Daughter of Ashes

by Marcia Talley

  The final photograph, however, caused me to sit up straight. On May 25, 1950, the Tilghman county clerk had issued marriage licenses to three couples.

  Dean Kelchner, 39, to Deborah Dutton, 39.

  Joe Jacobs, 22, to Alison Markwood, 21, and … My heart stood still.

  Clifton Ames, 18, to Nancy Hazlett, 17.

  Math was not my strong suit. My husband had once given me a T-shirt that read: 4 Out Of 3 People Have Trouble With Math. But even I could do the math on this one. Using my fingers, I counted forward. If Nancy Hazlett had been pregnant in May 1950, or gotten pregnant shortly thereafter, her child would have been born in February 1951, making the baby around six months old in August of that year when, according to the medical examiner, Baby Ella had most likely succumbed to polio.

  That Clifton J Ames the Second had been the father of Nancy Hazlett’s baby I now had no doubt. Had being in possession of that information almost cost Rusty his life?

  It depends, I thought, on what he did with it.

  I’d already violated too much of Rusty’s privacy to start feeling guilty. I snooped on, trolling through his text messages, then his email.

  It took only a few minutes to find the answer in his outbox. Rusty had forwarded the photograph of the marriage license notice in the newspaper to his mother – Kendall, not Grace. What do you know? he’d written. I’m sure you can put this to good use.

  Suddenly the significance of one of the text messages that had popped up on Rusty’s phone at the scene of the accident hit me like a sledgehammer. It was Kendall – ‘Ken’ – who had texted her son, ‘Got it. Stay cool.’

  Sadly for Kendall Barfield, staying cool seemed to have proved fatal.

  So much for Rusty’s claim that he wasn’t close to his biological mother. He hadn’t wanted Grace to see the contents of his iPhone. This must have been the reason why. Grace, a woman who was deeply involved in charity work and her church would hardly have approved of Rusty’s role in what seemed like a blackmail scheme.

  Before I could change my mind, I forwarded copies of Rusty’s photos to my own email account, then erased the evidence of my crime from Randy’s sent file. One thing was certain: I needed to talk to Rusty Heberling – and quick. The question was what, if anything, the young man remembered?

  TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.’

  L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between, 1953

  When I arrived at the hospital, the volunteer at the visitors’ desk informed me that Rusty Heberling had been moved to a rehab facility. A quick call to his father, Dwight, told me where.

  Bayview Health and Rehabilitation Center sat on several rolling green acres on the outskirts of town, although there was no ‘bay view’ that I could see.

  I found Rusty in his room, a comfortable single furnished more like a hotel room than a hospital, with a bay window overlooking an ornamental lake.

  He was seated in a wheelchair by the window reading a Kindle in a large-size font, but looked up at my ‘Hello,’ and seemed genuinely pleased to see me.

  ‘Mrs Ives!’

  ‘How are you doing?’ I asked.

  Rusty closed the Kindle and slipped it between his thigh and the arm of the chair. ‘As you see, having a bit of trouble getting the stupid legs to cooperate.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  He shrugged. ‘The Nazis in the PT department work me over pretty good. I need to get well just to get away from them, you know?’

  ‘How’s your mom?’ I asked.

  ‘Grace?’ Rusty smiled. ‘It’s spay and neuter day, so she’s out at the animal shelter. Sometimes I think she cares more about the animals than people.’

  ‘Actually, I’m glad she’s not here because there’s something I need to talk to you about.’ I reached into my handbag for his iPhone and held it out to him.

  ‘Damn! You found it!’ A frown clouded his face as what I had just said sank in. ‘What?’ he asked, withdrawing his hand without touching the phone. He eyed me suspiciously.

  ‘Your phone had been badly water damaged, but I was able to dry it out,’ I began. A spare chair sat at the foot of his bed. I dragged it over so I could sit down next to the wheelchair and talk to him face-to-face.

  Without confessing to snooping in his phone, I said, ‘I’m worried about you, Rusty. Did it occur to you that whoever was driving that black Mustang intended to kill you?’

