A Widow's Curse

by Phillip DePoy

  He looked up at me as if he had just discovered a new book of the Bible.

  “Well.” I conceded a bit of a smile. “I can’t top that.”

  “Damn right.” He gave one last look at his computer screen. “The epilogue is pretty funny. Who bought the place and turned it into the world-class resort it is today?”

  “No idea.”

  “In 1988—I am not making this up—it was purchased by Prince Hubertus Fugger.”

  He couldn’t hold back a bit of derisive adolescent laughter at the expense of the royal name.

  “I’m betting that on your Web site there, you’ve got a bit of ‘even today the ghost of someone or other can be seen lingering’—that sort of thing.”

  “Oh, absolutely. You can see ghosts everywhere—even the Confederate colonel has been known to make an appearance in the gardens. But I also have to say that from the English point of view, the whole Barnsley family is significantly haunted in a way that might not be immediately obvious to an American. I would think that they represent the worst, really, of the so-called yeoman farmers that date back to the Middle Ages and became, in fact, a certain segment of the English middle class.”

  “Why would that make them haunted?”

  “Families like the Barnsleys, lots of them, developed into the Dickensianly cruel bosses, vicious factory owners, heartless landlords of the past several centuries. The upper classes merely ignored poor people or hired them as servants. But the middle classes felt that they had bettered themselves economically and therefore had earned the right to abuse and take advantage of poor people, deliberately keeping them impoverished so that they, the middle class, could get rich.”

  “While your bizarre brand of Marxism is interesting—”

  “Sorry, I only meant to say—”

  “That the punch line is,” I declared, “the auction of 1942 would be where Conner acquired our three items.”

  “I do.” He closed his notebook. “Yes.”

  “Of course it’s possible.” I sipped.

  “You’re not going to start again with the—”

  But before Andrews could continue to berate me, the telephone rang.

  “Five dollars says that’ll be Skidmore checking up on me.” I reached for the phone. “Hello?”

  I would have won the bet. His voice was light but firm.

  “Good. You are there. Now I don’t have to get all manhunt and release the bloodhounds.” Skid seemed in a more jovial mood than he had in some time.

  “I’ve seen those dogs,” I agreed. “They are pretty tired.”

  “So. What’ve you been doing?” His sad attempt at nonchalance failed completely.

  I hesitated.

  “Fever?” He had lowered his voice.

  “How much do you want to know?” I matched his tone. “I mean, just enough to convict me or enough to make you an accessory after the fact?”

  “Quit that kind of talk,” he said instantly. “I’m not fooling with you.”

  “I went to Pine City.” Best not to make matters worse by provoking him—or lying to him. “So did Andrews. We’ve uncovered what we feel is relatively amazing information.”

  “You have.” It wasn’t a question—more an accusation.

  “First,” I hurried on, “I have discovered that my family is cursed.”

  “I could have saved you the trip to Pine City on that score.”

  “In the matter of Mr. Shultz,” I went on, “I can tell you that it’s possible the coin he brought me was minted by my Welsh ancestors, and it was a prized possession of my family until it was lost in a bet to the Barnsley family—”

  “As in Barnsley Gardens?” he interrupted.

  “Am I the only one who doesn’t know about that place?”

  “Yes. What about the Barnsley family? Man, there’s a family with a troubled history.”

  “You know about this?

  “Everybody knows about the Barnsley curse, Fever,” he told me wearily. “It’s a great story and most likely good for business over there.”

  “Well, that saves me telling you about the research that Andrews has done. Except that my great-grandfather—”

  “Conner,” he injected.

  “—might have gotten the coin in question back from the Barnsley family, along with a very valuable painting and, for some reason, an Indian artifact at auction in 1942. So if the coin or the disposition of the coin is the motive for Shultz’s murder, things don’t really look that good for yours truly.”

  “Right.” Skid shuffled some papers on his desk. “I’m sure there’s more to your story.”

  “Including,” I interrupted, “the weird fact that some lawyer named Taylor over in Pine City will lie or has already lied to the police about a phone call I received from Shultz just before the murder.”

  “Preston Taylor?” Skid sighed. “The one you were talking about with Huyne?”

  “Don’t know his first name. But it’s Taylor and Taylor in that big house on—”

  “Preston Taylor is about to run for governor, Fever.”

  “Of Georgia?”

  “He’ll most likely win, too. He’s got enough money to buy the one or two connections he doesn’t already have. He’s a part of the old-style machine that you always hope is gone from Georgia politics but isn’t, really.”

  “Yes. I thought that, in slightly more coherent fashion, when I first met him.”

  “Well, congratulations: You’re dead. If he’s got his sights set on you, he’ll kick your butt good.”

  “Your language really has degenerated since you became sheriff.”

  “Uh-huh. All this so-called research you and Andrews have done—has it gotten you anywhere?”

  Had it? Before I could think, I heard myself coming to conclusions as I told them to Skidmore.

