What the Cat Dragged In

by Miranda James

“These cats are spoiled, aren’t they?” she said.

  “They sure are.” Haskell grinned as he gave Ramses a small bit of the chicken.

  Conversation around the table for the rest of meal had nothing to do with the murder or the bones in the attic. By tacit agreement we avoided those topics. Alissa told us about living in central California. Haskell talked about growing up on a farm here in Athena County, and Stewart shared a few anecdotes about his eccentric uncle. He did not mention that his uncle had been murdered, however. I chipped in a few anecdotes about Houston, and we all enjoyed ourselves.

  I praised Stewart for the excellent meal, and Alissa chimed in. Stewart and Haskell shooed us out, saying they would clean up. I knew they liked doing domestic things together, so I didn’t demur. Alissa tried to insist on helping, but they wouldn’t hear of it.

  “I finished my book,” Alissa said when we’d reached the foot of the stairs. “Would you mind if I picked out another one?”

  “Of course not. Help yourself. I’m going upstairs to read myself. Let me know if you need anything.”

  “I will.” She hurried past me with a smile, and I waited to see her enter the den before I went upstairs. Ramses had stayed with Stewart and Haskell, ever hopeful for more chicken, I felt sure. Diesel came up with me and settled himself on the bed in his regular spot.

  After removing my shoes, I padded over to the desk, where I had several books I hadn’t yet read. I chose a nonfiction book, a popular history of medieval England, and brought it back to the bed with me.

  Helen Louise was late in calling that night, and she apologized profusely. “We didn’t get back to the hotel until a little after midnight,” she said, giggling. “I knew you’d be mad if I didn’t call, though.”

  I laughed, though her phone call had awakened me from a sound sleep. “I’m glad you called, honey. Sounds like y’all had more fun than usual tonight.”

  She giggled again. “Too many hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s.” She hiccuped suddenly, then apologized.

  “I see. Well, you go on to bed and get some rest. Don’t try to talk tonight,” I said.

  “Okay, sweetie. Love you,” she said.

  “Love you, too.”

  I put down the phone, smiling in the dark. Helen Louise rarely drank to excess, and I feared she would be regretting this episode when she woke up in the morning. Hurricanes had two or three kinds of rum in them, along with fruit juices. I recalled the one I’d had the last time I visited Pat O’Brien’s as being on the strong side.

  The call had roused me enough that it took me a while to go back to sleep. I thought about the mysterious “Maudie,” and what had happened to her. Had Marty Hale really dug up her bones and hidden them in the house? That was a bizarre thing to do, but Alissa seemed to think he would have done it.

  Then I thought about Asa Luckney. I wondered if I would find out somehow why my grandfather changed his mind right before he died. Perhaps there would be something in the papers at the historical society. I was eagerly anticipating going through them in the morning.

  Finally, I drifted off to sleep, and when my alarm went off later that morning, I awoke a bit groggy. I sat up on the side of the bed, and Diesel came to sit beside me, leaning against me. I rubbed his head and yawned. Ramses wasn’t with us. He might have spent the night with Alissa, I supposed.

  I was the first one downstairs, and that surprised me. Usually Haskell was up early, even on weekends, and I often found him drinking coffee when I appeared. Given that the case hadn’t been resolved, I thought he might have been out the door earlier. In an ongoing homicide investigation, the hours he worked were long and tiring. I hoped he’d had a good rest.

  Sure enough, I found his favorite mug in the sink. I filled my own mug and set it on the table. There was no paper today, so I contented myself with my phone after I finished adding cream and sugar to my coffee.

  No earth-shattering headlines in the world this morning, thankfully. I put my phone down. I fried a couple of eggs and browned two slices of toast for my breakfast. I allowed Diesel a couple of bites of toast, but he had to content himself with the wet food I gave him before I went back upstairs.

  Aleta Boudreaux was waiting for me when Diesel and I arrived at the historical society building near downtown.