  Rusty seemed to be studying the silver medallions on the wallpaper and refused to meet my eyes.

  ‘You know who it was, don’t you?’

  He turned his head, sucked in his lower lip and nodded silently.

  ‘For God’s sake, who?’

  ‘The only dude I know who drives a badass car like that is Tad Chew.’

  I couldn’t place the name. ‘Who is Tad Chew?’ I prompted.

  ‘Clifton Ames’s grandson. The youngest kid of his daughter, Annette Chew.’

  Ah! I remembered the showoff in the yellow Speedo at Kendall’s picnic, the kid who’d told the sheriff he’d seen Caitlyn … the Mustang in Kendall’s parking lot. I caught my breath. Whoa! So, Clifton Ames was sending his grandchildren out to do his dirty work for him. What rock had he crawled out from under?

  ‘Just because he wears J Crew and Banana Republic and starts at Princeton in the fall, Tad thinks he’s hot shit.’ Rusty was on a roll. ‘Works for his uncle Jack part-time, too. Dude doesn’t need the money, so what’s that all about, I wonder?’

  I flashed back to the day of Jack Ames’s visit to Our Song, pictured the preppy, college-aged kid who’d slid out of the driver’s seat of Ames’s Acura. Hadn’t Jack called his young chauffeur ‘Tad?’ So, maybe it wasn’t Clifton Ames who wanted to silence Rusty. Maybe it was his son, Jack, the owner of the face smiling out at the world from political billboards all over Tilghman County. If Jack Ames had aspirations to occupy the Oval Office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a family scandal might very well derail his plans.

  ‘Look, Rusty,’ I said, moving on. ‘What puzzles me is that you were sharing this information with Kendall. It seems to me that your relationship with your biological mom was a lot closer than you wanted anyone to know.’

  ‘The last couple of years …’ Randy began, then he shrugged. ‘I guess Kendall was on a guilt trip or something. Calling me up, giving me presents. I didn’t want to hurt Mom’s feelings. Grace, I mean.’

  I set the iPhone on Rusty’s knee and held it there. ‘You need to show these photos to the police. If what you say about Tad Chew is correct, whatever Kendall did with the information most likely got her killed.’

  ‘I know.’ His head lolled against the back of his chair. ‘I am such a shit!’

  ‘What did she do with it?’

  Rusty took a deep breath and blew it out slowly through his lips. ‘You were at her picnic?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Then you saw that boat, that swimming pool?’

  ‘I did. Pretty hard to miss.’

  ‘Kendall didn’t pay for all that like everybody thinks. Cliff Ames did.’

  I sat back, stunned. ‘But why?’

  ‘About ten years ago, Cliff and Kendall had an affair. She was way younger than him, of course, so I was kinda surprised when she bragged about it one night at the Crusty Crab after she’d had a bit too much to drink. Somehow, while they were still sleeping together, she found out that Clifton’s old man had rigged it so that he could buy up a bunch of small farms that were being auctioned off for delinquent taxes.’

  ‘Kendall was already working in real estate by then, wasn’t she, so she might have stumbled across records of the transactions,’ I suggested. Just as I had.

  ‘Anyway,’ Rusty continued, ‘Clifton junior told Kendall that his dad got him a summer job at the county tax office so that the kid was in on the ground floor, so to speak. Not sure how they managed it, but Kendall told me that the farms went to auction before the owners knew what hit them.’


  ‘The son of a bitch.’ The words just fell out of my mouth. I couldn’t help it. That certainly explained why Clifton junior was so interested in what records were stored in the courthouse basement.

  ‘Clifton senior allowed most of the former owners to stay on as tenants, like at your place, but there were a bunch of farms up north of town …’ Rusty paused. ‘That’s where Clifton Farms built their processing plant.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘After they broke it off, Kendall used that information to get “loans” from Cliff, but I don’t think any of them were ever repaid.’

  That figured, I thought. ‘And Cliff’s marriage to Nancy Hazlett?’

  Rusty’s eyebrows shot up under his bandage. ‘That was a shocker, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Why on earth did you share that information with Kendall?’

