Hannah caught herself and stopped.
Uh-oh. More friction.
Gerry said, “I have no idea, Hannah. But…frankly, from what my brother tells me sometimes, the petty-politics in police departments is capable of covering up a multitude of sins.”
“So police in-fighting over climbing the career ladder is why Ada was cremated so quickly after being found?” Hannah snapped. She began gathering her things and pushing her chair back.
Gerry said, “Maybe it was the condition of the remains. Maybe she was so deteriorated there was little to be told….”
Hannah turned to me and said, “Tell her, Rachel. Tell her how even bleached-out bones can be used to explain the cause of death. At least, sometimes.”
Bones. I raised my eyebrows in sympathy but remained silent. I was hardly a forensic anthropologist.
I watched the chocolate-voiced homeschooling mom slump back in her chair and take another deep breath. In a tired voice, she said, “I’m sorry Gerry. I’m just very angry about what happened to Ada. It makes me sick. Anyway, to finish my comments, the medical examiner was quoted as saying his autopsy was inconclusive. And Luke was charged with ‘failure to report an unattended death’ and ‘unauthorized burial.’ Both misdemeanors. I mean, think of it. No one questioned why he was out in his backyard digging holes to stash his wife in?”
A couple of tea-sipping neighbors to our small table turned to stare.
“Backyard?” I mumbled.
“That’s where the legally recognized family plot is. Right behind her house. I’m willing to bet it’s an open field with no markers.”
An idea surfaced in my mind.
Hannah raised her hands in a gesture of peace, and resumed more quietly. “Luke was fined $1,000 for the latter, and I don’t know what happened to the former charge, but I’m willing to bet it got dropped.”
My brain was scrambling for the latter and former, and found them; the latter, for which Luke was fined, was the unauthorized burial, the former was the unattended death. Whatever that meant.
I said, “But who paid the fine? Luke and Ada couldn’t have, could they?”
Gerry, who had been fiddling with her tea cup as if looking for patterns and clues among the leaves, said, “What? Oh, no, I don’t think so. As far as I know they were dirt poor. Luke was a handyman, doing odd jobs wherever they could be found. Like his dad. Jake.”
I was thinking how helpful Hannah’s research had been, when she said, “Even my sources at the newspaper were surprised.”
“You mean Peter’s sources?” I said.
“No. I was a reporter there before we started our family.”
Perfect! My idea grew.
I switched tracks. “Do either of you think Luke killed Mark?”
“What?” Hannah was wide eyed. But Gerry had finally stopped studying her tea leaves. She looked directly at me and smiled.
“I didn’t think you’d gotten that far yet.”
“Where?” Hannah.
By way of explanation, I said, “Mark died in nineteen sixty-five, at least according to the genealogy. And Ada and Luke were married within a month. A Cleveland County Times newspaper report said the boys were involved in a bar fight that resulted in Mark’s death. But that was all. I found a cached copy of a news report online.”
They were clueless.
I continued. “What I’m suggesting is maybe Luke killed Mark over Ada in a fit of jealousy. Did you notice how they were listed on Victoria’s quilt? The boys’ names at the top of the path, and Ada Stowall down the bottom of the path? I mean, which one did she marry? So I’m thinking, maybe she married Mark. Then Luke got drunk and killed Mark in the bar fight. Then Luke married Ada. ”
“Why would Ada marry Luke if he’d just killed her husband, the man she loved?” Hannah said.
Gerry agreed. “Yes. And, if Luke killed Mark, wouldn’t he have been placed under arrest?”
I added, “Not right away. Not if it wasn’t obvious what had happened. But the dates on the genealogy support this theory. I’m still researching this because I ran into a problem with the archives of the Cleveland Times. They’re incomplete. About two months of them are missing from the online archive. And when I called the Pinto Springs library they said their microfiche copies have gone missing, too. I’m going to look in San Diego County next. Maybe there aren’t as many Stowalls living there.”
I decided to go forward with my idea.
“Okay, look, I have a different goal for the rest of the afternoon than discussing genealogies and quilts. How would you feel about going to Ada’s house to see what we can find? I believe both Luke and Eddie are in some way involved in Ada’s demise. What do you say, ladies? Are you up for working with me on this?”
They made more furtive eye contact with each other but didn’t immediately say no. I persevered.
“And if so, here’s a contract to place you both under underpaid employment--a little private investigations protection for your help.”
I placed a dollar in front of each of them, knowing full well this was at best a questionable way to employ them and an even more questionable way to offer them protection under the legal umbrella of Lyons Investigations and Research, Inc. But I also needed to know the fullness of their intent. Would they help or would they just do lunches with me where they reluctantly eked out tidbits of info?
Hannah said, “I thought several courses in the field had to be completed before we could be hired.”
She’d been researching PI work?
“Apprenticed,” I corrected. “You can still be hired as contract employees for the purpose of research. You certainly qualify, Hannah. And Gerry, you might, too. Because of your special police connections.”
Hannah smiled another of her Buddhist smiles, and slowly reached forward to lift her dollar bill. I heard Gerry gasp. They did more eye contact. Gerry looked down at her own dollar while Hannah put hers in her wallet.