  “I believe that the three items Conner bought at auction are related, and I must also now assume that they are related to a family curse in which I am involved. That the curse has actually attached itself to the coin, at least insofar as it is deemed valuable both economically and emotionally. Ergo, I conclude that someone in the Barnsley brood is trying to get the coin back in an effort to a) change their economic fortunes or b) improve their lot in general. J’accuse some Barnsley. There should be plenty of the descendants around here somewhere. I mean, I found out from my own Welsh relatives that the memory for this kind of thing is genetic and really long-lived. That’s where my research had gotten me.”

  Andrews was staring at me as if I had lost my mind. Doubtless, Skidmore was on the other end of the phone with more or less the same facial concern.

  “One of the Barnsleys killed Shultz?” Skidmore was the first to react.

  “Are you insane?” Andrews followed suit.

  “Family legends take root.” I was looking at Andrews but speaking into the phone. “Someone in the Barnsley clan blames their family’s ill fortunes on the cursed coin. In a time of need, someone in Blue Mountain allowed the coin to be sold. Now the Barnsleys have to get it back.”

  “Why?” in stereo from both men.

  “In order to rid themselves of the curse.” I tried to make it seem the most obvious thing in the world.

  “Fever,” Skidmore began, irritated as he could possibly be, “you know I usually indulge your ideas because I believe they have a real meaning for you, and maybe for me, too. But if you think—”

  “What I think is irrelevant,” I interrupted. “I’m not remotely saying I believe in this sort of thing. I’m only saying that some people do, and one of those people might be a Barnsley, and if he or she is, that would be reason enough to go to almost any lengths to get the coin back.”

  “Why do they need to have the coin in their possession to get rid of the curse?” Andrews leaned forward onto the table.

  “I heard that,” Skid said on the phone. “I’d like to know the answer myself.”

  “Because the coin contains the curse.” That much was obvious, surely. “So when an object ca
rries this much bad luck, the ancient ways are, I think, the best. Let’s say we revert to Celtic lore. Get a black feather from a rooster, go to a crossroads, and, holding the feather and the coin, call out the name of the goddess Áine three times.”

  “Stop,” Skidmore insisted. “Which goddess am I calling out?”

  “Áine. She’s one of the original Tuatha de Danaan, offspring of the goddess Dana—first tribe of Celts.” I watched Andrews shake his head. “She’ll help you with the curse.”

  “Right.” Skid was, I believed, on the verge of hanging up on me.

  “And we revert to Celtic lore because?” Andrews spoke loudly enough for Skidmore to hear him.

  “Appalachian folklore has its roots in a more ancient belief system brought to America by the Scots-Irish settlers in these mountains. That system belonged originally to the Celts. The people with whom we’re dealing in this instance span the ocean, are genetically associated with both European and American variants of these beliefs, ergo—”

  “Haven’t I told you never to say the word ergo?” Skid broke in.

  “Sorry.”

  “Look, Fever,” Skid allowed, “I don’t really care that you left the house when you weren’t supposed to, or that your explanation for the murder belongs in an old-timey song more than in a crime investigation. But I am interested in the fact that you believe the Barnsley family has something to do with our situation, in light of what I’ve just found out.”

  “You don’t wonder if the Briarwood curse has anything to do with the Barnsley bad luck? You said yourself that everyone—with the apparent exception of myself—knows the stories about the Barnsley family foibles. So why wouldn’t that same curse have something to do with the murder of Mr. Shultz? I’m talking about the psychology of a curse—nothing metaphysical whatsoever.”

  “Do you want to hear why I called you?” Skidmore sighed, somewhat indulgently. “Or do you want to go on and on like a college professor?”

  “‘Like a’—that’s hitting below the belt a bit, isn’t it?” I complained.

  “I’m calling,” he insisted, losing patience with me, “because I’ve busied myself with a little actual police work. Melissa and I have been checking phone records, just like they do on television. And you might be interested to know that we discovered Mr. Shultz was called from England not long before he called you the first time. I recognized your number, of course. Right before that, someone in England called Shultz over a dozen times in two days.”

  “From England?”

  The surprise in my voice prompted Andrews to come to attention.

  “What is it?” Andrews sat up straight.

  “Someone called Shultz from England,” I told him, “shortly before he came up here.”

  “Who called? Does he know?” Andrews asked.

  “Melissa’s still checking,” Skidmore answered, “but as far as we can tell, every call came from a household by the name of Barnsley.”

  I moved to sit down at the table with Andrews.

  “Who called?” Andrews insisted.

  “He was called by the Barnsleys. In England.” My voice sounded hollow even to me.

  “Hang on,” Andrews said slowly, suddenly tugging at his earlobe. “Hang on.”

  “That’s right,” I said, reading his mind.

  “What’s right?” Skid mumbled into the phone. “What’s Andrews saying?”

  “He’s not saying anything,” I answered, “but I’ll bet he’s thinking the same thing I am. If you’re right about those calls, then Mr. Shultz may have known a whole lot more about all of this business than we thought. Than he ever told us, I mean.”

  “I’m not sure I understand that.” Skid’s voice had gone quiet.

