The Peace Haven Murders

by M. Glenn Graves

  “Not necessarily. In their cases it meant that they had no family willing to take care of them. Most of them, no, all of them, had mobility issues. Nothing seriously wrong. They just couldn’t get around like they used to.”

  “Who can?”

  “I can.”

  I nodded and waited.

  “Anything else?”

  “Your Aunt Mildred.”

  “My Aunt Mildred what?”

  “She’s on that list.”

  “Mildred is dead? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I just did.”

  “Now who’s being smart?”

  “I didn’t want to be too abrupt. I know how you felt about her.”

  Mildred was my father’s oldest sister. Of all the family members, she was the most genuine character of all. She was well into her nineties, but still as alert as any human being I knew. She was still a character and I dearly loved her.

  “She was ninety-something, right?”

  “Ninety-five.”

  “People die younger than that, you know.”

  “There was nothing wrong with her.”

  “Bodies wear out.”

  “True enough, but there is usually something wrong.”

  “Sometimes the heart gets tired and stops.”

  “Not hers.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “We talked almost every day.”

  This was a revelation. Thirty years ago they hardly spoke, although they were civil. My mother always believed that Aunt Mildred was a horrendous influence on me. She accused Mildred of encouraging me toward police work. True enough.

  “She moved to that home because she had fallen two or three times. Once she almost fell down those damn stairs in her mansion. I think it scared her badly and so, well, you know Mildred. She moved into the home.”

  “Why didn’t you ask her to move in here?”

  She looked angry. I expected some chastisement.

  “She would have none of it. I offered. She declined. That was it.”

  “Sorry, mother. I had no idea that you two got along that well.”

  “People change, you know. Sometimes slowly, but we do change.”

  I nodded.

  “When did she die?”

  “The day before I called you.”

  “She’s the reason you called.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you suspect something … sinister?”

  “Enough is enough. Falling is one thing. Dying is quite another.”

  “True enough, but falls do usually mean that something is wrong inside.”

  “But not always to the point of death. Just investigate, okay?”

  Her tone was different, not demanding, but actually asking. It was unusual for my mother to ask anyone for help with anything.

  “I’ll nose around a little and see if anything turns up.”

  “Her funeral’s Wednesday, at the church. It was delayed because she’s to be cremated.”

  “Where?”

  “Cuthbert-Boran made the arrangements.”

  “Soon?”

  “Before Wednesday.”

  4

  “Keith Cuthbert, please,” I asked the young woman seated in the office just off of the hallway in the funeral home.

  She stared at me so I smiled at her. Networking.

  “He’s busy right now. May I take a message?”

  “No. I need to speak with him immediately.”

  “He’s … ah… working. You can talk with Allen Boran if you like.”

  “I like.”

  “Just a moment.” She picked up the receiver, pushed some numbers and waited. “Mr. Boran, there’s a woman here to see you.”

  She cupped her hand over the receiver and tried to whisper to me. “What’s your name?”

  “Clancy Evans.”

  “Oh,” she said to me, and then into the receiver, “Clancy Evans, Mr. Boran.”

  She hung up the receiver and smiled for the first time. I answered in kind.

  “He said he would be right out. You can have a seat while you wait,” she offered.

  “No time to wait, Missy.” She had a name sign on her desk that faced me. It read Missy Shelton.

  “He shouldn’t be long,” she was trying to appease my blatant anxiety.

  Before I could counter with some clever remark, an office door opened and a graying Allen Boran greeted me. He was a few years older, but still looked good.

  “Clancy, how good to see you. It seems like forever since I have seen you,” he said as he paused in the doorway allowing me to pass through ahead of him.

  “Time passes,” I said as I walked by him.

  “That it does, Clancy. That it does. I extend my condolences to you in the death of your aunt.” His words sounded professional, without much empathy. Perhaps he had been in this business of death too long.

  “Thanks, Allen. I appreciate your kindness,” I said giving him more credit than I felt he actually deserved. “I need to know if you have already cremated my Aunt Mildred.”

  “Let’s see,” he opened the right hand bottom drawer of his desk and began thumbing through some files. “Mildred Evans Keesee …yes, Keith sent the body off yesterday,” he closed the file and placed it back in the same spot in his desk drawer. Good detectives always watch things that are trivial. Most of them are meaningless. But not all.

  “Yes,” he continued, “she is scheduled for this morning ... Lynchburg ... ashes to be returned this afternoon or tomorrow.”

  “Can you stop it?”

  “Stop it?”

  “I want to view the body before she is cremated.”

  “It was her wish to be cremated, Clancy. It’s in her will, one of those living will documents.”

  “I know. I helped her write it. I still want to see the body.”

  “I don’t know, Clancy. This is an unusual request, you understand.”

  “I’m family, Allen.”

  “True enough, but still….”

  “Call them and offer up any excuse you can. I’ll drive to Lynchburg immediately. Just do not let them cremate her remains before I see them.”

