“She was so cool,” Danette said.
“Yes,” I answered. “And I don’t have the foggiest idea why somebody would want to hurt an old lady like Clarissa Hart.”
I walked toward the door and was just about into the hall when Danette turned the stereo back on. She quickly turned it down to a normal decibel level. “Is that too loud?” she asked.
“No, that’s just perfect,” I said.
“Shut the door on the way out,” she said. “I don’t want to be disturbed.”
I did as she asked. On to get some gossip.
I reached the room of Sherise Tyler at the end of the hall on the first floor, directly under Clarissa Hart’s room. I knocked on the door and barely had my hand back to my side when the door was sucked open. Sherise Tyler looked as though she was expecting somebody and it wasn’t me. The disappointment on her face was obvious, and she knew that I’d caught it.
“Mrs. O’Shea,” she said from way up in the clouds. This woman was tall, tall, tall. “What brings you to my room?”
“I was hoping that I could have a word with you.”
She only stared down at me, as if she was waiting for the real reason.
“Okay, I was hoping that maybe you would share some gossip with me.”
With that she smiled and motioned me into her room with a wave of her arm. She walked over and opened the window that faced the river and picked up her cigarettes on the nightstand. “Sorry,” she said as she lit the cigarette. “I know you’re pregnant and all, but there’s a dead body slowly decaying directly above me, and I think that this calls for a cigarette. I’ll try and blow it out the window.”
“I appreciate that,” I said.
She inhaled deeply, causing the end of the cigarette to glow bright red-orange, and then she flipped her long silky blond hair behind her shoulder and smiled. “So, somebody finally offed the old lady.”
I tried not to let my surprise register on my face, but I don’t think I did a very good job.
“People in this valley have been waiting for Clarissa Hart to the for thirty years,” she explained.
“This is good,” I said. “I came to you for gossip, and it looks like you have no qualms about talking.”
“I can’t tell you everything I know, because then I’d have nothing left for my story,” she said and blew smoke directly out the window. She held the cigarette so close to the curtains that I just knew at any minute they would go up in flames.
“So, you are searching for a story,” I said.
“Oh, I’m not searching for anything. I’ve got my story. I just have to prove it,” she said.
“Prove what?” I asked.
“Why should I tell you?”
“Well, partly because if Clarissa was murdered then I’m the number one suspect in a homicide, by the simple fact that I was found in the room with a dead body. I’ve never been a suspect in a homicide before. I was sort of hoping—”
“Hoping to solve the mystery yourself?” she asked. This time she sucked the smoke up her nostrils, and I wondered if that was worse for her than the initial smoke, since, technically, she would be getting both first- and second-hand smoke. I was enthralled with this, much as I’m enthralled with people who can blow smoke rings. How do they become so talented?
“Well, yes, actually,” I answered finally.
“Ask me a question, and I’ll try to answer it to the best of my ability,” she said.
“Who is Norville Gross?”
“I haven’t the foggiest idea,” she said. “Obviously somebody important. Or at least important to Clarissa. People come out of the woodwork when there is money to be given or money to be had.”
Okay, fair enough answer. “What’s the story on Edwin?”
“Oh, dear sweet Edwin. The prodigal son returns. He was actually pronounced dead once. During the Korean War. He came home walking alongside his coffin,” she said. “Never married. No children, that he claims, anyway. Knows every shortcut there is to being the richest man in the world.”
“So, then why isn’t he the richest man in the world? Or is he?”
“Because he is the only one who believes it. He spends money he doesn’t have. He files bankruptcy every ten to twelve years, like clockwork. A complete loser.”
Pretty much what I thought of him, actually. “What about Oilier
“He seems on the up-and-up.”
“And the others? Lafayette and Maribelle?”
“Lafayette is a sweetie. Simpleminded, no great education, mind you. But he has a heart of gold and was a decorated soldier in both Korea and Vietnam,” she said. She’d finally had enough of the cigarette and put it out in the ashtray on the nightstand. “Maribelle is never what she seems.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
She shrugged. “She tries to come across as this person who is deeply concerned about others. She likes for people to believe that she’s this truly sentimental woman, when all she is really concerned with is her money and her station in society.”
“How well do you know the family?” I asked.
“Well enough,” she said. “But only from a distance. This is the first time they’ve met me. Although I’ve met them a time or two.”
I decided to let that go, figuring if she was going to tell me, she would have. “What about the staff? Anybody particularly vindictive?”
“Dexter always does what he’s told. Faithful. Susan, the cook, is very quiet. I don’t have much on her. Vanessa Killian. . .” She hesitated an awfully long time. “She’s harmless.”
“Okay,” I said. “I guess that’s all I need to know for now.”
“Don’t you want to know about the boardinghouse? About the place you’ve inherited?” she asked and stepped away from the window with her arms crossed.
“What about it?” I asked. “It’s a boardinghouse. What is there to know?”
