Picture Them Dead (15 page)

But Gavin didn't relax. He sat, staring at his running shoes, casting an occasional sidelong glance in Joe's direction.

“Appreciate you coming forward with this,” Denny said.

“You're not going to run me in?” Gavin asked.

“Nope,” Denny said. “Are the articles still in your trunk?”

Gavin nodded. “I didn't take anything out.”

“Good,” Denny said. “We'll go over with you to collect it. And sometime tomorrow we'd appreciate it if you'd come in and make an official statement.”

“He'll be there,” Joe said. “I'll see to it.”

fifteen

Esme and I spent a couple of hours on Saturday morning arranging proper archival files for the stuff we'd found in the bundle Sadie Harper had left for Miss Lottie. Esme began assembling the artifacts for the scrapbook on the history of the land. She's good at it; she chooses representative samples that illustrate the text, whereas I want to include everything, which is impractical and also makes the scrapbook tedious and messy.

Being a sucker for diaries and old letters, I tackled those. I started with the memo books. Sadie wrote down everything, from important historical information to grocery lists, all together in little booklets. She was succinct to an extreme. In one, dated August 5, 1914, she'd written one word: “War.” But somehow that one word took in all the horror and heartbreak of the next few years. She noted the date of Samuel Wright's death and underneath had written: “May God have mercy on us all.” How I wished I had some context for that.

Next I looked through the correspondence between Sadie and her sister-in-law, Inez, reading snatches aloud to Esme. Sadie and Inez had kept up a correspondence for years, and though I didn't have Sadie's half of the exchanges, a lot could be garnered from Inez's responses. She had a beautiful hand and a pleasing writing style, and best of all, she was a consummate gossip, especially when it came to Eugenia, Miss Lottie's future mother. I pulled out one from July 1915.

I saw Eugenia today downtown. She was with her mother, Dolores. I don't have much to say to Dolores, for too many reasons to tell here. Let us suffice it to say her nose is too high in the air to make congenial conversation possible. But I do think little Eugenia is a sweet girl, despite her parentage. She is modest and polite and dedicated to Samuel. That is clear. I have had the chance to observe them together on several occasions and I feel assured she will be faithful in every respect.

Inez was clearly more upper-class than Sadie Harper, or at least felt herself to be. There were references in her letters to Sadie's life as a farmer's wife, where she managed to convey both admiration and condescension.

I simply cannot imagine how you get it all done, Sadie. It sounds as if life for you is little better than for the pioneers. All that gathering and canning and the husbandry of your animals, cow-milking, churning and all such. You are truly a marvel that you can live and thrive in conditions that would finish off a woman like me post haste. I am afraid we would simply starve were it up to me to work as you do to provide for you and Oren day in and day out. You must be so worn down.

“So Inez was a city slicker. Where did she live?” Esme asked.

“Baltimore,” I said. “Though I don't think it was ­really what you'd call a hot urban center back then.”

“Is there more about Samuel?”

“Yes, here's one where Inez is lamenting that he's had to go for his training and in another she says he's been shipped out, bound for Europe.”

I got up to tick those dates into the time line, then continued reading the letters, skipping over day-to-day news, looking for more dates. “Oh, here's something; this would have been after Samuel was overseas.” I read aloud:

I know by now, Sadie, you have heard the tragic news; Eugenia's parents, Dolores and Conrad, both gone in one cruel stroke, their beautiful home burned to the ground. In the way of small mercies I have been assured they had expired from the smoke before the conflagration took them (if the people who say so really have any knowledge of the matter). It is so very horrid. I suppose I should feel guilty about some of the things I have written to you about Dolores, but I did, after all, only say the truth and her passing does not make it any less so. Still, I am fearsome sorry she died and I feel so achingly sad for poor Eugenia. Now she must bear her grief alongside her longing and worry for Samuel. It is a cruel turn.

“This was Miss Lottie's maternal grandparents,” Esme said, consulting the Harper family chart I'd constructed. “So she never knew them.”

“Not them and not the grandparents on the Wright side either. They were both dead long before Samuel went away to the war.”

“What became of Eugenia? Do the letters say?”

