Perri read Elizabeth Graham’s letter to Nina and Tom. As they mulled over the information, Perri said, “Dr. Graham recognized that ring. In that moment, he realized that when the Morrises robbed Jasper Graham’s grave for the side knife, as he had hired them to do, they had also robbed Elizabeth’s grave. Hers was immediately adjacent to Jasper’s. Orcenith Graham was never meant to know, and as far as we know he wouldn’t have found out about the ring if Felix Tyndall hadn’t died. He knew the grave had been disturbed because he went to Alabama to take care of the new arrangements, but he didn’t realize they had taken anything from it. He was deeply insulted by the audacity of the Morrises by plundering the ring from great-great grandmother’s grave. I guess in his mind, plundering one grave was okay as long as they had his permission.”
“Almost none of this would have happened if Felix Tyndall hadn’t had a heart attack and toppled over dead in his living room.”
Archer joined in, “Eleanor said Felix had never been active, and she knew he hadn’t been taking care of himself since he and Susan, his ex-wife, divorced, but she hadn’t expected him to just keel over like that. But he did and his business came to a standstill.”
“After Felix died, Eleanor and Russell had very little time to clear out his apartment because the landlord was chomping at the bit to re-rent the space. They basically piled everything into a moving van and brought it to their house, storing it in their basement and garage. Neither of them had the password to Felix’s computer or his email account, so they couldn’t do much about the unshipped orders or try to figure out what sort of bookkeeping records he had. They just set it aside and started from scratch.”
“Russell had a long-time interest in the Civil War and thought it seemed like a good time to get involved in the re-enacting world and sell off the remaining inventory, especially since their own investment would be fairly small at first, really only needed to buy a license, some period clothing, and a way to transport the supplies. If it went well, they planned to go into the business full time. And it was going pretty well, until last weekend.”
“I understand that much, but now I think we’re up to the point where we came to the re-enactment and the Calders were here as sutlers, and I bought the Most Cursed Knife in the Universe.” Nina encouraged Perri to continue.
“Right, you bought the Most Cursed Knife.” She laughed a little and went on. “Eleanor and Russell had no way of knowing one of the knives in their stock was intended for a ‘special’ customer who had already made a down payment of $2,500, with another $2,500 due at time of delivery. After it was robbed from the grave, Roger took it to another man in their circle of contacts who cleans the items recovered. After it was cleaned and reconditioned a little – after being in the ground for that long is needed some care – the knife was returned to Roger who then shipped it to Felix.”
“As your luck would have it, you walked up to the Calders’ table to look at knives not too long after Roger Morris, dressed in a Union uniform, had been pestering Russell to get out a knife he suspected him to have but that he didn’t know he had. Russell may not have been the one who packed the Most Cursed Knife when they were cleaning out the inventory. He probably didn’t realize they had one distinctly different than the others. Roger walked away, hoping to try again later, but he stopped only a few yards down Sutlers Row to watch.” Perri looked at Nina, “The next box that Eleanor opened contained the knife. Roger saw you buy it.”
“And then he dragged Russell Calder off into the woods and killed him because he saw me buy it? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Roger didn’t kill Russell Calder.”
“What? He had to have.” Perri watched Nina’s face go from confusion to thoughtfulness to realization. “Oh!”
Tom interjected, “What? What do you mean ‘oh’?”
“Valerie Morris killed Russell Calder. She was at the event, in period garb also, so she fit right in. She was nearby when Russell tried to get the knife. When he couldn’t get it, Valerie became impatient…”
“No kidding. Why is that not hard to believe?” Nina said with disgust.
“…and she walked right up to Russell and told him she needed to talk to him. This information came from Roger. He said he wasn’t really sure what Valerie said to Russell to get him to follow her: it could have been that she needed help, that there was a problem with his license to merchant, anything, but Valerie isn’t talking yet. At any rate, Russell ended up out in the woods with Valerie. At the same time that is happening, Roger sees Nina buy the knife. Now Roger realizes that Valerie talking to Russell isn’t going to help them, it may hurt them. It would be better to quietly leave the Calders to themselves and concentrate on getting the knife from Nina now that he had located it. Roger takes off running through the merchant area, bumping into a few people as he went, including me.”
