Picture Them Dead (8 page)

Winston's ex-wife, may she live out her life happily far, far away, called us the “Ancient History” club, and she didn't mean it as a compliment. She thought things from the past were best left there, not “dredged up for other people to paw over.” And she'd really soured on the whole thing when Winston traced one branch of his lineage back to a slave woman.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked Esme. “Make some dip?”

“No, I'll do it. This kitchen is too small for both of us. You go on out to the workroom and see what I got done this morning.”

“Okay,” I said, though I couldn't figure out how the kitchen had gotten too small for both of us to work in it. We'd done it a million times. “You got my message, right? About Dee identifying the dead woman?”

“Yes, wasn't that something? Denny told me about it, too. I invited him to come tonight since this isn't a regular meeting.”

“Good,” I said. “What, specifically, did you want me to look at in the workroom?”

“I set up all the records we've collected so far for River's research and I got about halfway done with entering it into the database. I marked where I got to, maybe you can finish up before everybody gets here? And I went through that box of pictures and pulled out all the ones that were taken on the Harper place, for the scrapbook.”

I'm normally the methodical one, but over the time we've worked together, Esme has become a conscientious record keeper. She'd set out the records, sorted the way I like them, and had even taped a long sheet of paper to the worktable so I could start a time line, one of my favorite tools. I picked up a ruler and a pencil and started ticking in dates. Eventually this would document everything we could learn about the Harper place, but for now I concentrated on the time frame from 1900 to 1950, since finding the identity of the Forgotten Man was the focus. I worked away on that for a few minutes, but then the guilt got to me. There was still a stack of records that needed to be entered into the genealogy program, so I woke up the computer and set to it.

I kept a close eye on the clock, since I knew I needed to tidy up the family room before our meeting. I finished with fifteen minutes to spare, but before I shut down the computer I ran the function that gives a display of everything that's been entered so that I could see what Esme had put in earlier. I glanced over the screen and hooted a laugh so loud it brought Esme to the doorway.

“What's so blessed funny?” she asked. “You scared me. I thought you were having some kind of fit in here.”

“Miss Lottie's marriage certificate to Howard Wal­ker,” I said, pointing to the screen. “I didn't see this yesterday. Charlotte Wright and Howard Walker. Her birth name was Wright. She tried to tell me this afternoon and I didn't get it. Her name was Wright and I thought she was acknowledging that she understood my question. Anyhow, now we know her name. We just have to figure out how she's related to the Harpers.”

Esme frowned and came over to look at the screen. She traced her finger along until she came to the marriage license info for Oren and Sadie Harper in 1915.

“I couldn't read this on our copy but I scanned it and put it through the guesser today,” she said, using her euphemism for a piece of software we use that extrapolates to complete the text or image in old documents. We don't rely on what the guesser comes up with, but sometimes it can give us good clues to pursue. Esme had the entry highlighted in yellow, a signal that the information was tentative. Oren T. Harper had married Sadie Marie Wright in September 1915. She was seventeen and he was twenty-one.

“So Miss Lottie is likely from Sadie's branch of the family, not the Harper side. We need to switch gears.”

“But, Sophreena, River tasked us with finding out who's in that coffin, not with tracing yet another branch of the family's history,” Esme said.

“I know. But I think the answer to the question of who is in that grave lies with Miss Lottie. If our time frame is right, she'd likely have been alive when that body was buried there. She'd have been a child but maybe old enough to remember. And since we're not having any luck with the official records, so far she's our best shot. We'll have to go back to Cottonwood, probably a few more times.”

“Not we, you,” Esme said firmly. “I'll do the entry, or make myself useful otherwise, but I can't deal with that ornery old woman.”

I could have said it takes one to know one.

But I didn't.

*   *   *

The club meeting was festive and mostly centered around the upcoming nuptials, but we did manage to get some business in. We all gave our usual reports about what we'd worked on since the last meeting. Not surprisingly, Marydale and Winston had nothing to report because they'd been busy with wedding plans. Through having her DNA tested, Coco had found a long lost cousin who had some information about her father's side of the family. She was amused to find out her great-grandfather had been a gandy dancer for the railroad. “So I've got a fan dancer on my mother's side and a gandy dancer on my father's. No wonder I can't sit still.”