I quickly skimmed some more, then huffed a laugh. “Uh-oh, trouble brewing,” I said, then read to Esme:

Dear Sadie, It is with a heavy heart that I must write to let you in on this. I fear our sweet Eugenia is lost. You know that she has gone to live with her Aunt Lavinia. Well, that lady, dare I even use the word, is turning out to be not a fit guardian for a young girl. Eugenia has gotten quite out of control. She has bobbed her hair and I am very afraid she is becoming a flapper. She has adopted that style of dress and goes out jazzing with her friends and being a regular bohemian. I hear through the grapevine that she has even been seen smoking in public and I suspect may be doing worse in private. I do wonder if she will forget all about Samuel, and him in those dreadful trenches over there fighting for his very life. I am sorely disappointed in the child.

“Oh, God forbid,” Esme said. “A flapper.”

“And bobbing her hair!” I said. “That hussy.”

“Well,” Esme said, “we can poke fun, but I'm sure that was cause for scandal back then. Especially if she'd given poor Samuel her pledge.”

“But she did wait for him,” I said. “They were married very soon after he came home. She got pregnant with Lottie within a few months of the wedding and she died giving birth, so, sadly, they only had about a year together. There's a wedding photo in the album, but it's still at River's house.”

“What did River say about taking the stuff from the bundle to Lottie Walker?” Esme asked.

“He's all for it,” I said. “But he'd like copies. I finished the report for River to give Ron Solomon. It details everything we've learned that points toward identifying the Forgotten Man as Samuel Wright. It may affect whether River will be allowed to move the remains. I'm going to take it out to him this morning. You want to come?”

“Yes, I think I will,” Esme said. “I still have something floating around in my head about that spot in his backyard. I'm probably just asking for a headache, but I'd like to walk around a little out there and see if I get anything more.”

“Okay, good. But just so you know, I'll probably take this stuff out to Miss Lottie afterward. You want to go out with me or take your own car?”

Esme puckered her lips. “I'll go with you,” she said. “I'd like to see how she responds.”

“She knows what happened. I'm sure of that. She keeps saying things about ‘that night,' so clearly something dramatic happened, but she says she'll take it to her grave, and I think she has the will to do just that.”

“Well, the woman is ninety-seven years old. If we're going to find out anything from her, it'd best be soon.”

“Yeah, well, hard as it is for me to accept, there may be things we'll never know. We'll have to settle for what we can get.”

We worked quietly for a little while longer, then Esme spoke, her question coming out of the blue. “So do you think Gavin Taylor had anything to do with Sherry Burton's death?”

“What? No.”

Esme looked over her glasses at me.

I sighed. “Okay, I hope he didn't. I'm trying to believe he didn't. Gavin is like one of the lost boys,” I said. “But I really do believe he's a good-hearted guy. He just doesn't think sometimes. He does stupid things, but I can't believe he'd do bad things.”

“It only takes one moment of bad judgment to do a lot of harm,” Esme replied.

“Has Denny said anything more about the Miami connection?” I asked. “Are they making any progress?”

“He hasn't said much,” Esme said. “I think it's pretty clear she wasn't living like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm down there, but if she was into something that got her killed, I don't think they've nailed it down yet. And I don't think they're slacking on the case, since it sounds like there's a bigger fish to be had if they can pin this murder on a smaller one.”

“Drug dealers,” I said. “If it's drug dealers, then it's got nothing to do with our world, right? Maybe that's why I've felt so detached from Sherry Burton's murder. I feel terrible that it happened, and that it happened here makes me feel vaguely responsible, but I've been able to hold it at a distance after the initial shock of finding her. Now I realize it's affecting people I know very deeply.” I told her about our visit to River's house with Laney. “She was so sentimental about her time with Sherry and upset about her death. Even Bryan Mason, who I don't think anybody would describe as a sensitive soul, seems genuinely disturbed.”

“Formative years,” Esme said. “That's when we were all searching for our identity.”

I nodded, thinking of Gavin's reminder that we'd been in the same puppy pack in school. He'd been among the herd of kids who'd come to my house to study, or for pizza and movie night. Or sometimes my dad would organize us into a battalion for some volunteer project or other. Gavin and I hadn't been best buddies or anything, but we'd been schoolmate friends. By high school we'd drifted apart. Gavin had started hanging around with a racier crowd, headed by Bryan Mason. Laney had left us behind by then, too. It was nice to rekindle those friendships now that we'd all found ourselves.

