Kindred Spirits (15 page)

“Yes, son, she was mean,”
Mr. Buchanan says. “The way she treated Helen was terrible.

Always telling her she
was ugly and she had no common sense. ‘An educated fool,’ she used to call
Helen. And she made Helen work so hard! Helen taught school from eight to three
five days a week. The only job Mildred had was giving piano lessons to the few
kids who weren’t too scared of her to take them, which she did for three hours
a week at the very most. It would seem fair that if Helen was doing most of the
work and earning most of the money, Mildred would pitch in and do some of the
work around the house. But no! She expected Helen to do all the housework and
cooking. I used to call her my little Cinderella. Once Helen suggested that
they hire a girl to come in once a week and help with the cleaning, but Mildred
told Helen that not only was she the laziest person on earth, she was also a
spendthrift who would squander every cent of their money if Mildred wasn’t
there to watch her.”

“Wow,” I say, “why did
Helen keep on living with Mildred if she treated her so badly?”

Harold smiles. “Because
she was so sweet. Helen was a victim of her own kindness. She said that with
their parents dead, Mildred was the only family she had, and that family had to
stick together. She said she would move out of the family home once we got
married, but until then she would stay with Mildred because she did love her,
even though she made her cry sometimes.” He shakes his head like he’s shaking
off a bad memory. “Mildred made her cry quite often, actually.”

The
sheriff looks up from cleaning his fingernails with a pocket knife. “Don’t get
me wrong here, Mr. Buchanan, this is a real interestin’ story. But I don’t
understand what it is you felt like you needed to tell me. If this has
something to do with the Jameson sisters’ murder, that case was solved as soon
as it happened.”

“I’m getting to the part
I need to tell you,” Mr. Buchanan says. “I just want to make sure I explain
myself so you’ll understand why I did what I did...although sometimes I’m not
so sure I understand it myself.”

He gestures for another
drink, and I give it to him.

After he swallows, he
says, “As you might imagine, it was hard for Helen and me to see each other. We
couldn’t be seen together in public, and it was hard to see each other in
private because I still lived with my parents, and they kept a close eye on me.
And Mildred kept an even closer eye on Helen, even though Helen was a grown
woman and should have been able to do as she pleased. The one time a week Helen
and I could always see each other was Tuesday afternoons. Mildred had a Ladies
Missionary Circle meeting that she never missed, which meant that Helen and I
could have an hour and a half together while Mildred was away. I lived for that
hour and a half a week.”

Mr. Buchanan looks like
he might smile from the memories, but then something stops him short. “Helen
and I would sit on the couch in the living room and talk and hold hands, kiss a
little, and the time would pass like it was just a few seconds.” He takes a
deep breath. “Well, one Tuesday afternoon, the day of the murders, Helen and I
were sitting on the couch as usual. I had just leaned in for a kiss, my eyes
were closed, and I guess Helen’s were too, when I heard a scream. I opened my
eyes, and I saw Mildred standing there with the black boy everybody called
Charlie T, and she was screaming like she had seen me attacking Helen instead
of just kissing her.”

“Hm,”
the sheriff says, putting his knife back in his pants pocket, “Do you reckon
she was screaming because Charlie T was threatening her or hurting her some
way?”

“No,” Mr. Buchanan says.
“Charlie T wasn’t doing a thing but carrying his newspaper bag. I guess he was
out delivering papers, and Mildred saw him on her way home and invited him in
to do a chore of some kind. They paid Charlie T to do their yard work and fix
little things around the house...the ‘man’s work’ they didn’t know anything
about. So Charlie T was just standing there frozen while Mildred screamed and
screamed.” Mr. Buchanan winces like he can still hear the screaming. “Helen got
up off the couch and went to try to calm Mildred down. She put her hands on
Mildred’s shoulders and said,’Let me explain...if you’ll just calm down, I’ll
explain everything.’“

Mr. Buchanan shakes his
head. “But Mildred said there was nothing to explain, that she knew what she
saw. Then she said, ‘Harold Buchanan, I am going to call your parents and tell
them about this,’ but even worse, she said to Helen, ‘And won’t the principal
and the school board be interested to hear about how dear old Miss Jameson is
carrying on with one of her students?’ Well, Helen just got hysterical. She
begged Mildred not to tell, and said, ‘Harold’s out of school, and he’s not
been my student for years. I’d get fired if you told, and we need my salary.’
But Mildred said they could get by on the money their daddy left them. ‘It
would be tight,’ she said, but I remember she said, ‘some things are more
important than money things like keeping a scarlet woman like you away from
innocent schoolchildren!’