Jack was finally getting back to working on his own family lines. He'd started the whole endeavor to find out if the family legend about being related to the infamous Ford who shot and killed the outlaw Jesse James was true. But when he got the proof, it put him in a blue funk for a while. I fully understood this, since I was going through something similar, as I reported to the group when it was my turn.

“I've had a breakthrough,” I said. “I did a Skype interview with a woman who was a friend of my late grandmother, my mother's adoptive mother. She's elderly, but her memory is sharp and she remembered details I won't recount since this is a night for happy things. Suffice it to say, my mother's adoption was, as I suspected, quite irregular, almost certainly illegal, and, I fear, unethical. But now I've got some dates and names of other people involved and at some point I'm going to make a trip to the Marshall Islands to see what I can find out. For now, I'm letting it sink in for a while.”

“Can I have a turn?” Dee asked, raising her hand. “I know I'm just a visitor, but I'd like to report that I'm about to have a whole new family.” She reached over to pat Winston's thigh, and I could have hugged her when I saw the smile spread over his rugged face. Marydale, too, was beaming.

Esme took that cue to give them our gift and Marydale burst into tears as she leafed through the book. The front part was filled with pictures we'd gathered of the two of them taken over the past few years; the rest of the book was filled with scrapbook pages we'd designed, waiting for new photos and memories. The remainder of the evening was spent reminiscing over the pictures.

Denny and Jack stayed on after everyone else had left. I almost invented some pretext to get Jack out to the workroom with me to see if we could resume our talk, but it would have been too obvious. The chatter soon came around to the topic that was never far from our minds these days, the murder at River's place.

“I understand you've been out to see the grandmother,” Denny said. “Is she of sound enough mind for me to do a notification? We haven't been able to find any other kin.”

“She comes and goes. Today when we talked she didn't even realize her daughter was dead. But she has moments when she's clear. You haven't been able to locate the brother?”

“Not yet,” Denny said. “You get a full name or location on him in your poking around, you let me know.”

“Any idea why she was killed?” Esme asked.

“Nothing solid,” Denny admitted with a sigh.

“She must have died sometime after the vigil was over,” Jack said. “Or surely somebody would've seen or heard something. And it must have been after that rainstorm came through. That was a hard rain. You think she went to the tent looking for shelter?”

The tumblers clicked. Of course, that's why it had been important that her clothing and hair looked soaked through.

“Could be,” Denny said. “She died sometime in the mischief hours. Rainstorm moved through here about two thirty a.m. The ME puts time of death between two and four a.m. Now we've just gotta find out what evil creature was afoot in the land at that time.”

“Have you talked to any of the people who were friends with her when we were kids?” I asked.

Denny nodded. “Talked to all three of them. Laney says she hasn't seen or talked to her in years, but Bryan says he kept in touch. According to him she bounced around a lot. Last he knew, she was a bartender down in Miami. They got together when he was there for a golf expo a while back. But he hadn't heard from her lately. We've contacted the department down there.”

“How about Gavin?” I prompted when Denny didn't go on.

“Gavin was a little dodgier. He first said he didn't know her. Then he knew her but hadn't talked to her since they were kids. Then she wrote to him while he was undergoing his ‘unfortunate incarceration' for auto theft. He swears, maybe a little too vociferously, that he didn't know she was in these parts until he heard about the murder.”

“Are you saying he's a suspect?” I asked, almost laughing at the idea.

“You know the answer to that, Sophreena. Everybody's a suspect until they're ruled out. And since his alibi is that he was home in bed, alone, where any sensible person would be at that hour, I haven't struck him off the list.”

“Well, she was staying somewhere,” Esme said. “Did you check the local motels?”

“Gee, why didn't I think of that,” Denny said with a laugh. “That sounds like something a cop might do.”

Esme gave him a withering look.

He cleared his throat. “Yes, we checked all the hotels and motels, B and Bs, guest cabins, and rooming houses in a fifty-mile radius. We're on the lookout for cars that haven't moved in a couple of days and checking bus, train, and airline records. So far, zip.”

