by Joe Coccaro
Carter said nothing, jaw clenched as they ambled onto the highway and then left onto the road leading into Cape Charles. He wondered if Malcolm was teasing Rose or merely pointing out fact. Smitten? Jessep Greyson was, Carter had to admit, eerily charming, unpretentiously smart, and flawlessly dignified. Carter reasoned that he should resist showing any contempt for or jealousy of Jessep because Rose would interpret that as a lack of self-confidence. And why should he feel threatened? Jessep was nearly twice Rose’s age, fit and charming, but with all of the physical limitations that come with seniority. Surely Carter could compete with that, at least sexually. He’d already tamed Rose’s lust.
“So, Rose, what’s your plan for Jessep?” Carter asked.
“For starters, he is charming,” Rose said. She smiled at Carter and batted her curled eyelashes as if to taunt. “Beyond his peculiar charm, he makes for an interesting case study. Who can say whether his paranormal experiences are intentional fabrications or real manifestations? There seems to be substance here—a lot of it.”
“Hard to compete with that,” Carter blurted. “But I think I can help you as well.”
“Oh my sweet Romeo, so you’re competing with Jessep?” Malcolm snorted a laugh from the backseat, and Carter winced.
“I just mean that I know a little about the town and can do some investigating. I told you I was a newspaper reporter in a previous life.”
“What do you have in mind?” Rose perked.
“Cyril Brown down at the hardware store. Gil told me that Cyril’s family were owners or key investors in Colonial Savings and Loan, the bank that used to be located in the old pub. Remember the vault inside Gil Netters? I’m guessing Cyril would know something about it. Cyril and I get along great. He’s crotchety but very smart and a font of knowledge about this place. I’ll go have a chat with him in the morning.”
Rose leaned her mouth close to Carter’s ear and whispered, “And what about tonight, boy toy? Want to have a chat with me? I feel stimulated after being around all of you manly men today.”
“Sounds like I need to defend my turf,” Carter whispered back. “But do me a favor: Make sure we remember to close the bedroom windows and draw the shades. Either that, or we need to charge admission.”
CHAPTER 15
CARTER SLIPPED FROM under the covers, stepped lightly into the bathroom, and took a shower to wash away lovemaking residue. Rose lay asleep, lightly breathing and curled on her side, her hair strewn over her face and legs splayed like a pair of scissors. She was a bed hog. She had pushed Carter to the outer rim of his queen mattress. As the warm water poured over his head, Carter wished he could sleep as soundly as Rose, the way he had as a boy after playing outside all day, his body exhausted and mind unencumbered. He could sleep twelve hours straight back then, without a twitch.
***
The morning was bright and warm, and, as expected, Carter found Cyril rocking in his wicker-back chair, jawing with Mac and a couple of other locals with front-row seats to the Cyril-Mac morning diatribe. The sparring duo split the cost of a newspaper subscription and shared it each morning during the week, critiquing the headlines—rarely with compliments—and almost always taking opposite views.
“I’m tellin’ you, Mac, my boy Trump could win this thing if the damn Republicans would just shut up and go with it. They’re worse on him than the Democrats. And this anti-Muslim, white supremacist stuff is a bunch of hooey,” he said and pointed to a headline. “It’s the damn liberal media peddling poison and fake news. But I’ll tell you what, the only people being faked out are those liberal pollsters. Mark my words. Everybody I know is voting Trump. Look around the county—there are twice as many Trump signs in yards.”
“What’s that you said, Cyril? Somethin’ about white supermarkets? Can’t do that no more, and it’s wrong,” Mac huffed. “People should be able to buy food where they want. Blacks and Mexicans gotta eat too.” Mac had raised his voice and tilted his ear toward Cyril.
“White supremacists, not supermarkets.” Cyril snickered. Mac and Cyril’s fan club about spit out its coffee.
“Mean! That’s what Trump and his hooligans are,” Mac roiled. “He’s a hateful man who’s going to hell. White supermarkets! That’s discrimination! That’s unconstitutional.”
“Drink some more coffee, you ol’ fool,” Cyril said. “Trump ain’t no racist. He’s just a tough sombitch. Someone needs to be. Working people are getting screwed paying for all these programs that let people eat without workin’. I worked every day of my life. No one paid me to sit at home.”
