah Ketchum didn't even know where the diamonds were, right?”

“Yeah?”

“So then if we get there and Bradley Chapel is hacking away at the tombstones and takes the diamonds, that's not going to look too good on his part, now is it? How would he know the diamonds were there if Danny Jones and Jeremiah Ketchum didn't even know?”

“You know, sometimes you're all right,” I said.

“Like I need your approval.”

“You do, whether you admit it or not,” I said. “If I'm not happy, my mother's not happy, and if mother's not happy, then you won't be happy. It's simple family dynamics.”

“There's the Channel 6 van,” he said, ignoring me. He pointed beyond the covered bridge to the parking lot of the church. We pulled up along the road, a few feet before the turn to the covered bridge. Normally, we would have been able to pull all the way off the road, but the snow kept us from doing that. When the snowplows had gone through and cleared the roads, the snow naturally went to the sides, creating a three-foot-high wall. So we were sort of stopped in the middle of the road.

“You stay here,” he said.

“Colin,” I said, whining. “I can't even see the cemetery.”

“My heart bleeds for you, Torie. Really it does.” With that, he got out of the squad car and went to meet up with Deputy Duran. The two crossed the covered bridge on foot and then headed up the road toward the church. From where the squad car was situated, I could not see them as they wound around the front of the churchyard to reach the cemetery. Lord knew how long they were going to observe before moving in.

Colin had left the keys for me—in case of an emergency, I assumed. I thought a moment about turning the engine on so that I could listen to the radio. But I had a feeling this car was booby-trapped, and I just wasn't going to take the chance of turning on the sirens by accident and warning Bradley and Kyle that we were there. So I tapped my foot and hummed a song by Dido.

It seemed like twenty minutes had passed when Deputy Duran came walking back across the bridge and motioned for me to come. I got out of the car, half-afraid that this was a test and Colin was going to bark at me from behind a tree and carry me off to jail. But I got out anyway. “Colin says he wants you.”

“Okay,” I called to him.

Deputy Duran waited for me to get to the bridge and then walked alongside me. A few years older than I, Duran used to be the all-star quarterback for Meyersville High. Funny, Deputy Newsome used to play football, too. Anyway, Duran once belonged to a motorcycle club with Chuck, but he'd quit a few years back, after a really nasty accident left him with a broken leg and a hole in his skull.

“What did he find?”

“We waited behind the tree and watched, but all they were doing was filming video. Doesn't look like they were up to anything else,” he said.

Just as we reached the cemetery, Earl Kloepper came walking from the church, his gray hair combed straight back. “What's going on, Deputy Duran?”

“Come on out to the cemetery, Earl. Colin's probably going to want to talk to you.”

The three of us walked to where the sheriff, Bradley Chapel, and Kyle stood in front of the seven tombstones. “Earl,” the sheriff said. “I need permission to do something.”

“What's that?” Earl asked.

“I need to move these seven tombstones,” he said. “But I promise if they are destroyed in the process, the Historical Society will pay for new ones. Right, Torie?”

“Right,” I said, not knowing whether we would or not. Knowing Sylvia, though, she would pay for new ones. She may be an old biddy sometimes, but she's generous about things like this.

“Duran, go get a shovel.”

Bradley Chapel peered at me with curious eyes. I nodded to him, and he nodded back. “Are you ever going to tell me what this is all about, Sheriff?” he asked.