Death in Living Gray

by John Clayton

  The sheriff didn’t acknowledge the camaraderie of a shared secret, but looked up at Jack Senior firmly, all the while twisting his hat. “Then, what it comes down to is that some person or persons stole the jewels, killed an accomplice or witness, put the body in there, and accidentally left the bracelet in the excitement. He or they would have had to know about the compartment.” The sheriff didn’t belabor the point: his implication was pretty clear: it had to have been one of the Abernathys. But he was even-handed. “We’ll make inquiries to see if anybody saw anything unusual around here back at the time of the ball. And if you’ll give us a list, we’ll check with your cousins to see if any of them are missing.”

  ***

  J. Augustus Pickerill, III, was an unimpressive sight: short, skinny with curly reddish hair shot with gray. He’d just arrived with his bleached blond and svelte wife, Cassandra, in his bleached blond and svelte Mercedes driven by his bleached blond but not so svelte butler cum chauffeur, Maurice. They said around here that Pickerill’s looks were deceiving because he’d made a lot of money on Wall Street and then bought the old Whitaker Place over on the other side of the county seat just after he had acquired Cassandra from Brooklyn by way of Hollywood. That’s what some said. Others claimed that he made his money wholesaling sauerkraut in New York City; some said that he was old New England money and went to Yale; and still others that he was mob connected. But the latter guess was probably due to the appearance of Maurice, who looked like an evil albino bodyguard in a kung fu movie.

  Nobody knew anything much for sure except that when he got here Pickerill made a big social splash, giving money for a wing on the county hospital and holding an annual Confederate Memorial Day Ball on the first Friday night after May 31. Five years before, just after he had renovated the main floor of the old Whitaker Place, he invited all the wealthier white people in Mason County to come in period costume. The locals probably would never have worked themselves up to put on such a ball but they were never wont to turn down a free drink––so they attended en masse, the men dressed up as majors or colonels even though most of their ancestors were privates. Mr. Pickerill hadn’t invited any of the black members of the community, but Henry Adams took it upon himself to come anyway, dressed as General Lee, complete with white beard—putting on whitey it used to be called. Some of the local gentry objected––it was a desecration of a holy memory––but others thought it was pretty funny, especially those who thought that there was nothing holy about the desecration of the land brought on by the war. It didn’t hurt that Henry, in his capacity as blacksmith, kept the gentry’s expensive horses walking. So the ice was broken. The annual party became an open house and anyone could come as long as they wore a period costume. Some of the commuters even came in the Yankee uniforms of their forebears. But Henry was the only Black since most of the others had outgrown the art of getting what they wanted with jokes. Relations between the races in Mason County were semi-tolerable as long as whites didn’t mention the Confederacy or blackface minstrel humor.

  “What you got?” J. Augustus shouted at the sheriff as he strode past me from one of the back doors of the car. Maurice was slowly ambling around to open the door on the other side for Cassandra when suddenly the two Dobermans, which were riding in the front passenger’s seat, started a cacophony of barking that drowned out everything. Maurice jumped away from the car, but J. Augustus walked back a few steps and put his hand in a sort of horizontal position. The dogs shut up immediately. He’d gotten the pair a couple of months before and liked to carry them around just so he could show off his prowess in controlling them. He swung back toward the sheriff and said, “Well?” as if it hadn’t been his dogs that had interrupted the proceedings.

  Sheriff Overhouse pulled the bracelet from his briefcase, still wrapped in its protective plastic bag, and walked down the steps from the porch where we had all been waiting. He was holding the bag up in the light so it could be seen better by Mr. Pickerill, who immediately reached out to grab it.

  The sheriff pulled it back, muttering, “Fingerprints.”

  Pickerill started to protest, his hand poised in midair, and then smiled, nodding his head. “Of course, of course. That’s certainly mine. I could tell from a mile away. But where’re the rest? The diamond tiara, the ruby bracelet, and the sapphire brooch that was my mother’s, and all those little rings. His hand was inching up to reach for the bag again, so the sheriff slid quietly back out of range.

