The Death of Perry Many Paws (23 page)

“But if he thought his father was Fulton Foster that means his father would have been Hetty’s brother … Oh, God, you don’t think …” Poor Syra and Bing.

“Incest? Of course not. There’s never been any incest in Birdsey Falls,” Claudia reassured us.

“He probably heard all the names and got them mixed up. If you ask Syra I’m sure she can straighten it out,” Sybil added.

“And there’s no possibility that Syra and Bing have the same father,” Claudia pronounced. “I mean, just look at them. It’s genetically impossible. What Bing believes is not necessarily the truth. And it doesn’t matter now anyway so why do we have to keep talking about it?”

Because we spent the entire dinner talking about what you wanted to talk about, that’s why. “What did Willard Foster do?”

“Business. He traveled for business and left the kids home a lot with a nanny, which is why Hetty ran around like a wild animal,” Sybil explained.

“What did Fulton do? Was he older or younger?” I asked. I wasn’t going to be satisfied until I could make a family tree and understand all these relationships.

“Fulton didn’t do anything. He was a child. He went to school and did whatever little boys did.” Sybil had taken over the conversation for both her and Claudia because Claudia was now staring out the window, totally disassociating herself. If she wasn’t the one talking she at least expected the conversation to be
about
her.

“I think Tamsen means, why wasn’t Fulton in the photo with the rest of the kids. Or was he a lot older or younger than the rest of you?” Cam chimed in. That was exactly what I meant so I couldn’t fault him for attempting to explain what I was trying to say. I obviously needed the assistance.

Sybil glanced over at Claudia. “How old was Fulton?” Claudia ignored her. “I’d say Fulton was maybe a year or two older than I was, definitely younger than Hetty.”

“So he would have been around eight when that photo was taken?” I asked.

“I suppose so.”

“Why wasn’t he in the photo?”

“Because he never played with us. I mean he wouldn’t play with Claudia and me because we didn’t play with boys and he was too young to play with Franklin and Edmund. Fifteen-year-olds don’t want to play with eight-year-olds.”

Claudia did the ladylike equivalent of rolling her eyes, which was to sigh loudly. “And he was crippled.”

“Crippled?”

Sybil nodded her head. “Yes, now I remember. He had polio and had to wear leg braces. So he was inside the house a lot. I don’t even remember what he looked like.”

Maybe I could track him down and see if he remembered Franklin as a teenager. Sometimes people who are housebound are very keen observers. If I were an eight-year-old stuck in the house all day I would spend a lot of time at the window watching the other kids play. Claudia and Sybil may have been oblivious to what was going on but I bet an eight-year-old boy wouldn’t be, especially if his sister was playing pirates with the older boys. “What happened to him? Does he still live around here?”

Claudia shook her head. “Hardly, dear.”

“Well, where did he go? What happened to Fulton?”

“He disappeared.”

No amount of probing would get any more information out of either Sybil or Claudia. Claudia announced she was half-ill just from being forced to think about those days and she had to go home immediately. Sybil, either out of respect or fear, agreed with Claudia that they should leave and even though I badgered them for information all the way out to the car neither would say another word.

sent out email to all the WOACA members to let them know there was an agenda for our Tuesday evening meeting. We were going to divide up the pile of April 1 newspapers and see if we could figure out why Franklin had kept them. Cam had suggested having each person read a certain section of the paper so they would notice if something kept reoccurring that might be a clue to why they were collected.

Bing and Syra arrived first so Bing could set up his refreshments. He had made tortes—lemon, chocolate and pecan. I supplied various hot and cold drinks and by the time Grace and Diane arrived we were all settled in the library snacking and discussing a plan of attack for the papers. As is the way among friends, the ugliness of last week’s WOACA meeting was forgotten and forgiven.

“I’d love to take the classifieds,” Diane volunteered as soon as she realized what we were doing. “I can’t wait to see the romantic notes people put in the paper in the ‘40s and ‘50s. The ones during the war will be especially poignant.”

“I’ll take the Daily Living section or whatever it was called back then,” Bing offered. “I want to look at the old recipes. I may find something good.”

“I’ll switch back and forth with Bing on Daily Living,” Syra volunteered. “While he is caught up in recipes I’ll check the advice columns
and things like that. Also the obituaries— which shouldn’t be in a section entitled Daily Living, by the way.”

“That leaves us with the first section and the local news, Grace. Which do you prefer?”

“I’ll do the first section news. You take local,” she suggested. “Oh, what about sports?”

“I’ll give that one to Cam. That’s what he was anxious to read, anyway.” We would separate the papers by section and then gather them together again, so we would end up with seventy complete editions instead of two hundred different sections spread out all over the room. It would be neat and methodical.

I took the 1938 local news and settled into my leather chair, my feet propped up on the ottoman, a must for long-term reading. I found an interesting article on the new Clancy’s hardware store opening. There was a photo of the original owner, Jim Clancy, and his grade-school-aged son, Tom. Tom was “old man Clancy” now and his grandson, Ron, had just taken over the day-to-day operations. Unlike the Behrendses, the Clancy’s had a family dynasty with something to show for it other than a monstrous house. I wondered if the Clancys had been in Birdsey Falls back when Roger Behrends had built this house. Maybe they had owned a different hardware store then and the construction workers for the house had bought their tools there. I was just thinking about all the things in life it would be fun to research and learn about if one only had the time, when Grace yelled out.

“Here’s something I never heard about. Listen.