I was amazed. I’d expected at least a little resistance. The wind was threatening to lift Gerry’s faux-contract off the table, so she quickly slapped her hand down on it. I noticed her new nails for the first time. Long and tapered, and very red, with one pink rose on her right ring finger. I’d already taken in the multi-carat diamond on her left. She slid her dollar into the logo purse.
“Okay, now that you’re employees, I have a question, Gerry. When I got home from the bee Sunday morning, Matt opened Ada’s quilt on top of our spare bed and a diary slipped out of it. In the diary was your retainer check, thank you very much. But what I’m wondering is, where did you find the diary?”
She thought for a moment then said, “I didn’t. Andrea produced it. It was so late I didn’t think to ask any questions, I’m afraid.”
“Right, it’s on the list. I know where Ada’s house is and I assume you do too?” They nodded in unison. “So I’ll meet you both there in, say, half an hour?”
They agreed.
I watched them walk away, almost arm-in-arm, buddies. I let out a sigh of relief. Then Hannah tossed over her shoulder at me, “Just so long as you know I’ll probably be looking for a raise somewhere down the road.”
But of course.
Chapter 19: Eddie 5
The fuzz arrived. He stood in his basement, swaying under the effects of the one beer he’d had. After the fires it had rained. Hard and long. Luke had disappeared during the rain. Gone off into the night again. After a while, without those drugs Luke made him take, Eddie thought it might be okay to drink one of Luke’s beers. So now he was swaying. Eddie half expected Luke to return with another drunken woman but instead, a couple of deputies arrived. They were wearing brown uniforms. One of them stopped just a few feet away from his back window and Eddie listened.
The first deputy said, “The 911 caller reported she smelled something. I don’t smell nothing.”
“Anything.”
Eddie followed their gaze, toward the neighbor’s house, up to the second story.
The sec
ond deputy said, “We better check further out.”
“Come on. She’s just a nosy old bitch.”
Eddie watched the two uniforms move their bickering back toward the end of the yard.
How could the neighbor smell things from so far away? But the breezes were coming from the west, and there’d been the hard rain.
And Luke wasn’t a good gravedigger. Eddie had known that the bodies should be buried deeper. But he was still weak, and Luke was still an ugly monster.
Suddenly the deputies came hustling back from the field, one of them with a phone to his ear. He was calling something in.
Eddie wondered whether they’d found his mother or one of the drunks. The brown-shirts moved around the house, their voices growing smaller as they went. Eddie climbed the stairs, tiptoed, stood listening. Nothing. He opened the kitchen door...nothing...stepped quickly toward the back exit. He would spend tonight away, maybe in his grandma’s truck.
Chapter 20: Ada’s Home
I arrived before Hannah and Gerry and parked a distance north of Ada’s house, attempting discretion by situating myself at the end of the street concealed by a small wooded area of mostly pine trees.
In fact I was parked at the end of the only street in this entire neighborhood, one that wound its way down the top of the western slope of Applepine Ridge in a series of S turns. It wasn’t lost on me that this continuous road mimicked a snake.
Ada’s house was just a mile and a half south of Victoria’s house, where we’d sewn the night away.
Our target sat at the end of a decades-old working class neighborhood. To the left of Ada’s two-story home was another boxy structure pretty much identical, with a privacy fence and an unkempt band of shrubs separating the two. I noted there was a good thirty feet between them. The right side of Ada’s house—the north side--was bound by a vacant lot with the pines.
Lots of folks would value the privacy afforded this house, by the large separation from the only adjacent home, but also by the road out front and the two sides with nothing but fields as far as the eye could see. But for Ada Stowall, the privacy had finally proven fatal. And only God knew what it meant to Eddie Stowall.
The name of the snaking road was Mountain Springs.
There seemed to be only three types of homes in this development, two-story like Ada’s, one-story, and something I remembered from the seventies called splanch. Split level ranch. All of them were wood sided homes.
At the back of Ada’s house the slope eventually leveled out on a plain of wild grasses as far as the eye could see. As I’ve noted, in another neighborhood this sort of privacy would be worth something. But this neighborhood was mere steps above the isolated patches of dead-on-their-wheels RV’s and tin roofed, Tijuana-style shacks hidden along some of the winding country roads of inland Southern California.
Somewhere in all the grassy fields beyond the rear of the house was a cemetery, according to my new employees. But I couldn’t see any sign of it from where I now sat, behind the small woods.
The wind had died down, probably tempered by the weight of heavy rain clouds waiting for the temperature to drop so they could weep. It was a weepy kind of neighborhood. Put me in the mood for a dirge.
Impatient with my sinking spirits and bored with waiting for Gerry and Hannah to arrive, I finally decided to read an entry or two in Ada’s diary. I probably shouldn’t have.
The entries had misspellings and grammatical errors scattered throughout, as would be true with any child’s writing. But the mistakes didn’t lessen the poignancy of this child’s memories.
