Grave Undertaking

by Mark de Castrique

  “But someone might have thought his testimony would be more damaging with the jury.”

  “They still pulled jail time.”

  “Yeah, but I doubt that was any consolation to Sammy. Who were these guys?”

  “The local crook was a contractor named Duncan Atkins. He’s still in jail. I don’t know about the others.” She scowled. “I’ll have to ask Cliff Barringer. He was our court reporter at the time. He’d have notes on the other men as well, if the jerk bothers to keep them.”

  I got up, realizing I’d gotten as much information as I could.

  “Thanks. Let me know what you find out,” I said. “This visit’s between us.”

  “Play it however you want.” She stood up but didn’t walk around the desk. “Tell Susan to relax. I’m sure Sammy managed to get himself popped without any help from her or Walt. Probably a two-timing husband who got caught on camera.”

  I opened the door, and then turned back. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  “Hell no.”

  The first thing I noticed when Susan opened her door was the table was no longer covered in feathers and glue, but set with good china and silver for two. The gas logs burned low in the fireplace and the tree at the edge of the hearth sparkled with white lights and a host of angels. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir shared the air with the aroma of brownies. “Wow,” was all I managed to say.

  “Just a little something I threw together after work. I hope the tossed salad doesn’t taste like ink.” She held up her stained fingers. “This stuff is murder to get off.”

  I took her hand and kissed a fingertip. “I’ll suggest to Ewbanks they try a new flavor.”

  “The London broil just has to sit a few more minutes. Would you change your standard beer order for a glass of merlot?”

  “I’m in for the whole package.”

  She returned from the kitchen with two rounded wineglasses and we sat on the sofa. The light in the room glowed with the mixture of candle, fireplace, and tree. I’m not the most romantic guy, but the scene made me feel we should have been on a Harlequin cover. And I liked it.

  “To us,” I said, clinking my crystal glass against hers.

  “To us.”

  We sat suspended, wineglasses in hand, ignoring the rings from Susan’s phone. Then the speaker from her answering machine overpowered everything.

  “Susan,” said Cassie. “God-damn-it, I’m sorry. I just got free to call and I hoped to reach you before the broadcast. They’re idiots and I’m off the story. Get Barry and get a lawyer.”

  Chapter 10

  After the dramatic open culminated in the title NEWSCHANNEL-8 SIX O’CLOCK REPORT, Matt Markle appeared on Susan’s TV, barely able to contain his excitement. The well-coiffed anchorman looked like he wanted to crawl over his news desk and into the room with us.

  “NEWSCHANNEL-8’s ongoing coverage of the case involving the body discovered in the Eagle Creek Methodist Church cemetery has learned a major breakthrough came this afternoon. With details, here is NEWSCHANNEL-8 investigative reporter Cliff Barringer.”

  The camera zoomed out to reveal Barringer sitting smugly on the right of the set. He nodded to his colleague, and then gravely stared into the camera as if ready to announce an impending nuclear attack. The shot changed to a close-up with Cliff Barringer, Investigative Correspondent written underneath him. The guy must have gotten a promotion during his on-air introduction.

  Susan grabbed the remote and turned up the sound. Wine and dinner were forgotten.

  “Thank you, Matt. Sources close to the investigation have told me Sheriff Horace Ewbanks of Walker County has identified a print on the alleged murder weapon which could break this case open. Last night, my exclusive report named Walter Miller, a local CPA, as the owner of the gun. In Mr. Miller’s statement to authorities, he asserted that the pistol had been stolen from him at an unspecified time in the past. The identification of a fingerprint now puts that claim in doubt.”

  The camera zoomed back to allow room for a visual to appear over Barringer’s left shoulder. A composite of two photographs shared the screen—a grainy black and white of Walt that looked like it had been enlarged from some Kiwanis Club speaking event and a cleaner one of Susan at last month’s groundbreaking ceremony for the new O’Malley Surgical Clinic. NEWSCHANNEL-8’s graphics department had placed a highlight effect on her smiling face. I heard Susan take a sharp breath.

