Behind the Bonehouse (12 page)

Thursday, April 16th 1964

Esther Wilkes climbed out of her husband's rusty red Ford pickup, pulling herself up with her right hand clutching the top of the doorframe.

She was a large woman. What some might've called stout. But she was firm looking, and she stood up straight, and her small-striped tan-and-blue dress fitted well and was perfectly pressed. She'd made the dress so it fell halfway between her knees and her ankles, and she'd sewn a belt of the same fabric, though neither of them looked homemade. She was wearing stockings, in spite of the heat, with lace-up black oxford shoes with sturdy squared-off heels. She carried a large brown pocketbook in one hand and a handkerchief she'd embroidered in the other, and she waved it once at her husband, before she blotted her forehead, as he backed out of the driveway and headed to work in Midway.

She stood for a moment on the sidewalk, thinking about her brother, Charlie, on his way up to the Belmont track with one of the Claiborne four-year-olds who'd be running there that summer. She hadn't talked to Charlie since he'd gone back to work, and she was worried he wasn't over his bronchitis. He'd had a weak chest since he was the tiniest child, and it'd sounded real croupy when he'd coughed in church on Sunday.

'Course, Charlie Smalls was no kinda fool. He was a Negro man respected by white folks
and
by colored, by rich folks
and
by poor, as a man of honor and good common sense. And if she knew he neglected himself, being his twin and having seen it all her life, all she could do was pray that his loyalty to Mr. Bull Hancock and the horses he put in his care didn't make Charlie ignore his own health a good deal more than he should.

She had her own troubles too, to get through now, and she needed to collect herself and prepare for what was coming. She patted the chignon on the back of her head, while her broad big-boned ebony face composed itself against the dread that fluttered deep in her chest. She adjusted her belt then, and let out a sigh, and started down Carl Seeger's drive toward the turquoise-and-white Chevy sedan in front of the unattached garage.

She followed the flagstone path that started at the drive just behind the house, and curved off to the left, that Mrs. Seeger had laid with her own hands clear to the kitchen door.

Esther knocked on it twice—the white painted door with small paned glass filling the whole top half—and didn't get an answer. That hadn't ever happened. Not since Mr. Seeger had lost his job and been home all day long. She tried the handle, but it was locked like she expected, and she walked into the garage and got the key from the coffee can where Miz Seeger had hid it for her years before, that he didn't know was there.

She knocked on the door again, to be on the safe side, but when Mr. Seeger didn't appear, she unlocked the door, and opened it an inch or two, and called Mr. Seeger's name. She didn't want to vex him mightily by barging in unannounced—not on the day she was fixing to quit and ask for what he owed her.

Things were real different since Miz Seeger had left, and you couldn't count on how he'd react. She s'pposed he mightta gone out for a walk, or forgot she was coming. But she knew he wouldn't have trusted her with a key, and she put it back in the garage, telling herself that hard as it was, she'd have to tell him she'd had it all along, once she'd let herself in.

She opened the door, and stepped inside, the reek of cigarettes making her cough—and almost tripped over Cassandra, stretched out on her side, four feet past the door, lying dead right there on the floor.

Esther said, “Poor little thing!”
Lord knows what couldda happened
, as she closed the door real quiet like, and stepped around the thin grey body to set her purse on the counter. She looked back at the stiff matted fur, and shook her head, before she smoothed her dress and stepped on out into the hall that led to the front door.

She was listening hard for Mr. Seeger. For water in the shower, or the toilet getting flushed, or the typewriter clickin' in the study. She didn't hear nothin' but the grandfather clock ticking under the hall stairway, and she called his name softly again, then louder by the front door.

He wasn't in the study, and he wasn't in the living room. And the bathroom was empty too between the study and his bedroom at the back, just off to the side and a little in front of the kitchen.

The door to the bedroom was standing ajar, and she knocked real quiet like, and called his name, then pushed the door wider.

