“So, what happened?”
“She paid my father whatever I would be bringing in mining, plus an extra ten dollars a week. In exchange I was to go to school, but as soon as school was out, I had to come to the boardinghouse and do whatever odd jobs there were, plus read to her every day. That was all she wanted me to do. I did that for nine years,” he said with a smile on his face. “I told her once when I was leaving for college that she’d saved me. She shook her head and told me that my mother had saved me by seeing to it I knew how to read and that I’d saved myself by being willing to work and learn. She refused to take any credit for it at all.”
“So do you come from a long line of miners, then?” I asked.
“My father was a miner for fifty-two of his sixty-three years. He came down with black lung. They started making his coffin before he was even dead,” he said.
“W-why would they do that?” I asked.
“There was no hope. As soon as they diagnosed him. . . everybody knew,” he said. “His father worked the mines and his father before him, and my great-grandfather was a slave over in Shenandoah. The miners weren’t much better off than the slaves, but at least the miners could vote, were free to go where they wanted, and didn’t have to worry about their children being sold out from under them. I’m not exaggerating when I say the life of a miner back then was close to slavery. We’ve been told it was a free country, but at the time . . . to people who worked for the company . . . it wasn’t. Nothing free about it.”
What do you say to something like that? “Did your father ever talk about the old days? Or your grandfather? I’m looking for the scoop on the Panther Run Boardinghouse and the coal company. I know that the superintendent was lynched there.”
“Why?” he asked, and I noticed a slightly distrustful tone.
“I’ve inherited the boardinghouse and I’m curious as to its history. Once I started getting a little bit of information I just couldn’t get enough,” I said. And it was true.
“That place was at the center of bloodshed for many years. My grandfather told me about the lynching once,” he said. One of his dogs had laid his head in his lap, and Mr. Miller absently stroked the fur on its head. “Gainsborough wasn’t always the superintendent.”
“No?” I asked.
“No. He was sent in to take over because the first superintendent was missing for two weeks and then found floating in the river. They brought Gainsborough in, and at first he was just an official guest of the company. He’d been a superintendent at several other mines, and from what I understand had whipped them into shape in nothing flat. He had a reputation coming in. After a while, he decided to take the position of superintendent,” Mr. Miller said. “It was his fatal decision.”
Mr. Miller looked as though he was growing tired of the conversation, and I felt a little peculiar sitting in this man’s house asking him all sorts of personal questions. But not peculiar enough to refrain from asking one more.
“Do you remember what was hanging in the great room of the boardinghouse when you were a child? Right above the fireplace?” I asked.
He smiled at me and stopped petting his dog for a minute. “Yes,” he said. “The photograph of Gainsborough’s funeral.”
“You ever ask her why it was hanging there?” Elliott asked.
“Yes. Yes, as a matter of fact I did,” Mr. Miller said.
There was a pregnant pause, and not just because I was in the room. “Well? What was her answer?”
“She said ‘Forgiveness comes when you forget.’ “
“What the heck does that mean?” I asked. I hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
“I don’t know exactly,” Mr. Miller said. “But I never asked again.”
“Well, we’ve taken up enough of your time. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your taking a moment to answer the questions of a complete stranger,” I said and stood up. I smiled at him and he smiled back.
“I figured if Clarissa left you the boardinghouse, you must be okay,” he said. “She had a keen sense.”
“Oh, thank you,” I said.
“Can I ask you a question?” he said as he got up to show us to the door.
“Sure.”
“Why’d she leave it you?”
“She said it was a debt repaid,” I answered as Elliott and I reached the foyer. Mr. Miller opened the door and the brilliant yellow sunlight spilled in across my face. “My great-grandmother Bridie MacClanahan had owned it originally and left it to Clarissa.”
“Bridie Mac,” he said. “You don’t look much like her.”
“How would you know what she looked like?” I asked, aware of the fact that she’d been dead fourteen or so years before he was even born.
“Oh, I’ve seen pictures. At Panther Run. We’ve all seen pictures,” he said.
You would think that at a moment like that I would be able to think of something to say. Instead I thanked him again and stepped out into the brilliant light with Elliott, just as confused as I, by my side.
“I want to go home,” I said.
Twenty-five
Rudy?”
“Yeah, Torie?” he asked. I knew that he was several states away, but if I closed my eyes and pressed the phone up to my ear as close as I could get it, I could almost imagine we were in the same room.
“What’s going on?” I asked as casually as I could. “How was fishing with my dad?”
“Miserable.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because he caught about twenty fish, and the only thing I caught was a case of malaria from all of the blasted mosquitoes,” he said.
“Take more vitamin B-twelve,” I said. “You know, Elmer can tell you every vitamin you need to take for every ailment. He claims vitamin E will do the same thing that Viagra does.”
“I don’t need any help in that department,” Rudy said. “Or do I?”
“Considering my present state, I think not.”
“You miss me?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said. “How’s Mom?”
“Fine. She’s finally come to the decision that you will look just as good in peach chiffon as you would in seafoam-green . . . satin or whatever it was that you were supposed to wear,” he said. “I think Colin’s getting a little nervous.”
