Time Is a River (30 page)

“I take it then that you don’t believe she killed DeLancey?”

“No I do not! Nor does Phillip Pace, and he knew her better than anyone. He was at the investigation, you know.”

Mia didn’t know that. “And Theo? Any last thoughts about her?”

Mrs. Rodale’s face softened to sorrow. “Poor Theodora…”

M
ia sat on the rocking chair of the cabin’s porch. The sun was a slice of crimson over the purple mountain range. Nearby, the river raced. She could hear the omnipresent sound of rushing water. From somewhere in the surrounding trees the Carolina wren was crying out its strident whistles. She searched the foliage for the small, buff-colored bird with white streaks at the eyes. From off in the woods, another wren returned its call. She leaned back in the chair, enjoying the calm of the twilight hour as serenity settled in the mountains.

It was deceiving. A hurricane was hitting the Gulf coast and was expected to travel north toward North Carolina. Mia felt a tempest of emotions in her heart, as well. She held the yellowed envelope addressed to Theodora Watkins Carson. Since the moment it came into her hands it had been the bane of her existence. She turned it over and ran her finger over the seal. The side edges of the envelope had opened over the years. It would take but the slightest pressure from her finger in the center to raise the seal and open it.

The temptation was overwhelming. In this letter she might well learn from Kate herself what the truth of her story was. This was her final letter to her only child. Her last chance to express all that she’d harbored in silence for so many years. What would she say?

Mia longed to know. She had gone this far in her search; what was opening one more letter, she rationalized?

She rose and walked back indoors, tapping the letter against her palm. She paced once around the room, deliberating. Then she made a beeline for the bookshelf. Finding Kate’s diary, she put the envelope inside of it and placed the book back on the shelf.

Her mind was made up. The diaries, the conversations, the news articles—all of those had been open and available to her. The seal on the envelope was a moral line she could not cross. To break it would be the equivalent of opening Pandora’s box.

The following morning Mia drove to town to see Nada. The hurricane and its projected path was the hot topic on every news station. When she arrived at the
Gazette
, the office was busy. A special be-prepared edition was going out that afternoon. Nada was on the phone in her office but she signaled for Mia to take a chair and wait.

Two minutes later Nada hung up the telephone and shook her head with disbelief. “You’d think a category five was hitting Watkins Mill.”

“How bad is it?”

Nada rubbed her face with her palms, then looked down at the map spread out across her desk. “Hurricane Nicholas is still a category two, but that water is warm and it’s predicted to gain strength. Hurricanes not only affect the coast, they can move inland and drop buckets of rain. A single hurricane can wallop a large area. I remember back in 2004, hurricanes Frances and Ivan passed through the North Carolina mountains within a two-week time span. The rivers and streams flooded. Mudslides took out roads, cars, houses…a real mess. That’s what we’re worried about. In your neck of the woods, you should be, too.”

Mia felt a flutter of panic. “What do I do?”

“Make sure the cabin’s sealed up good and tight and get some provisions to last you for three days or more. If the road goes out, you could be up there for days before they clear it up. Mudslides are the big threat up here. We’ve had an unusual amount of rain lately and the ground is saturated. That’s when trouble starts.”

“I’m going directly to Rodale’s after here to get supplies. But I got your message. Sounded urgent. What did you want to see me about?”

“Oh, that!” Nada’s face brightened with recollection. “I found those articles about the investigation. The articles dated November, nineteen twenty-nine. They’re here somewhere.” She rifled through stacks of papers on her desk and the credenza. Then she called out, “Missy!”

The young girl poked her head in. She had pink streaks in her hair and heavy kohl around her eyes. “Yeah?”

“Where’s that file for Mia? The one about Kate Watkins.”

“I’ll get it.”

A minute later Missy sauntered into Nada’s office carrying a manila folder bulging with papers. Mia couldn’t help but notice her violet nail polish.

“Thanks, dear,” Nada said, taking the folder from her. “Oh, and will you tell Bob I need that article? Right away, please?”

“OK,” she replied with a bored expression.

When she left Nada shook her head with frustration.

“That’s a new fashion statement for her, isn’t it?” Mia asked.

“That’s one girl who’s not set her cap on the newspaper world. I swear, nothing seems to light a spark in her. Not even a hurricane.”

Mia was anxious to see the articles. She pulled her chair closer to the desk and sat down as Nada opened up the file.

“I printed out copies of all the articles I could find. Once I got started, I traced back to copies of newspapers that printed the story in other cities. Let’s see…New York,” she said as she passed a printed article to Mia. “Here’s Boston. New York again.”