There was a big window on the wall facing her, and another off on her left. The curtains were open, but the wooden louvers were half-closed, yet enough pale early morning light slipped through the slats for Esther to see Carl Seeger on the far side of the double bed against the wall on her right.

The bedclothes were twisted and crumpled around him, and as Esther walked toward the foot of the bed she could see his right foot dangling off the mattress, his right arm hanging off it too, his mouth stretched wide, under staring eyes that were fixed right on her.

Esther Wilkes had been looking at death since the day she was born. Chickens and calves and hogs on her papa's farm. Too many kinfolk and friends to count. And she knew what she'd seen from the door. It was the look on his face that made her clasp her hand to her mouth and whisper, “Oh, my dear sweet Jesus.”
There ain't no peace in this death, no, sir. There ain't no hope at all.

His photographer had finished in Carl's bedroom, and Earl Peabody, the Woodford County sheriff, stood on the left side of Carl's bed and stared down at his body, which was mostly covered in pajama bottoms and a dingy white T-shirt stained with all the bodily fluids Earl expected with death.

There was one of the new plastic type hypodermics on the floor beside the bed not far from the outstretched arm, and a small glass vial with a black plastic lid overturned on the bedside table. Earl rocked back on the heels of his boots, his hands in his back pockets, and made a noise low in his throat that sounded like sadness at the waste before him, and what was coming next.

Frank Buckout was standing on Earl's right, his strained face turned away from Carl as though he couldn't look at him, as he said exactly what Earl expected, which caused Earl to keep his face on straight and try to look like it made good sense for him to wait on instructions.

“As Coroner of Woodford County in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, I pronounce Carl Winslow Seeger dead. I add furthermore that I consider it to be an unexplained death. That means you got this one, Earl. You and your boys proceed.”

“Right.”

Frank turned toward Earl then, and set a hand on his shoulder before he started toward the door, stating the obvious one more time to make sure Earl hadn't missed it. “The investigation's been placed in your hands from this minute on.”

“Yes, sir, I understand. We'll get the body to the medical examiner in Louavull soon as we can. My guess is he died last night. That's what the M.E. figured at first sight, but we'll know a good deal more after he's done the ortopsy.”

“Fine. Give my best to the wife.”

He was gone then. And Earl thought for the hundredth time what an odd situation it was—that everyday ordinary folk with no medical or forensic training got elected county coroner. All they got was a two-week, on-the-job course after their election, and yet they were the ones to declare the death and assume responsibility for the whole investigation. They had no idea how to begin one, much less carry it through, and they'd hand it on to the Sheriff in a second, so what was the blasted point?

Not that it mattered a whit.

Not when Carl Seeger was lying dead with a puncture wound in his left arm. A syringe under him on the floor. A vial of something turned over on the table next to an ashtray half full of butts and a piece of typing paper, with type in the middle, it behooved him to read again.

I have no reason to go on. All I care about has been lost to me: job, wife, reputation. Now that Cassandra is dead too, I have nothing left to look forward to, tomorrow, nor any day after.

Earl slid the note in a plastic bag, then picked up the syringe and smelled it, before he slipped it in another and laid it on a chair. He looked under the bedside table, then picked up the dust ruffle and looked under the bed—and there he found a black enamel pen, just past the edge of the fabric, with a gold band at the base of its top engraved with an inscription:

With Love from J. to A.—12/8/62

Earl said, “J. to A.? Jane Seeger to … who?”

I'll have to ask Miz Seeger, and Esther Wilkes too.

He pulled the top off and saw it was a fountain pen, then dropped it in another bag—just before the gurney rolled through the bedroom door.

His deputy, Pete Phelps, sidled in behind it, saying, “We checked every door and window like ya asked, Stump, and everyone of 'em's locked, so we can eliminate a break-in right off the bat.”

“Good. Ask Burt to shoot photos of every room, and outside the kitchen door too. Stones and all, up by the door. There looked like dirt was kinda dug up and scattered. Have him shoot the front door, and around the garage. With the concrete drive and all, we won't get tire tracks, though there might could be mud prints from tires, with the shower last night and all. Ask him to look for that. Have you dusted the typewriter in the study?”