Harold’s
forehead wrinkles, as if the memory causes him physical pain. “I jumped up
then, and said, ‘Now wait a minute, Mildred.’ But she said she would not wait,
that somebody needed to be in charge here. The tone of her voice changed; it
sounded almost kind. ‘Harold, Helen,’ she said, ‘I will consider not telling
either the Buchanans or the school officials about this if you two will meet
certain conditions.’ Helen asked what the conditions were, as innocent as a
babe in the woods. Mildred said the first condition was that Helen and I never
see each other again and if we did happen to run into each other on the street,
we were to pass without speaking. Well, about this time Charlie T finally found
his voice and said he’d best be going and he’d come back another day about that
yard work. But Mildred yelled, ‘No! Stay, Charlie ! I want you to witness this.
And there’ll be some money in this for you to make sure you keep quiet about
what you saw.’ And of course, the times being what they were, there wasn’t
anything for Charlie T to do but say’ yes ma’am’ and stay put.

“Then Mildred turned back
to Helen. She said, ’The second condition is this: you’re going to start living
your life according to what I would like. You can go to your job as usual, but
once you’re home, you will spend your time doing exactly what I tell you to do.
If I want you to scrub the bathroom with a toothbrush, you do it. If I want you
to get out of bed at one o’clock in the morning and bake me a cake, you’ll do
it. Do you know why you’ll do it?” Mr. Buchanan’s eyes are wet with tears. “By
this time Helen was crying so hard she could barely say no. But when she did,
Mildred smiled, and it was the ugliest smile I’d ever seen. She said, ‘Because
if you don’t, I’ll tell.’ I told Mildred that she couldn’t do that, that it was
blackmail, but she said,’ Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do.’ Then she
slapped Helen’s face hard, so hard she knocked her glasses off, and called her
a name that’s not fit to say in front of children.”

Mr.
Buchanan sighs. “That’s when I snapped. You have to understand. I was young, I
was crazy in love, and I thought I was rescuing the woman I loved from peril. I
knew, because Helen had showed it to me, that their father’s pistol was sitting
on the mantle behind the clock. They were always a little scared of intruders
and kept it for protection. And of course, I thought I was using the gun for
protection, too, when I grabbed it and stood face to face with Mildred,
pointing it at her.

‘Don’t you ever talk to
Helen like that,’ I said. ’I’m going to settle this here and now.’ Like I said,
I was young, and I thought I was the hero in a cowboy movie. But I swear I
never planned to shoot Mildred, just to scare her.

“But then Helen screamed,
‘No!’ and tried to grab the gun from my hands. We struggled with it for a
couple of seconds, like a tug of war, and I don’t know which one of us
accidentally pulled the trigger, but the gun went off.” Mr. Buchanan’s eyes
spill over with tears. “She was shot through the heart. The heart that had
belonged to me. She died...instantly.”

“Now wait a minute, Mr.
B.” The sheriff is on his feet now, pacing. “Are you telling me that Charlie
Thomas didn’t kill Helen Jameson’ that you did, by accident?”

“Yes,” Mr. Buchanan says,
his voice still choked from crying. “Helen’s death was an accident. But
Mildred’s death was not.”

The sheriff’s jaw drops.
“You killed Mildred Jameson, too?”

“Yes.” Mr. Buchanan looks the sheriff straight in the eye. “As
soon as Helen fell to the floor, Mildred started screaming, ‘You killed her!
You killed her! Murderer! Murderer!’ I had just lost the only person I loved,
and standing before me, alive and screaming, was the only person I hated. was
so filled with rage I didn’t even think. I just pulled the trigger.”

“And
Charlie T was just standing there the whole time,” I say.

“Yes,” Mr. Buchanan says.
“Some people run when they’re scared, and some people freeze on the spot.
Charlie T froze. His face was frozen in this look of horror...he looked more
like a statue than a person. And as I saw him there, I realized he was a
witness to the murder I’d just committed. I held the gun on him, but the horror
of what I had just done was sinking in, and my finger wouldn’t touch the
trigger.”

