Death & the Gravedigger's Angel

by Loretta Ross

  “It’s a manual wringer, for doing laundry by hand,” she said. “Where did you find it?”

  “On a corner of the back porch. I knew it was a wringer, but where’s the rest of the washing machine?”

  “That wasn’t part of a washing machine,” she told him. “People used to wash clothes by hand, with a washboard. They’d have the wash water and the rinse water in big metal tubs. This thing clamped on the edge of the tubs. You’d wring the soap out before you put them in the rinse, then wring that water out before you hung them up to dry.”

  “Sounds like a pain in the butt. Where do you want it?”

  “We’re putting the non-furniture antiques in the parlor for now,” she said, pointing. “Gadgets on the right, clothes on the left.”

  Robin lugged it into the other room, his voice drifting out behind him. “This is gonna be a huge sale.”

  “Yeah. It’ll probably take two days to sell it all.”

  “Did you see the car?”

  “No, there’s a car?”

  “Yeah, in one of the outbuildings, under a tarp. An Impala, from the sixties. I’m not sure what year. Needs a bit of work, but it looks like it’s in really good shape.” He came back out of the parlor and leaned on the doorframe. “You know, I’m gonna be sixteen in a couple of months.”

  Wren shot him an amused look from under her lashes. “You don’t say?”

  Heavy footsteps crossing the porch interrupted their conversation and Wren glanced toward the open door, hoping to see Death. He and Randy were helping Roy and a couple of the sons with the bridge, and Wren was worried that he’d overdo it.

  Instead of her boyfriend, she found a deputy sheriff in the doorway.

  “Hey, Orly! What brings you out this way?”

  Orly Jackson had been a couple of years ahead of Wren in school. He was a short, balding man with a round face and a generally cheerful demeanor. At the moment he was scowling slightly, but she couldn’t tell if he was genuinely annoyed or putting on a show.

  “Just the woman I was looking for,” he said.

  “Me?”

  “No, him. Yes, you.”

  “What did you need me for?”

  He came inside and helped himself to a seat on a dust-cloth-covered settle. “I’m still trying to identify that dead horse thief.” He paused and cast Wren a slanted look. “You heard about the dead horse thief ?”

  Wren just looked at him. “This is East Bledsoe Ferry. I heard that Buddy Zimmer fell off his porch and I heard that Melanie Vansant was late to Sunday school. You really think I’m not gonna hear about a dead horse thief ?”

  “Whatever.” He took a 3x5 photograph and an evidence bag with a square of paper inside from his breast pocket and looked at them for a moment. Then he held out the picture. “Recognize him?”

  Wren shied away. “You want me to look at a picture of a dead guy? Really?”

  “Yeah. It’s not gory. He just looks like he’s sleeping, I promise. C’mon. Look at it!”

  Reluctantly, Wren took the picture he handed her and peeked at it. It was an old man, from the neck up. He lay on his back with his eyes closed. His face had an unnatural pallor. The wrinkles around his mouth and eyes looked like they had been molded in clay. His eyes were dark and sunken and his lips were blue.

  She shuddered. “He doesn’t look like he’s sleeping. He looks like he’s dead.”

  “Well, he is.”

  She gave Orly a withering look, but he just raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

  “Can I see?” Robin asked, coming over to look. “Oh, wow. He does look dead. Cool!”

  “I suppose we can be thankful there’re no brains showing.” Wren sighed.

  “He didn’t hit his head that hard,” Orly said. “It wasn’t the head trauma that killed him.”

  “No?”

  “No. The branch just knocked him out and made him fall off the horse. He actually died from alcohol intoxication. He drank himself to death.”

  Wren tried to hand the picture back. “That’s too bad.”

  “Yeah.” Orly held up a hand, refusing to take the photo. “But who is he? Or who was he? Look at it and tell me if you know him.”

  Wren looked at the picture again. “No, he doesn’t look familiar.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yeah. I mean, he looks a little familiar. Like someone you’ve seen in the grocery store, maybe? Or maybe he just looks like someone on TV. I don’t know. But I know I don’t know him. You act like you think I should.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “But why?”