Mia read through a few of the headlines:
Information Sought on Missing Person. Wife Demands Investigation. Inquest Ordered for Missing Man. Love Nest Uncovered. Murder or Mayhem? DeLancey Declared Missing Person
.

“Some of these headlines read like tabloids,” Mia said, flipping through them.

“It was a sensationalized story at the time. But I hadn’t realized it was covered in out-of-town newspapers. What with the scandal, that would have explained why Kate’s column was discontinued.”

Mia brought the copies to the small table and settled herself to read. The minutes passed as she quickly scanned the articles, and with each one Mia felt her heart race faster with shock and indignation. When she went through them all, she tossed the last sheet on the table and leaned back in the chair.

“But Nada,” Mia said, incredulous. “There isn’t any proof there was a murder at all! It was just an investigation. There wasn’t even a trial!”

“Right! There never was a body. DeLancey’s case was a missing person investigation. Despite some very public accusations and very harsh criticisms of the police concerning improper handling, the sheriff’s office determined that insufficient evidence had been provided to declare Mr. Theodore DeLancey dead. He remained a missing person.”

Mia was stunned. Her mind whirled with the injustice of it all. “So all these years the stories about Kate Watkins killing her lover were nothing more than rumor and scandal?”

Nada nodded her head. “Appears so. I’ve been in the news business and a historian for many years and one thing I know is that, sadly, it wouldn’t be the first time. It was mostly the out-of-town papers that made all the assumptions about a love triangle and the murder motives,” she added with a tone of defensiveness. “The
Gazette
didn’t point that finger.”

“But it didn’t defend her, either.”

“No. But that’s not a newspaper’s job.” She drew herself up. “I thought they did a decent job of being impartial in a very emotional case.”

Mia didn’t want to get into a battle over the quality of the
Gazette
’s reporting of the case. “No matter what paper,” Mia said, “the innuendo that Kate Watkins murdered DeLancey was allowed to fester and grow until it became accepted as the truth. Why didn’t anyone speak up for her? I thought she was so beloved by the town. She must have felt so betrayed,” Mia said, understanding that particular emotion so well. “Where were her friends? Where was her family?”

“Her father died immediately after the investigation. His obituary is in that pile of papers for you. As for her friends…” She shrugged. “I can’t say what anyone might have said or not said. I wasn’t there and it wasn’t recorded in the paper.”

Mia squeezed the bridge of her nose as she tried to collect her thoughts.

“I’m going to talk to Mr. Pace.”

“I thought you said he wouldn’t talk about the murder.”

“I’ll show him the articles. Beg him on my knees. I’ve got to try. He’s my last hope.”

I
’ve lived many, many years and in all my memory no disappearance in this part of the county has prompted so much speculation as that of Mr. Theodore DeLancey.”

Mia sat across from Phillip Pace in the library. Rain streaked the windows in sheets driven by a fierce wind. The storm had hit the coast and the weakened tropical depression was now making its way north. Though it was midafternoon, the sky was dark. Inside, small pools of light flowed from table lamps like halos.

“How could Kate have been so vilified?” Mia asked. “In her own town?”

“What you got to remember,” Phillip said in earnest, “is that it wasn’t a normal time for this town. Not anywhere in the country. Everything was in a tizzy. October of nineteen twenty-nine. Does that date ring a bell?” He gummed his lips, and hands large and gnarled gripped the sides of his chair in agitation. “You’re all so young I don’t know what you kids know or remember anymore.”

“Yes, sir, I know about the stock market crash,” Mia replied. “October twenty-ninth, nineteen twenty-nine was Black Thursday. It marked the end of the Roaring Twenties and the beginning of the Depression.”

He nodded his head with seriousness. “What goes up must come down. That’s what people said a lot back then, trying to make sense of it. Asheville had the highest per capita debt of any city in the country. I’ll bet you didn’t know that.”

“No,” she admitted. “I sure didn’t.”

“Our town was booming in the twenties. When the stock market crashed, it was a hard hit. Those of us who lived through the Depression were changed forever. We learned to do without. An old suit, a bit of string—everything has some use left in it. Some, like the DeLanceys and the Watkinses, lost fortunes. The rest of us just hoped we could get our cash out of the bank. Folks were panicking. I’m telling you, it was a bad time. Emotions were high, folks weren’t themselves.

“On top of all that, we were having a spell of serious weather. Rain, rain, and more rain, like now. Mudslides were so bad folks couldn’t get to town for supplies. Every able-bodied man was out clearing roads. So when word come that Mr. DeLancey was missing, I reckon the sheriff just put that on his list.”

“Who reported him missing?”

