by Anne Hagan
I stooped and opened the flaps of the box. Inside there were several old jars; the kind with a metal bale closure and a glass lid. Tucked down along one side of the jars was a long, thin wood box, maybe an inch and a half or so thick. I slid my hands into the box to either side of it and, placing my fingertips against an edge on either end, I slowly eased it up and over until it balanced on top of a couple of the jars.
There was a little metal hasp on one side. Using the fingernail side of my finger, I pushed up under it and got it loose. I used the very tips of my fingers against the corners of the lid to open the box. ‘Bingo’, I thought, when I saw what was inside.
Chapter 18
Mel met us at the top of the root cellar stairs with a flashlight. Everyone hustled up but Faye who moved along slowly behind me as I carried the carving set box on a piece of one of the flaps of the mason jar box.
“Is that what I think it is?” Mel asked when she saw it.
I swallowed hard. “I think so.”
Upstairs, Hannah went to tend to the still whimpering Jeff and Morgan went with her. Kris looked at the three of us, staring at the box and then glanced at her son who was looking on with interest. She did a double take.
“Cole, you’re leg’s bleeding a little. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
“Aw Mom; I want to see inside the box.”
“No, now,” Kris ordered him. “It was really dirty down there. We don’t want that to get infected. Into the bathroom with you.”
As I set the box down on the kitchen table, Jesse came into the room. Faye tipped her head toward the box. “That the one you remember?”
He walked to the table and bent at the waist to look at it.
“Don’t touch it!” Faye warned him. He shot her a look.
Standing erect again, he said simply, “Pretty sure. You look at it?”
Faye shook her head.
“Do you recognize the box?” I asked.
Again she shook her head.
“Get me some gloves Mom,” Mel said, taking charge.
“There’s rubber gloves in the first aid kit your sister just took into the bathroom to tend to Cole.”
“I’ll get them,” I told the three of them.
“There’s no telling,” Mel said, as she gloved up, “if there will be any usable fingerprints on here or any trace evidence after all of these years. Even if the knife that killed Mathis is in here, we might go away from this knowing little more than we already know.”
There were nods all around.
Mel worked the hasp as I had before and lifted the lid to the fully open position. It laid flat alongside the bottom compartment which contained a carving knife and fork set.
We all leaned in over it but then Faye abruptly backed away. “That’s it. That’s the knife and fork set Granddad always carried to the dining table to carve. I recognize the design on the knife handle.”
She smiled a little as she remembered the distant past. “He would move his place setting toward the center of the table so Grandma could set the turkey platter or the Christmas ham right in front of him. He’d open the box and take out the knife and the fork and then begin carving while we all stared in awe, mouths watering for that first bite. We’d pass dishes round the table and he’d load on white or dark meat or thick slices of ham.” She looked toward the table again and then quickly away. “They must have been passed down to my mother after all.”
Mel closed the box and latched the hasp. “What do you want to do now?” she asked Faye.
“What can I do? I mean, you have to take it right? Send it in to the lab or something?”
“I can, yes. It’s a cold case that’s been closed for years. If I take this to have it examined, it’s going to have to go to Columbus and that means I’m going to have to re-open the case. I just want to make sure you understand that and you’re prepared for that.”
Faye wavered as she stood. Jesse went to her, took her arm and led her back to the table, to a chair. She stared at the box for several long seconds while we all stood by silently. “What I want to know is,” she began, finally, “how did this get from the dining room in my parents house into a box in the basement that got moved to the new house, by who, and nobody knew a thing!” She pounded the side of a fist on the table.
“Honestly Mom, I don’t know,” Mel said. “And, if we can’t get any prints off of it or any...any other evidence, we won’t even be able to speculate.”
Faye looked up at her daughter, her eyes pleading. “My parents prints might...will both be on there. Might not be anyone elses.”
“I know; that’s why I’m asking you now what you want to do.”
“It isn’t really a choice?” she said, more as a question than a statement. “You have a job to do and I want to be able to sleep at night knowing I didn’t keep you from doing it. If the only prints you find are my Dad’s, that’s what you find, I guess.”
“AFIS doesn’t go all the way back to the seventies, Faye,” I said.
“What?”
“AFIS; it’s the fingerprint database. It doesn’t go back that far. Unless your dad had his fingerprints taken for something way back then or before he died and then got scanned in, anything the crime lab gets off of that box or the set won’t match him.” I was trying to give her a little measure of comfort. It seemed to work.
“Fine then,” she said. She waved a hand at it as she said to Mel. “Take it with you tonight. I want nothing more to do with it.
Chapter 19
Sunday Evening, November 8th
We were on our way home, the carving set sitting on the seat of Mel’s pickup truck between us like the elephant in the room. I watched her profile for a few seconds and then plunged in. “I went through that file last night, Mel.”
“I know, at least I figured you did. I heard you get up. I leafed through it myself before I brought it home but I didn’t have a lot of time.” She glanced over at me. “It’s pretty thin.”
“Boy, you aren’t kidding. I had more questions than answers after seeing it.”
“Nothing jumped out at you?”
“Other than that there were obvious holes in the investigation...that or someone held stuff out of the file.”