  “Because,” Orly said, holding up the evidence bag, “he had a note in his pocket. It has your name on it, and I’m pretty sure that this is your handwriting.”

  three

  That same morning, Roy’s wife Leona was presiding over an auction at a small, two-bedroom, one-story brick ranch-style home on a treeless lot. They were selling the contents first, with the house itself set to go on the block at one p.m. Some of the younger Keystone sons and grandsons were with her, handling the set-up and calling while Leona kept an eye on things from the cash tent. It was a beautiful late summer day, and although she’d had them set up the tent for shade, she’d rolled up the sides to let the breeze through.

  The sale had just gotten under way when Sam and Roy returned with Wren, the Bogart brothers, and Deputy Jackson. Leona glanced up from her crossword puzzle and looked at her husband.

  “I don’t even want to know what you did to get brought home by the cops at this hour of the day.”

  “You malign me,” Roy said with mock indignation.

  “I know you.”

  “Well, missy, it just so happens you’re wrong this time. It’s not me that’s got the cops involved. Wren is a person of interest in a murder investigation!”

  Orly rolled his eyes. “She’s not a person of interest, she’s just helping us with our investigation. And it’s not a murder investigation, it’s just an accidental death investigation.”

  “Bah!” Roy waved one hand dismissively, pulled over a folding chair and helped himself to a seat. “Semantics.”

  “Leona,” Wren said, “look at this! It was in the pocket of the dead man’s Confederate cavalry uniform!”

  Orly Jackson handed over a note in a clear plastic evidence bag. It was stiff and stained with some dark liquid but still legible. They gathered to read it over Leona’s shoulder:

  Will of J. K., ex. 5/27/1923 in St. Clair Co., mentions. SAS db-CW at NARA confirms Andrews wounded at 1st b. of Booneville. Repaired bullet hole in left shoulder matches recorded wound. Ext. CW insig. is correct—some pins and patches appear to have been added later, e.g. removed WWII-era P.H. and returned to fam.

  “Wren wrote this,” Jackson said. “Look, I’m just trying to identify the guy. Wren says that Keystone and Sons must have sold the uniform he was wearing, but she couldn’t tell me when, or who bought it. Roy and Sam said you keep all the business records.”

  “He made me look at the picture of the dead guy,” Wren put in, sounding aggrieved. “I didn’t recognize him. And you don’t even want to know what that stain is!”

  “But what does this note mean?” Jackson persisted.

  “May I?” Death asked, taking the paper from Leona and studying it. “Wren was trying to authenticate that this was an actual Civil War uniform. She made these rough notes and tucked them into the pocket, and then forgot to take them out again. Right?”

  “Yes!” Wren said. “I wrote that the uniform was worn by a Civil War cavalryman named Andrews, apparently. I checked the Soldiers and Sailors database-Civil War at NARA—that’s the National Archives and Records Administration—and confirmed that he served, and that he was wounded at the First Battle of Booneville. There was probably a family story about him that I was authenticating. I was also able to confirm that his wounds matched damage visible on the uniform, and that the Civil War era insignia present was correct for his rank and unit. There were also some p
atches and pins that had been added later, and I noted that I removed a World War Two–era Purple Heart and returned it to the family.”

  “Wouldn’t they have taken it off if they wanted to keep it?” Jackson asked.

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s illegal to buy or sell a Purple Heart. And it’s disrespectful. And we don’t do it.”

  “I see. But the point is, you sold the uniform that my dead guy was wearing?”

  “We must have.”

  “So can you look in your records for me and find out who bought it?”

  Leona gave him a withering look. “You know, it’s really not that simple.”

  “Why not?”

  “Young man, we sell thousands of items every week. Keystone and Sons has been in business since the 1960s and Wren has been with us since she was in high school. In fact”—Leona peered at the note again—“given the teddy bears on her notepaper and the fact that this is written in metallic purple ink, I’m going to say it probably dates from when she was in college.”