  Barringer paused to make sure the director had brought in the pictures, and then continued, “The print on the pistol is unmistakably that of Dr. Susan Miller, a surgeon with the O’Malley Clinic in Laurel County and the daughter of the gun’s owner. Sheriff Ewbanks would neither confirm nor deny that Dr. Miller is a subject of his investigation, only stating that he expects her full cooperation wherever the evidence might lead.”

  Mercifully, the photos of Walt and Susan disappeared as the camera zoomed back to Barringer.

  “However, I have learned,” continued the correspondent, emphasizing his favorite pronoun, “that Dr. Susan Miller is the estranged live-in girlfriend of the victim, private detective Samuel Calhoun.”

  “Estranged live-in girlfriend!” Susan erupted beside me. “I dumped the bastard,” she shouted at the bearded wonder destroying her life. “Why don’t you just pronounce me guilty and be done with it?”

  Whether Cliff Barringer did declare her guilty was impossible to tell because Susan’s outburst covered his closing comments. The camera switched back to Matt Markle.

  “Thank you, Cliff,” effused the anchorman. “And there is a further twist to this rapidly unfolding story. Our own newsroom is not without personal connections to the case. News director Cassandra Miller is the sister of the gun’s owner and the aunt of Dr. Susan Miller. In the interest of the unbiased reporting you have come to expect from NEWSCHANNEL-8, we are taking special measures to insure our coverage remains above reproach.”

  The camera zoomed out to reveal the anchorman now joined at the desk by a distinguished, older, white man with gray hair and chiseled features. He wore a pressed blue suit, burgundy tie, and crisply starched white shirt. His pale blue eyes stared straight into the camera. He had the bearing to be sitting in the Oval Office of the White House.

  “And now, with some additional comments, here is the Chairman of Mountain View Broadcasting and owner of WHME-TV, Nelson Darius.”

  “Good God,” muttered Susan. “The station owner. What’s he going to do, fire Cassie on the air for being my aunt?”

  “Thank you, Matt,” said Darius in a tenor voice not quite devoid of its mountain twang. “And thank you, viewers of NEWSCHANNEL-8, for making us your number one choice. Ten years ago, I made a commitment that WHME-TV would be the premier information source for western Carolina. To help me in that quest, I recruited and hired Cassandra Miller, a native of our region and an experienced, award-winning producer for CBS News. Under Cassie’s guidance, the NEWSCHANNEL-8 team has operated with integrity and dedication to fulfill my dream. They will continue to do so.”

  Darius turned his head. A second camera framed him in a close-up, and his tone shifted from serious to grave. “However, the body unearthed in the Eagle Creek cemetery has taken Cassie Miller from news manager to relative of those involved in the case. She and I have agreed this is not the appropriate perspective from which to produce this particular story. Although I have total confidence in Cassie, our newsroom policy dictates that she not be involved in the coverage of this investigation. Instead, I shall personally direct our reporting efforts with the capable assistance of WHME-TV’s Public Affairs Manager, Charlene Kensington, and the full-time assignment of Cliff Barringer. I want to assure our viewers we will follow this story wherever it leads, without bias and without compromise.” He paused and leaned a little closer to the lens. “You have my word.”

  The camera pulled back to include the anchorman again. Matt Markle nodded respectfully to his boss. “Thank you, sir. We welcome you to the news team.”


  “What a suck-up,” said Susan.

  The station took a commercial break and Susan turned off the set. Immediately, the telephone rang.

  “Would you get it?” she pleaded. “It might be Cassie, but if it’s not, I’m out.”

  The caller asked for Susan and identified herself as Melissa Bigham of The Gainesboro Vista.

  “Hello, Melissa Bigham of The Gainesboro Vista,” I replied warmly. Susan shook her head that she didn’t want to speak with the reporter. “This is Barry Clayton.”

  Melissa worked for the small daily in town. Last year the young woman and I had collaborated on a news story that trapped a killer. It proved to be an exclusive that gave the novice journalist a national byline when the wire services picked it up. I trusted her as much as anybody can trust a reporter.