“You won’t make a good investigator with that kind of attitude,” she said. “The where is often as important as the who and the why. This boardinghouse was at one time owned by the company. Do you know what that means? The company, back in the first quarter of the century, meant the coal company. Whichever coal company happened to own you and your family. Saying the words the company would send chills down some people’s spines and contempt would be so heavy they nearly vomited with it.”
“So, it was owned by . . . the Panther Run Coal Company, correct?”
“Yes,” Sherise said. “And you didn’t work for the company. The company owned you.”
Eight
I was once again looking at the photograph that hung on the wall above the fireplace.
A funny thing happened once I stopped looking at the dead guy in the casket and looked at the other people surrounding him. I recognized a woman standing just to the left of the casket. It was Gert’s mother, my great-grandmother Bridie McClanahan, who later married and became Bridie Seaborne. She appeared very young in the photograph, in her late teens or early twenties. She stood with one arm draped around the only person in the photograph who truly looked to be grieving. A woman of the same age, but lesser height. My great-grandmother was a hair short of six feet, a genetic trait that was lost to me. I inherited my height from my little short French grandmother on my father’s side.
“Who is that?” I asked Gert.
“Who’s who?” she asked and got up off the couch. She’d been angrily flipping channels on the television, which was receiving mostly snow since the flash flood occurred. “Can’t believe they aren’t showing the ball game.”
“West Virginia doesn’t have a professional baseball team,” I said.
“They could show the Orioles game. Or. . . the Reds.”
My grandmother was a confirmed sports fanatic. When Otis Anderson made his eighty-something-yard run for the Cardiac Cardinals back in the seventies or early eighties, my grandmother jumped up out of her chair and broke her foot on the coffee table, which she had forgotten was sitting there. It was in the same
place it always was, but she forgot about it that time. I was the only kid in school whose grandmother broke her foot in anything remotely concerning sports, let alone watching a game.
“Well. . . you wouldn’t be able to see the picture very well anyway,” I said. “Now come over here and tell me who this person is in the picture.”
She reared her head back so that she could see out of the bifocal part of her glasses. Then she took them off and blinked her eyes, rubbing the glasses on her shirt.
“Want me to spit on them?” I asked.
She gave me that look. You know, the one that says I’m one heck of a smart-ass and that if I were worth the trouble, she’d hit me a good one. “You think you’re funny,” she said. “Just wait until you get old.”
“I’m getting old waiting for you to tell me who this person is in the picture!”
She put her glasses back on and repeated the process. “I can’t see it.”
I lifted the picture off the wall, and was immediately attacked by dust and one little bitty furry spider that I flung across the room with such fury that he probably died on impact. I was ashamed when I realized that I had actually squealed at it. When I was sure that there were no more crawly things, I wiped the glass with the extra material on the bottom of my shirt.
Gert took the picture and walked over to the window to get better light. After about twenty seconds she looked up and declared, “That’s my mother.”
“I know that, Gert. Who is in the coffin?”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, I don’t know who that is. Never saw him before.”
She examined the photograph again. “That’s Clarissa, though. Standing next to Mom.”
“It is?” I asked. I walked over and stood next to Gert, examining the photograph over her shoulder. “You recognize anybody else?”
“Sure. . . that’s the reverend. That’s my uncle Max. Oh, that there is. . . oh, what was that feller’s name? Always wore his pants crooked. Can’t remember. You know, Max played professional baseball.”
She was back to Max. I’d heard this story before.
“Yes, back in 1918 or somewhere around there. For the White Sox.”
“And that looks like. . . I don’t know. Been too long. Some of these people were workers. For the company.”
“How can you tell?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Well, this picture was taken out back, see, there’s the well. And there is the fence that isn’t there anymore. So it was taken on the boardinghouse property, and most people that lived here or around here worked for the company. Plus, they look like miners.”
I looked at the faces staring back at me across time, and I couldn’t tell they were miners. How could she?
“When was this picture taken?”
“Before Mom got married. See. . . her hair’s still down to her butt. She cut her hair shortly after she got married.”
“So, somewhere between 1916 and 1918.”
“Yeah, or it could have been after she was married, before she cut her hair. Although she’d probably be pregnant and she doesn’t look it. No later than 1918,” Gert answered. She studied the photograph a minute, and then her eyes lit up as if she’d just discovered something. “That man is in a casket!”
“Yup,” I said. “I wonder who it could be? It had to be somebody important for the photo to be enlarged this big and hung over the fireplace in such a prominent display.”
“People are disturbed,” Gert said and made her way back to the couch and the remote control. “No baseball. What kinda state is this?”
“It’s your state. You were born and raised here.”
She waved her hand at me as if to say shut up.
Dexter Calloway came into the room and stopped, to my grandmother’s deep frustration, right in front of the television. “Mrs. O’Shea,” he said. “Clarissa said for me to show you the attic.”
“What?” I asked. “Clarissa is dead.”
“Before you’uns got here, she took me aside and said that I was to make sure that you saw the attic, there bein’ stuff up there that belonged to your great-grandma,” he explained. “Since she couldn’t show it to you, I was supposed to. Things been so hectic, though, I plumb forgot.”