‘The body of Raymond Mayberry Ketchum, the alleged victim of a kidnapping plot, was found early this morning in Camden Woods. Mr. Ketchum disappeared from his home the evening of March 30 on his way to a meeting of the Knights of Columbus. According to fellow Knights of Columbus member Duncan Martin, Mr. Ketchum never arrived at the Knights of Columbus Hall on Berkeley Street. It is assumed he left his house at 7:00
p.m., as was his routine, to attend the 7:30 p.m. meeting, and then disappeared. On March 31 Dr. Fletcher Ketchum, brother of the victim, received a note demanding $10,000 for Ketchum’s safe return. Cursory examination indicates that Mr. Raymond Ketchum died in the early hours of March 31 from a gunshot wound to his head. The police are not commenting on the alleged kidnapping or whether a ransom had been delivered.’”

Grace passed the paper around and we all looked at the photo of Raymond Ketchum, a rather non-descript, middle-aged man, slightly balding and chinless.

“I wish we had all of the papers for April 1938. I’d love to read the rest of the story as it developed,” Grace said. “I wonder why no one has ever heard of this story before.”

“It was over seventy years ago …” I said.

“But it was a kidnapping. How many of those do we have?”

“
Alleged
kidnapping. We don’t even know the rest of the story.”

“I’m going to get on the Internet and check the back issues of the paper tomorrow. This is intriguing.”

“But it probably has nothing do with Franklin’s murder seventy years later. He was fifteen when this Ketchum guy was killed,” I reminded her.

“True. But it’s interesting. I’ll move on,” Grace reassured me. With Bing looking for old recipes, Syra reading old advice columns, and Diane lost in the love laments of seventy years ago, I was beginning to think that I’d need to go through all the papers again myself. Grace was my only hope to stay on target.

Diane was next to share important information. “Listen to this. I think I found a stalker. There’s an ad in the personals in 1938 that reads,

‘You dropped your glove on Vincent Street. I sleep with it under my pillow. I’ll be on Vincent between 2 and 3 on Thursday afternoon with your glove.’

“It’s signed Frankie …”

“That doesn’t sound like something a fifteen-year-old would write,” Syra offered.

“Wait. There’s more. On April 1, 1939, there’s an ad that reads,

‘You dropped your scarf in front of Clancy’s hardware. I sleep with it under my pillow. I’ll be in front of Clancy’s between 2 and 3 on Monday afternoon with your scarf.’

“Also signed Frankie.”

“OK. I’m officially creeped out by this guy …” Grace shuddered. “… and in 1940 there’s this personal ad:

‘You dropped your handkerchief on the steps of the library. I sleep with it under my pillow. I’ll be in front of the library between 2 and 3 on Wednesday afternoon with your handkerchief.’

“Signed Frankie. Do you think it could be Franklin stalking women up and down the streets of Birdsey Falls?”

“I agree with Syra. It just doesn’t sound like a fifteen-year-old to me,” I protested. I didn’t want Uncle Franklin to be a teenage stalker.

“Believe me,
none
of us knows what goes on in the head of a fifteen-year-old boy,” Grace reminded us. “What we need is a man to tell us if this seems realistic for a teenager. Is Cam around? No offense, Bing.”

“None taken,” Bing mumbled, continuing to peruse the recipes from the 1940s.

“I’ll show Cam the ads tonight. I don’t want to have this whole thing come to a halt over one series of ads. Who knows what else we may find. Let’s make a list of all the weird threads to follow but keep reading the papers.”

“OK,” Diane agreed. “But I’m going to keep looking for the Frankie ads and then go back and read the rest of the personals. I feel like I have a hot lead here.”

Diane started grabbing all the personal ads from the 1940s and settled in with a notebook and pen balanced on the arm of her chair. At least she was taking it seriously even though it seemed like a nothing lead to me. Of course all I had found was the opening of Clancy’s hardware store, so who was I to judge?

After a few minutes Diane yelled out, “In 1941 Frankie found an earring outside the entrance to the cemetery.”

“Is he sleeping on it?” Bing asked.

“Yup.”

In 1942 Frankie found another handkerchief, this time in the movie theater lobby. In 1943 he found a red and blue hair ornament outside Dr. Griffen’s office, and in 1944 he found a bell-shaped brooch on the steps of the post office.

“Tamsen, do you think this ad series
could
be Franklin? It would explain why he kept the papers …” Diane asked.

“Well, I never heard anyone refer to him as Frankie. And what’s the deal with it always being the April 1 edition?”

“No one called him Frankie now, but what about when he was a young man?” Grace asked. “We should ask Claudia. Why don’t you call her?”

“Now?”

“Just ask the question and then get off the phone; how hard can it be?” Syra stated. She had never had a mother-in-law so I forgave her her naiveté. I reluctantly dialed her number and hoped she wouldn’t answer.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Claudia. It’s Tamsen. I’m sorry to call so late …”

“It’s only 8:00 and …”

“… but I was wondering if anyone ever called Franklin ‘Frankie’ when he was a teenager.”

“Never. We were always called by our given names.”

“OK. Thank you. Goodbye.” I hung up. Let her puzzle about that one for a while. I reported back to the group that he was never known as Frankie and they countered with that being an even more persuasive reason why he would refer to himself as Frankie in the paper, so no family or friends would connect him with the ads.

“But even if Franklin did stalk women until they dropped something, that doesn’t explain why someone would murder him,” I protested.