The Death of Perry Many Paws (34 page)

I had been going through the newspapers again with a legal pad at my side, jotting down anything that might possibly be important. I read through the articles about the kidnapping and the lost money again and became intrigued with how that crime might have been solved if it had happened today rather than in 1938. The police have so many more analytical tools at their disposal now that weren’t available then. There is something very seductive about unsolved murders and I made a few notes of how to use a variation of this crime in my New Orleans novel. I got curious about Fletcher Ketchum, the brother who had sworn he had taken the ransom to the assigned drop point. What had happened to him? Obviously he was no longer alive; he would have been over a hundred years old now. Did he push the police to keep investigating his brother’s murder? He couldn’t have been satisfied with the money disappearing and his brother being murdered. I was eating peanut butter toast and some chips for lunch when Cam called.

“Hey, it’s me. What’re you doing?”

“Eating lunch. You?”

“Eating lunch.”

“In your office?”

“No, I’m at Hurley’s. I just gave my order … thank you … they just brought my water. Guess what?”

“I’m guessing that someone wasn’t thinking when he named his restaurant Hurley’s,” I replied, turning my head away from the phone as I crunched a handful of chips. No sense opening myself up for a lecture on healthy eating.

“What’s that crunching sound?”

“I’m eating an apple,” I lied.

“Yeah, right. I bet it’s chips.”

“Maybe …”

“I wanted to let you know that the police called me back about the money we found at the cottage.”

“Who called? Was it that Donny guy?”

“Yes.”

“Did you find out his last name?”

“No. He said it but I can’t remember. I just remember the Sergeant Donald something or other. Anyway, he told me we could pick up the money any time.”

“Great. We’ll be rich, unless your mom changes her mind about wanting it.” I started to think of things I could buy with $850 wrinkled dollars. Maybe I would need to iron it first. Would that be considered money laundering? I didn’t want to do anything illegal.

“I don’t think she will. She’d take one look at it and pronounce it too ugly to keep. Anyway, what was interesting was that when they looked through the money, they noted that none of the currency was issued later than 1938. That money has been around for a long time …”

“Like seventy years. My God, you don’t think it is part of the money from the Ketchum kidnapping, do you?”

“Ketchum kidnapping? Is that the story from Franklin’s old newspapers? Money never found. Guy shot. People keep looking for it in the woods? Ah, that looks good, thank you. My chicken Caesar salad just arrived.”

“Yes, that kidnapping …”

“But the ransom was much more than $850 …”

“It was $10,000.”

“And Uncle Franklin got it how? He was fifteen when that happened. Are you saying he kidnapped this guy and stole the money and then shot him? If so, Ryan could take some prank lessons from him. This is a great salad. They put some kind of spice on the chicken that really adds to the …”

“I’m not saying Franklin did all those things but the money could be from the ransom. Can you call Donny back and tell him that theory? See what he says.”

“Sure. I’ll call him as soon as I get back to the office. Gotta go. Bye.”

Talk about food for thought. My head was spinning with possibilities now. I tried to picture a one-hundred-and-five-year-old Fletcher Ketchum coming back to town to kill an eighty-five-year-old Franklin, who had stolen the ransom money and killed his brother seventy years ago. Why wait so long to seek revenge? Could a one-hundred-and-five-year-old man manage to walk through the woods to Franklin’s cottage? Not likely. Grace had trouble getting out there without having a heart attack. And if there were a younger generation of Ketchums, wouldn’t they just go to the police? Why murder an old man? And why not take their money back? Except maybe they did take back all the money but didn’t find the last $850 in the paper bag. I needed to think.

I knew that if I went back to my library, I would be tempted to lie on the couch to think and the innate coziness of the room would put me to sleep. So I opted for the solarium, which was filled with a soft autumn sun and bright fabrics. I filled up the red watering can and wandered from plant to plant, giving everyone a drink and an encouraging word, and thinking about the money.

Franklin was fifteen when the kidnapping and murder took place. He was living with his parents, wealthy people. Why would a fifteen-year-old need $10,000? I think cars only cost around $1,000 back then. Did he want to buy a house? Two houses? In 1938, $10,000 would go
a long way. Middle-class families didn’t make that much in two or three years. I remembered the first line from the Edgar Allan Poe quote: “there are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told …” Kidnapping and murder certainly would fall into that category.