  “Hi, Barry. You want to give me Susan’s official no comment.”

  “No comment.” Susan stiffened and I winked at her. “Now that we’ve gotten her official response out of the way, what do you think’s going on?”

  Melissa laughed. “You’re questioning me? Well, off the record, I’d say Cliff Barringer is trying to skewer Cassie Miller.”

  “What?”

  “Newsroom politics, pal. It’s payback time. Maybe you were gone, but when Cassie joined NEWSCHANNEL-8, the first thing she did was remove Barringer from the anchor spot. She couldn’t fire him because he had a contract. He was reassigned to court reporting. The man’s ninety percent ego and ten percent bullshit, but he knows where a lot of bodies are buried and will get his exclusive now and then.”

  I thought of the irony. Cassie demoted Barringer and he wound up covering the trial of Sammy Calhoun’s big story. “Who’s his source on this one?”

  “Wish I knew. I’ve talked to several guys in Ewbanks’ department and been stonewalled. Same for the other reporters. Maybe Barringer’s bugged the sheriff’s phone.”

  “Maybe.”

  Melissa made another attempt for information. “What do you think the comment Susan is not commenting on would be if she was commenting?”

  “Nice try. My turn to say no comment.”

  “Not even about the estranged live-in girlfriend?”

  Melissa knew how to punch the right buttons.

  “She dumped him,” I said. Susan shot me an alarmed glance. “Years before he disappeared,” I added.

  “Years?” questioned Melissa.

  “Yes, two qualifies as years.”

  Susan stood up and started toward me. I should have taken that as a sign to shut up.

  “Melissa, let me say no one is more surprised than Susan by this turn of events. If she fired her father’s pistol for target practice, a fingerprint is perfectly consistent with that use.”

  “So, she did fire the gun for practice?”

  “That’s far more likely than she shot an old boyfriend, hauled his body up to Eagle Creek cemetery, and buried him single-handedly.”

  She laughed again. “You’re right. I can’t see her doing it single-handedly. Where were you seven years ago?”

  “Patrolling the streets of Charlotte. Look, I promise when Susan is ready to comment, you’ll be the one I recommend she contact.”

  “Fair enough.” She gave me a string of numbers and had me repeat them just to check I had written them down.

  As soon as I placed the phone on the cradle, it rang again.

  “I can’t take this,” said Susan. “Don’t answer.”

  The voice on the machine was a reporter from the Asheville paper.

  “Let’s take dinner to the cabin,” I said. “They can’t bother you if they can’t find you.”

  The twenty-minute drive from Susan’s condo proved to be a good transition from the paralyzing shock of the newscast to the practical actions we could take to go on the offensive. When we parked at the cabin, Susan was determined to make three phone calls—one to Sheriff Ewbanks protesting the public disclosure of her name, the second to her Aunt Cassie to find out what had happened at the station, and the third to Melissa Bigham giving an exclusive on her relationship with Sammy Calhoun and her reaction to the events.

  I would make one call. I wanted to know what Tommy Lee thought Ewbanks would do next and how we could best defuse it.

  While I set out plates for our progressive dinner, Susan dialed the Walker County Sheriff’s Department. Ewbanks was in and immediately took her call.

  Susan managed to inject her voice with the proper degree of indignation, and I gathered from her end of the conversation the sheriff tried to appease her anger. Then the expression on Susan’s face shifted.

  “Who’s Mabel Potter?”

  Ewbanks must have told her because she sighed and lost the accusatory tone.

  “Yes, I was angry,” she said. “Sammy had borrowed the gun and skipped town without returning it. It belonged to my father and I wanted it back.” A long silence served to intensify the color in her cheeks. “That’s not true,” she argued. “I thought maybe he’d left it in the apartment. I had a key and found the apartment cleaned out. That was after he left. She’s got it wrong!”

  Ewbanks made the mistake of giving her an order.

  “I’ll say what I want to the press. The problem will be finding a reporter not flooded by the leaks from your department.” She slammed down the phone.