  “But you keep records.”

  “Business records, yes, but only for six years and not for every item sold.”

  Orly sighed. “Well, can you at least look at the man’s picture and tell me if you’ve seen him at auctions before? Because it seems to me that there’s a good chance he’s the one you sold the uniform to.”

  “But then how did it get on a dead guy?” Death said.

  Leona gave him an odd look. “I’d imagine he put it on before he fell off the horse.”

  “Yeah, I don’t mean that dead guy.”

  “That stain on the paper?” Wren said. “The uniform is soaked in formaldehyde and, um, icky dead body stuff.”

  “That’s the technical term,” Randy Bogart said.

  “Okay,” Leona said. “That’s disgusting.”

  “We figure the old man must have taken it from a corpse,” Jackson explained. “We searched the nearby cemetery, but there’s no sign anyone’s been digging into any of the graves. Also, we talked to the guy who operates the back hoe and checked with the cemetery board. There’s no record of anyone being buried there within the last six months. Here.” He held out the photograph. “This is the dead man. It’s okay. He just looks like he’s sleeping.”

  Leona took the picture and peered at it. “He doesn’t look like he’s sleeping. He looks like he’s dead.”

  “Made you look. Do you know him?”

  “No.”

  “There’s no reason we would know him,” Wren said, exasperated. “I keep telling you, if the dead guy stole the uniform off the body of a previously dead guy, then the previously dead guy is the one who’s most likely the one who bought the uniform at our auction. He’s the one we’d know. The buried dead guy, not the drunk dead guy.”

  “Unless they were relatives or best friends or something and the drunk dead guy bought the uniform for his brother, or whatever, but then his brother decided to be buried in it. Or something,” Jackson countered.

  “Maybe the first dead guy stole the uniform from the drunk dead guy and the drunk dead guy was just stealing it back. Then he’d have been the one who bought it and you might know him after all,” Randy suggested facetiously.

  “Maybe they bought it together and had one of those things where the last one standing was supposed to inherit it but then the first dead guy cheated the drunk dead guy. That’d work too,” Death offered.

  Wren glowered at them. “Guys. You’re not helping.”

  “This is the only lead I have,” Orly said. “There must be something you can do to help me identify him! You know, he could have family somewhere that doesn’t even know he’s dead!”

  “Listen,” Death said, “an authentic Civil War uniform is something you’d put in the auction listing in the paper, right?”

  “Yeah, absolutely,” Wren agreed.

  “Okay, and based on your stationery choices, we figure this happened about, what? Four to eight years ago?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Right. And the paper keeps a copy of every edition they’ve put out. So”—Death looked to Jackson—“if you go back through the papers and read all the auction notices, you might be able to figure out where and when the uniform was sold. You also know that the uniform was worn by a Confederate Cavalry officer named Andrews who was wounded at the First Battle of Booneville. And in 1923, it was mentioned in a will that was executed at St. Clair County on May 27th. Look for someone with the initials J. K., and you might be able to identify the family that the uniform originally belonged to.”

  “How would that help?” Orly asked.

  “Maybe the drunk dead guy was a member of the family that sold the uniform,” Death reasoned. “Maybe he thought he was going to inherit it, but then it got sold out from under him, so when he found out the buyer was buried in it, he decided to steal it back. I mean, think about it. He had to be pretty attached to that thing to take it off a dead body and put it on!”

  The deputy sighed and his shoulders slumped. “Yeah, okay. I guess that’s a starting point. Thanks for your help. If any of you think of anything else, let me know?”

  They said goodbye and watched him walk away.

  When Jackson was out of earshot, Wren gave Death a puzzled look. “You really think that looking for J. K. from 1923 will help identify the person who bought the uniform, or the person who apparently stole it from a dead body?”

  Death shrugged. “Not so far as I can see. But at least I made him go away.”