Correction: all of us but Gavin, the lost boy.

sixteen

“Thank you,” River said when I handed him the report. “You two have lived up to your reputations. I'm looking forward to seeing that scrapbook.” He turned to Jennifer. After a moment of silence, she felt his eyes on her and straightened.

“Oh yeah, thanks,” she said, and I believed she kinda, sorta meant it.

“I don't know how this is all going to work out,” River said, “but now that I know old Sam a little”—he nodded toward the photo album on the table—“I wouldn't much mind having him resting out there on the hill. So it'll be okay either way it goes.”

“You're a kind soul, River,” Esme said.

Luke harrumphed. “You didn't see him dealing with the workers who improperly installed the solar panels on the workshop this morning,” he said. “ ‘Kind' was nowhere in his repertoire.”

River grinned. “I guess I do get a little hot under the collar when people disrespect the vision,” he said.

I remembered then how River had been the morning we'd discovered Sherry Burton's body. He'd come stomping across his yard loaded for bear. It had scared me a little, but then finding the girl was dead had made me forget how angry he'd been.

River wasn't all laid-back hippie. I'd heard that from several people who knew him well. He'd had a tough time of it in his war, Vietnam. He'd come back with emotional and spiritual baggage.

A crash came from the direction of the workshop, and we all jumped.

“Oh Sweet Mother, what now?” River said, heading for the back door.

“You see to that, Dad. I'll take this over to Ron,” Jennifer said, picking up the report from the table. “I really did mean it, you know,” she said, turning to Esme and me. “Thanks, both of you.”

“Glad we could help,” Esme said, and I had hopes of the wall coming down, the doves let fly, swords being beaten into plowshares. Or at least the Christmas truce I'd read about in one of Samuel's letters, when the German and Allied soldiers in the trenches simply decided among themselves not to fight on Christmas day and sang carols, played touch football, and showed one another family photos before resuming their places in the fighting the next day.

Luke walked us outside and we could hear River giving the workmen a dressing-down for their careless handling of a workbench they were unloading.

“We're headed out to see your grandmother,” I told Luke. “Have you seen her?”

Luke nodded. “I went out there, but she didn't know who I was. Grandma Lottie didn't like kids much, and she especially didn't like having to take care of us. I think it was more to do with her relationship with our mother, if you could call it a relationship. If you look up ‘dysfunction' in the dictionary, our family photo will probably be there.”

Esme was standing next to me and I could hear her breath coming in small puffs. “Luke,” she said, her voice sounding a bit strained. “Do you remember when there was a well out here? Right about in here,” she said, taking a few paces.

“No,” Luke said, tilting his head. “Not a working well. Grandma Lottie's house was on well water, but there was an electric pump house, not an old-fashioned pulley-and-bucket type. There was a flower bed where the well had been, though, and she was very particular about it. We'd catch hell if we messed with it. Which was strange, now that I think about it. There were no flowers anywhere else on the property other than wildflowers. She thought growing flowers was a frivolous waste of time. Actually, she thought pretty much everything was a frivolous waste of time. But she said if you were going to put the work and money into growing something, you ought to be able to eat it.”

River stepped out of the workshop and cupped his hands, calling for Luke to come help. Once he'd trotted off I turned to Esme. “Are you getting something?” I asked.

“Plenty,” Esme said. “Oh, Sophreena, I don't know what it's all about, but something terrible happened here. Right here on this spot.”

“At the well?” I asked.

Esme took in a deep breath. “Yes,” she said. “There are people—three, I think, maybe four. There's shouting. It's dark and something terrible is happening. There's fear and panic. It's all coming at me so hard I can't breathe. I need to get out of here.”

We turned to see Jennifer standing three feet away. Her body was rigid and her eyes wide. “Oh, dear God,” she muttered, “you're deluded. You need help. You both need to go. Now.” She turned and went back into the house.

Esme let out a groan. She lifted a hand and seemed about to call after Jennifer, but then she let the hand fall. Her shoulders slumped and she looked totally defeated. I'd never seen Esme like this and it unraveled me.

“Oh, Esme, I'm so sorry. I should have been watching. I didn't hear her come out. Let's not worry about her. It'll be fine, just fine. No problem.” I was chirping inanely, and couldn't seem to stop.