  “That’s all we found, Mr. Pickerill,” he said, trying but failing to twist his hat using the hand not holding the bag. So, since he was outside, even in front of a voter, he sat it squarely on his head. “We’re going to tear up more of the floorboards now—looking for the rest.”

  “Be sure you do!” Mr. Pickerill snorted. “That tiara was my wife’s favorite, as well as being worth a half million. Isn’t that right, Cassie?” He looked for confirmation to the blond fantasy slowly walking up from the back of the car.

  Cassandra was inspecting her scarlet fingernails, which were in violent but complementary contrast to the black leotard that she was wearing. “Yeah, I really liked that.” I always thought she should be chewing bubble gum while she talked. But actually her vices of that type were confined to smoking cigarillos after dinner. Still, she always managed to make my skin crawl something like fingernails on an old-fashioned blackboard. Maybe it was because the ebony tights were really just an exercise outfit in which she had not one lump of body out of place. If I tried to wear something like that, I’d look like a black hearse with mumps.

  Mr. Pickerill nodded over toward the forensic crew. “I see that you’ve called in the state police to take over the investigation.”

  “Oh, they’re just doing the lab work. We’ll handle the actual investigation with our own staff,” the sheriff said.

  “I thought that since they’re here already they might as well lend a hand,” Mr. Pickerill persisted

  “Mason County pays good money to the Virginia state police to do the forensic work, but they can’t just run in and take over anytime they want.” The sheriff started to take his hat off, then thought better of it.

  Actually, I was thinking the same thing as Mr. Pickerill. The only violent death that the sheriff had to deal with was the result of a bar brawl or a hunting accident. He wasn’t really equipped for a mysterious body, hidden in unclear circumstances. After all, he hadn’t done real well on finding Mr. Pickerill’s missing jewels.

  Jack Senior supported the old boy network, however. “I think Sheriff Overhouse has the capability to find out what happened. After all, he’s been elected by the people of Mason County five times,” he said.

  The sheriff nodded without making any obvious show of appreciation.

  Mr. Pickerill opened his mouth, closed it and then opened it again, “That’s nice for you to say, but after all it’s your house where my jewels were found.” He stared at Jack Senior, the house, and then at me. “Maybe you have something to gain by sloppy police work.”

  While the sheriff had implied in private that he thought we could have been involved, an outsider like Mr. Pickerill was not allowed that presumption. But this was a rich voter, so he calmly explained, “Let’s not draw hasty conclusions until all the facts are in, and the first fact will be the result of the autopsy done under the supervision of the state police—just like you want.”

  Mr. Pickerill looked peeved. “If you have made no progress in two weeks I’ll call my Congressman. Those jewels were very important to my family.” He included his blond wife in a sweep of his arm and retreated toward the back of the car. Maurice, who had been resting on the front right fender of the Mercedes, staring at his fingernails, slipped off to hold the back door open for Cassandra—who floated onto the back seat while casting a vacant smile all around.

  The car slowly turned around in the drive, allowing the Dobermans in the front seat a sweeping view of the property, and crept out to the highway, fading into the distance—between a school b
us and a truck full of locally grown Virginia turkeys.

  Chapter 2

  We could always sell the pasture that runs right up to the barn,” Jack Senior said. “Les Dixon said he’d buy it in a minute.” He was groping for an easy out as we sat in the kitchen because Victoria was in the living room playing Tuesday Morning Bridge with her DAR cronies.

  “The only problem is that we need that much to be a farm,” I said, explaining something that he already knew. “So the zoning people will let me use the old barn as a shop.” You’ve got to have over twenty acres to be a real farm. If we sold the field, it would put Victoria’s land at under ten. Then I’d have to go round and round about using our residence as a retail and construction shop. Of course that wouldn’t have mattered even five years ago, but the newly arrived commuters wanted to protect the environment just as they had found it and the board of supervisors, knowing where the next vote was coming from, was going along with all the new zoning restrictions.

  Jack Senior nodded mutely, staring into his coffee cup. Our manor house tenants, Bill and Midge had found a new development only halfway from Washington where the builder had promised to keep the trees and leave a lot of green area. They were moving out in the morning leaving us with a big hole in the floor and no rental income.