  “Good morning,” she said brightly. I would have recognized her for her abundant curly hair as a library patron if I hadn’t been expecting to see her.

  I returned her greeting. “Thank you so much for arranging this for me. I can’t tell you how excited I am to find out more about my family.”

  “You’re welcome.” She bent to coo at Diesel. “You’re such a handsome boy. I wish I could take you home with me, but I don’t think that will be allowed.”

  He meowed in response, and she laughed. “You’d swear he knows exactly what you say to him.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” I said.

  “Here’s the key.” Aleta produced it from a pocket in her slacks. “Let me show you how it works. The lock can be a bit stubborn sometimes.”

  We approached the door, and she instructed me on the proper way to get it unlocked. I watched carefully and felt sure I’d have no problem with it.

  She walked in with me and showed me the light switches. She then pointed to the reception desk. “Your papers are there. I’ll get out of the way now. You just lock up after you’re finished, and you can drop the key off on Monday. One of the board members should be here until noon.”

  I locked the door behind her. Diesel had been wandering around investigating the room. I closed the doors leading out of the space, because I didn’t want him wandering loose in the museum. He wouldn’t deliberately damage anything, or at least I hoped he wouldn’t, but there was no point in setting him up for failure.

  I found a thick folder in the center of the desk. I pulled a notepad and pen from my briefcase and set the latter aside. I had allowed myself three hours for this, and I had left notes for Stewart and Alissa of my whereabouts, along with my cell number for Alissa.

  Eagerly, but with care, I opened the folder and began to examine the papers. The first items I encountered were copies of land documents, deeds, to some of the property in Athena belonging to my family in the early nineteenth century.

  I pressed on, scanning and putting aside certain documents for a lengthier perusal. I found several letters that I was tempted to read immediately, but I steeled myself to carry on, laying them aside.

  The first time I thought to check the time, it was already ten-thirty. I had been too engrossed in my task to realize I’d been here that long. I put down the document in my hands and stood up. Diesel had been asleep near my feet. He stirred and looked up at me, yawning.

  “I’m going to walk around the room a couple of times,” I said. “My back is stiff.”

  Diesel chirped and stretched while I suited deed to words. After a few minutes of moving around, my back loosened up, and I resumed my seat.

  The next document I picked up turned out to be a family tree that began in the early 1700s, I was thrilled to see. I started to jot down the names, dates, and relationships, focusing on my line of descent. I would add the others in later. The tree came down all the way to my father in my line and ended there.

  I noticed something unexpected with my grandfather and great-aunt. In between their names was another name, Allan Wilfred Harris, and his dates. Allan had married a woman named Jincy Harrell. They had a son, Horace. No wife was listed for Horace, but there was a dotted line down from his name. He’d had a son named Martin.

  Mr. Hale was my cousin.

  THIRTY

  Esther Carraway had left this out of her book. There had been no mention of a connection to anyone named Hale. I speculated that Martin Hale’s father might not have married his mother. If so, Esther Carraway had let me find this out for myself.

  At this late d
ate, I wasn’t scandalized by the discovery. I looked again at the tree, and I saw that my great-uncle Allan had died not long after Martin Hale was born. Why hadn’t my grandfather ever mentioned the relationship? Why hadn’t my aunt or my father done so? Surely they had to know about my great-uncle’s son and his grandson.

  But he was Martin Hale, not Martin Harris. That argued for his being illegitimate.

  I looked more closely at the family tree. I put it under a brighter light, and I noticed that the ink adding Martin to the tree looked different from the ink on the rest of the paper. The handwriting was slightly different as well. I wondered who had added Martin to the tree, and why.

  Had this been done maliciously? Was it even true?

  How would I find out?

  I decided that I needed to copy the papers containing the diagram of the family tree. I looked around, and sure enough, there was a copier in the room. I turned it on and waited for it to warm up. I made a couple of copies of the original. I put one of them back in the file and took the original and the second copy with me.

