All the Butterflies in the World

by Rodney Jones

  “I don’t stand a snowflake’s chance in hell at a trial,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s a hard scratch ahead of you.”

  I awoke to the light of morning sneaking in through gaps in the foundation wall. “Sir?”

  My uncle stirred. “It’s cold down here.”

  I placed my palm on his forehead. “You’re hot, sir. You feeling all right?”

  “Mostly sorry. Can you find my medicine?”

  He took a nip of the laudanum, and a minute later, he was snoring. I wanted to check his wound, but there was no chance I’d be able to see anything. Even if I could, there wasn’t much I could do but look at it and fret over it.

  About thirty minutes later, I heard footsteps overhead, followed by the rattling of a key in the basement door.

  McNeil appeared at the top of the steps. “Come on. Let’s get a move on.”

  “My uncle’s needing a doctor… sir.”

  “He’ll get a doctor quick as we get to Woodstock.”

  “He needs one now. He’s ill with a fever.”

  “He’s sufferin’ due consequences is what he’s doin’. Get your asses up here.”

  I helped my uncle up the steep stairway. Winded from the effort, he dropped into a chair at the kitchen table, leaned over, and propped his head in his hands. I heard voices coming from somewhere within the house—a man and a woman arguing.

  “You wanna see a doctor then get a-movin’,” McNeil said. “Let’s go.”

  A lady with long wispy strands of white hair and not a single tooth showing behind her thin wrinkled lips burst through the door from the dining room. She looked as fired as a smithy, and just behind her, the proprietor was so flustered he could hardly walk.

  “Git out of my kitchen,” she snapped at McNeil.

  “Ma’am—” the sheriff said.

  “Out, out, out! Guests are not allowed in here.”

  “Ma’am, I’m the sheriff, and this is—”

  “I don’t care if you’re the king of England. Ain’t no one’s allowed…” She looked at Uncle Ed and gasped. “What happened here?”

  “Ma’am,” I said, “my uncle’s ill. Can you tell us where we can find a—”

  The sheriff swung around and grabbed my arm. “Boy, you don’t frown without my saying so. You savvy?” He turned to the lady. “I beg your pardon, ma’am. We’ll be getting out of your hair here shortly.”

  She stepped over to my uncle. “My Lord, you should have that looked at.”

  McNeil shook his head. “He’ll be fine, ma’am. I’ll have him looked at quick as we get to Woodstock.”

  She turned toward her husband. “Harmon, did you know about this?”

  “It isn’t none of our concern,” the man said.

  She glared at the sheriff. “I don’t care what this man’s done. He needs a doctor.”

  “Yes, ma’am, indeed.” McNeil turned to me. “Get your uncle up out of that chair, and let’s go.”

  “Doctor Daniels is just a short ways down High Street, fourth house on the left.” The lady wagged a finger toward the back of the kitchen. “You’ll see his sign out front.”

  Once we were in the wagon, however, the sheriff turned the wagon around and headed west, back up Main Street.

  “Sir, the doctor’s the other way,” I said.

  “Is that right?” McNeil spit over the side of the wagon.

  “She said High Street.” I pointed down the road behind us.

  Uncle Ed placed a hand on my arm and gave it a light squeeze. “Don’t worry about it. I don’t plan on dying.” He let out a raspy cough. “Not on his account.” He nodded toward the sheriff.

  We rolled along with the Black River on our right, then a mile or so out, we turned north, following the road up through Okemo Valley. Woodstock was another eight hours away.

  chapter seventeen

  Tess

  I spent days researching the Valentine Murder—much of it on the internet—not finding one relevant article. There were a lot of Valentine’s Day murders and massacres, violence of every kind, but none of them had anything to do with John, his family, or me. I called the Woodstock History Center. A guy there recommended I search the Rutland Herald archives at the public library. So I gave them a call.

  “How far back do the archives go?” I asked the girl at the other end.

  “It’s really quite impressive,” she said. “Let’s see. Oh, now what? This is… wait… uh… hold on.” I heard a light tapping, some shuffling, then mumbling. Thirty seconds later, she came back on the line. “March eleventh, 1872. And it’s being expanded every day.”

  I hopped into my car and drove to Rutland. But once I arrived, I was told that the library’s network was down—something to do with a search overload. They were working on it and were confident it would be up and running within a few hours.

  I called the County Clerk’s Office in Woodstock.

  An assistant boasted, “Oh yes, we have records dating all the way back to the mid-eighteenth century. But I’m afraid you’ll have to be here in person before we can do a record search. Department of County Records policy.”

  The following morning, after a cup of coffee, I gave Liz a call. “Hey, wanna go to Woodstock?”

  “Why?”

  “The Valentine Murder.”

  “Oh, shoot. I can’t go anywhere today. Dad’s pissed at me because Bill Hoyt got arrested for possession of drugs,” she said.

  “Bill Hoyt? What?”

  “Selling prescription drugs at school.”

  “Really?” I was surprised. Bill was an honor student. “So what does that have to do with you?”

  “Failure to report a crime, I guess.”