“You know it will surely not be fine, Sophreena. Or if you don't, you should. She'll have this all over town before nightfall. Esme Sabatier, the crazy old conjure woman. And the first thing she'll do is go straight to Denton. I might as well go home and start packing my things.”

“Don't be ridiculous, Esme,” I said. “People here know you. They're not going to turn their backs on you because of what she says.”

“You've not lived with this as long as I have, Soph­reena. It won't be good.” She looked out across the yard toward my car. “I can't go with you to Cottonwood. I'm sorry. I just don't feel up to it right now.”

“I won't go either,” I said. “I'll stay with you.”

“No, I need some time,” Esme said. “You go on. I'm going to have a walkabout, then go to Claire's. I've been meaning to get out here to hang some curtains for her anyhow. You go take care of your business.”

“Our business,” I called as I watched her walk away. I had a lump in my throat and I was blinking back tears. I quickly swiped at my eyes as I saw Luke approaching.

“Crisis averted,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the workshop. He gazed out to where Esme was trudging along, struggling with her heels. She stopped and took off her shoes and continued on her way in her bare feet. That's when I realized how bad this was. If Esme was forsaking her shoes, what was next?

“Where's she going?” Luke asked.

“To Claire Calvert's,” I said, trying to sound casual. “She just remembered she'd promised to help her with something. I guess I'm on my own. I don't suppose you'd want to go out to Cottonwood with me to see your grandmother? I'm taking all the things that were in that bundle from Sadie. You might learn some things about your family, assuming you're interested.”

“Sure,” Luke said. “I would like to know more about the family. I was told next to nothing about our history growing up. I know zip about my father's side. And by father, I mean genetic donor. I never met the man. He planted the seed but didn't wait around for the harvest. Same goes for Sherry's dad. Mom really knew how to pick 'em. So, yeah, I'd like to know more about the family. It would be nice to find there were some shining lights somewhere up in the family tree.”

“Every family I've ever traced has a mixture of shining lights, steady signals, dim bulbs, and burnouts,” I said. “But I believe we all ought to know our own history. After all, it's made us who we are. It gives us things to live up to and things to live down, things to honor as traditions and things to work to reform.”

“I've got plenty of reform projects,” Luke said. “Maybe I can find some of the other stuff to go with it.” He offered to drive his car and I took him up on it so I could leave my car for Esme. I put the keys in the glove compartment and texted her. I transferred the box containing the photo album, the letters, the memo book diaries, and other artifacts to Luke's trunk. As he raised the lid, I had a fleeting thought of Gavin finding his trunk full of Sherry Burton's belongings. What a shock that must have been.

“Root beer?” Luke said as I placed a six-pack of the brew on the far side of the trunk, as far away from the artifacts as I could get it.

“I'm not above bribery, or tempting her with drink,” I said. “She likes root beer.”

“Still?” Luke said. “She used to brew a homemade version from the sassafras trees that run along the edge of the woods down by the creek.”

“I don't think I've ever had homemade root beer. Was it good?” I asked.

Luke pursed his lips. “Grandma wasn't big on sharing, but I swiped a bottle one time. It was good, but not good enough to get smacked for. I didn't try it again.”

“If you can get your grandmother to tell us the story of what happened to Samuel Wright, I'll buy you a case of the best,” I said as I climbed into the passenger seat.

“I'll hold you to that offer,” Luke said as we started down the long gravel driveway. “I think the things I missed most during the last year were hamburgers and Cokes, which is weird because I'm essentially a vegetarian.”

“Forbidden fruit?” I said.

“Yeah, except I had all the fruit a person could ever want,” he laughed, and nodded in the direction of Claire's house. “So Esme and Claire Calvert are friends?”

“Yes. They work together sometimes. Esme tutors kids through a program at her church and the Literacy Council provides resources and referrals. At least that's how they met, but now they're close personal friends, too.”

“Ms. Calvert's a nice woman,” Luke said. “Or at least she was nice to the little snot-nosed punk I was when we stayed here in the summers. She'd loan me books and give me snacks, and one time, when it was a rainy day and she saw I was outside, she set up this big canvas tent at the corner of her yard and said I could use it as my headquarters. That was her little joke 'cause the tent was army surplus.”

