Buried Roots

by Cynthia Raleigh

  The cabinet was bare. Archer looked at Perri, “What now?”

  “May I?” She pointed to the cabinet.

  “You bet.” Archer stood with his hands on his hips, watching intently.

  Perri reached into the cabinet, which was about eighteen inches deep. She couldn’t see any mechanisms, doors, or latches. She ran her fingers across the wood of the back facing but it was smooth. She pressed down lightly on each shelf, nothing.

  “How did the one in the other house open?”

  Perri looked a little sheepish, “I don’t know. The tour guide opened it and I didn’t notice how she did it, it just swung open suddenly.” She reached far upward, almost out of her reach, trying to press on the wooden molding that filled the joins of the cabinet. Her weight leaned against the front of the empty shelves. She stopped and backed up. “Hang on.”

  “What? Did you find it?”

  Perri looked at Archer then, with the cabinet door still open, pressed forward a little more forcibly with both hands on the edge of one of the shelves. The entire cabinet moved inward just a fraction of an inch and then popped outward, toward Perri by at least an inch and a half. She placed one hand on the inside edge of the cabinet next to the fireplace and the other hand on the finished right end. She pushed against the back side of the cabinet with her right hand and, pressing the fingertips of her left hand against the painted wood inside it, she pulled it forward. The cabinet swung forward a few inches in an arc, rotating on hinges behind it. It stopped moving easily. Afraid she would damage it, she asked Archer to help her ease it the rest of the way. With Archer lifting against its weight and Perri pulling it outward, it swung fully open.

  They both stared at the wall behind the cabinet. In the stone used to build the outside walls, the stonemason had left a hollow. Definitely planned as a hiding place, inside the stone work it was squared and dressed, providing a smooth surface for whatever was to be placed within. It wasn’t exceptionally large, but it was big enough to hide the knife. Propped diagonally, it just fit, just barely.

  “There it is. There it is!” Archer laughed and put his arm around Perri’s shoulders. “I didn’t believe it. I wanted to, but nope, I didn’t believe it. We’ve got him, on all of it. I can’t believe someone robbed a grave, murdered, and kidnapped for a damned knife like this? Just because it belonged to his family, what kind of motive is that?”

  Perri looked up into Archer’s face and grinned. “That isn’t the whole story.”

  Chapter 40

  Perri and Tom spent most of the night draped over hospital couches. By eight o’clock the next morning, Nina was declared fit for discharge and was released. Following snoozing until after noon, showers, and fresh clothes, everyone was feeling much better, including Nina. As she drained the last of her third cup of coffee from one of the carafes from room service, she said, “What happens to the cursed knife?”

  Tom laughed uncertainly. “I have no idea.”

  “Would you keep it if you could?” Nina gave Tom an incredulous look.

  Perri joined the conversation, “Why don’t you wait until we’ve had a chance to talk to Archer this afternoon to even discuss it?”

  Nina replied, “I have to go in to give a statement. I guess I could just talk to him about it then.”

  “I know he is pretty eager to get your statement to determine which charges he can file against the Morrises and Dr. Graham. I was able to go through all the details I had uncovered with Archer. When you and Tom left for the hospital, we spent a couple of hours or more piecing together the events of the last couple of weeks. I never got to explain it all to you two, though, and I think you will want to know.”

  Nina eyed Perri suspiciously. “She’s up to something. What’s going on that I don’t know about?” She cast her glance sideways to Tom.

  He held up his hands, “This time, I really don’t know. I was with you, remember?”

  Perri purposely shot Nina an impish grin and said, “You’ll find out soon enough. If no one objects, we’ll have time to talk through it at the barbeque tonight.”

  “Give us a hint.” Nina and Tom chimed in unison.

  “You just have to wait.”

  “Come on, don’t do that.” Nina tipped her head to the side and opened her eyes widely.

  “I would have to have my notes in front of me to get it all straight.” Looking at her watch, she pushed her chair back, “It’s about time to go, isn’t it?”