  “You’re seventeen years old, and you’re being grounded?”

  “I’m not grounded. He didn’t say that. I just can’t leave the house.”

  I was stuck going to Woodstock alone. First, I stopped at the sheriff’s office.

  The man behind the counter—Deputy Oran Wilhelm—grinned and shook his head. “1875? I wasn’t even born then.” He hollered over his shoulder, “Phil, do we keep records from the nineteenth century?”

  The man responded, “I’m on the phone, Oran.”

  Deputy Wilhelm turned back to me. “Hell, my granddad wasn’t even born then.”

  So helpful.

  Next, I went to the County Clerk’s office where I was assisted by a small, Jack Russell-terrier-type dude who seemed thrilled to show me historic documents. In jittery, abbreviated sentences, he started explaining the history of zoning in Woodstock. I realized halfway through his presentation that the records actually did date to the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, they had nothing to do with my murder, or anyone’s murder, for that matter.

  “You don’t have anything on criminal trials?” I asked.

  “Well, no.” His posture wilted, as though he’d just realized he had lost his audience. “We don’t keep records like that here. You’ll probably need to go to the courthouse for that kind of thing.”

  At the courthouse, a round-faced lady with a perfect Carol Brady ’do proved the most helpful, upfront, and maybe the friendliest person in the state of Vermont. I followed her up and down the corridors of that ancient castle as she stuck her head through doorway after doorway, asking this person and that, “Where do we keep the old trial records?”

  No one had a clue. She got on the phone and made a few calls.

  “Oh, is that right?” she said into the phone. “Oh well. Thanks, Gillian.” She hung up, looked at me, and shrugged. “I’m sorry. Apparently, a lot of the really old stuff was given to the Hysterical—the Historical Society.” She gave me a name and number, along with directions to the History Center, where I’d find Mrs. Parker, the director.

  The History Center, the first place I’d c
alled the day before, was two minutes from the courthouse, just as everything else in that town was. But Mrs. Parker was at home recovering from a bee sting. I again returned home empty-handed.

  That evening, I got a call from Nicole’s dad.

  “I have a check for you,” he said.

  “Oh. I almost forgot about that.” In my mind, everything physically associated with John was part of the same ephemeral experience, as if the book and the money had disappeared with him. It was all beginning to feel like some made-up fantasy.

  He laughed. “I wish I could almost forget about eleven thousand dollars.”

  “Uh… eleven thousand?”

  “And it’s about to get bigger. I sent the other coins to a guy in Albany. I told him we want twelve. He’ll probably come back with seven or eight, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Good God.”

  “Does your friend have a bank account?”

  “Umm. I don’t think so.” A check made out to John Bartley? A flat tire would be easier to deal with.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Well…” I wondered if I should have him make it out to me. But that might look suspicious.

  “Look,” he said, “I could get him cash.”

  “Oh? Would you?”

  “Um.” He hesitated. “Yeah, but he’s not going to want to carry that much cash around, is he?”

  “I know it’s weird, but that’s what he wants.”

  “Hmm. Okay. I’ll stop by the bank on my way home from work on Monday.”

  I lay in bed that night, refining my hypotheses regarding John’s appearance in my life. I did my best to steer clear of the more romantic, teenage-girly notions and focused instead on the most paranoid but sensible possibilities. Maybe the coins and book really had been stolen, and I was being duped into laundering them. The exhibit in Weston could be a part of an elaborate plot, one that also included the staff.

  But the scam had a gaping hole in the middle. John couldn’t possibly have guessed that I’d return to the museum. And I couldn’t see the point in him changing the story to something crazier when it was already dangling from the edge of absurd. And the money, eleven thousand in cash, was another hole. There didn’t seem to be anything preventing me from keeping it, claiming I’d gotten much less, or even disappearing into Canada with it. There were simply too many ways for such a scheme to backfire on him.

  I eventually fell to sleep with romantic, teenage-girly notions drifting about in my head.

  After breakfast, I called the Woodstock History Center. Mrs. Parker, the director, answered the phone. I asked her if they had records of nineteenth-century criminal cases.

  “Well,” she said, “some. A lot of the older records didn’t survive the years, I’m afraid. Are you interested in anything specific?”

  “I’m looking for information about a murder trial that took place in 1875.”

  “There were a few murders around here then. Do you have a name?”

  “John Bartley?”

  “Hmm, that doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “I believe they were calling it the Valentine Murder.”

  “Oh? Now that’s intriguing. May I ask why you’re interested in that?”

  I’d lose the old lady in an instant if I gave her anything resembling the truth. “My great-great-aunt was his lover,” I said, “and one of his victims.”

  “Really? Someone’s done a little genealogy work, I see. Let me see what I can find,” she said. “I’ll get back to you.”

  I hung up and called Liz. “You still grounded?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you as long as you keep insisting that I was grounded.”

  “Oh, no. I meant, are you still prohibited from leaving the house for a specified period of time?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Woodstock.”

  “John hasn’t shown up?”

  “No.”

  “Are you like in love with him or something?”

