God, it was so sad. I couldn’t imagine her life. I couldn’t imagine being a hundred and one years old and having eighty-something years to look back on the tragedy. I wonder if it ever got easier. Did it ever become less painful? “What about you?” I asked. “Did you kill Clarissa?”
“No,” she stated vehemently.
“Did you know about the will? That Sherise had originally been left the money that Norville Gross ended up getting?”
“No,” she said. “I’m flattered that Sherise was even considered. But, honestly. Norville should have had that money if he was really her great-grandson.”
“Are you upset that you weren’t left anything?” I asked.
She smiled a warm and caring smile. She wiped her hands on a towel and then took the hair net off her hair. “Mrs. O’Shea, I didn’t need to be left anything. For one thing, she provided for me my whole life. She paid for Sherise’s college. But the main reason I didn’t need to be left anything in her will was because she’d already given us our inheritance. Me. Dexter. Vanessa. Ten years ago, we all got a savings account for Christmas with seventy-five thousand dollars in it, and an IRA to boot.”
“What?” I asked. I felt warm and fuzzy all over thinking of Clarissa’s generosity. Was it me or did they just not make people like that anymore?
“Clarissa was a very introverted, aloof woman. You could not get close to her. She was not warm and cuddly. Other than discussing menus, I bet she and I never had more than twenty conversations in all the time that I worked here. But she was the kindest person I’ve ever met. With the largest sense of honor I’ve ever seen in a human being. I would not—I could not—kill Clarissa Hart. I don’t think Dexter or Vanessa would be capable of it, either. Those who are capable of it are her children.”
With that she dismissed me by turning around and putting the spices back in the spice rack. She was finished talking. That was that. If she spoke the truth, then she had cleared up a lot. I couldn’t help but wonder, though, if her daughter Sherise Tyler honestly felt the same way toward Clarissa that Susan did. There was something about Sherise that just didn’t fit. One thing was that Clarissa had taken the fifty thousand away. Clarissa had enough money. Why hadn’t she just given Sherise and Norville fifty thousand each? No, it was as if she was punishing Sherise.
But for what?
Thirty-nine
I was seated at Aunt Millie’s round oak dining table, consuming the roasted chicken and vegetables she had made for us. I have to admit that Gert did look a little shaken today. There was something in her eyes. But have no fear, Aunt Millie was being quite the doting daughter, bringing her whatever she needed, interpreting her grunts and groans, and serving her favorite minced-meat pie for dessert. Aunt Bethany always said that Aunt Millie was allowed to dote because she didn’t have to put up with her all the other days of the year. Whatever; my grandmother needed this attention today.
“Have you decided what you’re going to do with the boardinghouse?” Aunt Millie asked.
“God, no,” I said and rested my head in my hands. “The Harts may still try and contest the will, especially now that we know the property is worth beaucoup bucks because of the coal mine on it. I just wish I didn’t have to think about it.”
Aunt Millie smiled at me, sending sparkles into her eyes.
“Think about it,” I said. “This is so unfair. My whole life I’ve always played with that old joke ‘I can’t wait until my rich uncle gets out of the poorhouse and leaves me something.’ You know, you wait for this kind of opportunity your whole life. I mean, not for somebody to die. Nobody wants that. But for somebody to just hand something over to you. To win the lottery or something. Whatever. You think, oh, if only I had this much money or that much property that I didn’t have to pay back. What all I could do with it. Kids’ college fund, trip to Scotland, whatever. Now it’s actually happened to me and I don’t want it. I don’t even want to think about it.”
“That is pretty bad,” Aunt Millie said. “I didn’t mean to scare you the other day when I told you that the boardinghouse was cursed.”
“Oh, but it is. I truly believe that it is,” I said. “On the one hand, I’d love to keep it. It’s got such a rich history. Bridie actually owned it, for crying out loud. On the other hand, if I never see it again with its lynching tree and its rotted screens, I’ll be perfectly happy.”
“You are in a dilemma,” Aunt Millie said.
“Take what you want from it and sell it,” Gert said. “You and Rudy are busting at the seams. You could use a new house.”
“Oh, but I’d feel so guilty,” I said. “Just selling it like that. Especially after Clarissa left it to me because I cared so much for antiques.”
“Clarissa’s dead,” Gert said. “She won’t care.”
I rolled my eyes. It didn’t make me feel any better. Nothing would make me feel better other than to wake up last week and not make the trip to West Virginia at all. I didn’t think that was very likely. It wasn’t like I was trapped in one of those really bad TV dramas. Although it felt like it sometimes.
The phone rang and Aunt Millie answered it on the second ring. “Sure, just a minute,” she said and handed me the phone. “It’s Elliott.”
“Oh,” I said and took me phone. “Elliott? What’s up?”
“I found something on Sherise. I stayed as long as I could without the janitor kicking me out. I e-mailed a couple of people who owe me favors and told them that I absolutely had to have this information by this evening. You really should get on-line, Torie.”
“What? What is it?” I asked, ignoring his comment about the information superhighway.