“Good,” I said. “It will put hair on his chest.”
Rudy laughed and then seemed to teeter on the verge of saying something. “What is it?” I asked.
“Your grandmother called earlier,” he said.
“Oh, did she tell you that she’s all mad at me?”
“No. She did say that you guys wouldn’t be able to come home because the old lady was definitely murdered and that you were the biggest suspect,” he said. “Do you need me to come out there? Do you need me to call our lawyer?”
“We don’t have a lawyer. Do we? Honey, what do we have a lawyer for?” I asked.
“My father has one. I can get him,” he answered.
“That’s very sweet of you,” I said. “And it makes me feel good. But things are . . . under control.” I knew as soon as I said it that it was a bad choice of words.
“Under control? Torie, what is going on?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing . . . Look, I didn’t do anything and it will be cleared up before you know it. I should be home as planned late this weekend,” I said. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Which means I need to worry very, very much.”
“Thanks a whole heck of a lot,” I said.
“Don’t get touchy, Miss Torie,” he said. “You’re like a magnet for trouble.”
“You’ve been talking to my mother. I’m so underappreciated. I remember a time when you used to be on my side,” I said.
“Oh, hush. How are you feeling? Baby okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re fine. How are the kids?”
“Fine.”
“Okay, well, I’ve got to go. Elliott is taking me square dancing,” I said.
“Elliott.”
“Seaborne.”
“Oh, yeah, your cousin,” he said with just a tad of relief in his voice. “Square dancing?”
“Yeah. Figured I should get some fun in, while I’m here. It’s in town and everybody’s going. I think I’m even going to get Gert to go along,” I said.
“Just don’t let her dance,” he said. “She won’t be able to move for a week.”
Twenty-six
A few hours later I found myself pondering things like, just what is a do-si-do, anyway?
It was actually more of a party than an actual square dance. There was plenty of do-si-doing to go around, but they also had some nice waltzes and slow dances and foot-stomping, almost rock-and-roll type music. I just thanked God there was no crying-in-your-beer music, because what’s the point of crying-in-your-beer music if you couldn’t have any beer to cry into? Besides, I can only take so much crying-in-your-beer music and then I want to shout from the top of my lungs, “Get over it, already!” I grew up on it, though. If they mapped out my chromosomes, somewhere in there they’d find Tammy Wynette and George Jones.
It was nice to see Danette out and having fun. Somehow she’d managed to find some other lonely tattooed and pierced teenager, whose parents were not claiming him as far as I could tell, to hang with. I’d seen nothing in the way of adult supervision around him. I don’t think that this was their particular venue, but they were making the most of it.
“Do you want to dance?”
I turned to find Dexter Calloway standing next to me with his hand outstretched. He was dressed in a pair of jeans that looked like they’d just come off the rack and a black Western-style shirt. I hated to turn him down, since he was being so polite.
“As long as you don’t mind dancing with your arms way out in front of you,” I said. “My stomach tends to get in the way of dancing.”
“Don’t mind,” he said and led me out to the dance floor. He tried his hardest to lead me into one of those dances where your feet slid across the floor and made a box. I always misread signals and end up trying to take the lead away, and then I step on somebody’s foot.
“Oops,” I said as I stepped on his foot. I had known he would not be immune to my maiming feet. “Sorry. I’m not very good at this.”
He just smiled and kept up the pace. It was so simple. Why did I have to think about it so much?
“Dexter, can I ask you a question?” I had to raise my voice somewhat to be heard over the band, which had not just one but two fiddle players. He nodded. “Why do the Hart children care so much about the boardinghouse? It in no way equals her other property and investments. What is the big deal with it? Are they just upset because Clarissa left one tiny morsel to a mouse instead of the big cats?”
“Funny how the only other person who inherited anything is dead,” he said. “That means whatever he inherited is theirs now, too.”
“Is it your intention to make me uneasy, Dexter? Because if it is, I just want you to know that you’ve succeeded and you can stop any time now.”
He gave a half-smile and shook his head. “I just want you to be on guard. Edwin is not above breaking the law to get what he wants. And Prescott is without a conscience,” he said.
“Oh, wonderful,” I said.
“There’s more to the boardinghouse and the property it sets on than meets the eye. And they all know it,” he said.
“Like what?”
He looked around the room, suddenly uncomfortable. Pastor Breedlove was on the dance floor with, I assumed, his wife. Although I didn’t know for sure.
“You’re asking the wrong person,” he said.
“Who should I be asking?”
He said nothing.
“Dexter?”
“Ouch! Could you pay a little more attention to your feet?” he said.
Heat rose in my cheeks as mortification set in slowly. “Sorry,” I said. “Maybe we could do one of those dances where you just go around in a circle.”
“Like the teenagers do at the eighth-grade dances?”
“Yeah. Like that.”
He smiled at me, and for at least a minute, I didn’t think that he was going to let me have my way. Finally, he stopped making me go in a square, and we settled into dancing in a circle. I could do this and talk at the same time. I was confident.