“Oh my gosh! I remember now. That was him.”
“Right. Roger made it to the woods alright, Russell was still alive, but when he appeared suddenly, Russell turned to leave. Valerie insisted he stay and tell her where the knife was, to get it for her. Roger was trying to tell Valerie to let it go when Russell began walking away. Valerie had a knife, a hinged kitchen knife on a cord, like she would if she really worked in a kitchen. She opened it and threatened Russell. Roger tried to get Russell to stay, afraid of what Valerie would do, knowing if she stabbed the guy they’d be discovered. When Russell persisted in trying to leave, Roger punched him in the stomach. Russell bent forward from the blow. Valerie stabbed him with the knife. Russell may have survived an attack with a knife no larger than a four-inch blade if he hadn’t been bent over and Valerie hadn’t gotten terribly lucky. He was in perfect position and the blade just slipped in between the vertebrae and severed the spinal cord at the C1-C2 level, which disabled his respiratory function.”
“That’s horrible! She’s cold-blooded. The knife wound didn’t directly kill him then.”
“Right. Roger was mortified, watching the man die just about undid him. He wanted to give the whole thing up and leave right then. But Valerie wasn’t having any of it. She told him to leave immediately and he did by going through the far side of the woods, out to the main road, and back to the parking area. He waited in the car. Valerie tried her best to hide the body, but the best she could do was drag it over to the fallen log, which was only a few feet away, and try to tuck it up as close to it as possible.”
“But what about blood splatter and all that? She should have been all splattered and obvious. How did she get away with no one noticing?” Tom asked.
Nina offered, “That type of wound probably didn’t have much bleeding, did it?”
“No,” Perri answered. “The only blood was immediately around the wound and on the upper collar area, a little on the shoulders as it ebbed out for a short while. Valerie went back to the kitchen area although we don’t know by what route. She burned her apron in one of the fires then milled around, carrying wood, or doing inconspicuous jobs just outside the actual kitchen area, hoping to get a chance to get the knife away from you, Nina.”
“She was watching for us?”
“She definitely was watching us, and we met her. We talked to her.”
“Emeline! Emeline the kitchen cook. That was her, because the next day when I asked for the recipe, Charity said they didn’t have anyone named Emeline working the kitchen.”
“That’s right. Also, back to the blood, remember when we introduced ourselves and I reached out to shake Emeline’s hand but she recoiled and made an excuse about having grease all over her hands? She didn’t have grease on her hands, but she did have blood under her fingernails and around the cuticles from the stabbing and from removing the knife. It wasn’t a lot, but enough that she didn’t want to shake hands”
“She kept wiping them on the towel, which isn’t an unusual thing to do, but she was really just trying to hide her fingers, wasn’t she?”
“Yep. Remember how we turned to watch the paramedics a
nd when we turned back she was gone, nowhere to be seen? When she realized they were cordoning off the entire area and interviewing everyone, she hightailed it back through the woods and around to the car. She and Roger moved a short distance down the highway, toward Midlothian, and waited for us to leave.”
Nina stood up and walked around the deck once, “So was it Roger Morris who trashed our hotel room. We told Emeline, or rather his wife Valerie, that we were staying in a hotel. They just followed us?”
Perri nodded. Archer spoke up, “Right. You had also told her you were from Indiana, so you were easy to spot by your license plate. Roger didn’t know that when you left the hotel the second time that you were bringing the knife here or he could have saved himself the trouble.”
Then from Tom, “He missed his opportunity because he had a good couple of hours while we went to eat supper and the knife was in the room.”
“I think what happened was that he had to change out of the Union uniform before he went to the hotel but he hadn’t figured in something like that. It would have been too memorable if he strolled through the lobby dressed as a Union soldier. He and Valerie have been staying in the old Graham house the entire time, but it’s in the opposite direction, and not too close, so it took time to drive there, change, and drive back. By then you had returned and he had to wait. He was probably thrilled when you left again, only to be disappointed.”
