The Ghostly Hideaway

by Doris Hale Sanders



  The Ghostly Hideaway

  By

  Doris Hale Sanders

  ©copyright 2005

  Double DD Publishing

  2638 Tar Springs Rd.

  Cloverport, KY 40111

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any means now known or hereafter devised without the written permission of the above-named publisher is forbidden.

  This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

  Published 1-17-2013

  ISBN # 978130118977

  Chapter One

  The Betrayal

  It’s my fault; I should have suspected something. The trouble was he had known Norman Jones since they were both children. The two of them had graduated from Fairmont High together and had subsequently gone into business as partners. And it was a most lucrative enterprise, too. The town of Fairmont, North Carolina had a lot of new construction going on as well as a great deal of remodeling work, too. Edward had been extremely proud of Wroe and Jones Contractors and equally proud of the work they did. They had even been written up in the local trade journal and some of their work had been photographed and praised in glowing terms.

  That sure had ended with a bang, the bang of a judge’s gavel. He was totally flabbergasted when the police came for him. He had known the police officers, all three of them; had gone to school with one of them and to church with the other two.

  “Come on, Hank. What kind of joke is this?" Edward had asked in an almost teasing voice.

  “I’m afraid it’s no joke, Ed. You’re accused of grand theft; the unlawful taking of articles valued in excess of one thousand dollars." Hank sounded as if he hated to be confronting him.

  “Who am I accused of stealing from?”

  “The customer whose home you were remodeling: Joe Mills." Officer Bill Jenkins slipped on the handcuffs and began to hustle him out to the car.

  “But Bill, you know I wouldn’t do that. What makes them think I did it, anyway?”

  “Because they found your fingerprint on the key that was left in the door. Now I shouldn’t even have told you that; just forget that I did.”

  They had gone as far as the front sidewalk when Penny saw the police car out front with the lights flashing. She thought there might have been an accident or something. When she saw the four men heading for the police car, she called out to them.

  “Hey, where are you going? Eddie, dinner’s almost ready. You can’t run off right now." When the officers turned around, she saw that her husband was in handcuffs.

  “Penny, call Frank Niles and ask him to meet me at the police station. There’s been a big misunderstanding somewhere.”

  Penny couldn’t believe her eyes. What could they possibly have arrested Eddie for? She called their attorney and Frank assured her he was on his way out the door. After that, things had got out of hand in a hurry. They had executed a search warrant and when they looked through his work truck, they found a silver coffee urn wrapped up in a towel and stashed in his toolbox.

  Even though Edward screamed “frame-up” to high heaven, (didn’t everybody?) the grand jury took only thirty-five minutes to indict him. Edward kept trying to decide who might have wanted to frame him for this. He couldn’t figure who in the world would want him to be blamed for theft. Was it remotely possible that one of the other local contractors had needed that job badly enough to try to discredit him? Of course, any whisper of dishonesty on his part would ruin his reputation, maybe permanently. Whoever was making him look guilty could do irrevocable damage to his and Norman’s business. He didn’t know what in the world to do. He just knew he was innocent; but how on earth would he prove it?

  They let him out on bail but he still had no idea what to do to start to clear his name. Then his attorney told him the prosecution claimed to have an eyewitness—someone who saw Edward stealing the items from the house. That certainly had him puzzled. Only the person who framed him could claim to have seen him doing something he knew he hadn’t done. When the trial began, they called the fingerprint expert who swore the print on the key left in the door did indeed belong to the defendant. The police sergeant told how the search warrant had turned up the silver coffee urn belonging to Joe Mills hidden in his work van. Joe Mills swore that the item belonged to him and that numerous other items were also missing from his house, at least twenty thousand dollars worth.

  “Call your next witness, Counselor,” the Judge instructed.

  “The prosecution calls Norman Jones, Your Honor.”

  Edward had expected that the defense might call Norman as a character witness, but why would the prosecution call him to the stand?

  “Mr. Jones, can you tell us what happened on the evening of March 14?”