  “I just want to know what’s going on.” I told Liz about all the dead ends I’d encountered over the last two days. “I’m giving him ten days. If I don’t hear from him, then I’m going shopping for an iPhone with that money.”

  “Mr. Adam sold his coins?”

  “Yup. And don’t forget that I have the old book, too. It goes up for sale if John doesn’t show his face here soon.”

  “Tess, don’t you think it’s bizarre, him leaving that stuff with you?”

  “Ain’t the sharpest crayon in the box, is he?”

  “You’re so full of it.”

  “What?”

  “You’re in love.”

  I sighed. “Actually, I’m not so sure about the ten-day ultimatum.”

  “Crap. I was about to suggest we skip Woodstock and instead go to Manchester—a preemptive shopping trip.”

  About an hour later, Mrs. Parker called. “Miss McKinnon?”

  “Yes?”

  “I found it.”

  “The case files?”

  “Yes, and it is so interesting. You were named after your great-great-aunt?”

  I jumped to my feet and tried to control my voice. “I guess so.”

  “You really should see this.”

  I picked up Liz, and we drove straight to the Woodstock History Center, arriving a few minutes after eleven. The center was housed within a large early-nineteenth-century home called the Dana House. Since it was Saturday, the place was closed to the public.

  “By appointment only,” Mrs. Parker had assured me over the phone, making me feel special, in stark contrast to my various meetings the previous day.

  She met us at the front door, a small ancient-looking lady with pure white hair. “So nice to have young visitors here.” She smiled.

  She didn’t wear a trace of makeup, not even lipstick. I’d never seen more wrinkles on a face or met a woman so apparently comfortable with her degeneration.

  She led us through the museum, which was furnished in much the same way as the little museum in Weston, to a room near the back of the house. There, several yellow, brown, and sepia documents were arranged on a long table.

  The documents were titled with legal stuff, like Case No. VTWS-J.S. Bartley, Charge and Disposition, Motion to Produce Evidence, Request for Discovery, and Request for CR.

  Liz pointed at one. “Defendant’s answer to state’s motion for discovery?”

  “Law,” Mrs. Parker said. “A language of its own.”

  I looked at a document titled Motion for Grand Jury Testimony but could make little sense of it. A clear plastic bag contained a stack of brittle-looking brown pages. On the top sheet was line after line of elegant cursive gibberish.

  I pointed at the bag. “What is that?”

  “Well now, there’s usually a transcript that accompanies the recorder’s notes, but I don’t think that’s what this is. I’m not even sure we have the witness testimonies here. This”—she indicated an envelope lying on top of another handwritten document—“is what most intrigues me.” She slipped her knobby old fingers into a pair of plain white gloves then opened the sealed bag and slid its contents onto the table. “A love letter. How it ended up among the court records, I don’t know. But look at this. It’s addressed to your aunt.”

  My heart pounded against my ribcage. “My aunt?”

  “The young lady he murdered. Perhaps it was used as evidence.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “There are a number of things I find remarkable about the letter,” she said. “Most notably, the date—September the seventh.”

  While I was still trying to process the information, Liz blurted, “Wouldn’t that have been after her death?”

  “Exactly,” Mrs. Parker said. “This is r
ather puzzling.”

  She moved the letter to the side, revealing an envelope addressed to Miss Tess McKinnon, West View Road, Wallingford. Someone had circled the address and neatly printed UNDELIVERABLE above it.

  Mrs. Parker tapped the envelope. “And I wonder why he addressed it to Wallingford.”

  A tingle spread across my scalp, and goose bumps popped up on my arms. I dropped down into a nearby chair.

  Liz pointed at the letter. “Can I see that?”

  “Certainly.” Mrs. Parker gently slid the letter in front of Liz. “But please don’t handle it. The paper is brittle with age.”

  “‘Dear Tess,’” Liz read aloud, “‘I doubt you will ever see this letter, but if you should, please know firstly that I am sorry. I had only just finished the job I came here to do when the sheriff showed up with two others and arrested me.’” She gave me an astonished look. “Do you believe this?”

  Thoughts were spinning in my brain, conversations falling apart, fragmenting—there for a second, escaping, then reappearing nonsensically. I could only shake my head in response to her question.

  “Isn’t it fascinating?” Mrs. Parker’s eyes gleamed. “This young man was obviously disturbed, writing to a woman he’d killed weeks before and asking to be forgiven. Fascinating.” She placed a hand on Liz’s shoulder. “Go on, hon, read the rest.”

  Liz turned back to the letter. “‘My trial is set for the twentieth. I reckon maybe you already know that and probably the outcome, too. I, of course, came here to save my aunt and uncle from grief and suffering, but it seems all I have managed to do is cause more. My uncle has only twenty days left of his sentence, but he is so ill, I fear he will not make it out of here alive.

  “‘I can almost imagine what David felt, facing Goliath, though I could never understand his confidence. I am ready to accept my fate, but I don’t want to carry regrets to the grave, my biggest being my failure to tell you that I love you. I have loved you from the moment I first laid eyes on you. I pray this letter finds you. I take comfort in the belief it will and in knowing you are safe and well.