  ***

  Perri leaned back in the comfortable Adirondack chair on Archer’s deck. She closed her eyes and really relaxed for the first time in several days. The warm evening sun was traveling in its downward arc toward sunset. The surface of the small pond in the backyard reflected the sun’s amber light.

  She thought back on her conversation with Nick that afternoon. While waiting for Nina to give her statement, she’d had a fairly long talk with Nick while sitting under a solitary twisted oak tree just beyond the police station parking lot. She had talked with him at least once each day, but the calls hadn’t been lengthy, just long enough to update him on the latest events. She would be heading back to Indiana in the morning and Nick would drive up from Kentucky on Sunday.

  Perri was about to doze off when the bottom of an icy glass was placed on the back of her hand where it rested on the arm of the chair. She opened her eyes to see Nina leaning over her, “Try this. It’s some weird concoction Archer makes. Don’t ask me what’s in it, I don’t know, but I don’t care.” She plopped down in the chair next to Perri and took a huge gulp of the drink.

  Perri took the glass, full of rosy, fruity looking liquid with what looked like strawberry seeds suspended in it. “You’re going to have a miserable frontal lobe stab if you slosh it all down at once,” she warned Nina as she sipped the drink and decided she didn’t care what was in it either and that she’d probably need another one. One at least.

  Archer and Tom had grilled chicken and hamburgers. None of them had anything resembling a full meal in a couple of days. Along with potato salad, deviled eggs, and creamy coleslaw from the grocery, they’d all eaten until they were groaning.

  Archer pulled his chair up to make a circle. “Before we all get three sheets to the wind, maybe Perri wouldn’t mind going through the history about the knife Nina bought and how it caused this whole debacle.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been waiting all day to find out about this.” Nina folded her legs up into the chair and got comfortable, drink cradled in her hands in her lap.

  Perri straightened in her chair, “I’d be more than happy to do that. I’m just glad it’s over and we can talk about it now. This is much more complicated than I would have thought. If it weren’t for the horrible dangers Nina went through, not to mention the murder and assault, it would be really interesting. Well, it’s still interesting…”

  “Ok, girlfriend, we got that, let’s hear the scoop.” Nina fluttered her hand at Perri to get on with it.

  Perri used one of the chairside tables as a desk for her documents and started from the beginning, as they knew it.

  “Most of this early information I got from Archer. He helped me fill in a lot of the blanks.” She shuffled a couple of papers. “We have all met Eleanor Calder. Her brother, Felix Tyndall, Eleanor’s maiden name is Tyndall, lived in Richmond as well. He had divorced recently and started an online business selling Revolutionary War and Civil War reproductions. He wasn’t having instant success, but business was steadily improving. “

  “At some point, he became involved in a less than legal aspect of the business. We don’t know who he met or talked with to get him started in it, but he did have contacts in different areas, mostly across the south, that he referred to as his Recovery Agents. His notes sound a little cloak-and-dagger sometimes. He seemed to have enjoyed that part of it.”

  “Roger Morris was his contact in southern Alabama. Roger had been in trouble several times for minor things: metal detecting on state property, trespassing on private property wit
hout permission, and one more serious incident of removing a state certified relic. He did a little bit of jail time for that, but hadn’t had any trouble since then.”

  “I would call murdering someone and then kidnapping pretty serious.” Tom remarked indignantly.

  Perri agreed. “Right, of course, but this was up until several months ago, and there’s more to it than that. His wife, Valerie, doesn’t appear to have been involved in the relic business until Roger was incarcerated. During that time, she took up the jobs Roger had been doing, except Valerie wasn’t as squeamish about what she did. By the time Roger returned home, three months later, she had already completed two jobs that involved a resurrection of the despicable practice of grave-robbing. She had help with it, it would have been a bit much for her to do alone, but she hasn’t said who those people were, not yet anyway.” Perri aimed a nod to Archer, who added, “Not yet.”