  ‘Insurance?’ He closed his eyes, massaged his eyelids with his fingers then said, without actually looking at me, ‘I didn’t think she’d actually use it. I’m really sorry about that.’

  ‘Look, Rusty. I think there’s a very good chance that either Clifton Ames or his son, Jack, murdered your mother. There’s also the possibility that Clifton murdered Nancy Hazlett back in 1952 to stop her from telling anyone about their marriage or the baby.’

  ‘Shit,’ Rusty said, stretching the word out into two syllables. ‘Are you telling me that Clifton Ames was the father of the baby up your chimney?’

  ‘I believe so, and I think you can help me prove it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I want you to promise me that you’ll call Andy Hubbard and tell him what you just told me. Got that?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, sounding like he meant it. ‘But how does that prove that Ames fathered that baby?’

  ‘I have a plan, and it involves making Clifton Ames believe that the cops are going to exhume Nancy’s body to test it for a DNA match to the baby.’

  ‘Are they actually going to do that?’

  ‘No, they don’t have to. Nancy’s brother, Thomas Hazlett, submitted a sample of his DNA for analysis. They already have a positive I.D.’

  Rusty looked relieved. ‘So what’s the point?’

  ‘If Nancy didn’t die a suicide, then there may be evidence that her neck had been broken, just like Kendall’s.’

  Rusty lowered his head, wrapped his arms around himself in a bear hug and was silent for a long time. When he looked up again, he said, ‘I feel sick.’

  I patted his knee. ‘I think we all do.’

  TWENTY-SIX

  ‘A female interviewer – a reporter in petticoats? I am very curious to see her,’ Ralph declared.

  Henry James, Portrait of a Lady, 1917

  After leaving Rusty, I headed home, stopping first at the grocery to pick up something for dinner.

  When I plopped a couple of rib eyes and a bag of Caesar salad on the conveyor belt, Penny said, ‘Have you heard the news?’

  ‘What news?’ I asked as Penny dragged my steaks over the scanner.

  ‘Tad Chew has been arrested!’

  I’d been rummaging in my handbag, searching for my credit card, but that got my attention. ‘What for?’ I asked, looking up, although I was pretty sure I knew the answer.

  ‘They say he’s the one who ran Rusty off the road. My boyfriend works for the towing company that took Tad’s car away to the police garage.’

  It was wrong, I knew, to rejoice in anyone going to jail, but the news fit in perfectly with my plans.

  After Penny bagged my items, I hurried back to Our Song where I stored my purchases in the fridge and went out looking for Paul. I found him at the end of the dock preparing to install the outboard – which he had finally agreed to consign to the care of a professional engine mechanic – on the runabout.

  ‘Quick,’ I said. ‘What was I wearing the day that reporter came calling?’

  Paul considered my question while I admired the greasy black smear on his cheek. ‘You’re asking me?’

  ‘The reporter, Madison Powers, gave me her card. I tucked it into the pocket of whatever I was wearing, but I can’t remember what that was.’

  Paul looked blank.

  ‘The day the water pump was delivered?’

  An eyebrow lifted. ‘Ah! I think it might have been your black jeans. I remember admiring the way they stretched over your …’

  I silenced him with a death ray. ‘The dirty clothes bag!’ I shouted in triumph, and hurried off to find and rummage through it.

  Madison’s business card finally in hand, I made the call. It went to her voicemail, of course – doesn’t anyone answer their telephones these days? – but when she returned my call fifteen minutes later, she seemed pleased to hear from me. After some small talk – during which I learned it was her birthday – I gave her the scoop about Tad Chew, explained the situation and told her what I wanted.

  When the article came out in the Maryland section of the Washington Post several days later, I was having a cappuccino with Kimberly at the High Spot.

  A suspect has been arrested and charged with hit and run in the accident which nearly claimed the life of a Tilghman County building contractor, Dwight ‘Rusty’ Heberling. Heberling was on a job-related errand when his motorcycle was struck by a late-model Mustang allegedly being driven by Thaddeus Chew of Elizabethtown, who fled the scene. Chew is the grandson of poultry magnate, Clifton J Ames II and a nephew of Tilghman County Council president, Jack Ames, who is running for Congress in Maryland’s Ninth district this fall. A source close to the Ames family said, ‘Whatever the outcome, Tad has our full support.’