  “Let me call and see what I can do. In the meantime, you can wait in the other office.”

  “I’ll wait right here.”

  “Okay, Clancy. Give me a moment.”

  He flipped through his collection of phone numbers hanging on some type of free-wheeling device that looked more like a whirling dervish than an organized system. He found the number and dialed. I waited.

  “Bill Maxwell, please,” he spoke into the phone.

  “Bill, Allen Boran here. I have a request from the family of Mildred Evans Keesee for you to postpone the cremation for a few hours. A member of the family wants to see the body before you cremate. Is that possible?”

  We both waited for a reply.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “There was a long pause. He seemed to be listening.

  “Of course. I understand.”

  Another pause.

  “She lives in Norfolk and just learned of the passing.”

  Pause.

  “Good. Good. Her name is Clancy Evans and she will leave immediately for Lynchburg… Thank you, Bill. Thank you very much.”

  He hung up the phone and relayed the message to me.

  “Thanks, Allen. We’ll talk later, and catch up on old times.”

  Missy was chatting away with someone on the phone when I left her office.

  “Who’s Mildred’s doctor?” I asked my mother.

  “Jones-McCann, same doctor she’s had for twenty-five plus years.”

  I made the call and luck was with me. At first she was reluctant to go, but after I explained the reasons, she readily agreed and we were on the road to Lynchburg in less than an hour. Curiosity is a wonderful thing.

  The facility for cremation was on the north side of Lynchburg. It was mid-afternoon when we arrived. A tall young man escorted us to a stainless steel room with stain
less steel light fixtures and stainless steel tables.

  “Wait here,” the tall man said.

  We waited. Like a good detective I surveyed the room in case I would need to know more than I knew at present. Just as I was running out of stainless steel things to detect, the tall young man returned pushing a stainless steel gurney and a body. Since the gurney was covered with a white sheet I could only surmise that it was a body. He parked the sheeted gurney directly under one of the stainless steel lights and moved to a corner of the room where he stood without another word.

  I removed the sheet and sure enough it was the body of my dear, sweet, eccentric aunt who had done her best to misguide me during my growing up years. She wasn’t trying to make me a criminal, just develop a keen sense of impishness in direct opposition to the straight and narrow path my mother had me on. My father was somewhere in between the two women.

  “What are we looking for exactly?” Jones-McCann asked.

  “Don’t watch many movies, huh?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “This is where the super-sleuth police detective or the keen private eye says something like ‘evidence of foul play.’”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Ever surveyed a corpse?”

  “Not my specialty. I generally try to keep them from becoming corpses.”

  “Noble.”

  “There does not appear to be any surface evidence of trauma to the body,” she offered after I watched her study all angles of Aunt Mildred. “You know that there was no autopsy performed.”

  “That’s why we’re here.”

  “We’ll have to get permission to have an autopsy. And the family has to okay it.”

  “I’m family.”

  “Guardian?”

  “I’ll call my mother.”

  I pulled out my cell and the ever-quiet tall young man from the corner cleared his throat and approached me.

  “It won’t work in here. Besides, we have rules about cell phones in this room.”

  I walked outside the building and called my mother. While I waited, I wondered why there were rules about using cell phones in a room with dead people. Lack of privacy?

  “Did Mildred have a guardian?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “Me.”

  “You.”

  “Yes.”

  “We need to do an autopsy.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Don’t know until we find it.”

  “That sounds dumb.”

  “True enough, but it’s the only answer I can give you that is the truth right now.”

  “Do it.”

  Despite his repeated objections, I finally won over Bill Maxwell and convinced him to give us time to perform an autopsy on Aunt Mildred. My girlish wiles even softened him enough to offer his facility for the procedure. Smooth talking devil that I am.

  I made several calls from his office and finally located the ME in Roanoke who agreed to perform the autopsy. He wanted the body sent to him there, but I used more of my silver tongue arguments to convince the ME to come to Lynchburg.

  The ME permitted Dr. Jones-McCann and me to join him for the autopsy after we donned the necessary garments. It was not my first experience with watching such an interesting procedure, but it was my first one in which I knew the person being autopsied. It does affect you.

  “We’ll run some blood and urine analyses to see if anything shows up, but the time-line could be against us finding something after three days,” the ME said.

  “Any needle marks?” I asked.

  “Just the usual ones so far.”

  “But she was healthy. Why any needle marks at all?”

  The ME opened her file, flipped through some pages, and then wrote it down.

  “They were giving her B-12 supplement shots.”

  I moved to her feet to check for needle marks there. Between the toes is often a good place to hide needle traces if one is trying to hide such traces. I found nothing.

  “Unless the samples we send to the lab show something in her system, I find nothing here to indicate that she was murdered. It all appears a natural death. She was, what,” he picked up the medical file on Mildred. “Ninety-five. My, my. She was a healthy ninety-five, I will admit that. Atypical. I guess her heart just gave out.”