  “Well, I had decided to go to the Mills residence where we had been working and see if the owner was home. Edward and me, we had a couple of questions that needed answering about the work we were doing. We needed to know if he wanted new trim put up in the room we were remodeling or if he wanted us to try to piece together the trim that was there and put it back up.

  “When I got there, I was surprised to see Edward’s work van parked about half way down the block under some trees. Then I noticed someone coming out of the house carrying a large bag that looked quite heavy and heading toward Edward’s truck. I stood there with my mouth hanging open and watched as Edward carefully placed the bag in the back of the truck and pulled away from the curb.”

  Speaking of mouths hanging open, Edward’s was at this point. This was his friend, his partner, his long-time buddy telling lies about him and it would probably be enough to get him convicted of the crime.

  “What happened next?”

  “I simply couldn’t believe what I was seeing. So I followed him. I thought maybe somebody had stolen Ed’s truck and his keys and, well—I didn’t know what to think. As I said, I followed him. I saw him go to the bus station and while I watched, he rented a locker and put the bag in the locker. But before he put it in the locker, I saw him rummage around inside the bag and take something from it and put it under his coat. After he locked up the storage compartment, he went back to his truck. I continued to follow him. I still couldn’t believe it was actually Ed and he had a baseball cap on that pretty well hid his face.

  “I followed him back to his house and he was in the back of the van for a few minutes and then he went into the house. I could see him through the front picture window when he got to the living room and took off his cap. I’m sorry, Ed, but it was definitely you." Norman looked at the defense table and sadly shook his head.

  Well, he knew now who was framing him but he sure didn’t know why. Edward could tell them why his thumbprint was on the key. Norman had claimed to have lost his key and asked to borrow Ed’s key to have a duplicate made. This was no spur-of-the-moment thing; Norman had planned it. It sure looked as if it would work, too. How could he discredit his ex-friend? Penny knew when he went to bed the night of the incident; but he had no way he to prove that he didn’t get up later and do what Norman said he did. Norman had to have planted the coffee urn in his truck, too, but he could think of no way to prove that, either. Ed was flat-out screwed unless he thought of something fast.

  “Ask him what time he is supposed to have seen me doing these things,” he whispered to Frank when it was time for cross-examination.

  “Mr. Jones, during what period of time is my client supposed to have done these things you claim you witnessed?”

  “Well, I’m not sure exactly. It was sometime between nine o’clock and midnight." Norman looked somewhat unsure and Attorney Niles jumped on it.

  �
��Can’t you be a little more specific than that, Mr. Jones?”

  “Well, it may have been closer to ten o’clock.”

  “Is that when you first saw him or when he was supposedly renting a locker at the bus station?”

  “I guess that’s when I first saw him.”

  “You’re sure about that, now? Ten o’clock when you saw his truck on Center Street and you saw him coming out of the Mills house? That’s your statement, now?”

  “Yeah, ten o’clock. That’s when it was. I’m sure, now. Positive.”

  “And that would have made it ten-fifteen or maybe ten-thirty when he got to the bus station to rent the locker.”

  “Yeah, it would have taken fifteen or twenty minutes to get from Center Street to Elm Street where the bus station is.”

  “He went home after that according to you and went into the living room and the lights were on in that part of the house. Is that your statement?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you see anybody else in the living room when Mr. Wroe got home?”

  “Yeah. His wife was in there and they talked a few minutes, turned out the lights and, I suppose, they went to bed.”

  “Okay, according to you, Mrs. Wroe was still up with lights on in the living room at around eleven or a little after. Is that correct?”

  “Yeah, I suppose. I’m not completely sure of the time, though.”

  “Very well. Let’s review your testimony. You saw him coming out of the Mills house at ten o’clock and you saw him rent a locker at the bus station at around ten-thirty. You were positive, you said, about that. Right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Okay. Now Mr. Wroe lives on Second Street. How long would you say it would take to get from Elm Street to Second Street?”

  “Well, it’s about twenty-three blocks. I’d say probably thirty to thirty-five minutes, taking traffic and traffic lights into consideration.”

