“As well you should be freaked out. Can you come home now?”
“I’m on my way.”
Twenty-three
As soon as I arrived home, Colin, Rudy, and Sheriff Mort were all thundering toward my car in the snow and the cold, their breath billowing away in puffy clouds. If it hadn’t been for the fact that they were all upset—some more than others—I would have made some joke about how they reminded me of the zombies from some B horror movie. When I got out of the car, Rudy put his hands on his hips and said, “Thank goodness you’re all right.”
“Well, of course I’m all right. I wasn’t here when everything happened. The question is, Are you all right? How are the kids?”
“I told you everybody’s fine.” Then he hugged me, but I could tell he was upset. It wasn’t as if I had done anything to provoke this; he just needed to be angry with somebody in general. Quite often a spouse is the default punching bag.
“Why were you at your office this late?” Colin asked.
“I can be at my office as late as I want,” I said. I’d say I was a bit defensive, but that would be an understatement.
“You should be more careful,” Rudy and Colin both said at the same time.
“I can’t believe you went off and met that cousin guy of yours without taking anybody with you,” Colin chided.
“Wait just a doggone minute. I am a grown woman. I can go wherever I want. Hell, Colin, I’ve done far stupider things than this, and you know it,” I said.
After a moment’s pause, he said, “Well, that’s true.”
“See?” I said. I figured this was probably the only time that I’d be happy that Colin agreed that I’d ever been stupid. “There you go. In the grand scheme of things, this was barely stupid at all.”
“All right, all right, I need to talk to Torie,” Mort said. Rudy and Colin exchanged glances and then decided to leave me alone with Mort, although they took only about ten steps to the left and stood at the fence, watching the sheriff and me the whole time. Mort looked me straight in the eye and said, “What did you find out?”
“About what?” I asked.
“Somebody was after something,” he said. “You have to have something for them to be looking for it.”
“All right, I’m going to pretend for a moment that sentence made any sense whatsoever,” I said.
“You know what I mean. What is it you have?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Has anybody checked on my cousin Phoebe’s whereabouts?”
“Why?” he asked.
“Well, whoever did this went to great lengths to make sure he or she didn’t actually hurt anybody. Not even the animals. Which makes me think it’s somebody who knows me. Phoebe’s crazy. She could think I have some information that I’m not sharing with her.”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“She’s been working with Glen Morgan. Who knows what she’s thinking?”
“What about Glen, anyway? He could have followed you, seen that you didn’t go home, and then come out here to try to get whatever it is you have.”
I shrugged. “It’s a possibility.”
“Is there anybody else I should know about?”
“Honestly, it could be anybody in the Morgan family. Somebody in that family doesn’t want me to know either the truth behind the murder of Belle or the secret of who wrote some of the music. You know as well as I do that Clifton Weaver’s killer was somebody in his family. It has to be one of the Morgans.”
“So, where do we start?”
“With all the living cousins,” I said. “I don’t care how old they are, either. You don’t rule anybody out just because they’re old and feeble.”
“And your cousin Phoebe,” he said.
“Yeah, her, too. Although, seriously, Mort, I don’t think she killed Clifton Weaver. She’s out there and she can be petty, but she won’t hurt any living things. She’s a vegan.”
“Right, I’m going to base my investigation on her eating preferences.” He snickered.
“You know what I mean,” I said.
“I know.” He smiled then and glanced over at Rudy and Colin. Then he shook his head. “Call me if you find anything else out. I mean anything.”
“I will.”
“And you have no idea what the person was looking for.”
A recording of “The Blood Ballad,” I was fairly certain.
“No, not a clue.”
* * *
Needless to say, sleep eluded me. So I got up and went to my office and decided to pore over everything I’d discovered in the past few weeks.
The copy of “The Blood Ballad” that I had made was safely tucked away in the locked desk drawer in the guest house at the back of the Kendall House. I had thought for a moment that since Glen Morgan was the only person who knew I had a copy of the song, the vandal at our house had to have been him. But then I realized that he could be working with any number of relatives or friends on this “investigation” of his, so he could have told any of them. And, seriously, if I’d been after the song, I would have assumed that the person who turned it over to the authorities had made a copy. So anybody trying to get their hands on this song could have just assumed I had a copy. So I was back to the fact that anybody could have set off that smoke bomb.
In truth, it could have been any one of several people. Maybe there was a war going on in the Morgan family over who could get a book written faster. I realized there could be people involved that I knew nothing about.
Not to mention that whoever had the original would be in serious danger if anyone discovered they had it.
At 1:00 A.M., I plopped down at my desk, rubbed my eyes, and started going through papers. I moved aside the photographs and bird standings that Eleanore had given me earlier and then realized that I hadn’t even looked at the pictures from the horse show. I glanced through them and found several of Matthew on Cutter. Basically, he’d gotten first place for riding around the ring without falling off.
The girls had competed in the egg race, where they’d had to hold an egg on a spoon while their horses wove in and out of plastic cones. The last one with an egg on a spoon won. You wouldn’t think it would be that difficult a task, but it actually is. Cute pictures, I thought, and set them aside.