  “I need to skip backward a little bit. As you know already, the knife belonged to an ancestor of Dr. Orcenith Graham. The family history that I was able to uncover begins with Pleasant Graham. He was born in Virginia in 1752. The house where Nina was kept was built while Pleasant was growing up and he lived there his entire life, dying in 1807.”

  “His son, Edwin Graham, was born in the house in 1785. He’s the one whose actions eventually set this scenario into motion. Remember that. Edwin married Mary “Polly” Fleming on April 24, 1810. After his father’s death, leaving a brother to live in the house here in Richmond, Edwin and Polly moved to what was Creek Territory and then Mississippi Territory, parts of what are now Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.”

  “The Creek Indian War broke out in 1813 and Edwin joined the Mississippi militia. Because of the raiding and danger, Polly and their son, Jasper, accompanied Edwin, along with many other families, to Ft. Mims for safety. Despite several warnings, Ft. Mims was dreadfully unprepared to withstand an actual attack, and on August 30, 1813, that’s what happened. The Red Sticks attacked and killed around four- to five-hundred people, Edwin Graham being one of them. I’ll come back to that later though.”

  “Polly and Jasper survived by slipping through an opening hacked through the stockade’s northern wall by the remaining settlers trapped in the corner of the fort. They spread out, some trying to escape by running or walking away, some made it and some didn’t. Others, including Polly and Jasper, were able to get to the nearby bank of a small tributary of the Alabama River, they followed it on foot for a mile until it widened out and they were able to travel on a flatboat down river to Fort Stoddard, which is near Mt. Vernon, Alabama.”

  “Polly and Jasper set up house in Mobile. Polly remarried and when Jasper grew up, he owned a soap mill in Mobile. He married Elizabeth Harkins in 1830 and built a house about ten miles north of Mobile.”

  Perri took two big swallows of her drink, a drop of the condensation falling onto her notebook. “The knife that Nina bought for Tom was originally Jasper Graham’s. Before the Civil War, Jasper became acquainted with Thomas Leech, the maker of the knife, through a mutual friend he had met in his business dealings. Jasper wanted a side knife and he wanted one designed similar to the cavalry sword owned by his friend that had been made by Leech. Jasper requested a scaled-down version. He asked for a side knife with more custom features than normal, one that was quite unusual, but not as overt as the cavalry sword. Jasper carried the knife with him throughout the Civil War, which he survived, eventually dying in 1899 in the Port of Mobile, as it was known during the post-war period, until 1900.

  Tom was listening intently, Nina looked less enthused. “I’m not sure what all this has to do with this knife I bought.”

  Archer intervened, “Hear her out. It sounds like a lot of information, but I think it will make it worthwhile in the end if you hear the whole story.”

  Tom agreed, “I think so, too. I think anything we can learn about this knife and its history, which seems to be substantial, will be great for us if we get to keep it.”

  “True, ok, sorry. Can I get another one of those zingers of yours Archer?”

  Perri held her glass out for a refill too. Archer lit some outdoor candles around the perimeter of the deck to keep the mosquitos away. After everyone was resettled, Nina said, “Full speed ahead.”

  Isaac’s mother was overcome by grief at his death and completely forgot to keep the side knife back for Isaac and it was erroneously buried with him, as the letter explains. Elizabeth Graham survived Jasper until 1903. At the time she died, their two children, Isaac and Matthew were living back here in the Richmond area in the Graham house. Isaac had opened a brewery in Richmond and was doing quite well. Since their parents had passed away, the house in Alabama was vacant. It was decided that Matthew would take over running the brewery in Richmond, remaining in the family house, and Isaac and his wife, Hannah, would move to the property in Alabama and open a second brewery there, which he did.”

  “Branches of this family have moved back and forth several times over the years. Isaac’s son, Benjamin went to college in Richmond and graduated with a degree in education, but he moved his family to Alabama when his parents made the decision to move. He ultimately moved yet again, to accept a prestigious teaching position, eventually becoming the Dean of the History Department, in a college in Atlanta, which no longer exists.”