“Work! You call this work?” Mac said. “Cyril, you don’t do nothin’ ’cept sit around squawking all day and selling stuff in your store made in China.”
Carter waited for a pause in the banter before stepping into the arena. “Mornin’, gentlemen. Do I need to get an ambulance? Sounds like someone’s gonna have a heart attack.”
The boys laughed.
“So, what you up to, Carter? Ready for a drink?” Cyril asked.
“Too early, but thanks. Cyril, I do have something to ask . . . about your family.”
“Be careful there, lad,” Mac warned. “Old blueblood Cyril here will challenge you to a duel if you insult his kin. The Browns is fightin’ people.”
“Pistols at twenty paces? No thanks.” Carter laughed. “No, this has to do with the old Colonial Savings bank, the building that Gil Netters is in.”
“What about it? My granddaddy was treasurer of the bank board for about fifteen years. The place was destroyed in a fire back around 1920 or ’21, I think. Did you know that, Carter?”
“Yes, that’s what Gil said. You aware of any records or information about what happened, besides the newspaper article about the fire.”
“Not much survived,” Cyril said. “Two people died. Place was pretty much gutted from what I was told, except for stuff stored in the vault. Someone had the good sense to lock it down before they ran out of there. But two people got locked inside and suffocated in the heat. A bank teller tried to save ’em but the smoke got ’em. I’m guessing there was lots of cash and deeds and safety-deposit boxes. We used to have some of them around, but antique stores bought ’em. The bank closed after the fire, but most depositors recovered their savings and valuables, at least that’s what my grandfather said.”
“Any records left, or were they destroyed?”
“Most of that stuff is long gone.” Cyril thought a moment. “Come to think of it, there are a few footlockers and boxes in the attic here from the old bank. My daddy made me carry them up there when I was a kid. He said they were in the basement of Granddaddy’s house in Eastville. I’m guessing they may still be up their collecting dust with a lot of other junk. Want to have a look?”
***
The hardware store attic was dank and strewn with decapitated mannequins, old store signs and metal shelving, boxes of old lead plumbing joints, and unlabeled boxes stacked to the ceiling—decades of junk and forgotten inventory.
“We need to clean this place out. Maybe I’ll donate all of this junk to the church for a yard sale. I need to score some brownie points with the Lord. Bound to be some valuable stuff up here,” Cyril said.
After getting his bearings using a flashlight, Cyril pointed to several wooden trunks, all about the size of an army footlocker. Each was dusty gray with rusted hinges.
“Thankfully, they ain’t padlocked,” Cyril said. “Here ya go.” He handed Carter the flashlight. “Knock yourself out. You can use my office downstairs. It’s too damn hot up here. Just be careful hauling that stuff down the steps. These old railings are loose. I don’t need a lawsuit on my hands.”
Cyril kept a small office in the back of the store. It had an oak desk and lamp, a few bookshelves, a small fridge, and a 1950s calendar of blondes in bathing suits. Tonic water and other mixers filled the fridge. A bottle of flavored vodka lay in the tiny freezer along with ice cubes.
Carter hauled down three of the lockers, set them on the
floor, and poured himself a vodka over ice.
***
The footlockers mostly contained old leather-bound bank ledgers. The edges of the pages were brown and brittle, some torn and missing corners. Each page was numbered and, from what Carter could tell, showed a record of deposits and withdrawals. There were also stacks of smaller ledgers, each numbered by year with black ink. Carter perused a couple of volumes of each with the flashlight. The names, dates, and amounts were so evenly and neatly articulated that the author most certainly had received an “A” in penmanship. Carter laughed, contrasting the artistry of this impeccable cursive with his own indecipherable chicken scratch. He remembered how Mrs. Halprin, his second-grade teacher, had once examined his hands to see if they fully functioned. At a time when teachers tried to convert lefties to righties, Mrs. Halprin had tried the opposite with Carter, hoping that writing from the southern hemisphere would straighten out his letters. The left hemisphere proved as illegible as the right, so Mrs. Halprin allowed him to switch back and instructed Carter’s parents to buy him a typewriter.