Mr. Buchanan closes his
eyes and takes a deep breath. “It’s this next part that’s the hardest to talk
about. Still holding the gun, I checked Helen’s pulse to make double sure she
was dead. There was no need to check Mildred’s pulse...just looking at her you
knew there was no way she could be alive. And then I did the worst thing I’ve
ever done.

“I looked at Charlie T
standing there, and suddenly the whole future that had been spread out before
me was in danger of disappearing. I couldn’t let my dreams be destroyed because
of one accidental killing and one justifiable one, I thought. I had a full
scholarship to go to UK the next month. I was going to be a successful business
man, a politician, a leader in my community. I kept looking at Charlie T. In a
time and place like that, I thought, what future could a black kid like him
have? His opportunities were so limited that he’d be doing odd jobs and yard
work for the rest of his life. And that was when I made the coldest, most
selfish decision of my life. I decided that my future was more valuable than
Charlie T’s.”

“But...but
you couldn’t have known that,” I say. “You can’t just decide one person’s life
means more than another’s.”

“I know that now,” Mr.
Buchanan says. “But at the time I was full of the arrogance of youth, and I
truly believed I had more to offer the world than a boy like Charlie T did. So
I held the gun on him, and I said, ‘You did this, do you understand?’ He said,
No sir. So I repeated, ‘You did this. You killed the Jameson sisters because you
were mad that they paid some other boy to do their yard work for them.’“

Mr. Buchanan pulls up the
cover on his bed like he’s suddenly cold. “Charlie T was shaking and crying
like a child, which is, of course, what he was. He tried to interrupt me...he said,
‘But Mr. Buchanan,’ and I said’ But, nothing. When the sheriff gets here, you
confess to the murder. You’ll do some jail time, but I tell you what. If you
tell the sheriff what really happened, I’ve got friends who’ll make sure you
don’t live long enough to say another word. So what are you gonna tell them,
boy?’ I said. Charlie T was crying so hard he barely choked out, ‘I did it.’

I said, ‘That’s right.
You did it,’ and that’s when I grabbed the poker from the fireplace and knocked
him out cold. I cleaned my fingerprints off the gun and put it in Charlie T’s
hand. And then I called the sheriff’s office and said that I’d heard screams
and shots coming from the Jameson place. I said I’d run in to find Charlie T
holding a gun over the dead bodies of the Jameson sisters and that I’d managed
to sneak up behind him and knock him out with a poker. I didn’t give the
sheriff my name, and as soon as I hung up the phone, I got out of there and ran
straight home.”

The sheriff has taken off
his glasses and is rubbing his eyes like he has a killer headache. “Mr.
Buchanan,” he says, “are you sure it happened like you say it did?”

“Of
course I’m sure. It’s my body that’s failing, not my mind.”

“Hm,” the sheriff says.
“What was it that made you want to confess after all these years?”

“Well,” Mr. Buchanan
says, turning to look at Adam and me. “These young people were part of it.
They’re the ones who figured out I did it.”

“You two?” The sheriff
sounds like what he just heard is even more shocking than Mr. Buchanan confessing
to murder.

“Yessir,” I say. “Adam
here lives in the old Jameson place, and that got us interested in the murder,
so we did some research and went around asking people questions.”

“I heard they were asking
questions,” Mr. Buchanan says. “My buddy Roy Silcox came over one day and told
me a couple of kids had come to his office asking about the Jameson murder. He
told me this not knowing I was the one who did it, of course, but just by way
of making conversation. He said the girl was Irene Chandler’s spooky little
granddaughter, and the boy was Chinese.”

“Korean,” Adam says so
softly that only I can hear him.

“I got worried,” Mr.
Buchanan says, “so I got my great grandson Cody who goes to school with these
kids to leave some notes and even make an anonymous phone call to Adam’s house,
telling them to stop snooping.”

“Cody Taylor is your
great-grandson?” Adam says. “He’s such a pain!”

Mr. Buchanan smiles. “He
can be, yes. And I shouldn’t have encouraged him to harass you.”

“Oh, Cody doesn’t need encouragement,”
I say. “He harasses us all the time.”