“Yep.”

“Good. And would ya tell Miz Wilkes I'll be with her in a minute, soon as I finish here?”

“Got it, Stump.” Pete, who was six-feet-five and thin as a stick, adjusted his flat-brimmed WWI style campaign hat on his bald head, and disappeared toward the back.

When the mortuary men had lifted Carl onto the gurney and wheeled him out the door, Earl was still staring at the bed. It looked to him like it was an old mattress, thin and sunken where Earl and his wife had lain for years. But it seemed like one part of the bottom edge looked bumped up higher than the rest.

He pulled the mattress up right about there and slid his hand in between it and the springs, and pulled out a brown leather book.

It was a diary, or some kinda journal, two inches thick, or close to. Written in Carl's handwriting, based on what he'd seen on his desk. He leafed through it, and found the last entry, dated the night before.

April 15, 5:45 P.M.

I've had as much as I can take. Alan Munro's persecution has lost me my livelihood and my reputation. Even Jane has turned against me because of Alan's actions at Equine Pharmaceutical and his vendetta against me. His visit here in November was solely to deliver a private threat, and was just the next in an escalating series that's continued ever since.

The verbal abuse he heaped on me at Keeneland during the racing was an indefensible humiliation. And
then
he came here to harass me two days later! I know he killed Cassandra. He's threatened to repeatedly. For as soon as I came home and found her, and saw sticky smears beside her on the linoleum, the smell left no doubt that the substance was Dylox and had come from the Equine lab. It constituted the next step in Alan Munro's plan that ends with my own demise.

He could've gotten a key from Esther. Her brother is a friend of Buddy Jones, who's very close to Alan and his wife. Esther could have taken an impression of my key, or Jane's in the garage (which Esther doesn't know I know about, being nearly as oblivious as my former-wife). Esther could have given it to Buddy so he could give it to Alan. If Alan wanted a key, he'd have found a way to get one, of that I have no doubt.

I can no longer tolerate his attacks. His killing of Cassandra, who'd never done him any harm, shows the vicious bent of his insanity. Munro was a trained assassin during World War II, and I know it's only a matter of time until he makes a concerted attempt to murder me too.

All I can do is leave tomorrow as quickly as I can pack. I could return to Bloomington, or maybe try Nashville. Destination doesn't matter. I have to escape Munro's persecution and preserve this journal too, in case the worst happens.

Earl Peabody shook his head, and stared out the window that faced the foot of the bed, the journal held carefully by one leather corner in his huge tanned hand. “Carl musta gone off the deep end, 'cause Alan Munro wouldn't a killed him.”

I know Alan. The way he dealt with that killer two years ago, without takin' revenge. No, he and Jo are real fine folks, and Seeger's way off base.

Gotta run it down anyway, and get to the bottom of it quick as I can.

'Course, the inscription on the pen, that's
something.
“J to A.”
From Jo to Alan? They got married about then, from what I remember. Not that Alan killin' Carl makes any sense at all.

Earl took the suicide note into the study and turned on the turquoise electric typewriter that sat in the center of the desk. It was one of the new IBM models, like the one they'd just gotten at the Sheriff's Department after months of wrangling over funding, the model that had a revolving ball, with the type stuck on all around it, that could be replaced to change the font.

He pulled a piece of typing paper out of a bottom drawer and held it up next to the note by Carl's bed so that the light coming through the front window was right behind them both.

There was a watermark on the one from the bedroom, and one on the paper from the desk too, but they weren't the same marks the way he'd expected.

He typed the same message that'd been left by Carl, and saw right away that the type was the same, but the “o” was chipped on the one from the bedroom, and wasn't on Earl's typewriter.

So it ain't just what you'd come to expect. Not right outta the chute. Not some everyday suicide. Not with different type.

'Course it's not like suicide's an everyday occurrence with folks here in the county. I don't reckon there've been twenty all together, not in the past eighteen years.