Grave Danger (9 page)

T
HE BEAUTIFUL OLD
V
ICTORIAN MANSION
sat high on the hill on the edge of the historic district and loomed over the town and mill properties. The residence had been known as Thorpe House until 1940, when Lyle Montgomery fired two mill workers for using that name in front of him. Forever afterward, the house was called Montgomery Mansion.

Back then, the company provided nearly all employee housing. TL&L owned the company store, the gas station, the hotel, the church; even the United States Postal Service paid rent to TL&L to have an office within the town. The only building in the area not owned by the company was the Masonic Hall, and the fired workers and their families had to stay in the Hall until they could find a way to leave Coho forever.

The mansion sat in a park-like setting, with huge old oak trees and a manicured lawn. The Queen Anne-style house had a complicated, asymmetrical shape, which included a wide porch next to a rounded tower on the east-facing front of the house. Decorative shingles adorned the upper floors and stained glass sparkled in the smaller side windows. Carved moldings adorned every window frame and most joints. The ornamental balusters that supported the porch railing were a work of art in their own right.

From the first time Libby had driven through Coho, she’d wanted to enter this house. Architecturally, it was superb. Built in 1885 after the first Thorpe House burned down, it wasn’t the oldest structure in Coho, but it was the most gorgeous. As Libby and Jason stepped onto the porch, she was saddened such a beautiful old structure had a long history of needless cruelty.

Jason opened the front door and she entered a tiny vestibule with a second door inlaid with stained glass. He opened the interior door and she stepped into the entrance hall. A central fireplace with an elaborate mantel sat cold and empty. Arched doorways flanked the fireplace on either side. To the right of the door was the staircase, decorated with ornate railings, which zigzagged to the upper floors. Above the first landing were the round stained-glass windows with a flowery design that glowed with warm shades of red, orange, blue, and purple in the afternoon sun. In spite of the vibrant hues, the entire entry hall seemed cold, forlorn. A letdown.

The front room was stark. No knickknacks on the mantel, no coatrack, no umbrella stand. Not even a comfy bench to sit on while removing muddy shoes. The room—larger than her bedroom—was a space one passed through on the way to more important things.

“It doesn’t look like anyone lives here,” she said to Jason.

“Aunt Laura says this is the way their father liked it.” He shrugged. “Lyle’s only been dead for twelve years, and Aunt Laura is seventy-eight.” He smiled as though that explained it, and she supposed it did.

He led her to the sitting room to the left of the foyer. “Wait here. I’ll round them up.” He disappeared through a different doorway leading to the back of the house.

She wandered around the room, which at least held furniture, and a few items that gave her clues to the occupants of the house. One shelf held an array of artifacts, including arrowheads and other projectile points in identifiable styles. Someone had traveled throughout the Pacific Northwest and into the Great Basin to collect artifacts from different archaeological sites. There were several point styles from Eastern Washington and beyond.

The artifacts reminded her of her purpose in being here. Rosalie Warren and the Kalahwamish tribe were counting on her to be their voice. She had to give Rosalie the report she wanted without opening herself up to a lawsuit. She’d decided on a course of action. She couldn’t publish conjecture or supposition, but she could publish verbatim transcripts of her interviews with the living members of the Montgomery family. She had to get them to say what she needed.

She sat on the couch and pulled out her annotated Montgomery family tree, which would help clarify the familial relationships while she conducted the interviews.

Jason returned with Laura Montgomery in tow. Laura was a whisky-voiced chain-smoker with stooped shoulders and more wrinkles than rayon at the bottom of a laundry basket. She was also the one Libby had pinned most of her hopes on. As the eldest living child of Lyle and Millie, she’d be most likely to have the information needed. The transcript of this interview could become a vital piece of Libby’s report.

Laura sat in a silk-covered chair with a tiny dog in her arms. The dog glared at Libby for several seconds before settling in its owner’s lap and going to sleep. Libby placed her tape recorder on the coffee table and hit the record button before asking Laura whether she agreed to the taping of the interview.

“Fine,” Laura said.

Libby’s eyes flicked to Jason, who sat in a chair behind Laura, facing Libby. His expression remained passive. “And, Ms. Montgomery, will you grant me permission to publish a transcript of this interview as an appendix to my report?”

Jason looked as if he wanted to object.

Libby tried to look ingenuous.

“Whatever,” Laura said. “I don’t care. I know why you’re here. We know more about what’s going on in this town than Jason gives us credit for. That awful Indian woman, Rosalie Warren, wants you to write a history of Coho that only includes the Indian side of the story. I don’t give a damn about Jack’s permit or his Cultural Center. Why would we want to celebrate the Indians and their backwards practices? Waste of money if you ask me.”

“I’m here to document the history of Coho, Ms. Montgomery,” Libby said with restrained calm. “And if I only wanted to publish the tribe’s version, I wouldn’t interview you. I understand you managed the hotel for more than fifty years, starting during World War II. Can you tell me about that time?”

Libby could see the struggle on Laura’s face. Plainly visible was her yearning to share stories of her proudest moments. From her research, Libby already knew about the time the hotel served as a hospital and shelter for passengers of a ship that sank in the Strait of Juan de Fuca in 1949. But her pride warred with her need to snub Rosalie Warren, and therefore, Libby.