“You got it like I got it. It came right out of the file room.”
“I’m not accusing you of...”
“I know,” she interrupted me. “I’m just saying...” She rubbed a hand through her hair. “Oh hell, I don’t know what I’m saying.” She stopped the truck at the end of the road and waited for traffic to pass out on the state route before turning and covering the last mile home.
I glanced at the dirt bike strapped into the bed behind me. Kris’s was right behind us, both kids with her and I knew Hannah and Morgan where not far back in Hannah’s car either. At home, Beth would come right over to help unload the bike and get it cleaned up. There wasn’t a lot of time.
“Are you worried like I am that this knife is the actual murder weapon and that maybe one of the Laffertys hid it away that day, before Eunice sent Faye to look for it, and then pulled it out on Thanksgiving and killed Tanner Mathis with it after all.?”
She shook her head but didn’t look at me. “Think about it. Who else would have had access to it prior to Thanksgiving Day or even that day? It doesn’t seem like it was something they left just sitting out, laying around.” She glanced down at the box and then at me. “What’s it say in the case file? Anything about the time line?”
“Well, no. They didn’t have the murder weapon,” I reminded her.
She tapped her forehead then drummed the wheel as she steered us toward the house. “Right, sorry. My mind’s going a million miles an hour.”
“Yours?” I laughed. “It’s just a crazy, mixed up mess...even more now than it was before. I just feel bad for your mother right now. I’ve got to wonder what she must be thinking.”
###
“Mom? It’s me.”
I listened as Mel checked in with her mom bef
ore we turned in for the night and I could tell Faye was more than a little looped by the whole situation. Even though Mel didn’t have her on speaker phone, I could hear her pretty clearly from where I was sitting across the room from my wife.
“I’m upset, yes, sure,” she was saying, “but, like I always tell your father, ‘It is what it is’. After all that’s happened, I really just want some closure around the whole thing.”
“For Grandma?”
“No,” Faye said, without hesitation. “For my own piece of mind. If it turns out that my father killed that man, I doubt I’ll tell my mother because I know that would break her heart and maybe even hasten her death. Some days, I think she’s barely hanging on. Besides, the more I think on it, the more I think her being the way she’s been since his death may have something to do with all of this.”
Mel was quiet for a minute then she responded, “We probably won’t be able to prove anything, you know?”
“Don’t you protect me Mel if that’s what you’re thinking. I’ve thought this through. That man, no matter what he did, didn’t deserve to die over it. If he died by my father’s hand, I want to know.”
“It’s not that, not at all. What I meant is, if there’s trace blood on this knife, we may have to exhume Mathis - if we even know where he’s buried - to get any DNA to match to him but that doesn’t prove who killed him. We’d expect your parents prints to both be on the knife or on the box let alone any other ones. If they haven’t degraded over the years, they might maybe match to something but any prints that have been there probably have degraded.”
Chapter 20
Monday Morning, November 9th
Faye had been up most of the night fretting, despite her bravado to Mel. Come morning, she was in no shape to help out at the bakery and Hannah was swamped. I called on Rebecca Hershberger who was only too happy to take Jef for the day and then I jumped in to help Hannah.
I hadn’t bargained for it but I couldn’t have planned it better if I had actually planned it. The coffee klatch of the matriarchs began to gather shortly after I arrived for another informal Monday morning meeting. I was stocking a freshly iced batch of Mel’s personal favorite carrot cake cupcakes in the case when Selma and Bridget walked in.
“Hi ladies. Out for a stroll today?”
Bridget guffawed at that. “Sweetie, I don’t walk anywhere! Now tell me, what were those you were just putting in?”
“Fresh carrot cake cupcakes.”
She waved a hand dismissively, “Too healthy. Got any of those caramel apple ones like I had last week?”
Selma gave her friend the eye. “You think of carrot cake as healthy but you’re all for apple?”
“Now you just hush!” Bridget said.
As I prepared their orders, the two women pushed two of the small tables together and sat just as Marsha and Lucy both came in to join them. Hoping to pry a little more info out of them without Faye around to throw a damper on my quest, I smiled to myself.
I didn’t even have to bring up the subject.
Selma asked me, “Is Faye not here today?”
“No. I’m taking her shift today. Why?”
“I didn’t want to say this in her earshot dear. I take it you’re looking into that old murder thing we talked about last week, after all.”
“A little,” I admitted. “There isn’t a lot to go on.”
She tipped her chin up, lips pursed and studied me. I just waited. I knew she had something on her mind but I wasn’t prepared for what came next.
I saw you out talking to old Horace Bailey the other day...well, working in his tulip bed. Now, unless he paid you to plant bulbs for him, I’m thinking you were picking his brain over that...that case, right?”
I nodded. “You got me there.”
“Did he tell you that back in the day he had a thing for Faye’s mother?” The other three ladies nodded and murmured their agreement.
“You all know?”
Again, there were nods all around.
Recovering from my shock quickly I admitted that he hadn’t. “Do you remember when that was? After Drew died?”
Lucy shook her head in an exaggerated motion. “Oh no, no dear,” she said. “It was around the time of the murder so it certainly started before it.”