I found the photocopies of yearbook pictures that I’d made with Colin back when I first started investigating this case and we’d gone to Progress. I went through every face in the grade before Clifton Weaver, the grade Clifton Weaver was in, and the grade after him. In the grade after him was one of my uncles. I also found several of my second or third cousins scattered about in the different classes. Looking at a photo of the class the year before Clifton, I noticed somebody I wasn’t expecting: Leo King. It didn’t really surprise me, though. A lot of people from Progress move farther north to be closer to St. Louis, where there are better jobs.
I knew I was missing something, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I also knew that most likely I would never figure out who had killed Belle. It really could have been anybody. It could have been Scott Morgan’s wife, Florence, or any woman who was in love with him, including my great-grandmother.
Sighing heavily, I glanced around my desk for some divine guidance, as if staring at the empty water bottle or the jar of antique buttons would suddenly help me figure it all out. Instead, I happened to get a really good look at the corner of one of the photographs from the horse show. I was fairly certain my mystery Percheron was in the photo.
Snatching the picture, I scoured it for a clue as to who owned the horse. The horse show had been sponsored by the Granite County Saddle Club and been held down on the fairgrounds in the southwestern part of the county. You couldn’t get farther away from New Kassel and still be in the county. People from several counties all around had entered the show.
I got out my magnifying glass. I swore the horse in the photo was the Percheron out in my corral right then. It was in the distance behind Matthew. The owner, or
the rider, was obscured by Cutter’s hindquarters. I could barely make out the number on the saddle: 183.
All I needed to do was call up Bonnie Overkamp and ask her who owned number 183, and our mystery horse would be solved. Bonnie owned the facilities where most of the horse shows around were held, and she always kept records of the shows. It would have to wait until morning, of course. It was far too late to call.
Twenty-four
The next morning, I called Bonnie Overkamp right away but just got her answering machine. I left a message and went about my business. On my list of things to do was Christmas shopping. Helen Wickland and I usually did at least one day of Christmas shopping together, because we needed each other in order to keep focused and sane while deep in the belly of the beast known as the mall. Neither of us liked big crowded places, and so neither considered it fun to make a trip to the mall in south county at Christmastime. And it wasn’t as if I could just skip the mall, since my daughters had both requested items from Hot Topic, and there certainly wasn’t a Hot Topic in New Kassel. If there had been, we’d have had little old ladies throwing rocks through the windows, I’m sure.
It took no less than twenty minutes just to get into the parking lot and find a space. The first thing we did was head to Auntie Anne’s for a pretzel. Then we meandered our way down to the lower level, where Hot Topic was located. “I’m usually finished shopping by now,” Helen said.
Helen and I go way back. The first time I walked into her chocolate shop and ordered a pound of fudge, we clicked. Then I volunteered to churn fudge at one of the festivals, and our friendship was cemented. Believe me, you do a lot of bonding over stirring fudge for hours on end.
“No, you’re not,” I said. “You say that every year, but it’s never true.”
“Oh,” she said, thinking about what I said for a moment. “You know, you’re right.”
“Me? I wait until the last minute, and I’m still usually a gift short come Christmas morning.”
“You really are terrible,” she said.
“I know.”
We turned into the Hot Topic store and were greeted by a someone with five studs in his lip—no, wait, make that her lip—pink hair, and an eye patch. The Ramones were playing overhead, and Helen plugged up her ears with her fingers. “Hey, no, this is good music. Be happy they’re not playing the scary stuff,” I said.
“Oh. This is the good stuff?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll try to remember that.”
“Can I help you find something?” the girl with the eye patch asked.
“Yes,” I said. I pulled out my list and read it off to her. “I need a My Chemical Romance T-shirt and a Kyo hat.”
“Sure thing,” she said.
Helen looked at me and said, “What the hell is a Kyo?”
“It’s an anime character who evidently is an orange cat at the same time he’s a teenager.”
Helen appeared confused. “Do you find that the Japanese are a bit more…”
“You know, Helen, I don’t question it. I just go with it,” I said.
“And what’s a romantic chemical?” she asked.
“A band,” I said. “Let me do all the talking, okay?”
“Sure thing,” she said.
“I still have to get Naruto wrist bands,” I said to myself.
“Your children are so weird.”
Four hours later, we had eaten cookies and pizza—neither of which was as good as what we could get in New Kassel—and we’d gotten separated twice. I realized then that cell phones definitely have their upside. Years ago, we would have just wandered around the mall lost; now I just picked up the phone and called her, and two minutes later we were back together.
The second time we got lost, we decided we’d been there long enough. Helen and I dragged ourselves from the mall, only to realize we’d come out on the wrong side. The car was way down by the buffalo wing place, and we were up by the bookstore. “I’m not walking back through there,” she said. “I’d rather walk in the cold.”