  We were too tired for recriminations. The cost to fix the house had been estimated. Even with Henry Adams working for free because he felt guilty about miscalculating the strength of the floor, and paying Stuart’s low wages, the cost of the repairs was going take all the rent we would have gotten for the next year. And now we didn’t have that. Jack Senior was quiet, trying to figure out how to keep on philandering without saying it aloud. That was one of the things we didn’t talk about. And he knew that I had to keep something in reserve for the shop. They were funds he couldn’t touch. That was something else we didn’t talk about. Unlike many couples, we didn’t have fights about money. We just didn’t talk about it. And we made do. Over the years since I moved here, Victoria, who actually owns the old farm place, had sold off three hundred seventy of the original four hundred acres, unfortunately not waiting to get the boom caused by the influx of commuters. So we had thirty acres left including the old manor house, which we were now forced to rent out, the tenant house where we lived and the old barn where I had my shop and part-time retail antique establishment. We would make do again. Just like always. Without talking. Because I didn’t have the guts to scream.

  Jack Senior picked up his summer weight plaid sport coat and said, “I’m off to lunch. See what’s cooking around Mason County.”

  “Jezebel’s?” I asked.

  As he swung open the kitchen door to avoid his mother, who was coming back from the living room after saying goodbye to her bridge cronies at the front door, he turned and muttered, “The River Bend Restaurant is the sociopolitical center of Mason County. And I’ve told you a thousand times, the owner’s name is not Jezebel. Her name’s Delilah, Delilah Jones.”

  ***

  Jack Senior closed the door softly as he left. No slamming in anger. Always the gentleman.

  I could not see how a man with his talents could be so at loose ends. When I married him, he was a lawyer: UVA law school. Then about fifteen years ago there was a misplaced trust fund. I don’t to this day believe that he did it on purpose. Just massive inattention to detail and a few easy corners to cut. No criminal charges were filed but it got him disbarred. Right afterwards, he just sat and stared at nothing. “Give me a little time,” he said, “to get my head together.” Well, it’s been a decade and a half, and all he ever tried was an occasional harebrained get-rich-quick scheme—nothing either profitable or too terribly costly: just pointless.

  So Victoria had sold off pieces of land to pay expenses, including sending my two kids to college. I helped her make a little extra from the antiques in the manor house, though in truth most of them weren’t real antiques—just reproductions from the 1920s and 30s. Then again, some were the real thing: antebellum. So I learned to tell the difference. That was how I got in the antique business myself. First selling Victoria’s things in the barn on weekends, and then buying a few items from the local farmers who retired to Florida. Their kids hadn’t wanted to take over the farmsteads if it entailed eking out a living from the soil.

  But once I’d gotten the hang of it, I found the antique business pretty boring, so I started turning old tractor parts into furniture. It paid most of the bills, although I still traded in real antiques as they became available.

  I wanted to call my closest friend, Fanny Beecham, to enlist her aid in figuring what to do about the dead body and the jewels. But just like Jack Senior, I avoided Victoria and Uncle George Ebenton by crossing the backyard to use the phone in the barn. Only, on the way, I ran right into the bridge group—always good for a half an hour gossiping if I didn’t have anything else to do—which I did. So keeping right on moving, I shot them a quick wave as they were getting into Sarah Reilly’s Volvo station wagon. Virginia Goodenough, rotund, jolly, and perpetually disoriented, hopped doggedly into the back seat. She was the Episcopal minister’s wife, about half a generation younger than Victoria, since her husband was still the active pastor at the church that Victoria attended. Ruby Dixon, Les’s mother and one of Victoria’s old school friends, was hobbling slowly into the front seat, helped by Sarah Reilly, who was about thirty, with a blond ponytail and bright clear skin. Sarah had inherited her position in the bridge group from her paternal grandmother and seemed to fit right in, working most of the night to support herself as a commercial artist because she had to eat, and taking the days off to be a 1950s-style Southern matron because it was her duty.