“Their affair was probably brief,” Marsha said. “”Something like that is beneath the Eunice I know. She was solely focused on her family. I’d bet she was pressured into it. Horace was something of a cad back then.”
Selma Morrison sat back and folded her arms, quiet for the moment. There was something more there but I didn’t know what.
“No, he didn’t mention a crush or an infatuation or anything else when I talked to him and neither did Faye. Maybe Faye doesn’t know about it but, since you all do, it must have been pretty common knowledge at the time.”
Bridget said, “Rumor travels fast in a small town like this. Most of the older folks, I dare say, knew or at least heard something.”
“Okay, but what’s the connection to Mathis there or are you just telling me this for my general information?”
Selma burst forth, unable to contain her thoughts any longer. “I’m not only positive that Bailey had at least a brief affair with Eunice Lafferty, I’m pretty sure she welcomed it. Don’t ask me how I know that, now; I just do. Can’t quite put a finger on it. I’lll tell you this, Bailey’s got a mean streak and I wouldn’t have put it past him to murder Tanner Mathis and then try and frame Drew for it in hopes of getting him out of the picture.”
“No, no,” Bridget said as she waggled a hand over the table. “I know where you’re getting your information, from a damn drunk, that’s where! “Look,” she said as she pointed to me, “the only one that ever came out of all of that mess back then with no stink on him at all was Chuck Knox. I’m here to tell you, he ain’t no Angel Gabriel. Horace may have been having an affair with Eunice...heavens, we all know he was, but Chuck’s hands aren’t clean in this whole thing; you mark my words.”
“I don’t know about all of that,” Marsha said. He’s never said a cross word to me and he was one of the first to step in and help out with the farm and such when my Stewart got sick.”
“Probably wanted the land,” Bridget said. “I just don’t care for the man at all.”
“What do you think?” I asked Lucy who was sitting, just taking it all in.
“About Chuck? I think he’s a standoffish sort and he always has been. He has this, I don’t know, this air about him. Anyway, I can take him or leave him.”
Selma was the only one that hadn’t weighed in on Chuck. I looked over at her.
She knew what I was going to ask without me asking. “I’m with Lucy on that one. He’s got his moments but I wouldn’t call him a good guy. Now that Horace on the other hand...”
She was off and running, stirring the debate at the table. I excused myself to the kitchen to check on Hannah’s progress with cookies that were going to be in demand once the lunch crowd came into town for their daily stops at the restaurant or the pizza shop.
I wanted to talk to Selma and find out where she was getting her information, maybe get her personal take on the events of that Thanksgiving Day. I’d met Chuck Knox very briefly, one time, and I agreed with Lucy’s assessment. I couldn’t see him as a killer. But then, I couldn’t see Horace like that either. The guy planting flowers because his wife always did, didn’t seem like he could have ever been cold blooded killer, even if it had been more than 40 years ago.
###
After the lunch rush, when things slowed down, I left Hannah to her prep for Tuesday and I went through the shared store room into the store to talk to Mama.
It was quiet in the store too.
“Where’s dad?” I asked.
“He went home to meet up with an electrician. We’re getting a new thermostat put in.”
“Um, he’s an electrician. Why doesn’t he just do it himself?”
“He’s ‘retired’, he says. He d
idn’t even want to be working on that freezer the other day but we had to have it.”
“That’s okay, I really wanted to talk to you...privately.”
“Is this about yesterday? Some crazy stuff, that. Faye’s a mess.”
“I know. It’s sort of about that. I need to know where to find someone and you may know.”
“Honey, you’ve lived here a little longer than I have but I’ll try.”
“Chuck Knox?”
“I know him,” she said as she shook her head, “but I don’t know where he lives.”
“Wait, you might. Do you remember that pond where Terry Ford drowned?”
“Yes.”
“That belonged to Chuck. Was there a house near it?”
“I don’t think so...I don’t know for sure. Just pull it up on that map thingy you’re always lookin’ at.”
“I would but I don’t know where it is. Mel and I were in Tennessee when all of that went down.”
“Mmm, that’s right. I remember that pond’s off a back road that’s somewhere out near Faye and Jesse’s farm but, the only time I was out there, Faye was driving and I didn’t pay much attention. Sorry.”
“That’s a little bit of help. I can do a property search for him on the county website, I guess, and narrow it down to that area but I imagine he owns a lot of properties. That’s what I hear, anyway.”
“He’s a different sort.”
“How so?”
“Self sufficient but in a different sort of way than all the farm people around here. He’s a real live off the land type. He’ll come in here to buy cornmeal and smoker supplies once in a while. We started carrying a couple of smoker products special, just because of him. I think he does a lot of hunting and fishing for all of his own meat. At least, he doesn’t buy any of that here.” She shrugged. “He was in here just last week to pick up his usual supplies.”
###
I gathered up Boo and let her out into the yard to potty. While she went about her business, I went into my little writing shed and ran a property search online for Knox. As I suspected, he owned more than a few parcels, most of it just raw land. Maybe some of it had oil on it but I couldn’t tell that without pouring over the aerial views looking for drilling rigs or pump jacks. They weren’t my concern.