  “Okay. That would mean, counting the time you said he spent poking around in the back of the van, it had to be after eleven when he got in the house. And you said they talked a few minutes before they turned out the lights. That would mean, would it not, that Mrs. Wroe was still up in the living room after eleven and probably closer to eleven-thirty? Is that not a logical conclusion, Mr. Jones?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Jones. No further questions, Your Honor.”

  “The prosecution rests, Your Honor”

  “Very well. Court is in recess until nine o’clock on Monday morning. We’re adjourned." Judge Carwile banged his gavel.

  When the clerk called court into session on Monday, Ed was feeling considerably better.

  “Is the defense ready to proceed?” the Judge asked.

  “We are, Your Honor. I call Joe Mills to the stand.”

  “Remember, Mr. Mills, you’re still under oath.”

  “Are you the owner of the property from which the items were stolen, Mr. Mills?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Can you tell me where you were and what you were doing at fifteen minutes before ten o’clock the night of the robbery?”

  “Yes, I was on the telephone talking to Edward Wroe about the trim in the new sun room. There had been some trim in that room and Mr. Wroe was asking if I wanted to re-use it or if they should buy new trim.”

  “How long were you on the phone with Mr. Wroe?”

  “We talked for about forty minutes. I remember thinking I was going to miss the eleven o’clock news if we didn’t finish soon. I told him I didn’t want them to try to reuse the old trim. After that, it was necessary to decide what kind of trim I wanted them to put up in the room. He had a list of widths, finishes, styles and the prices on each. It required quite some time to go through all that.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Mills.”

  “Your witness, Counselor.”

  “No questions, Your Honor.”

  “You may step down.”

  “I call Nick Pullium, Your Honor.”

  After Mr. Pullium was sworn, Attorney Niles got down to business. “Would you tell the court where you are employed, Mr. Pullium?”

  “I work the night shift at the bus station.”

  “And were you working on the night of March 14?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “Was it a busy evening, Mr. Pullium? Did you have many customers—say, between ten o’clock and midnight?”

  “No incoming buses were scheduled during my shift and only one outgoing and it left at nine o’clock. No people were in the station at all until the red-eye arrived at two the next morning.”

  “But another witness said he had seen my client rent a locker from you at about ten-thirty that night. Are you sure no one rented a locker between ten o’clock and midnight?”

  He consulted his records that he had brought with him. The last locker I rented was on March 10. There just isn’t much demand for that service these days.”

  “Okay. Let’s review. You had no people in the bus station between nine o’clock that evening until two o’clock that next morning. Is that correct? And you didn’t rent a locker to my client during that time period. Is that also correct?”

  “Both statements are correct.”

  “No further questions.”

  “No questions of this witness,” the defense attorney said.

  “I call Mrs. Penny Wroe, Your Honor.”

  “Come forward and be sworn, Mrs. Wroe.”

  “Mrs. Wroe, I call your attention to the evening of March 14 of this year. Can you tell me, please, approximately at what hour you and/or your husband retired on that specific night?”

  “We usually go to bed at ten-thirty. That evening Eddie was on the phone with Mr. Mills until about ten-forty-five. We went to bed, both of us, immediately after he ended his business call. No lights were on in the house after eleven o’clock.”

  “You’re quite sure of that?”

  “Yes, Sir. Eddie was in bed with me at the time he is accused of committing this crime. He couldn’t have done what that man said he did.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Wroe.”

  “No cross, Your Honor.”

  “I call the defendant, Edward Allen Wroe.”

  “Mr. Wroe, can you account for your fingerprint being on the key found in the door at Mr. Mills’ property?”

  Ed gave his explanation about the ‘lost’ key.

  “Can you confirm your conversation with Mr. Mills during the time frame as he stated?”

  “Yes, I can and I do.”

  “Have you ever rented a locker at the bus station?”

  “No, I have not.”

  “Did you steal any property of any kind from Joe Mills?”

  “No, I did not.”

  It took the jury only forty minutes to find the defendant not guilty. When the police subsequently went to pick up Norman Jones for further questioning, he had apparently left for parts unknown.