  “Come on, boy,” I said to Diesel. He followed me out and waited while I locked the door and pocketed the key.

  I drove straight to Esther Carraway’s house, hoping that she would be at home.

  My luck was in. She answered the door. She opened it wide and motioned me in, along with Diesel.

  “I apologize for showing up unannounced like this,” I said, “but I really need to talk to you about something.” I handed her the copy of the family tree. I had left the original in the car.

  “I wondered how long it would take you to find it,” she said as she accepted the pages. “Come in and sit down.”

  Diesel sat by her legs, and Mrs. Carraway, already dressed for the day, patted his head. “I’ll always be glad to see you, handsome boy.” She looked over at me. “I told you that I didn’t wash anyone’s dirty laundry in public. It was there for you to find and do whatever you thought proper about the information.”

  “I presume you added Martin Hale to this,” I said.

  “I did.”

  “What proof do you have that he was my great-uncle’s son? Illegitimate, I presume.”

  She nodded. “Yes, he was born out of wedlock. I heard it from his mother herself, not long before she died.”

  “Who was she?”

  “A woman from Alabama, named Maudie Magee,” she replied. “Really a tragic story.”

  The name Maudie stunned me. Surely there was no coincidence in the name. Had Martin Hale buried his own mother in an unmarked grave?

  “Why wasn’t he Martin Magee, then?” I asked.

  “He was adopted by a family named Hale who farmed near your grandfather. I don’t know if your grandfather ever knew, though I suspected he found out when I heard about the terms of his will.”

  That would answer the question of the life lease, I thought. My grandfather had done it for his illegitimate nephew, family being family after all.

  “Shocked a lot of people, I can tell you,” Mrs. Carraway said. “Martin Hale and I were probably the only two people who knew the reason. He didn’t tell anyone, and neither did I. He didn’t want people to know he was a bastard. At least, that he was born that way.” She gave me a grim smile.

  “Tell me more about his mother,” I said. “When and how did you meet her? And what happened to her?”

  Mrs. Carraway sighed. “Wasn’t long before she passed away. She married a man in Alabama, name of Magee. Her husband had died, and she wasn’t well herself. She’d been in a bad accident and lost both her hands and her feet.”

  “That’s awful,” I said. “I’ve seen a picture of her.”

  “I’d like to see that sometime, if I might.”

  I promised to show it to her.

  She went on with the story. “She’d somehow found out who had adopted her baby. Someone I knew in Alabama, where she still lived, put her in touch with me. She asked me what I knew about Martin Hale, and I told her the plain facts. Not about his character, mind you.”

  “That was kind of you,” I said.

  She shrugged. “A friend of hers took her to your grandfather’s farm to meet her son. That was about twenty-five years ago, and she was old by then. I never heard from her again. I presumed she went back to Alabama and died there. I didn’t ask Martin Hale about her. It wasn’t my business.”

  I wondered whether I should tell her I was pretty sure where Maudie Magee had died. The story of the bones in the attic had run briefly in the paper. The sheriff’s department had hoped someone would come forward about them. Mrs. Carraway had obviously not made the connection between Mrs. Magee and those bones.

  I decided that she deserved to know. I explained it to her gently.

  She didn’t appear all that shocked. I figured she had run across many scandalous things in her research into the past of so many local families.

  “I forgot one thing,” Mrs. Carraway said suddenly. “Mrs. Magee told me she had letters from Allan Harris, Martin’s father, that proved he knew about the baby. He was planning to marry her, or so the letters said, but he was killed in the South Pacific during the war.”

  “World War Two,” I said.

  “Yes, I believe he was a marine.”

  “How sad for her,” I said. “I wonder if my great-grandparents knew about the relationship.”

  “Mrs. Magee told me they did, and they didn’t approve. She didn’t come from a family like the Harrises. They were poor sharecroppers.”