“Sounds like a kid's dream,” I said.

“It was,” Luke said. “She left it up and I took some of my stuff out there and I had it fixed up pretty cool, until Sherry found out about it and knocked it all down.”

“So I take it you and Sherry didn't get along?” I said.

“Most of the time she didn't acknowledge my existence,” Luke said. “With us it wasn't the Hansel and Gretel syndrome, the two of us together against the wicked stepmother, or grandmother in our case. It was survival of the fittest. She'd have sacrificed me in a heartbeat if it gave her an advantage. Otherwise she totally ignored me, which made me want her attention more than anything. I was an awkward kid and didn't make friends easily. I wanted to hang out with Sherry and her pals, but that was not gonna happen. So I spied on them constantly. I got pretty good at it, too. But anyhow, she didn't smash the tent because she didn't like me, she smashed it because Claire Calvert had given it to me.”

“She didn't like Claire?” I asked, frowning. “Who doesn't like Claire Calvert?”

“Sherry,” Luke answered with a sigh. “Ms. Calvert took it upon herself to come over and talk to Grandma Lottie about Sherry. She told her about Sherry and her friends hanging out down by the creek, getting up to no good. And she told her, too, that based on her talks with Sherry, she thought it would be good if Sherry got some counseling.”

“I don't suppose I need ask how your grandmother reacted to that.”

“Grandmother Lottie didn't give a rip what Sherry did, but she was livid about being shamed by a neighbor. Sherry got it bad. Grandma Lottie gave her an old-fashioned switching like she'd threatened a million times before. We didn't think she'd ever actually do it. Sherry was fourteen years old and if she'd realized what was coming she'd have run, but Grandma was quick. She grabbed Sherry and tied her hands to the back porch rail with a piece of clothesline and whipped her with a switch off a peach tree. She striped her across her legs and behind. It hurt, I'm sure, but mostly Sherry was humiliated and blistering mad. At Grandma, of course, but we were always mad at Grandma, that wasn't anything new. She was furious with Claire Calvert. She blamed her for all of it.”

“That's horrible, but I'm sure Claire had good intentions. She'd like to see you, by the way,” I said. “Maybe you could stop by and say hello sometime.”

“Uh,” Luke said, “yeah, maybe.” He flipped down the sun visor, squinting his blue eyes against the midafternoon sun. His skin was so brown from his past year in the tropics, his eyes were icy in contrast.

He ran his hand through his newly clipped hair and shook his head. “Naw, naw, I couldn't face her.”

“Why not?” I asked, watching as his face went through a series of grimaces.

“Guilt,” he said. “I feel guilty about what happened to her.”

“You? What do you have to feel guilty about? Oh no, tell me you weren't the one who made that phone call, Luke.”

“No!” he said sharply. “It wasn't me. But I didn't stop Sherry and her posse from making it. I swore to myself I'd never tell. But Sherry's gone now, it can't hurt her, and as for the others, I don't know them. Actions have consequences. My whole life has taught me that.”

“Would you tell me about it?” I asked.

“I'd like to tell Claire Calvert, but I'm too much of a coward, so yeah, I'll tell you. Like I said, Sherry hated Claire Calvert after she got that whipping. And she really did think Claire was having an affair, or at least that's what she said after the fact, but maybe she was trying to make herself feel better. Anyhow, I told you I'd gotten pretty good at spying on her and her friends by the end of the summer. I got close enough that night to hear them hatch the plan to call Quentin Calvert and get him to come home and catch Claire in the act.”

“Oh no,” I said with a groan.

“Oh, yes,” Luke said. “One of the guys put up some protest. I think Quentin was related to him somehow, but Sherry convinced him that was even more reason for him to want the husband to know what was going on. Sherry was a good manipulator, she got them all whipped up. They all climbed on their bikes and pedaled off to find the nearest pay phone. I stayed right up there in my tree perch wondering what I should do. I thought of telling Grandma Lottie, but then I was afraid there would be another episode with the switch. And I thought of going to Claire's and warning her, but it didn't seem like I should show up at her door if she was, well, you know, in the middle of something. So I did nothing. Absolutely nothing. And Claire Calvert ended up in a wheelchair.”