“I have no idea if it matters in the least. . . but Sherise has been married twice. Divorced twice. This last time was to some hotshot investigative reporter up in Boston.”
“Okay,” I said, wondering where this was going.
“He disappeared without a trace.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Sherise divorced him, only she didn’t get the settlement that she thought she was going to get. Two weeks later he turns in a story to his editor about unsolved crimes of Appalachia—wonder where that idea came from—and then is never heard from again.”
“How did you find this out?” I asked, absolutely amazed.
“Well, once I figured out who she was married to, I just followed the newspaper trail. It was all over the Boston newspapers,” he said.
“Was she suspected?”
“Suspected of what? There’s no body. No crime. Plus, he had a new girlfriend who gave a statement saying that he’d gone fishing, by himself, off the coast of Key West,” he said.
“Huh.”
“Did that help?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Oh, but get a load of this.”
“What?”
“Her first husband was none other than Sheriff Thomas Justice,” he said.
“You’re joking!”
“No.”
“How bizarre. They acted as if they didn’t know each other,” I said.
“Well, from what I understand it was a nasty, nasty, nasty divorce. She tried to prove he was a deviant and he tried to prove she was a lesbian. Neither of which, I think, are true,” he said. “You know how desperate people get sometimes during divorces. Some people will make up anything to win.”
“How did you find this out?” I asked.
“Well, again, once I found out who she married, I followed the trail. They were married in Edwardsville, Illinois, by the way. I paid a visit to an aunt of mine on my mother’s side who knows all the trash on everybody within a hundred miles. She told me all the scuttle. Even though Sheriff Justice and Sherise were living in Illinois at the time, Sheriff Justice’s mother still lived here. And his mother went to church with my grandmother, who in turn told my aunt everything.”
“God, I love small towns.”
“I know.”
“Well, I haven’t a clue if this means
anything. I wouldn’t think it does. Surely if the divorce was that bad, the sheriff wouldn’t be up to helping Sherise kill somebody. What would be his motive?” I asked.
“That’s pretty much what I thought, too.”
“Thank you so much, Elliott. I’m going back over to the boardinghouse tonight. I want to talk to Danette about yesterday. See if I can get anything from her. She’s been pretty cooperative with me. So, if anything else comes up, call me over there.”
“Sure thing,” he said. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“No,” I said. “I think everybody will mind their ps and qs since it’s known that my grandmother was attacked. I think they won’t want to slip up.”
“Okay. Call me if you need me.”
“I will.”
Huh. All very interesting information, but there was no way of knowing if any of it meant anything.
Forty
I pulled into the drive of the Panther Run Boardinghouse at about six thirty that night. I had totally forgotten that Clarissa would be laid out tonight and that more than likely Danette would not be here. I think the family waited so long to make funeral arrangements because not all of her grandchildren could be here until today. Nevertheless, somebody was at the boardinghouse, because there were a few lights on and the door was open.
“Hello?” I called.
Vanessa Killian came from around the corner with her purse in her hand. You could just tell by looking at her that she was ready to go somewhere. Her hair was freshly combed, and I think I smelled some sort of lavender perfume. “Mrs. O’Shea, I was just leaving for Clarissa’s visitation.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’d forgotten. My grandmother and I will attend tomorrow. Is there anybody else here?”
“Danette is in her room, hiding,” she said. “She said she couldn’t face it.”
It wasn’t as if Danette hadn’t already seen her great-grandmother dead, because she had. I suppose funerals just creep some kids out. Especially if they’ve never been to one before and the first one they go to is for somebody they loved very much. I could relate to that.
“Actually, that’s exactly who I came to see,” I said.
A muffled version of some extremely heavy metal music could faintly be heard coming from down the hall of the first floor. Nobody else was home. She was going to take advantage of it and jam. I did the same thing when I was her age.
“She’s in her room,” Vanessa said, declaring what I already knew. “Dexter said he would be back early, around eight. So I expect him anytime. And one of Maribelle’s other children has just come in, he is driving up from the airport as we speak. Otherwise, nobody is here.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”
She gave me a curt nod and went out the front door. Just as I was about to head for Danette’s room, there was a knock at the door. I assumed it wasn’t Vanessa or she would have just let herself in. I answered the door and, to my surprise, it was Deputy Russell.
“Well, hello,” I said. “Are you here to see me?”
“Actually, yes. I didn’t want to interrupt your dinner at your aunt Millie’s,” he said. “So I followed you here.”
“Good Lord,” I said. “You know everything. You’re not James Bond. You’re Big Brother.”
“I wish I did know everything.”
He had a rather pensive look to him. His mind was here with me, but it wasn’t. There were other things on his mind that were overlapping. I could see it in the way he looked at me. “What is it?”
“I don’t know how to say this,” he said.
“Well, then, let’s say it over food. That’s always good. Come on, I know that Ms. Henry keeps a stash of cookies on top of the refrigerator.”
“Okay,” he said and smiled.