“That’s all right, Mr. Calloway—”
“Call me Dexter.”
“Dexter. Better late than never.”
“The remote control won’t work through your blasted leg,” Gert said to him.
“Oh, sorry,” he said and moved.
“Ignore her,” I said. “Can I get up in the attic? In my condition?”
“Sure . . . there’s a stairway.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
Dexter Calloway led me directly to Clarissa’s bedroom. We stopped in front of it knowing that the dead body of Clarissa Hart was lying in there, exactly as it had been early this morning. The door had masking tape along the seams as more of a deterrent than an actual barrier. If somebody wanted in the room, he could easily remove the tape and go in.
“Why are we here?” I asked.
“The entrance to the attic is in Clarissa’s room,” he said.
I know I must have looked as though somebody had just clubbed me between the eyes, but I couldn’t help it. He knew we weren’t supposed to go into Clarissa’s room until the sheriff arrived and took her body away. Why would he try and take me up there? It took me a while to formulate words, because I just couldn’t believe he would do this.
“Mr. Calloway . . . ”
“Dexter,” he said.
“We can’t go in there,” I said.
“The entrance to the attic is in her bedroom,” he said as if I hadn’t heard him.
“Well, we’re just going to have to come back after the sheriff has come and taken the body away,” I said and tried to lead him back down the hall. Give the man credit for being thoughtful and a good employee but his comprehension score was really low.
Just as I turned to walk down the hallway I stopped. The entrance to the attic is in Clarissa’s bedroom. I turned and took the few steps back to Dexter, who had not moved away from the door.
“I apologize, Dexter.”
“For what?”
“For thinking that you were about as smart as a toad. So, somebody could have escaped into the attic this morning. Is that what you’re saying to me?” I asked.
“I’m not saying it,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. I thought I understood what he meant. He wanted me to be aware of it, but he wasn’t going to come out and say it. “Anything else?”
“I was out back picking the last of the strawberries and checking on the tomato plants about mid-mornin’ and noticed the window open.”
“The attic has a window?”
“Yes,” he said. “One on each end. The one toward Quiet Knob was open. Now, it might have been open before, but it’s not likely. Since it’s summer. Clarissa was a frugal one.”
“Did she really tell you to make sure that I saw the attic? Or was that a ploy to get me up here alone?”
Before Dexter could answer my question, the door across the hall from Clarissa’s opened and out walked Norville Gross. He looked at us suspiciously because . . . well, because I’m assuming we looked suspicious. We were standing in front of the sealed room that had a dead body inside, talking in hushed tones of voice.
“Afternoon, Mr. Gross,” Dexter said and nodded his head as if nothing was amiss.
“What are you two doing out here?” Norville asked.
“Talking,” I said. “About the tomato plants.”
“Yup, they lookin’ mighty healthy,” Dexter said.
Norville didn’t look much better than he had this morning, and I think the pressure of being cooped up here with all of Clarissa’s children was getting to him. They all desperately wanted to know his connection to Clarissa, and he wasn’t talking. He also must have known somewhere in the recesses of his mind that they were going to try and contest the will. He stood to lose fifty grand.
“I’m going to go find a rock somewhere on the mountainside and sit until dinner,” he said. “It’s stuffy in here.”
I knew better, since we had the air conditioner set on sixty-two degrees, for Clarissa’s sake. It was cool in here for most people, and just right for me. I’m normally cold, but these baby hormones raise my body temperature until I feel like I could warm the moon just by standing in the middle of it. I was liking this sixty-two degrees.
“Well, don’t fall off the rock,” I said to him and smiled. He looked at me strangely. “It was an attempt at being friendly.”
It didn’t matter, because he was already making the turn down the stairs. Dexter and I returned to our conversation.
“So is there something in the attic that I am supposed to see?”
“Yes. I’ll show you once they take Clarissa out of here,” he said. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a white rabbit’s foot key ring and handed it to me. There were probably four or five different keys on it. “It’s the keys to the place. It’s yours now.”
“I don’t think so. I mean, aren’t there some legalities still to go through before the place is actually mine?” I asked, holding the keys out in front of me as if they were poison to the touch.
“As far as I’m concerned, you’re my new boss and this is your place until you decide what you’re going to do with it. You have the last say-so on stuff around here,” he said. “Your grandma worked for the company, you know. She paid her dues.”
“Yes, I know. But I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”
“You’re one of us. Your blood is here. My grandfather died in the big cave-in of seventeen,” he said. “All of us got blood in the soil around here. Let me know if I can do anything else for ya.”
With that he walked off down the hall, leaving me holding a dead rabbit’s foot and wishing that old mountain folk wouldn’t speak in riddles.
Nine
It was time for dinner, thank goodness, because I’d done all of the snacking I could do without Susan Henry, the cook, kicking me out of the house. Every time I went into the kitchen, she scowled at me. I don’t think it was a coincidence, either, that each time she was holding a big knife or a rolling pin.
A MistY MourninG Page 5