“I don’t rightly remember who reported it. Everything got all muddled. Sheriff Dodds was a good man but he caught a lot of chaff for his handling of this case. It weren’t his fault. If DeLancey had gone and disappeared even a month earlier they’d have conducted the search in a timely manner, grilled the people they needed to, and reported it in the accepted, straight-out way of doing police business. And you can bet your last dollar this whole DeLancey case would’ve been cleaned up without scandal if it had involved average people at an average time.”

“You mean because DeLancey was from a wealthy family?”

“That. And the fuss she made.”

“Kate?”

“No! Mrs. DeLancey. Camilla, I think her name was. She came to town with her lawyer in tow and smoke coming out of her ears. She went straight to the sheriff’s office to demand he investigate her husband’s disappearance. She started making all kinds of accusations against Kate Watkins, and they were of a nature that if it got out the sheriff knew the newspapers would have a heyday with it. He did the right thing, trying to calm her down some.”

Mia leaned far forward, not wanting to miss a word. She didn’t know that DeLancey’s wife had come looking for him.

“Right off, the town didn’t like Mrs. DeLancey. Not just because she was from out of town. She was an uppity kind of woman, you know the type? She lifted her nose at you like you had a bad smell. We’re always wary of pushy northerners anyway, but this woman was attacking one of our favorite daughters. So the town stood strong in support of Kate Watkins. The DeLanceys might have been important in New York, but in Asheville, the Watkins family mattered.

“But Mrs. DeLancey’s wealth and influence was not to be denied. She and her lawyer called the investigation sloppy and forced the sheriff to begin a formal search. Did I tell you some reporters came to town, too? Yes, ma’am, they did. Once whiff of the story got out, they were like a pack of hyenas on a scent. A three-ring circus it turned out to be.”

Mr. Pace adjusted his seat and Mia sat with her pencil ready. She could see in the old man’s eyes he was going back in time.

“It was raining like the Lord’s flood. Nobody could remember a fall before or since with so much rain. Route Nine out of town was gone. It slid right off the mountain. That didn’t stop the folks from coming into town, though. Everyone was milling about, eager to hear any word about the investigation.

“Now, this wasn’t any inquest or formal court proceeding, mind you. The sheriff just called together the main people so he could get his story straight. And to appease Mrs. DeLancey’s lawyer, I reckon. Let’s see,” he said, rubbing his jaw and trying to recollect. “Mrs. DeLancey was there, of course. And her lawyer. Some insurance fella was there, too. Kate, of course. And her father, the Reverend Watkins. I was there. Kate asked me to come and wild horses wouldn’t’ve of kept me away. Paul Miller the coroner was there, too, just in case. Course, there wasn’t a body, but he was there. A few reporters muscled their way in. Sheriff Dodds was an honest, polite man, respected by everybody in town. I don’t know if anyone ever saw him lose his temper, so we knew he could keep an even keel on this procedure. Still, he shouldn’t have let those reporters in. It was standing room only. The air was thick in there, I remember. And it didn’t have nothing to do with the rain and humidity.”

November 21, 1929

“I’ll try to make this brief,” Sheriff Dodds said to Mrs. DeLancey. “Tell me, please, when you first realized your husband was missing.”

Mrs. DeLancey was tiny and fragile looking, like some porcelain doll. Anyone could see she was upper class, and when she spoke in that breathy voice, she sounded like a Brit. She was dressed in black mourning, which a lot of the local women thought was jumping the gun seeing as how her husband hadn’t even been pronounced dead yet.

“My husband had left for North Carolina on the eleventh of November. He usually was gone for a week, maybe two, on his fishing trips.” She said the words
fishing trips
as though she meant something else. “So I was alarmed when I received a phone call from you, Sheriff Dodds, a few days later asking me if my husband had returned home.”

“And had he returned home?”

“No. The last I saw of Teddy, I mean, Mr. DeLancey, was when he left his home in New York. You proceeded to tell me that my husband had not returned to his hotel room or checked out. The bill was as yet outstanding. The hotel staff found my husband’s clothing and some personal belongings still in his room.”

“What did you do next?”

“You can imagine my state of mind. I immediately called the Watkins family.”

“Why the Watkins family?”

“My husband rented the Watkins cabin for his fishing expeditions,” she explained. “I assumed this continued to the present.”

“How often did Mr. DeLancey rent the cabin?”

“He came to Watkins Mill twice a year in the spring and the fall. For four years. I used to wonder why he stopped fishing the Battenkill. We have a place of our own on that river, you see. Or why he didn’t accompany his friends on trips out west. He was determined to return to western North Carolina every year, two times a year. My husband was passionate about fly-fishing. However—” She paused and tugged at the handkerchief in her hand. “I must admit I did not understand his passion for this particular cabin in Watkins Cove.”

“But our records show he had a hotel room at the inn and did not stay at the cabin,” prompted Dodds.