“Girls like me who worked after the war instead of having children were resented for stealing jobs from the men,” Laura began. “I had no choice. Daddy needed me to run the hotel.” The desire to speak had won out. But based on Laura’s expression and tone, she had chosen to make the interview as unpleasant as possible.

“When your mother died, her children—you—inherited Thorpe Log & Lumber. It was your hotel. Not your father’s. Why did Lyle continue to run the company?” From Laura’s expression, Libby knew she’d made a mistake.

“It’s so easy for you to sit in judgment of us. You’ve heard some bad things, untrue things, about my daddy, and you want to know why we continued to let him run our company. You don’t know anything about me, about us.” As she spoke, she continued to pet her dog. But she’d become agitated and the dog must have sensed this because it looked again at Libby with belligerent eyes.

“I was only sixteen when my mother died,” Laura continued. “My brothers Earl and James were even younger. Billy was eighteen, but he went off to fight the war in ’42. Daddy’d been running the company since 1920, so it made sense for him to stay in charge. As we got older, we each took on jobs and responsibility for the company. Yes, I managed the hotel and restaurant. I worked there from my eighteenth birthday until I retired in 1995. Earl took over property management, which he still does, and James ran the logging operation, which closed down in 1999.”

“What about Billy?”

“When he got back from the war, he tried to take over management of the sawmill, but Daddy didn’t think he was ready for such a big job. Earl and James agreed.” She paused, and then added quietly, “Eventually, so did I. Billy worked alongside Daddy to learn the ins and outs of sawmill management. He was preparing to take over. But that never happened because Daddy outlived him by seven years.”

The Montgomery family operated on a business structure that resembled a monarchy. No new king until the old one died. Libby searched for a way to introduce a subject closer to her research questions. “Did the hotel employ any Indians under your management?”

“Oh Lord no! You can’t trust an Indian to do an honest day’s work.”

“Aunt Laura,” Jason said. “You can’t say things like that.”

“Let her speak, Jason,” Libby said, knowing she wasn’t defending the elderly woman so much as trapping her. “What about logging?” she said quickly to keep the interview momentum going. “Did any of the Kalahwamish do any logging for TL&L?”

“Yes. They were cheap labor.”

“So they were paid less than their white counterparts?”

Laura’s eyes hardened. “I wouldn’t know about that.”

“It was dangerous work,” Libby added.

Laura said nothing more.

Libby made a note to check the mill’s personnel records to see what the standard compensation for Indians had been. Jason couldn’t sue her for including information documented in TL&L’s ledgers.

The more she learned about the discrimination the Kalahwamish people had suffered at TL&L, the more she understood why Rosalie wanted this part of the history of Coho documented. But, if it was any comfort to the local tribe, Lyle hadn’t treated his white employees much better.

“I do remember one time when an Indian worked in the mill management office. In the early fifties, I think. Billy hired him. Daddy caught the man stealing and beat him, then threw him out. No Indian was hired to work in mill management after that.”

Billy was Jason’s grandfather. Emotion flickered in Jason’s eyes, but it passed before she could discern his reaction to Laura’s words.

The interview continued for another forty-five minutes. For Libby’s report, the conversation went splendidly. Laura continued to say things to paint the management of TL&L in the worst possible light with her racist comments. Sickened by Laura’s words, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for this woman who was raised with the anger and hate of a bigot like Lyle Montgomery. Who could Laura have been if she’d been born into a different family?

When Laura and her dog left the room, she looked satisfied that she’d vented some of her hostility, but Libby suspected she’d end up regretting their conversation.

Jason went in search of his Uncle Earl and returned with a wary-looking Earl in tow. She changed the cassette and hit record. She asked for permission to tape the interview and include the transcription in the report. His softly voiced “Yes” would protect her legally, but once again she wondered whether she’d pay a karmic price.

Yesterday she had conducted oral interviews with different mill workers, gathering as much information as she could about the settlement and management of TL&L. She had heard stories that Millie Thorpe Montgomery unwillingly gave up control of her company to her husband. Kicking and screaming, they’d said. One man commented that Lyle did the kicking, Millie the screaming. Some of those kicks broke Millie’s ribs. Libby wanted to hear the official Montgomery version of events. “Your mother, Millie Thorpe Montgomery, ran the mill from the time of her grandfather’s death in 1919 until she married your father in 1920. Then Lyle took over at TL&L. I’m wondering what you, Earl, and Laura were told about how that came about. Was the transition smooth?”

“My mother had no business running a sawmill,” Earl said.

“My understanding is that her grandfather,” Libby glanced at the family tree, “Andrew Thorpe, practically raised her in the mill management office. I would think she’d have known quite a bit about running the mill.”

“That was before I was born. But the woman I knew could never have held such an important job.”

Sadly, Libby suspected this statement was true. By the time Millie had Earl, she’d been married to Lyle for eight years. In that time, she’d had two late-term miscarriages and given birth to four babies, three of which survived. Libby couldn’t help but wonder whether the miscarriages had been caused by Lyle’s beatings. Earl’s memories would only be of the grieving mother and defeated wife who’d lived in fear.

Jason sat in the same seat as before. His face remained impassive, and Libby wondered what he knew about his great-grandfather’s abuse of his wife. Given their lunchtime conversation, she didn’t think he’d volunteer the information.