  Edward had tried to pick up the pieces of his life and go on; but, even though he had been judged innocent, people still didn’t seem to want to trust him in their homes. He guessed he couldn’t blame them but it sure did ‘put a hurtin’ on him’ as his Granddaddy would have said. He had spent a great deal of his life’s savings defending himself in court. Also, carpenter work is actually a two or three-man job. He finally just gave it up.

  He and Penny had talked about going back to Kentucky for a long time. Penny had lived in Kentucky until she was six and she thought of the Bluegrass State as her home. In fact, she was fairly sure she still had some aunts, uncles, or cousins back there. Since her mother and dad had died in an auto accident when she was eleven she had had no contact with any of them. Her mother’s sister, Genevieve, had taken her in and cared for her as if she were her own. All she knew about her father’s family back in Kentucky was that for some reason they—or at least most of them—hadn’t approved of his marriage to Anna Lou Starnes. But that hadn’t stopped Jimmy Langley from doing what he wanted and he was mad
ly in love with Anna Lou Starnes. He couldn’t see why Anna Lou’s having grown up in a trailer court had anything to do with their wanting to get married. Of course, he understood it somewhat better when Anna Lou's father and two brothers had ended up with life sentences in LaGrange Penitentiary after having been convicted of murder in the first degree. He agreed that it had hurt Anna Lou badly but it still had nothing to do with his love for her or hers for him. Sure, her sister, Genevieve, had become pregnant before she was married but she had still made a good life for herself and her husband and all her kids were happy, healthy, and well-adjusted people. Jimmy’s mother, Gertrude Langley, had agreed with him. And if she ever wished Jimmy had chosen a well-educated college girl from a well-to-do family, she had never said so. At least not to him.

  They had tried to stay near their Kentucky roots but his family around Lexington had totally ostracized them. His mother was the only one who had seemed to accept Anna Lou. However, Gertie had been ill for several years and when she passed away, they had no reason to stay there any longer. Finally, when Jimmy had been offered a good job in North Carolina, he had taken Anna Lou and their six-year-old daughter, Penelope, and moved there. Genevieve, Anna Lou’s only sister, had stayed in Lexington for awhile but after corresponding for a couple of years, Anna Lou managed to persuade Genevieve to move to North Carolina near where they lived. Most of this information, Penny had learned from reading letters that her aunt had written to her mother before she had also moved to North Carolina. Her mother had saved the letters and Penny had read them over and over.

  One of the few memories Penelope had of her father was of an incident that happened at suppertime one evening. Her mother had told her to wash her hands before she ate and she had rebelled. Her reasoning had been that her daddy hadn’t washed his hands. “See that dirt on the back of his hand? He didn’t wash it off. I’m not going to wash my hands until he gets his clean,” she had replied stubbornly.

  “But, Penelope, that isn’t dirt,” her father had explained patiently. “That’s what’s called a ‘birthmark’ on my hand. Come on, we’ll wash our hands together and you can see it won’t wash off." He had let her put soap on the back of his hand and she had scrubbed and scrubbed, but he had been right; it really wouldn’t wash off. And while she couldn’t truly remember his facial features, she still vividly recalled the dark brown birthmark on the back of his right hand. She did have a picture somewhere, old and faded, but the birthmark had been visible even in that picture.

  Now Penny—Aunt Genevieve had shortened the Penelope to Penny—and Ed were planning to move back to Kentucky. Somehow, she thought her mom and dad would approve of that idea. Just as there had been nothing to keep Jimmy and Anna Lou in Kentucky at that time, thirty-some years later there was nothing to tie their daughter, Penny, and her family to North Carolina now. With Edward’s business almost non-existent, that certainly wouldn’t be worth holding on to. Chrissy had just graduated from high school and it was two years until the twins would start school. Therefore, they had no compelling reasons to stay. They made the decision, then, to sell their house, head for Kentucky, and look for adventure. Someone should have told them: Be careful what you wish for—it just might happen!

  Chapter Two

  Lost In The Rain