“Yes. When I was informed of that, frankly, I was confused. I knew you were getting a lot of rain. I thought perhaps there was flooding. The truth is, I didn’t know why. So I called the Watkins house, in hopes they could shed some light on my husband’s whereabouts.”

“I see. Who did you talk to?”

“Their housekeeper, I believe. A Mrs. Hodges answered the phone. She informed me that my husband was not there.”

“She knew Mr. DeLancey?”

“Apparently so. She didn’t stumble over his name.”

“Did you ask to speak to anyone?”

“I did. I asked to speak to Miss Watkins and was told she was not at home, but that the Reverend Watkins would be returning home at five. I left my number and requested that he call me back immediately. That it was of the utmost urgency. I waited several days and received no reply. I grew frantic, as you can imagine. My suspicions were aroused and not knowing where else to turn, I called my lawyer, Mr. Michael Morris. He urged me to take immediate action.”

“Your suspicions were aroused? What suspicions were those?”

Mrs. DeLancey drew back her shoulders. They were tiny but straight as steel. She looked at her hands clenched tightly in her lap. The room hushed and everyone leaned forward in their seat.

“I knew for some time that my husband was having an affair with Miss Kate Watkins,” she said.

The room broke out in rumbling and all heads turned to Kate. All this time she sat in her chair straight and silent, staring out like she wasn’t even there. She was dressed in a plain gray suit—with her usual pants, I might add. Her dark eyes were trained on some point in the distance and no one could tell by looking if she’d heard a thing that was being said.

Sheriff Dodds frowned at that and his voice grew censorial. “How did you know this?”

“When my husband’s trips extended to two weeks or more at the cabin I consulted his fishing friends and they told me that they had never accompanied him to North Carolina. In fact, they complained how they missed his company on their customary trips.”

“The rivers of North Carolina are known for exemplary fly-fishing,” said Sheriff Dodds. “Is it not likely that your husband found a place he preferred to all others and continued to return here, year after year? I think most men in this room fish in these waters and never seek to go elsewhere.”

Mumbled agreement sounded from the local men. Michael Morris glared in his seat.

Mrs. DeLancey, however, did not lose her composure. “As I said, we have our own property on the Battenkill River, which is well known for its superb fly-fishing. No, I suspected that there was another lure at this particular spot. I learned that each time he went, he engaged the services of Miss Watkins as his personal guide. I remember her name because she was a woman guide and that’s not usual, in any state.”

“Miss Watkins is a nationally respected fly-fishing guide.”

Mrs. DeLancey’s brow rose. “Miss Watkins is also not the grizzled old mountain woman I had in my mind but an attractive, well-bred, young woman.”

“Excuse me, but what do your unfounded suspicions have to do with your husband’s disappearance?”

More murmuring from the observers.

“Before my husband left for this trip, I confronted him.”

“Are you saying that Mr. Theodore DeLancey admitted to an affair with Miss Katherine Watkins?”

“He did not deny it.”

The room burst with comments from the gallery. Kate stared straight ahead as though made of stone.

“Mrs. DeLancey, forgive me, but I still fail to see what your husband’s real or imagined relationship with Miss Watkins has to do with his disappearance.”

Her lips tightened with annoyance. “I’m sure you are aware of recent events in the stock market. What you might not be aware of is that my husband lost his family’s fortune in the crash. He speculated wildly and lost. He was desolate. Inconsolable. I’d never seen him in such a state.” She dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief.

“Yes, Mrs. DeLancey,” Dodds said in a conciliatory tone. “We all have experienced loss and can only imagine the magnitude of your own.”

Mrs. DeLancey mustered her resolve. “The point I wish to make is that my husband and I were brought closer together. He begged my forgiveness and pledged his undying love. He swore he was going to Watkins Mill for the last time, to break off his illicit relationship with Miss Watkins.”

Everyone’s head turned to Kate. Her dark eyes flickered with a glimmer of reaction as she slowly turned her head to gaze at Mrs. DeLancey. Kate’s face revealed neither disbelief nor anger. She just stared at DeLancey’s wife as though she were trying to make up her own mind whether to believe her.

“Why would he come all the way to Watkins Mill to tell her this?” Dodds persisted. “He could have wired. Or telephoned.”

“You may not know my husband also speculated in the market for Miss Watkins. He no doubt promised great returns, as he did with others.” Her voice was tinged with bitterness. “My husband could be very persuasive. In the end, Theodore lost the Watkinses’ money as well. He felt obliged to tell her this in person. My husband was not blameless. I know that. But the fact is Miss Watkins was the last person who saw him alive.” Her voice rose with emotion. “She had passion and motive.”