The room fell silent for a moment until finally Esme spoke up.

“Well, she didn't fall from the sky,” she said. “And she must have had more with her than what she was wearing. Sooner or later you'll turn up something.”

Denny nodded. “I sincerely hope so.”

“At least she's not the Forgotten Woman anymore,” I said. “She's got a name.”

“But I wonder who'll remember her,” Esme said, her voice soft. “And whether they'll remember her fondly.”

eight

I was at Cottonwood bright and early the next morning, sans Esme and armed with a six-pack of root beer.

“You're getting to be a regular,” the desk attendant said when I signed in. “I think Miss Lottie is in the community room. You can visit with her there if you'd like, or if she'd rather have you to herself, you can push her back to her room. Community room's right down that short hall.” She pointed to a wide entryway at the far end of the lobby, but I didn't need directions; all I had to do was follow the cacophony of voices accompanied by someone plinking away on a painfully out of tune piano.

Miss Lottie was sitting with three other women at a table in the corner and seemed to be, wonder of wonders, laughing merrily. She and another woman were in wheelchairs. The other two looked too young to be in a nursing home. As I approached the table, Miss Lottie frowned, but I had the sense it wasn't a grumpy frown, simply that she was concentrating. As the other women looked up, I introduced myself and told them I was a genealogist and was tracing the Harper family history and that Miss Lottie was helping me. All true as far as it went.

“I knew the Harpers,” the other wheelchair-bound woman said. Her voice was strong and her big eyes were further magnified by thick lenses. “I knew them nearly a century ago, can you imagine that? We didn't live but a mile from each other, but that was a long way back then, when you had to do it on foot. It took us coming into this place all these years later to become friends, didn't it, Lottie?”

Miss Lottie nodded, but I wasn't sure she'd heard or understood.

“Maybe you can help me, then, too,” I said. “What's your name?”

“I'm Ruth Wilkins. I can't say I knew Mr. Oren and Miss Sadie all that well; I was but a child. But they were friends of my mama and daddy's. I know they were good folks.”

The other two ladies introduced themselves. The first was named Constance McNally and she looked far too young to be in a retirement home. When I said as much she explained that they lived in the apartments in the other part of the complex and that they came over to visit every few days. The other one introduced herself as Margaret Roman. She was petite and lively and had a dandelion fuzz of snow-white hair. She was excited to hear I was a genealogist, and I braced myself for a long recitation of her family's illustrious history, which is usually what I get when I meet an amateur family historian. But she surprised me.

“I just love family stories,” she said, her smile the sweetest I believed I'd ever seen on a grown-up's face. “I come over here and talk to the people and write down what they remember about their families, then I give my notebooks to their family members later on when the person is, you know, no longer with us.” She whispered the last words. “The families seem to appreciate it. It amazes me how many people don't ever think to do that until it's too late and then wish they had.”

“Preach it, sister,” I said, which earned me another smile.

“I've even done some of Miss Lottie's family history, haven't I, Lottie?”

Miss Lottie looked at her blankly.

“You remember I asked you about your birth date and growing up out at the farm and all,” Margaret prompted.

“Charlotte Eugenia Wright Walker, born June sixteen in the Year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and seventeen. I was born at home in Maryland with an old granny woman the only one to help. I killed my mother coming into the world. Happy birthday to me,” Miss Lottie said, setting her water glass down hard on the table, her expression dour.

“Now, dearie,” Margaret said, patting Miss Lottie's hand, “it's a sad thing that your mother died in childbirth, but you oughtn't to say you killed her. That's not true.”

“True enough,” Miss Lottie countered.

“And what were your parents' names again?” Margaret asked.

“My mother was Eugenia, Eugenia Elizabeth Collins Wright. That was her name. She was real pretty. They say she had eyes blue as the sky and hair black as crow's feathers. That's about all I know of her.”

“And what was your father's name?” I blurted before I could stop myself.

My mistake. Margaret's soft voice and gentle manner had been carrying Miss Lottie along and I'd broken the spell. Miss Lottie turned to me, her eyes narrowed.

“You'll not trick me, missy,” she hissed. “We don't talk of my daddy. It was the war that ruint him. That and my mama dying. None of it was his fault, it was the war.”