Addressed to “any reader there may be” Ada the child began with:
“I’m writing all this down because I want someone to know what is happening to me. Today is my eleventh birthday and again mom and dad are drinking. Mom just gave me this diary for my birthday. She told me I should write things down when I’m young because I’ll forget it all when I’m grown. And knowing your roots is the key to understanding who you are. Part of me hopes I forget. Because I just don’t want to remember any of this. But another part of me agrees with mom.
The other birthday present my parents just gave me is I’m now an only child. My older sister Hazel is gone. She was only eleven. Now I’m alone with them. And I’m so scared.”
She signed this first entry, “Ada Marie Stowall.”
The next entry, and all others from this point on, was addressed to her sister Hazel.
I moved on.
“Dear Hazel,
My second maybe-memory is of me staying home from school to take care of mom. I don’t know where you were. It was just me and mom. Daddy had to go to work so he told me to clean up the house and to look for the little bottles of Southern Comfort. You remember how she kept them hidden everywhere. We used to search the house for the money she hid to buy it with, too.
He also wanted me to feed her vegetable soup. Mother’s face was all bruised. Her arm was all swollen. The smell of the soup mixed with the smell of alcohol is probably why I hate vegetable soup. I remember trying to feed her and how most of it ran back out of her mouth all over the bed. When I tried to get her up so I could change the sheets she wouldn’t move. The soup mostly trickles back out of her mouth.
Later on, I think it was the same day, I remember I waited at the door for the delivery boy from the liquor store. She would hide behind the door staring at me with sick eyes. I can still see his sorry eyes in my mind.
One night daddy came home and yelled at me for not cleaning the house. He was yelling that I should do a better job of taking care of her. Then I remember you yelling at him to take mother to the hospital. You say what I’m afraid to say, that he should take care of her and that she might die.
But I’m even more afraid for you. I think he will beat you next. I miss you more and more every day.
Your loving sister Ada. “
I thought a minute about what Gerry had said--that Andrea had produced the diary. I pulled out my cell phone. I’d already entered the bee ladies’ names in my contacts list. It took four rings before she answered, long enough for me to get anxious over how I should approach the subject with her. She’d been emotional at the bee. Even a bit prickly. I didn’t want to set her off.
“Hello Rachel.”
So she’d entered my number in her contacts, too.
“Is this a good time for us to talk, Andrea? I have some questions….”
“About what?”
Abrupt. Snappish. Maybe just her nature.
“I’m reading Ada’s diary. You know, the little book included with the quilt?” I waited for her to confirm this.
“Yeah.”
I said, “I wonder if you could share with me where you found it.”
Silence.
I said, “I think it would help me with my research if you told me.”
“How?”
“I won’t know that until you tell me.”
More silence. Finally Andrea said, “I found it.”
“Okay.” I waited a beat. She didn’t elaborate. I said, “Where?”
A big sigh. Finally Andrea said, “At Eddie’s house.” My eyes flashed toward Ada’s. Also Eddie’s.
“When?”
“In September. After he walked to his grandma’s. After….”
“After what?”
“Look, I feel…you know, like a rat. Like I’m ratting him out. It’s his life, you know?”
An idea crept into my mind. “No. I don’t. Why don’t you just start from the beginning, for instance when did Ada die?”
“She didn’t die! She was murdered.”
“Go on.”
“Okay, Ada was killed the end of June. At least, I think that’s when.”
Did Andrea know who killed her?
“Why do you think this is the case?”
“Because…because I visited Eddie then. Back in June.” She swore and disappeared into the nether again. I waited for her to return.
She saw Eddie in June? Then
why didn’t anyone else know he was alive…and then it hit me. She hadn’t told anyone else. And now she was feeling intensely guilty.
Andrea said in a small voice, “Ada called me in late June and asked me to come visit her. She said she had a quilt she wanted some help with. I was over at Victoria’s at the time, so it was no big deal. I just drove over.”
“So you visited with Ada before? Been to her home?”
She stopped again. I waited. Finally she said, “Look, none of that is important. I can’t go there. The deal is I went over and she took me down….to Eddie’s room. And I met him. And…I was sickened…I just can’t describe it. I just, I just ran away. I just couldn’t deal with it.”
Sickened? Why would Andrea have been sickened? But before I could ask, The redhead barreled on with her story.
“And then I get the call, that Ada had been found dead. That Eddie was at his grandma’s.” Another pause. “In September, after the fires. And I knew…it was my fault. I should have….”
I needed to share a little of what we’d found this afternoon. Needed to console her. Soothe her concerns.
I said, “Luke had been beating her for years, Andrea. We just came from the hospital, where we saw her records. Her life was a misery. You aren’t to blame.”
More long moments of silence and finally she said, “Thanks, Rachel. I wish I could be clearer. Truth is I don’t know when Ada died. I’m just assuming because that was the last time I saw her alive. Luke was crazy to keep Eddie locked away, and I think that Ada just wanted her boy…free.”
Free? What exactly did she mean by that? Before I could ask for more details, she blurted out, “I should have at least called Mary or Anne,” her voice thick with emotions. “I gotta’ go, Rache. I really don’t have any more information.”
And she hung up without hearing the questions I wanted to follow up with. So now I sat pondering them, one by one.
Ada Unraveled Page 13