I led him back to the dining area, where he sat down, and then I went into the kitchen and got the tin down off the refrigerator. I’d only been proclaimed owner of the boardinghouse for a few days, and already I knew where all the good stuff was hidden. It’s those nights with no sleep. I’m terribly nosy.
I know it’s not a very enviable trait, but there could be so many worse things.
“Here ya go,” I said and set the tin on the table. “Oatmeal raisin.”
“Thank you,” he said and took a bite of cookie. Then he said, “I ran those prints.”
“And?” I asked. I hate it when I have to drag stuff out of people. To hell with the drama, just tell me what it is you’re going to tell me anyway.
“They don’t match anybody’s in the boardinghouse. Yours and Edwin’s are on file,” he said. “Everybody else we printed.”
“Yes, I was arrested once,” I said. To my amazement, I actually blushed. I was the only person in the boardinghouse who had prints on file except Edwin. M-o-r-t-i-f-i-c-a-t-i-o-n.
“Ah,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Deputy, but you look as though you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders. What is it you want to say?”
“I decided to take a look at the case file,” he said. “There’s no way Norville Gross was killed by a panther. The autopsy report clearly shows that his death was caused by a modern weapon. And the autopsy was mistaken, I can tell that the weight and the angle of the entry wounds were definitely delivered by a human being.”
“But—”
The shrill of the phone ringing made Deputy Russell and me both jump as if we had been shot. He looked a little embarrassed as his grey eyes met mine. Well, we were even. We’d both been embarrassed in front of each other tonight. “I’ll get it.”
I disappeared into the front room and answered the phone. “Hello?”
“It’s Elliott,” he said. “Thank God you’re there.”
“What?”
“The twins.”
“The twin whats?”
“I called Louanne Hill back, just to see if there was anything else she could remember. While I was on the phone, I thought to ask her about the girl twin that her adopted brother had. Remember, he had twins. The boy is still alive up in Morgantown and he’s the father of Norville Gross,” he said.
“Yeah, okay. We knew that.”
“And remember Louanne said that the girl twin had died in a car accident a few years back?”
“Yeah. . . for God’s sake, Elliott, just tell me!”
“Her last name was Justice. She married a Justice,” Elliott said.
I looked over my shoulder at Deputy Russell, who had just come out of the dining room. The sheriff had lied about Norville Gross being killed by a panther. He’d put off running those prints. He had been married to Sherise Tyler. He had pinned me as the A number one suspect.
“Elliott. . .”
“I think Sheriff Justice is her son,” he said. “I can’t prove it right yet. Maybe by tomorrow.”
The goose bumps lay across my skin, causing the hair on my arms to stand up. Quick, irregular breaths came faster than I wanted them to, and I found myself a little dizzy. “Right, Elliott, I’ll talk to you later.”
I hung up the phone and looked at Deputy Russell, who was desperately trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I think my body was actually shaking.
“Deputy,” I ventured. “Whose prints did you find on the window upstairs in the attic?”
He looked down at his feet and shuffled them a few times. “I’ve got a call in to the state police.”
“They were the sheriff’s, weren’t they? He never thought to wear gloves because he knew he’d be the one in charge of everything.”
“Now, Mrs. O’Shea, I don’t want you to go getting all upset.”
“She didn’t really the of an allergic reaction to penicillin, did she?”
He said nothing.
“Is there any reason that I am suspected of killing Clarissa other than Sheriff Justice having deemed it so?”
His face answered that one for me. Pastor Breedlove had been correct in his suspicions about the sheriff. He’d said that things tended to end the way the sheriff wan
ted them to end.
“What else?” I asked. “What else were you going to tell me?”
Deputy Russell, with his large thick arms and his tall, tall frame, seemed suddenly afraid to talk to me. He’d lost his nerve. Maybe he just couldn’t say out loud what he was really wanting to say. What he really suspected.
“Sheriff Justice used to be married to Sherise Tyler. Were they working together?” I asked.
“Look, Mrs. O’Shea, I don’t know anything about that. I assure you that I have called the state police on this. You are free to go anytime you want to. What happens from here on out has nothing to do with you, really. I’ll see to it that—”
Deputy Russell did not finish his sentence.
I only had time to gasp. I could not warn the deputy. A baseball bat conked him in the head, and he landed with a thud on the floor of the great room. The person on the other end of that baseball bat was none other than Sheriff Thomas Justice. “Deputy Russell always had this damn-fool sense of right and wrong. Couldn’t get him to look the other way even for a parking ticket.”
“Sheriff,” I said. “What a surprise to see you.”
“I’ll bet it is,” he said. “Now, don’t try and convince me that you two weren’t just talking about how I killed Clarissa Hart. You can’t play that ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ game with me. If there’s one thing you are not, Victory O’Shea, it is in the dark. You must be a bitch to live with.”
I opened my mouth to say something but the sheriff just went right on.
“Always poking and prodding and asking questions about things that are none of your business!” he yelled. “I try and persuade you to go to the left, but no, you go to the right anyway. You’re infuriating.”
A MistY MourninG Page 21