Carter had only a vague idea of when Luzia Rosa Douro might have transacted business with the bank. All he knew for certain was that the Navy cruiser her beloved was on was hit July 19, 1918. So, that’s where he would start. He parsed the ledgers by date and found a few from that year. He flipped through the pages and ran his index finger down each line quickly. He found a long list and a transaction in July, but it didn’t bear the last name Douro. He looked at the small ledgers, which seemed more interesting. Instead of cash balances listed by name, they contained lists of numbers followed by a name: 112 Marcus Louis Verderose; 113 D. Earlworth Scruggs; 114 Eli Bernard Burton; 115 Kathrine Mae Kinard.
“Kinard! Of course,” Carter said. He scrambled back through the ledgers looking for entries under that name. After about a half hour of eyestrain, he hit pay dirt. Luzia R. Kinard. “Has to be her,” he said aloud.
The entry showed that Luzia Kinard had deposits of $434.65. Carter used his iPhone to do a Google search. In 2016 money, that was the equivalent of about $7,700, surely enough to live on for a while. She must have had a job. Either that or Young Kinard was very generous. He must have wanted her badly. On the line below the deposit entry was the number 137. Carter grabbed the stack of smaller ledgers from 1918. “Here it is,” he said. Next to 137 was the name again, Luzia R. Kinard. Beneath the name was an entry: Citizenship papers; two necklaces; broach; sterling silver hairband; gold ruby ring. “Found you, little missy.”
***
“How’d ya make out?” Cyril asked as Carter finally emerged about two hours later. “Was it worth the sweat?”
“I found the fair maiden, Cyril. Thanks. She had a nice nest egg in the bank and, apparently, a safety-deposit box of some sort with valuables.”
“Yeah, banks and some of the hotels or post offices used to rent safety boxes. We had a lot of transients through here back in the day. Lots of people staying in boarding houses locked their valuables at banks or the post office for safe keeping.”
“Cyril, I’m curious about something. What happens to unclaimed valuables?”
“As long as the safety-deposit box rent is paid, I suppose the stuff just sits there. Don’t really know. If a box is abandoned, I suspect the bank, post office, or whoever rents the box sells it unclaimed, just like they do with storage containers. You’ve seen the TV shows, right? The ones where these scavengers bid on storage lockers. My guess is that if there was unclaimed stuff from the old bank, it was probably sold or auctioned. That was a long time ago, Carter. No tellin’ where it wound up.”
“I’m not even sure the items under the name I’m investigating were left unclaimed,” Carter said. “But this proves that the woman who went missing was here, and probably for some time. Thanks again, Cyril. I put all the stuff back upstairs, and I helped myself to your vodka.”
***
Carter called Rose seconds after he stepped on Mason Way. He felt invigorated by his find, the way he had when he began as a news reporter and had scooped other media. What he discovered in those arcane records wasn’t exactly a gotcha, but it did buttress with hard evidence Rose’s anecdotal accounts of her great aunt’s presence in Cape Charles.
“Rose, what you heard about Luzia seems to be the truth. I found some old bank records from 1918. Luzia was definitely here. And she definitely had a connection to the Colonial Savings and Loan that burned. She had a pretty big stash of money in the bank and some valuables in a safety-deposit box.”
“Very cool, Carter. Anything interesting in the box?”
“The ledger listed a ring, Rose. A gold and ruby ring.”
“Wow! Just like my mom said. That Douglas Kinard fellow gave her his ring. Had to be!”
“Yes, and get this: She used his last name on the bank and safety-deposit box accounts. Hard to say why, but I’m guessing it’s because the bank knew the Kinard family. In fact, I found a few other accounts under that last name. I’m guessing Luzia probably figured she would be better taken care of and her money and possessions would be more secure as a Kinard. Or maybe someone in the Kinard family arranged all of this for her.”
“You’re quite the snoop, a regular Horatio Caine.”
“The CSI actor? Okay, I can live with that. And who does that make you, Samantha Stevens from Bewitched?”
“Now you’re really dating yourself, Carter. How old are you, anyway?”