Lost in thought, I overwatered my Croton and it began leaking all over the floor. Holding the watering can aloft like a lantern I began scurrying around the room looking for a towel. I headed toward the white wicker love seat in the corner, where a big pile of brightly colored cloths were neatly arranged. Funny. I didn’t remember those. I set the can down and reached for one and realized the cloths were actually the quilt I had brought down from the attic a week ago Sunday, the day we had Claudia and Sybil over for paella. I had wanted to show Claudia the quilt that night to see if she remembered it and could tell me where it had come from and whether someone in the family had made it. I had totally forgotten because she and Sybil had started telling us about Fulton Foster and his polio and how he disappeared.

Leaking Croton forgotten, I dusted my hands off on my jeans and picked up the quilt. It didn’t seem fragile. I really wanted to open it to see what the pattern was. It must be huge because it was heavy.

I decided I would unfold it and lay it out so I could see the full quilt. I couldn’t wait to show Cam. I began to carefully unfold it and gently remove the tissue paper that had been placed between each fold. As I unfolded it I became aware of something solid wrapped in the middle of the quilt. Someone had put a book on the quilt and then folded the quilt around it for safe keeping. I kept unwrapping until it was completely open and then just sat on the floor and stared. The quilt hadn’t been wrapped around a book after all. It had been wrapped around several brick-size bundles of money. I started counting and got up to $1,280 and was only part of the way through the first brick. There had to be close to $4,000 here. With the $850 from the cottage we were almost halfway to the $10,000 ransom. This couldn’t be a
coincidence. Especially since this money looked as old as the other. We apparently had old money hidden all over the place.

I tried calling Cam but got his voice mail. I didn’t want to leave a message about the money so I hung up. My adrenaline was pumping now and I couldn’t sit still and count money or keep calling, hoping Cam would pick up. I needed some action. The attic. Perfect. I would go back to the attic and start looking for other places where money could be hidden and never discovered for seventy years.

I didn’t take all my supplies this time, just a cold can of diet soda and a flashlight. I headed back to the area of Franklin’s desk where I had found the disturbing quote and the quilt. This must be the right area of the attic for what I was looking for. I revisited Franklin’s desk just in case I missed something. The last time I had been up here I hadn’t been sure what I was looking for. This time I was. Money. Old money. Knowing what I was looking for made it easier to hone in on possible hiding places. Once again I skirted the perfect pyramid of rolled-up socks that looked like the stash for an old-fashioned snowball fight. I re-examined the box with the foreign coins. The school papers where I had found the Edgar Allan Poe quote were right where I had left them. I was tempted to go through them page by page to see if there were more quotes or maybe some journal-like entries, but I was too focused on finding the money to settle down to the tedious task of paper shuffling. Later.

I squeezed past the trunks and dressers I had examined before and moved deeper into the clutter. I was looking for bags or boxes or even another quilt. I thought I hit pay dirt when I found a paper bag under one of the windows folded down on the top like the one in Franklin’s closet. I pulled it open, not even doing my mouse check routine, but it was full of nothing more than
Collier’s
magazines. I shook out a few in case there was money hidden inside but there was nothing there. I found some old board games. Cleaned up, these would look good in
the library. When Abbey came home for Thanksgiving it would be fun to get her and her friends involved in trying to play them. There were several decks of playing cards and one very fancy set in a cherry box. Very classy. I wandered into a pile of empty boxes and they came tumbling down on me. For a few moments I leaped around and waved my hands battling cobwebs and imagined insects until both the boxes and I settled down. Diet soda break time.

I pulled one of the many available chairs over to the window, rubbed some of the grime away and looked across our backyard as I sipped my drink. It was amazing how quiet it was up here. I wonder what this house was like when Claudia was a child. I couldn’t picture her running and screaming from room to room as Abbey had sometimes done when we played hide and seek. Had Claudia ever screamed or laughed or played hide and seek with her parents or her brothers? It was hard to imagine. I could picture Claudia and Sybil having ladylike tea parties in her bedroom with tiny saucers and cups. Probably real bone china, and fancy dolls that were just for show, perched on little chairs around them.

I started laughing to myself, remembering my mother warning me to stop sitting around daydreaming, “collecting cob webs” she called it. Well, I was certainly doing that now, sitting and thinking and literally collecting cobwebs. Maybe she had foreseen this moment in my life.