  _____

  Susan Leopold was a small woman in her mid-fifties with sharp, dark features. She wore a dark red skirt suit with spiked heels, and a large metal clasp held her hair up in a knot on the top of her head. She walked down the hallway at a brisk pace, her heels clacking on the pale gray institutional linoleum, and even with his long legs, Death found it a challenge to keep up with her.

  When Robinson had introduced them, Death had only planned to ask her a few questions to help him start his investigation into the Anthony Dozier case. She was a woman who made things happen, though, and within two hours he was following her through the high-security wing of the state mental hospital in Fulton, on his way to interview Dozier in person.

  This part of the facility was locked down. They’d had to produce photo IDs and go through a metal detector to gain access. The individual rooms had locks on them, and there were uniformed guards among the medical staff.

  Apart from that, the place resembled a college dormitory more than the stereotypical insane asylum one might see on television. There was no evidence of padded cells or straitjackets and, when they passed a common area, the people milling around were supervised but unrestrained.

  “Do you know anything about the law, Mr. Bogart?” Leopold asked as they followed a guard down a side corridor.

  “Not a lot,” he admitted. “My grandmother was a DA in St. Louis in the seventies.”

  “And what did you learn from that?”

  “Don’t argue with Grandma.”

  The guard stopped in front of a door and knocked, then used a key card to unlock it. He turned the latch and opened it just a little.

  “Anthony? You have visitors.” He motioned for Death and Leopold to go on through. “I’ll be out here. Just knock when you’re ready to leave.”

  Death didn’t know what he was expecting on the other side of the door, but it wasn’t the slight, pale man who sat at a card table in his room playing Solitaire. He was slender and fair-complected, with light blue eyes and hair so blond it was almost white. The window shade, a solid sheet of fabric with no strings attached to it, was pulled all the way down and, even indoors, Dozier wore a floppy fisherman’s hat.

  Given the man’s coloring, Death suspected he’d learned the hard way to avoid the sun. He’d probably spent his whole tour in Afghanistan trying to avoid a sunburn.

  “Anthony,” Leopold said, her voice softening, “this is Mr. Bogart. He’s a private investigator who’s going to be helping me with your case. I nee
d for you to tell him what happened. Can you do that?”

  Dozier was staring at Death with a fixed intensity that made him feel uncomfortable.

  “What’s wrong with your breathing?” Dozier demanded.

  “What?”

  “Your breathing. It’s wrong. Too shallow and labored.”

  “Nothing.” Death shifted a little and gave the other man a small smile. “Really. Nothing. I’m fine.”

  Dozier continued to stare at him, eyes narrowed.

  “I’ve just chased your attorney halfway across Missouri,” Death joked. “I might be a little out of breath from that.”

  “You’re a Jarhead,” the man replied. “That shouldn’t be anything. What’s wrong with your breathing?”

  Death sighed and took a seat on the twin bed. The bed and table were bolted to the floor and the chair was made of lightweight, molded plastic. The only decoration in the room was an unframed photograph taped to the wall. In it, Dozier stood next to a smiling woman in a long dress and hijab, who was holding a bouquet.

  His late wife, of course. This was his wedding picture

  “I was wounded in action,” Death admitted. “I have a compromised lung capacity. But I’m fine. I deal with it.”

  “Can I—” Dozier moved nervously, feinting toward Death and almost hyperventilating himself now. “I know it’s intrusive. I need—I’m sorry. Can I—can I take your pulse?”

  Death offered the other man his left wrist, tilting his head and watching him, considering. As his fingers circled Death’s wrist and found his pulse point, Dozier’s tension eased a little.

  “Good,” he said. “Strong. A bit fast, but strong.”

  He let Death’s hand drop and reached, almost absent-mindedly, for Leopold’s. She gave him her wrist without a word, as if she were expecting this, and met Death’s eyes over Dozier’s head.

  She knew he does this. She could have warned me. Probably testing me or something. Lovely.

  “This is what you did, isn’t it?” Death asked, comprehension dawning. “When you were under attack, with all those wounded and you were the only medic. You went from person to person, checking their vitals to be sure they were still alive.”