“Yes, I remember, you told me about him being in the war,” Margaret said soothingly, not the least bit thrown by Miss Lottie's change of mood. “That was a terrible war, the First World War. Just awful.”

“None of 'em are any good,” Miss Lottie said, tilting her head as if thinking this over, “but that one was just pure hell for the ones in the trenches. It wasn't like now, where they drop the bombs from those robot planes. In that war, you had to look a fella right in the eye when you killed him. That does something to a man. It poisons his soul.”

I leaned over and whispered a suggestion into Margaret's ear. She nodded and smiled at me, clearly proud to be taking the lead.

“Miss Lottie, could you tell me your daddy's name? And do you know when he died and where he's buried?”

“I could tell, but I won't,” Miss Lottie said, jutting out her chin. “You're in with her and trying to trick me,” she said, lifting her chin even higher in my direction. “I done told you I don't talk about that night. I made a solemn promise and I mean to keep it till I'm in my grave.”

“That's fine, Miss Lottie,” Margaret answered sweetly, though it certainly wasn't fine with me. What night? Promise not to talk about what? This was like waving catnip in front of a tabby's nose, then snatching it away.

“I'm not asking you to break a promise, Miss Lottie,” I said, keeping my voice as low as I could and still have her hear me. “I just want to make sure your father's grave gets a proper marker, that's all.”

“No marker,” Miss Lottie said. “No, ma'am. That'd only lead to folks poking their snouts in our family business, and Uncle Oren says we'll not allow that. Nobody's got the right to judge until they've walked a mile in her shoes. It was the only choice, and I ought to know.”

“Okay, no marker,” I said. “I just wanted to check with you about it; your father is buried on the old Harper place, right?”

Miss Lottie looked at me, her eyes losing focus. It was as if someone had thrown a switch and the light went out. She looked around, confused, until her gaze came to light on a plate of store-bought cookies an attendant had brought over.

“Is there nobody in this place knows how to make a good apple pie?” Miss Lottie said, loud enough to be heard in the kitchen, which I was pretty sure was her intent. “Sadie makes the best pie you ever tasted out of apples from our orchard. They're small and nubbly, but sweet as a mama's kiss, and Sadie's crust is so light you have to stab it with your fork to keep it from floating off the plate. She always makes me a birthday pie instead of a cake. Is Sadie coming to fetch me soon? She'll be afoot, she never has learnt to drive a car. Maybe she's ­a-waiting for it to cool down outside. She said she'd come fetch me soon as she could get loose.”

“I think you've lost her, sweetie,” Margaret said.

*   *   *

I stopped for gas at Joe Porter's filling station. He runs the only station in town that still has full service, and I hate pumping gas. The stench gets into my nose and I can smell it for the rest of the day. It makes me queasy.

I was hoping to have a chance to talk to Gavin Taylor, and as luck would have it, he was the one who came out to fill my tank. I risked the fumes to roll down my window.

Gavin and I weren't exactly buddies, but I'd known him all through our school years. He was one of those guys who blended into the background, popping out now and again to do something truly impressive—or truly stupid—before receding into the background again. He'd been suspended and sent for counseling in his sophomore year for coldcocking the gym teacher. That sounds like a terrible thing unless you knew, as the students all did, that the gym teacher picked mercilessly on small, weak kids. One of those kids happened to be Billy Hayward, Gavin's next-door neighbor. Billy was a painfully shy, skinny kid who'd never have dreamt of talking back to a teacher. He'd left gym class each day for months with red-rimmed eyes and trembling legs. We'd had some class talks about bullying, but no one had ever given us guidance on what to do if the teacher was the bully. Gavin improvised.

“Hey, Gavin,” I said, my voice nasal as I tried to keep from inhaling the vapors. “Haven't seen you in a while.”

I'd almost said, “Since you got out,” but saved myself from that foot-in-mouth moment. Apparently my hesitation hadn't gone unnoticed.

“It's okay, you can say it,” Gavin said with a sigh. “Since I got outta the clink.”

“Yeah,” I said, “what happened with that whole thing, Gavin?”