“Dexter. . . who should I be asking about the property?” I repeated. “You do know that I am a suspect in Clarissa’s death. If you don’t help me . . .”
“There’s not a thing I can say to you that is concrete,” he said. “All I can do is give you the paranoid suspicions of a middle-aged groundskeeper.” It was amazing listening to him slowly enunciate every word. He spoke very slowly, regardless of what he had to say. I, on the other hand, get faster and faster depending on how excited or upset I am about something. If I’m talking slowly and carefully, it’s usually because I think you’re stupid.
“Look, you simply can’t be any more paranoid than I am, so fess up,” I said, and smiled a big smile with my eyes as wide as I could make them. Man, my charms were just not working on these people.
“I’ve paid attention when I shouldn’t. I’ve been like a little mouse hiding in a corner,” he said. “And I still know nothing.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said. And I didn’t. “I think you want me to believe it because you don’t want to be the one to spill the beans to me. I mean, look at the way you let me know about the fact that there was an exit from Clarissa’s room. You want me to know. You just don’t want to tell me.”
His eyes flicked from person to person as we danced slowly around the dance floor. It seemed as if he was making sure that nobody was in hearing distance.
“What are we talking about?” he asked. “Exactly.”
“The fact that you know something you’re not telling me.”
“I know a lot of things that I’ll never tell you, Mrs. O’Shea. I don’t know who killed Clarissa,” he said. “Nothing you say can make me suddenly know that.”
“Then why are you so sure that I didn’t do it?”
“I just know,” he said.
“How?”
“I just do.”
“You know something about the boardinghouse . . . or what happened years ago. How about the lynching? Is that what you’re hiding?” I asked.
His eyes took on a bemused expression as he looked down at me. The music ended, and he held my hand for a moment and gave it a squeeze. “You’ve been doing your homework,” he said.
I rolled my eyes in frustration. He leaned in and said softly, “The Hart children are the most spoiled, self-righteous, loathsome, pampered bunch of people I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I hope you find what you’re looking for. And when you do, I only hope that it will be something so awful that it will make each and every one of them disappear from sheer humiliation.”
With that he walked away and left me standing in the middle of the dance floor without a partner. Without a partner and with a gaping mouth. I hadn’t expected such venom.
Never fail, Pastor Breedlove saw me standing alone and came my way. I looked down at his huge belly and then looked at mine.
“There is no way that you and I are going to be able to slow-dance,” I said to him just as he reached me.
“That was not my intention,” he said, and smiled. “You’re a smart cookie.”
“Thank you.”
“I was hoping I could buy you a 7Up and talk to you a moment.”
Somebody who wanted to talk to me? Like I would turn this down? “Sure,” I said. “Love to.”
Pastor Breedlove led me to a dark corner where we sat with our 7Ups at a square table about three feet by three feet. I’m assuming his drink was straight. I would give him the benefit of the doubt. God, I wanted caffeine. I’d already given Rudy instructions that he was to bring a cooler of Dr. Pepper to my hospital room right after the Apgar score was given to our new baby.
“I wanted to talk to you about you
r present predicament,” he said. He was straightforward; I’ll give him that. A little refreshing, actually.
“I’m listening.”
“The Harts are good people,” he said.
I couldn’t help it. I snarfed my 7Up all over the place. “Oh, excuse me, Father. I mean Pastor, or Brother. What exactly is it I’m supposed to call you?” I asked as I wiped at the plastic tablecloth to make sure my snarfed soda had not invaded his side of the table. How humiliating. First I stepped on Dexter’s toes, now I’d snarfed soda on a man of the cloth. What was happening to me?
“You can call me whatever you like,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “Sorry, Mr. Breedlove.”
“Why did you react that way?” he asked.
“Well, it’s that I’ve been told just the opposite. And if I went by the Harts’ actions, I’d have to say that my welcome hasn’t been the warmest,” I explained.
“All right. Edwin isn’t worth much and Maribelle means well,” he said. “She’s just easily influenced.”
“I believe she was born with a spine, the same as all of us,” I said.
“Don’t judge, Mrs. O’Shea—one of the first lessons of Sunday school,” he said. “My concern is Laffy.”
“Laffy?”
“Laffy Hart. Lafayette, I mean. Sorry, it’s an endearment since childhood,” he said.
“Why are you so concerned with. . . Laffy Hart?” I asked and tried not to giggle.
“He wouldn’t have killed his momma, Mrs. O’Shea. You have to know that,” he said and stroked his white fluffy beard.
“Nobody is saying that he did,” I said. “The last time I checked, I was the number one suspect.”
“Yes, I know,” he said, his eyes lighting up. “If you could just—”
“Just what? Confess? Rig evidence so that I’m convicted? Is that it?” I asked, incredulous. The band started up again. They were playing that swinging song by John Anderson. The one that talks about him sitting on the front porch and eating some kind of pie and he was just a-swingin’. Silly song, but I liked it.
A MistY MourninG Page 14