  “Andrews and I have spent our considerable—as you so offensively referred to it—college professor prowess on research to come up with the Barnsley/Briarwood connection. Barnsleys called Shultz. What reason would they have for that except to ask him about the coin because they had somehow found out that his father had purchased it? They would have at least told him something about their family’s claim to it just so Shultz would talk to them.”

  “Got it.” Skid paused. “That’s most likely how the Shultzes know that the coin used to belong to your family. Where does Shultz’s father fit into this, by the way?”

  “I’d like to know that myself.” I could feel myself grinding my teeth. “I’m assuming our Shultz didn’t live with his father. I mean, you were checking our Shultz’s phone, right?”

  “The victim lived alone. Not with his father.”

  “Hang on.” Andrews seemed stuck in a particular loop.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “What if Shultz knew the murderer? Invited him to this house? Isn’t that what Taylor said before he started to lie about us?” Andrews sat back, sheet-white, looking right at me. “Maybe the killer was here for you.”

  “He’s right, you know,” Skid said softly into the phone. “I heard that.”

  What was more: that person could still be about somewhere, perhaps even nearby in the pine shadows just outside the sunlight in my yard.

  Thirteen

  Skid wanted to send someone over to the house, maybe Crawdad. As delightful as the prospect was, I declined. Andrews was with me, I would lock my doors for a change, and Skid was only a short drive away, no matter where in Blue Mountain he was.

  The sun was going down by the time Andrews and I had finished talking over all our research, strange ideas, theories, guesses, and accusations: Shultz was evil or Shultz was innocent; lawyer Taylor was evil or he was in league with someone else to wrest my inheritance from me; Taylor was a small-town politico with pretensions too large for his capabilities; Taylor’s secretary, Becky, was very attractive.

  The final theory was almost exclusive to Andrews.

  For my part, the more we talked, the less convinced I was that any rhyme or reason remotely applied to the facts as we knew them.

  “Nothing makes any sense; nothing means anything,” I concluded. “Do you know what I was doing when Shultz called the other day, in fact?”

  “What?” Andrews barely indulged me.

  “I was moving big heavy rocks from one place to another. Rocks that will surely tumble back down in a very short time to the spot where they were in the first place.”

  “Fine,” Andrews moaned. “You go ahead and be Sisyphus; be Camus or Genet or whichever depressed French existentialist it was who came up with the concept that life is meaningless, backbreaking work and then you die. Me? If it has to be French at all, I prefer the more bacchanalian Greek derivative: eat, love, drink more wine. And cherchez la femme all over the place.”

  “I see.”

  We had sat all afternoon at the kitchen table. I’d scrambled some eggs late in the afternoon. They went well, somehow, with the bottle of Veuve Clicquot that Andrews had given me last Christmas. I had been saving it for some New Year’s Eve. Empty plates had been shoved to the middle of the table; empty glasses stood mute before us.

  “But despite yourself, you were right about the connections among all of these things, you know,” Andrews went on. “I see the patterns now.”

  “I was just thinking recently that if you spill a box of kitchen matches on a table, your brain will invent a pattern where there actually is none. That’s how desperate we are for meaning in a universe that doesn’t really offer an objective order at all.”

  “God.” Andrews craned his neck around as if he had a crick.

  “What?”

  “You love this melancholy like a bleeding Frenchman. Is that your heritage, too?”

  “In fact—”

  “Look, I don’t want to hear it!”

  Even Andrews, I could tell, had been surprised by the sudden vehemence in his voice.

  “All right.” I let out a slow breath.

  “Sorry.” He looked around as if someone else might have yelled, not he. “I guess I’m a bit on edge. What the hell is the matter with m
e?”

  We both glanced toward the living room for an answer.

  “We’re like two of the dwarves that didn’t make the Snow White cut,” he said, obviously attempting to lighten the mood. “You’re Gloomy and I’m Grumpy.”

  “I think Grumpy actually was one of the seven.”

  “No,” he corrected me breezily, “Dopey, Sneezy, Doc, Goofy, Happy, Gallant, and Dumbo.”

  “Half of those aren’t right.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “And you know the actual story of Snow White—I mean, I could tell it to you if you’re in a mood—”

  “Not if you paid me one thousand dollars.” He sat back. “I’ve changed your name. You’re not Gloomy; you’re Snoozy.”

  “Sleepy was one of the real dwarves, wasn’t he? I think that’s who I am right now.”

  Night birds and dark wind filled the air outside my house. A pale moon struggled up the sky. Andrews and I did our best to ward off the night with deliberate laughter.

  As human beings have always done, even before the discovery of fire.

  Deeming it best to turn in early, we left the kitchen light on—our version of leaving the fire burning—checked all the windows, locked all the doors, and retired upstairs.

  “I’m thinking of sleeping with my cell phone in my hand.” Andrews yawned at the top of the stairs. “I put Skidmore’s number on speed dial.”

  “I’m thinking of not sleeping.” I followed him up.

  “Fever.” He didn’t turn around, but his voice flooded the house with warm concern. “You have to get some sleep.”

  I stopped on the stairs for a second, because it was the first genuinely kind utterance from Andrews in recent memory. I had the impulse to cry—a testament to how right he was about my need for slumber.