I decided that in addition to bringing the fancy playing cards and cherry box down with me, I’d bring a couple issues of the
Collier’s
and a couple pair of socks just to show Hugh. If they had any value he might want them in his antiques shop. If not, maybe there was someone on eBay who collected such things. On eBay you could find a collector for everything. Probably even these cobwebs. I reached into the bag and pulled out a few
Collier’s
and then picked up a couple pair of socks, being careful not to destroy the carefully built pyramid. As I clutched the socks I noticed they made an odd crackling sound. I immediately
dropped them on the floor, imagining a fifteen year-old Franklin finding dead mice in the attic and wrapping them up in his old socks, then building them a pyramid like the ancient Egyptians. Mummy mice. That’s what all these socks were. Mummy mice built into an eternal pyramid. And I was the grave robber.

I tentatively picked up another sock ball and squeezed it. Crackling. I was literally cracking mice skeletons in my hand. I backed away from the mummy mice pyramid and retreated to the chair by the window. And stared at the pile. Then I stared at the socks on the floor I had removed from the pile. Then back at the pile again. This wasn’t accomplishing anything but I needed time to build up my courage to actually open one of those socks. Since right now I didn’t dare to even touch them, this was going to be a problem.

What could a mouse skeleton do to me, anyway? If the mice had been dead for seventy years all the ugly parts were long gone. I suppose there might be some fur left. I didn’t know how long that took to decompose. But muscles and liquids and anything else squishy would be long gone. I reached for my cell phone to call Cam to ask him how long it took a mouse to decompose in a sock and realized I left it in the solarium. Damn. I should carry that thing around my neck like people do with their reading glasses.

Back to staring at the sock pyramid. I would pretend I was in a game show and I would win a million dollars if I opened a sock and found a mouse skeleton inside. All I had to do was pull the sock open, drop it and run. Not happening. I could hear Cam yelling at me from the audience to do it, to win the million dollars. We could go on an extended European vacation or take a round-the-world cruise. Do it!

Nope. Can’t do it. Sorry. Money was a no-go as a lure. There had to be something else. Now the game show host was telling me that Abbey was being kept in a secret room in the studio, tied to a chair that was timed to drop through the floor into a flaming inferno in thirty
seconds if I didn’t open one of the sock mummies in time. 30, 29, 28, 27, 26, 25, 24, 23 …

Screaming like my hair was on fire I leaped out of the chair and lunged across the room. I grabbed first one sock mummy and then another, pulling them apart and throwing them on the floor until at least a dozen white cotton coffins lay scattered. I looked at my hands in distaste and rubbed them furiously on my jeans. Yuck. A million times yuck. But Abbey was saved!

Suddenly I heard my mother’s voice explaining to a neighbor who had been worried that I’d be bored because I had to take a two-day car ride to visit relatives in the Midwest. “You don’t ever have to worry about Tamsen. She knows how to entertain herself.” I believe I had just become the poster girl for that phrase.

I was about to retreat to my window chair to calm down from my ordeal when I noticed that among the scattered socks on the floor were twenty-dollar bills and not mouse skeletons. I bent over and started picking them up, smoothing out the socks and reaching inside, pulling out more money. I moved over to the now lopsided sock pyramid and began methodically removing the socks and opening them up. How easy this was now whereas five minutes ago I had been terrified—of nothing. It was a parable for life itself. There were a lot of socks here and a lot of money accumulating. First the quilt and now the socks. I was a money magnet today.

Like the brown bag of money, this too was old and wrinkled. I had ripped a few of the twenties during my frenetic display of sock opening while enmeshed in my dramatic thirty-second countdown to save Abbey’s life. Once every sock had been opened and thoroughly searched, I had a messy pile of about $2,000. That was twenty-five socks each with four twenty dollar bills wrapped inside. That meant there was a little over $3,000 left to find if we were really dealing with the Ketchum ransom. I had a feeling it must be hidden in the attic
somewhere. I was thinking about how the sock pile not only resembled a pyramid but also the head of an arrow. I walked around the destroyed pile and tried to see if the arrow indicated another viable hiding place for money. For instance, if I stood with my back to the window, as far back from the old sock pile as I could get to maintain some perspective, the top of the sock pile would have been pointing across the room to an old metal file cabinet. Good option.