  I didn’t like to think of my ancestors as being snobs, but it wasn’t an unusual attitude at that time.

  “I really don’t understand why Mr. Hale buried his birth mother in an unmarked grave,” I said.

  “There’s a family cemetery somewhere in those woods behind the house. Was that where she was buried?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve never seen the cemetery.”

  “It’s probably completely overgrown now. No one to take care of it for decades,” Mrs. Carraway said. “I expect she must have died in the house, and Martin Hale didn’t want anyone to know who she was. So he probably buried her himself.”

  His own mother, left in an anonymous grave, until her own great-grandson dug her up to play a prank on his grandfather. Sad and macabre all at once.

  “I wonder what happened to those letters,” I said, struck by a sudden thought.

  “Martin Hale might have burned them,” Mrs. Carraway said. “Or they could still be somewhere in that house. Have you looked through everything yet?”

  “No, ma’am, I haven’t, but I’m going to now. Mr. Hale’s granddaughter, Alissa, is here from California, and she’s staying with me. Once I tell her the story, I know she’ll be as eager to find those letters as I am.”

  “I wish you good luck,” Mrs. Carraway said. “Maudie Magee deserves that someone in the Harris family knows her story.”

  “I’ll make sure they know,” I said. “You can count on it.”

  “Good,” Mrs. Carraway replied. “Now, is there anything else?”

  I rose, realizing this was a polite hint to go. “No. I can’t thank you enough for your help with this, Mrs. Carraway.”

  She smiled briefly and took my hand. “You’re welcome.” When she released my hand, she stroked Diesel’s head a couple of times. “Bring Diesel back to see me sometime.”

  I promised to do that, and she showed us to the door. I drove straight home, because I couldn’t wait to share this information with Alissa. I would give Sean a call before we left for the farm and give him a rundown on everything. I would leave it to him to relay the relevant information to Kanesha.

  After the murder case was solved, I wanted to search the property for that family cemetery Mrs. Carraway mentioned. I couldn’t imagine that my aunt would have neglected it completely, or my father, either. But since the property was
leased to Martin Hale, they might not have felt they could insist. I couldn’t imagine that Martin Hale would have wanted them on the property.

  Wait a minute, I thought. My grandfather died before Hale’s birth mother came to visit. Unless Hale already knew about his true parentage, he couldn’t have blackmailed my grandfather into leasing the land to him.

  Perhaps my grandfather had known all along. Maybe he knew that Martin Hale was his nephew. He put up with him, despite his drinking habits, because of the blood relationship. I could see my grandfather doing that, even though he might not want to acknowledge Hale publicly. My grandfather, with his teetotal stance, would not have wanted people knowing that his own nephew, an illegitimate one at that, was a drunk. Hale must have threatened to tell everyone the truth of his parentage if my grandfather didn’t leave the land to him. My grandfather took great pride in his family; that much my father had told me. To his generation, acknowledging a bastard member would have been anathema.

  I decided that was the more likely scenario. Unless we found information to the contrary somewhere in the house. That was always a possibility.

  As soon as I got home, I called Sean and filled him in on what I had discovered. I could imagine he was dumbstruck for once, because he didn’t say a word until I’d finished.

  “Holy moly, Dad, that’s some story.” He sounded dazed. “So Alissa Hale is your cousin. Mine too. That’s wild.”

  “I know it’s a lot to take in. I’m going to find Alissa and tell her all this, either before we leave, or on the way to the farm. I’d really like to find those letters if Hale kept them.”

  “I’ll call Kanesha,” Sean said. “I have a couple things to do here, and then I’ll join you at the farmhouse.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate the offer. The more of us looking, the more likely we’ll find them.”

  There was no sign of anyone in the house, at least downstairs. Diesel came up the stairs with me and followed me down the hall to Alissa’s room. The door stood slightly ajar. I knocked, and Alissa called for me to enter.