  Heberling remains hospitalized but is expected to make a full recovery.

  In a related story, it was Heberling and his father, contractor Dwight Heberling, who discovered the mummified body of an infant girl hidden in the chimney of a Tilghman County house they were renovating.

  Responding to reports that state police were planning to exhume the body of a former resident of the house to determine if she was the mother of the dead child, a police spokesman said, ‘We continue to explore our options, but no decision has yet been made.’

  ‘I could kiss the woman,’ I told Kim. ‘This is a masterpiece.’

  ‘It’s true?’

  ‘Every word. Tad is cooling his heels in the local hoosegow, isn’t he, and as for the other …’ I flapped a hand. ‘The “police spokesman” could be anybody.’ I winked. ‘Or nobody.’

  ‘Tad was actually arrested?’

  ‘Yesterday, I understand. Everything she says in this article is true, including the unidentified police spokesman. Love it!’

  ‘What do you hope to accomplish?’ she asked, handing the newspaper back to me.

  ‘Honestly? I don’t know. But if Clifton Ames did murder his first wife, Nancy, and he thinks there’s a possibility that Nancy’s body will be exhumed …’

  Kim nodded. ‘I see, but you have to admit it’s a long shot. The man didn’t get to be the Chicken King of the Western World by being stupid.’

  ‘True, but smart men aren’t always smart when it comes to using and maintaining their power. Consider Bill Clinton, Elliot Spitzer, or that South Carolina governor who spent so much time “hiking the Appalachian trail.”’ I made quote marks in the air with my fingers.

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ I said, changing the subject, ‘is how the two of them could have married so young without their parents’ consent.’

  ‘It’s simple really,’ Kim explained. ‘Each county in Maryland sets their own rules for obtaining a marriage license. Back in the day, Elkton over in Cecil County was a regular Gretna Green for couples wanting a quick, quiet marriage, because until they changed the rules in 1938 there was no waiting period. Lots of famous people got married in Elkton, like Cornell Wilde, Debbie Reynolds, Willy Mays.

  ‘But you still had to meet their age requirements,’ she continued, ‘which was eighteen, I believe. In Tilghman County, however, you could get married without parental consent at seventeen, but they
weren’t very picky about proof of age back then. How old are you? Eighteen? All right, then. And if the girl was over fifteen, and could produce a doctor’s certificate proving she was pregnant, granting a marriage license was pretty automatic.’

  Kim broke her donut in half and dunked the torn end into her coffee. ‘What I don’t understand is how they managed to keep the marriage a secret. Tilghman County isn’t exactly New York City.’

  I’d wondered about that, too, but based on what Cap had told me about his sister, I had developed a theory. ‘I think she loved him, but he convinced her to keep the marriage a secret, claiming that he needed time to break the news to his family about the baby, or else he’d be disinherited. So she trusted him. Dropped out of school, had the baby alone. When the baby died …’ I paused. ‘She’d lost her mother, her child and her only brother was fighting a war halfway around the world – a POW who might never come home. Perhaps she felt she had nothing more to lose. Perhaps she threatened to tell his parents, so he killed her.’

  ‘Once Nancy Hazlett was dead,’ Kim said, ‘there was very little chance anyone would find out about the marriage. The original marriage certificates from that time period are on file at the Maryland Hall of Records, but the indexes for 1941 through June of 1951 are conveniently missing.’

  ‘Couldn’t you just visit the Hall of Records in Annapolis and look them up?’ I asked.

  ‘You’d think, but the licenses are arranged chronologically by year, then by month, then alphabetically by jurisdiction – that would be Tilghman County – then by the groom’s last name.’

  ‘Jeesh. So without the index you’d have to know exactly what you were looking for and, even then, you’d have to go through the file of records pretty much one by one. Too bad the index is missing.’