  “I doubt that,” I said. “You didn’t know my aunt.”

  “No, I did not. But there is no evidence on the body to indicate anything unnatural. I’ll contact you when the test results are finished.”

  5

  “Why don’t you go over to Peace Haven and do some detecting.”

  I noticed that it wasn’t a question.

  “I doubt if they have preserved the supposed crime scene since no one but you thinks there’s been a crime.”

  “But you can ask questions. You’re good at that. Go over there and piss some people off by asking a lot of questions. Maybe you can stir up a hornet or two.”

  My mother had never encouraged my questioning skills, nor had she ever been supportive of my keen ability to anger people by poking my nose around stuff that was generally labeled as none of my business.

  “Let me finish my coffee and I’ll get right to it.”

  Sam was asleep at my side, not quite under the dining room table where we sat finishing up breakfast. My mother was reading the daily news from Dan River and I was wondering what questions I could ask the Peace Haven people.

  “How long has the nursing home been accepting assisted living patients?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe two or three years. Why?”

  “Seems like a good place to start.”

  “I don’t follow,” she said, putting down the paper and peering over at Sam.

  “The ones who have died, the names you gave me yesterday, were they assisted living patients or nursing home patients?”

  She pondered a few moments as if to measure my question.

  “Let’s see, Sophie Tucker, Alice … Marilyn Pearson …they had all been in the nursing home there for a number of years.”

  “You mentioned some men, too.”

  “Yeah, Old Rabbi Shelton – do you remember him?”

  “He ran the Gulf Station where I used to buy bubble gum. He was married to one of my grade school teachers, right?”

  “Wilma.”

  “Yes. She was my fourth grade teacher. Nice lady.”

  “She died years ago and Rabbi had a hard time going on without her. Seems like he got Parkinson’s disease, or something like that, and had to go the nursing facility. No real choice as I recall.”

  “Any others?”

  “Eli Rowland died just before your Aunt Mildred. He was also in the nursing home section. They all were, except for Aunt Mildred. You think that’s important?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Well, you’re not going to learn anything by sitting here and asking me questions. Go detect, that’s what you do, isn’t it?”

  “Some of the time.”

  I sipped my coffee and listened to Sam’s gentle snoring.

  “You ever consider getting a regular job?”

  “Regular meaning anything not remotely connected to police work?”

  “Regular meaning anything that doesn’t have you carrying a gun and getting shot at,” she fired back. Her tone definitely changed.

  “No.”

  “You think carrying a gun makes you a tough woman?”

  “Makes me feel safer. I’m tough enough without the gun.”

  “Or so you think.”

  “Or so I think.”

  “And why the dog?”

  “Why the dog?” I repeated.

  “Why do you have to have such a large dog?”

  “He showed up one day and stayed.”

  “Why don’t you get some cute little mutt to live with?”

  “I take them as they come.”

  “You keep any and all strays?”

  “No, just the ones who co
me and stay.”

  “You have a house full?”

  “No. Just Sam.”

  “What happened to the other dog? I seem to remember that you had two.”

  “A friend needed a companion. I gave her to him.”

  “He looks vicious.”

  “Sam?”

  I looked down at the sleeping dog beside me. He looked anything but vicious, but I could recall a time or two when he saved my life by attacking some folks on my behalf. Solid black with some white markings of distinction, he was a majestic Labrador Retriever with keen powers of observation. He also possessed some remarkable detective skills. I doubt if my mother would believe that or appreciate it.

  “Only if he’s awake,” I suggested.

  6

  I took my mother’s not-so-subtle suggestion and drove over to the Peace Haven Nursing and Care Facility. Like anything else in a small town, it wasn’t far from my mother’s house. Sam rode with me. He knew where he wasn’t welcomed.

  Sam was sitting in the middle of the back seat, which allowed him to peer out the front windshield. I looked into the rearview mirror, but could only see his eyes because of the size of his head.

  “Do you consider yourself a vicious dog?” I asked him.

  “Arrrr,” he said.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Peace Haven was a brick structure, all one level with ever-expanding wings and hallways leading out from what appeared to be a central complex. It was larger than I had imagined and quite modern. Some of the places like this around Norfolk were older and longing for a face-lift if not a complete overhaul.

  Sam waited in the car while I went inside.

  A smiling receptionist in the center of the large hall greeted me. Her smile seemed to be a permanent fixture on her face.

  “Good morning. May I help you?”

  Her name tag had the name Holly embossed in black letters with a white background.

  “Good morning. I would like to speak with the person who is in charge of the facility.”

  I tried to sound as if I knew what I was talking about, but so far I was unconvinced.

  “That would be Mr. Mitchell.”

  “Okay, then I would like to speak with Mr. Mitchell.”

  “He’s in a meeting right now.”