  “Well, I’d say that went well,” I quipped, trying to bring Susan down off the ceiling. “Who’s Mabel Potter?”

  “Sammy’s landlady. She told Ewbanks I came over to his apartment looking for him with a gun.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “She’s botched the timeframe. I went there after he’d moved out. This Mabel Potter told me she’d received a letter from Sammy with a month’s rent in cash and a notice that he’d moved to Texas. I was furious. I probably said I’d like to kill him and I was looking for my gun. Now that he’s been found murdered she’s got the sequence out of order.”

  “What happened to his stuff?”

  “That’s the weird part. Potter said movers had showed up and loaded everything on a truck. Nothing was left behind.”

  “And no record of where it was delivered?”

  “Gone without a trace.”

  “Anybody could have sent movers,” I said.

  “What are we up against?”

  “You said something about a key.”

  Tears broke through her fury. “Oh, Barry, it’s not what it looks like. Sammy mailed me a key soon after he got the apartment. He said he wanted me to have it. He made it sound like an innocent request—someone he trusted to have access to his apartment in case he was gone for awhile. I meant to send it back. I swear I never used it till I went looking for Dad’s gun and that’s when the landlady found me there. God, was I stupid.”

  “Did he say why he wanted the gun?”

  “He had a meeting and needed some extra insurance. I knew he had a license in New York, and my pistol would be easier to conceal.”

  “How’d you get it to him?”

  She paused and thought for a moment. “I met him in the hospital parking lot. He said he was working on another big story for Cassie. I guess I felt sorry for him. She had told me about the shooting in New York.”

  “The convenience store holdup?”

  “Cassie told you?”

  “Yes. She also said it was a lie. He used it to get her to hire him.”

  Susan started pacing the length of my fireplace. “That snake. Aunt Cassie never told me. She hates to be duped.”

  “Give her a call and then Melissa. I can guarantee this landlady’s story will leak and you’d better get your version out first. Even though the Vista is a small paper, the other news outlets will have to take notice and quote it.”

  Susan got an update from Cassie. The situation stood as Nelson Darius described it. Cassie was removed from all aspects of the Sammy Calhoun investigation. She had considered resigning, but thought she had a better chance of helping Walt and Susan if she went along. It wasn’t the policy o
f being detached from the story that bugged her as much as the terrible judgment Nelson Darius and Charlene Kensington had used in putting Cliff Barringer’s reports on the air without independent confirmation. Barringer wouldn’t reveal his source, and Darius savored the exclusives too much to hold them.

  We decided I should call Tommy Lee at home before Susan contacted Melissa Bigham. He answered the phone.

  “You see the news?” I asked.

  “No. I was at the office and just got in. Patsy gave me the summary. What a damn mess.”

  “They’re convicting Susan on the news set. We’re going to fight back.”

  “She get a lawyer yet?”

  “No. Her Aunt Cassie said she should.”

  “Hold off a day. Sometimes getting a lawyer just makes you look guilty. Nobody’s charged her yet. I bet the most Ewbanks will do right now is to label her a material witness. I’m going to call my contact in Ewbanks’ office and see if I can get more information.”

  Bridges, I thought, but I wasn’t supposed to know that. “You think there’s any chance your source is talking to this Cliff Barringer?”

  “No way. Every officer I know hates the squirmy son of a bitch. Especially Ewbanks. There’s some other agenda here. Barringer must have some dirt on somebody.”

  “What else can we do?” I asked. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Find the real killer,” Tommy Lee said. “That grandstanding D.A. Darden Claiborne and Horace Ewbanks are searching for facts to convict Susan. She’s got the most circumstantial against her. I guarantee you they’ll miss anything that leads to another conclusion. You need to discover who else wanted Calhoun dead.”

  “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question all right, and I understand why you can’t help me find the answer.”

  “Barry, who said that? Between us we’ve got three eyes, four ears, and a brain and a half. Hell, I’d take them on with less. I just can’t do it publicly.”

  “Cassie told me that Sammy Calhoun was supposed to be a witness in the trial of the bid-riggers. You know the case?”