  ***

  Jezebel’s was pretty dead as I waited for Fanny, who was, as usual, late. We’d decided to meet there because it really was a gathering place. Of course, I knew the name wasn’t really Jezebel’s. It’s just I was pretty sure that the owner, Delilah Jones, was having an affair with my husband. So once, in pique, I’d called her that Jezebel and Fanny picked it up. Then half the community started using it without knowing why. And now that was the unofficial name in spite of the protestations of Jack Senior. The latter was sitting at the bar reading Jezebel/Delilah’s Wall Street Journal, ignoring the rambunctions of Hank Cooper and a few of the other good ol’ boys who were gathered for a noon pick-me-up between morning and evening chores.

  I was sitting in the sunroom, which had been sectioned off from the main restaurant and bar in the front. Several owners ago, someone had thought it would add class to the place to put in big picture windows overlooking the curve in the Salt Lick River that gave the place its real name, The River Bend Restaurant. I sat lolling in one of my own creations: an extended latticework of struts from several old threshers, with swings hanging down in conversational groupings. I’d built it for Jezebel when she bought the place—and before she took up with my husband. The front part of the building was still original, with a solid walnut bar about twenty-five feet long, and I’ve got to give her this: Jezebel kept it polished. The remainder of the restaurant was filled with ratty empire-style chairs, with red velvet upholstery, placed around the solid walnut tables that matched the bar. The walnut furnishings were worth more than the building. I was hoping that Jezebel would sell them to me at a good price before the whole shebang fell into the river.

  There was a ruckus over at the bar and suddenly Jezebel had Hank Cooper by the nose, twisting it so hard that his legs buckled. She was leading him, waddling knock-kneed and pigeon-toed toward the door. That happened at least once a week when he’d had too much to drink, so nobody paid any attention. Jack Senior was down on the floor quietly picking up a broken beer bottle. He straightened up, really striking—tall, straight, slim, with wavy white hair, all his, and a medium complexion starting to get tanned from the early summer sun. Flawless white teeth. Just as trim as he was when I met him thirty years before, but he didn’t offer to help his girlfriend. He sat back down at the bar placing the bro
ken pieces in a neat little pile for Jezebel to dispose of, doing what needed to be done with no fuss or hassle.

  Back when we first met, one of his army buddies said that about him: steady and unassuming. No bragging about his accomplishments. Once I saw a bunch of medals in his old duffel bag. But Jack Senior never talked about them.

  I’d met him in a bar while his unit was assembling before deployment to Vietnam and didn’t even wait for a second date to spend the night in bed. We had a month together in Hawaii before his second tour—he had a few months to go after the first tour, so why not extend for a whole year and get back to the fighting? He ended up a captain.

  Jack Junior was three months old when Jack Senior finally got home. The real reason that my son was named Jack Junior is that when I filled out the papers at the hospital, I didn’t know that my future husband’s real name was John. He knew I was pregnant, since we wrote back and forth, but his letters just told me that the war couldn’t do without him long enough to get married. When he got back, he did the right thing, even though it was the sixties and I guess I didn’t really expect him to. We were married by a nondescript justice of the peace and I left California for the Old South, a new bride. We told everyone that we’d been married on his first leave in Hawaii. No one here ever thought to ask if it was really true. My own mother, who knew the facts, talks so much that nobody ever listens to anything she says—not that she would tell on purpose—it’s just that she has to fill up natural intra-conversational gaps with something. The marriage might not have been too bad if he’d had a regular job for the past fifteen years. I didn’t know that his family was rich when I married him, so not having much wouldn’t have been a letdown. But he hadn’t done anything at all to save the family estate. If he had, I might even have accepted his dallying with Jezebel and the others, I guess. I mean, we were both over fifty. I figured he was compensating for having been disbarred. Or maybe that was just the way he was. Or maybe it was my fault because I was too lazy to do anything about it. Or maybe there was something important between us despite everything else that was going on. Even when I hinted at his adultery, Jack Senior was his usual fair-minded, gentlemanly self, suggesting that if I thought he was having an affair, I should even things up with a fling of my own. And I tried. I really tried. But it didn’t work out. So I didn’t know whether I was mad at Jezebel on moral grounds, or because she was doing better than I was.