“Me, too,” I said, and so we walked all the way around the mall in the cold, hauling what felt like 472 packages. And, of course, my cell phone rang. “Oh, Helen, can you get my phone? It’s in my jacket pocket.… No, not that one, the other one.… That’s right. Thanks.”
“Hello?” Helen said. “Hang on.”
Covering the mouthpiece with her hand, Helen said, “It’s Bonnie Overkamp.”
“Oh, well, put the phone up to my ear,” I told her. “Hello? Bonnie?”
“Hi, Torie, what’s up? We’re not having any riding camps or classes for another six weeks,” Bonnie said.
“No, that’s not why I was calling. Back in the fall, when we had the horse show at the fairgrounds…”
“Yes,” she said.
“I know this is going to sound strange, but can you tell me who the owner or the rider of horse number one eighty-three was?”
“Why?”
“Well, you may have heard that somebody dumped a Percheron at our place,” I said.
“Oh, vaguely. Somebody mentioned that, but I thought they said you bought one.”
“No, it just appeared at our house, and, well, there was a Percheron at the fall show that looks just like the one in our stables right now. Maybe they don’t realize we have their horse,” I said.
“I gotcha,” she said. “No problem, if you can just hang on a second.”
“Sure thing.”
Helen and I finally made it to her car. She unlocked the trunk and took my packages, then handed the phone off to me. I helped her load up the car, waiting for Bonnie to return. “We should have bought some chocolate,” Helen said.
“Why?” I asked, as if one ever needed to ask that question.
“For the wait,” she said, and pointed to the line of cars waiting to exit the mall. “We could be here for eternity.”
Bonnie came back on the line just as my call waiting clicked. I glanced at the caller ID and saw the number for Leo’s music shop. In addition to having Leo record some of the music for my father, I had asked him to put a few things on DVD and CD so I could give them to my sister as a Christmas present. I assumed that’s why he was calling. “Hang on, Bonnie. I’ve got a call on the other line.”
“That’s all right. I don’t have those records upstairs, so it’s going to take me awhile to find them. I’ll call you back when I get to them, okay?”
I just let the other call go into voice mail. “Sure, Bonnie. Look, I know you’re probably really busy this time of year, but as soon as you can let me me know, I’d appreciate it.”
“I understand,” she said. “It’s not a problem.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Helen and I gave a collective sigh of relief when we passed the exit ramp on 55 for Meramec Bottom Road 55. That meant we were officially leaving the congestion of south county. Sure, parts of Jefferson County were congested, too, but not like the areas around the mall. With each mile south we traveled, we relaxed a little more, and finally we hit the Granite County marker.
“Helen, can we stop by Ona?”
“Why?” she asked. “You want to buy a cuckoo clock?”
“No, I want to speak to Frank Mercer.”
“Who’s that?”
I filled her in as best as I could while she made the appropriate turn for going to Ona. I didn’t go into a lot of detail, but I told her about the recordings, Glen Morgan, the connection my family had with the Morgans, and the body of Belle Mercer Morgan appearing in Progress.
“You really do keep busy,” she said.
“I would die of boredom otherwise,” I replied, thinking of my stepfather. “You know, Colin hates being mayor.”
“I know,” Helen said, and put on her blinker. “Everbody knows. I mean, he’s not slacking or anything. He’s doing his job. It’s just so uninspired.”
“Yup,” I said. Helen pulled into the gas station. “Okay, stop here. I’ll ask if anybody knows where
Frank lives.”
Believe it or not, there are still places in America where you can hop out of the car and inquire about a local person’s address. One time, at least ten years after my grandparents had died, I got lost driving around the hills surrounding Progress. I stopped to ask a woman for directions, and she wanted to know who I was and why I was wandering around “her roads.” I told her my grandparents had lived around there—which was at least ten miles from her house—and when I told her who they were, she suddenly smiled and gave me directions. In these rural communities, people know who their neighbors are. Or were, as the case may be.
I walked into the convenience store and asked the lady behind the counter if she knew where Frank Mercer lived. “Well, no, not exactly,” she said. “Hey, Troy, come tell this lady how to get to Frank’s.”
“You go back out here, make a right, go up the first street that has a water pump in front of it. It goes back up on the hill, and his house is the first one on the right. Highest point in Granite County,” Troy said.
“Thank you.”
When I got back to the car, I relayed the directions to Helen, and within minutes we were pulling in his driveway. “I’m glad we brought your Jeep. That was a pretty steep hill.”
“You don’t say,” Helen replied.
We got out of the car and noticed right away that there were two bloodhounds sitting on the front porch. The house was a stately white-and-black building with a wall of windows facing the Mississippi River and the state of Illinois. From Frank’s driveway, you could see for miles. I glanced to the south and could see New Kassel in the distance. If I’d had a telescope, I most likely could have seen the Gaheimer House.
Frank Mercer had a well—most likely for decoration—sitting in the front yard. It was covered with Christmas lights. I glanced at Helen, who eyed the bloodhounds with quiet fear.
As soon as my hand touched the fence that enclosed the front yard, the dogs leapt to their feet and began barking.
The Blood Ballad Page 20