  “Orcenith Graham now lives about twenty-five miles east of Atlanta and works as a professor at the University of Georgia in Athens. Benjamin was his grandfather and died in 1954, only two years after Orcenith was born in 1952. He never really knew his grandfather. I don’t have much information on Reuben Graham, Orcenith’s father, who died in 2003, but there really wasn’t much said about him in the packets of documents Dr. Graham donated to the Library of Virginia Archives. Benjamin distinguished himself as a Professor of History and Orcenith was very proud of him, but I think Reuben may have held a more mundane position in the community and Orcenith just didn’t spend any time writing about him.”

  Perri replaced the documents she had been referring to in a folder, and pulled out another. “Now we are coming back to the present time. When Roger Morris arrived home from jail, Valerie had already entered into the deal with Felix Tyndall for the recovery of the side knife. Roger balked at the idea, wanting no part of grave-robbing, but in the end, he agreed to do the job on the condition they wouldn’t do it again. Valerie told Felix that they had permission to excavate on private property to allay any worries he had about it, but in reality, they were trespassing.”

  “Remember the house north of Mobile that Jasper and Elizabeth built?” Nina, Tom, and even Archer nodded. “At the time, it was very rural there. The house was built on an elevated finger of land that had swampy areas on three sides. A family cemetery was started a couple hundred feet from the house, which is where Jasper and Elizabeth are buried, next to each other. The cemetery was originally in a clearing on the highest portion of the property. Now it is it surrounded by trees. Someone does live in the house now, but the cemetery is no longer visible from the house. The current occupants mainly leave the cemetery in peace. It is no longer active and they have no reason to visit it. Because of that, the exhumation and robbery wasn’t discovered until late April when the homeowner was doing the usual clearing of the area around the stones, which he does twice a year. It was reported to the police, but by then, there was nothing they could do or any evidence to give them any clues as to who was responsible. They made sure the remains were properly reinterred.”

  “Reinterred? I know what it means, but how was the grave left? Surely, they didn’t leave the remains out on the ground, did they?” Nina asked.

  “No, they roughly replaced the coffins and tried to cover the damage. Most of the wood of the coffins had rotted away, although the higher elevation of the cemetery helped preserve the knife and other items. The skeletal remains were returned to the graves and much of the dirt shoveled back in, but not all of it. Once the authorities were notified, the graves were re-opened and the remains
removed, placed in coffins, and reburied.”

  “Who paid for this? The city, the state?”

  “Oh no. The graves were marked, and of course the property records went back far enough, that the authorities were able to contact Orcenith Graham. When they did, he was duly horrified at the violation of his ancestor’s graves, even made a trip down there to select new coffins and oversee the re-interment. Not only did he know where the knife was from and how the knife was obtained when he came to the police station to examine it, he also knew all about it when he traveled to Mobile to handle the arrangements. It was at his order that the grave robbing was done.”

  “What a monster. All this for a knife.” Nina slowly shook her head.

  “There’s more to it, I’m getting there. Again, this information I got from Tom and Archer, but it fits in with the history. If you remember, when Dr. Graham was here to have a look at the knife, he was just getting ready to leave when Tom walked into the office. He had found a ring in the inventory and was bringing it to Archer. Being distracted and engrossed in meeting Dr. Graham and the ensuing conversation, Tom laid the ring down on the desk. Dr. Graham noticed it and asked to see it.”

  “That’s right, he did.” Tom volunteered. “And I noticed that he was staring at it pretty intently when he first saw it. I didn’t know why, but I thought to myself at the time that he looked angry.”

  “Right. He knew what the ring looked like. Not only did he have a photograph of his great, great-grandmother wearing the ring, he had a description of it in a letter from her to her mother. Remember the inscription? ‘To my Betsy?’ Elizabeth Harkins Graham was known to her family as Betsy. This letter sheds light on why Dr. Graham became angry when he saw the ring.”