He shrugged. “I just saw the car and wanted to drive it. I wasn't going to keep it or try to sell it or anything like that. I just wanted to drive that sucker, just once. A 1971 Chevy Camaro, a classic muscle car. Fully restored. It was just sittin' there, the sun shining down on it like it was in a spotlight. Seemed to me like it was beggin' to be put through its paces, so I borrowed it for a spin. Figured I'd have it back before the owner got off work and nobody'd be the wiser. Turns out the owner has a window office with a view of the street and felt absolutely no inclination to share the pleasures of his sweet ride.”

“How long did you get?” I asked

“Six months, which was a gift. Could've been worse. But now I've got a record. Couldn't get my old job at the golf course back. I'm lucky Joe was willing to hire me.”

“Remind me again what you did at the golf course,” I said.

“I worked in the garage keeping all those carts running smoothly and spit-shined, ready for the rich folks to drive their fat butts around the course for their exercise. Bryan got me the job, but even he couldn't save my bacon after my unfortunate incarceration.” The nozzle snicked off and he coaxed an extra gallon into my tank with a series of nozzle clicks.

“Joe's a good guy,” I said once there was silence.

“Yeah, the man's solid. Truth is, I like working here better than at the course anyhow. Pay's not so good, but at least I'm working on real cars.” He jerked his head toward the garage.

“How was it for you in there, Gavin?” I asked.

“Bad,” he said. “I see now why sometimes people come out worse than when they went in. It's like a technical school for criminals. I learned about burglary, fraud, scamming, and fighting. I hope I don't ever use any of it. But I also learned a little about myself. The prison shrink informs me I have poor impulse control, can you believe that?”

“Hard to imagine,” I said. “Listen, I wanted to say I'm sorry about Sherry Burton; I understand you were friends with her.”

“How did you know—” He stopped and cocked his head back. “Oh yeah, you know the big cop, right? Well, like I told him, I knew her when we were kids, but I haven't seen her in a long, long time. I was sorry to hear about how she died. It was terrible, but I don't know anything about it.”

He was emphatic, maybe a little too emphatic, and I noticed he was no longer looking at me.

*   *   *

When I got home I went immediately to the workroom, where I found a stack of photocopies Esme had left for me from her morning courthouse excursion. Using the info she'd gotten on Miss Lottie, I was able to backtrack to her father, Samuel Wright, and after some digging I found what little there was of his military record. Samuel Wright had served in World War I, and from what I could find out about his unit, he'd probably spent some time on the front lines.

I had no proof that the glass casket held Samuel Wright's remains, but everything pointed in that direction and I figured it was time I called River to report the theory.

“So, run that by me again,” he said, getting lost in my recitation of names and relationships. “This Samuel Wright ties into this place how?”

“He was the brother of Sadie Wright Harper, the wife of the owner of the property starting around 1910. Oren Harper, Sadie's husband, inherited it from his folks. Sadie and Oren had no children, and they left the property to Miss Lottie Wright Walker, who would have been their niece. I'm still digging, and as I said, I have no proof as yet that the remains you found were those of Samuel Wright, but he's our best candidate so far.”

“Yeah,” River said, “now all I'd like to know is how and why he ended up with a hole in his skull, buried in my yard in a glass coffin, the grave unmarked and undisclosed. Is his death related in any way to that young woman who died at his grave? Who would have been related to him how, exactly?”

“That's a lot of questions,” I said with a sigh, my excitement about my theory waning in the face of all that remained unknown. “If I'm on the right track, he would have been her great-grandfather. You mentioned there might be some things in your attic we could go through. When would be a good time for us to do that?”

“How about tonight?” River asked. “I've got somewhere I need to be at five, but I should be back here by six thirty at the latest. I can rig some trouble lights up there and it'll be cooler after the sun goes down anyhow. Does that work for you?”

“You bet,” I said. “I'll be there by seven.”

I wasn't sure Esme would be able to make it, but at this point I didn't know whether to hope she'd be free to come along or that she'd opt out. I could deal with her irritability or Jennifer's hostility, but both at once was overload.

As if my thoughts had summoned her, Esme came in the front door. I went out into the hallway just in time to see her disappear into the kitchen with an armload of groceries.