“You’ll have to cast me under your spell to find out.”
“Maybe I already have, sweet boy. Maybe you’re doing my bidding.”
“Your wish is my command. Just spare me the whips and chains.”
“Okay, kinky boy, no whips. But I make no promises about chains. Call me tonight.”
CHAPTER 16
SATURDAY NIGHTS AT Gil Netters in the summer almost always devolved into a bacchanalia—a sweaty, grinding orgy of drunken bodies squeezed three rows deep by the bar and gyrating to R&B and classic rock records spun by deejays. The sidewalk outside the bar entrance was always packed as well with cigarette smokers or those just needing a few minutes of fresh air before plunging back into steamy waves of body heat beyond the door. On this August night, at the epicenter of the volcanic mass, danced a gangly woman with a bony face and legs as thin as a healthy person’s arms. Locals called her Thin Lizzy, but her given moniker was Luciana Alto. She was French, in her late thirties, and had married a NATO officer from her country who worked as a liaison with the US Atlantic Fleet in Norfolk.
Lizzy was a dancer, musician, and teacher. Besides English, she was fluent in three Romance languages and taught them in high school. She and her husband had bought a vacation home in Cape Charles and spent most weekends and summers there. After a few years, her husband had returned to France without her. No one knew why they had divorced, but there were plenty of rumors. Lizzy’s husband had spent one month a year in Europe. And while away, she came to Cape Charles alone to play. Rumor was that she was sleeping with the town’s top cop; others said it was the top cop’s wife. Regardless, everyone loved Lizzy, even Gil.
Lizzy sat on the left end of the political spectrum, an advocate for migrant workers picking crops on the Shore. She was a vegan with bronze skin and a crown of brown waves that dipped to the middle of her back. She wore thick-rimmed glasses that magnified her hazel eyes and had dimples that punctuated a permanent smile. Best of all, her mild French accent intensified with each mojito.
Carter watched Lizzy at work. Her spindly arms and legs spasmed like one of those inflatable tubemen in front of car lots and tax-return offices. She twirled like a ballerina and hopped like a punk rocker, a mishmash of elegance, hot anger, and free spirit.
She must be wild in bed, Carter thought.
Just at that moment, the band started playing Lizzy’s favorite tune, Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack.” She rushed toward Carter, grabbed his arm, and yanked him to the pulsing dance floor.
Gil looked up and nudged Lil with his elbow. “Lo
oks like your boy is about to become a man.”
***
The dance floor, no bigger than an average-sized living room, was a zoological study of the animal homo sapien. Short, fat male specimens clung to tall, thin females. Skinny, dark-skinned men bumped and grinded into the hips and glutei of pale, husky redheads with freckled noses and forearms as thick as A-Rod’s baseball bat. Bubbly gay guys wore eyeliner and wished they were as pretty as their bestest-best friends, and lean farm girls with golden locks had eyes that refracted light like the cubic zirconia necklaces they wore at Christmas. Aged women who once upon a time looked just like those enviable twentysomething lasses, their cheerleader hips now contorted from hatching babies and their jawlines pulled groundward by gravity, cut it up on the dance floor.
There were real jocks at Gil’s, guys who played college or high school ball. They mixed in with would-be jocks and jocks of Christmases past who imagined they might really have a chance to score with the Goldilocks girls flashing smiles at anyone who noticed their perfect skin and teeth. These young girls of summer wore Daisy Duke shorts high and tight. Those with significant cleavage displayed their hills and valleys proudly, like flags on the Fourth of July. Those less endowed wore their shorts even shorter to keep wandering eyes focused below the waist.
The prudish in Cape Charles—mostly married couples and the church crowd—avoided this lurid, indiscriminate assembly of raging endorphins, testosterone, and pheromones. But for Carter, this scene, hosted by his bestest-best friend, resurrected a nostalgia that transported him back in time to frat parties at Syracuse. The one big exception, Carter noted, was that the revelers at the Gil Netters campus spanned four decades, not merely four years of college kids. Four generations of debauchery harmoniously mingled with no more conflict than at a Sunday afternoon picnic.
“Gil!” Carter called and waved his arm, trying to get his friend’s attention.