Perri looked to Archer, “I’m turning this part over to you.”
Nina and Tom directed their attention to Archer. “Sunday, the day after this happened, was the day Eleanor had agreed to come to the event to see if she could identify the man who asked about the knife, who was Roger, of course. When she didn’t show up, I went to her house. That’s when we found that Roger had broken in and assaulted her. He was convinced she either had the knife or knew where it was, since it hadn’t been in the hotel room. He scared her pretty badly and virtually covered her with duct tape. He was supposed to eliminate Eleanor, but, while Roger isn’t a model citizen, he isn’t a murderer and he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He half hoped that maybe she’d die on her own by suffocation or maybe a heart attack and he wouldn’t feel as responsible. Crazy logic, but who can explain why people do these things? Valerie is evidently a monumentally unforgiving person. She had instructed Roger to kill Eleanor after he got the knife or the information, but fortunately he didn’t.”
Nina asked Archer, “Roger has been telling you all this stuff that happened?”
“Oh yeah, he’s ready to come clean on all of it. I think he’s relieved. Valerie and he had struggled with finances for a long time, and it got worse while he was in jail for those three months. Once she learned the kind of money they could make in the illegal artifact business, she went hog wild. He commented to me that he didn’t recognize her anymore and was a bit afraid of her himself.”
“Will Valerie be charged for Russell’s murder?”
“Definitely. Roger won’t be charged as an accessory because he only tried to detain Russell. He had no idea Valerie was willing to kill Russell and he’s being cooperative. Honestly, I’m not accustomed to this level of cooperation. He’s even given me information about the two totally unrelated grave robbing jobs Valerie completed while he was in jail. We can charge her for those as well as this one. Roger will have to do some time, the most serious offense is the kidnapping, and he did take part in that.” Archer looked at Nina.
“I’m never going after ice in a hotel again, I’ll tell you that. I can’t believe they followed us around like that, and we never noticed.” Nina nudged Tom.
“Well, we wouldn’t, would we? I mean, who watches for someone tailing them as a matter of course?” Tom defended himself.
Perri added half kidding, half seriously, “And I think I’m staying away from hotels for a while.”
“Even though our hotel room got tossed it never occurred to me someone was following us. They knew we moved hotels. Roger even followed us around Tuesday while we walked by the canal, went on the cruise, the Ghost Walk, everything. But at the hotel, they couldn’t get inside as easily as they did the other one because there are far fewer rooms and the staff knows, for the most part, who the guests are.”
“How did they get into the hotel? I didn’t want to ask you about it before because I didn’t want to bring it up. But I’ve wondered how they managed to do it.” Perri asked Nina.
“I was in that service room getting ice. I shut the ice machine when I was finished and was turning to go when I saw a woman through the glass of the door that led to that courtyard. I know now that it was Valerie, but at the time what I saw was a woman lying on the cobbles of the courtyard. She was holding her leg and looked like she was crying. She waved at me for help. I opened the door and just as I stepped through there was something over my head and someone picked me up. Before I could get my wits about me enough to call out, I must have already been outside the courtyard. Next thing I knew, I was in the back-seat floorboard of a car. Valerie was driving because I could hear her voice from the front and Roger’s voice from the back, where I was. There’s no love lost there, but I do think he tried to get me to be quiet to keep from making his screech owl of a wife angrier. She’s a piece of work.”
Clearly agitated by the discussion of Nina’s predicament, Tom said, “Something I still don’t understand is why I didn’t get a call or some kind of instruction after I tossed that knife out of the boat on the cruise. They had time to see they had it and obviously Roger made it back to the house without being followed.”
“All the calls they made were pre-recorded and played through throw-away phones, even the one you received on the cruise instructing you what to do with the duffle bag. We found the phone in the parking lot, just tossed on the ground. Dr. Graham is a very self-oriented man. He planned the kidnapping in great detail, but once he reached the point where he would have the object he wanted, he didn’t plan any further. It simply didn’t matter to him what happened after that.”
“Does his self-orientation extend to him believing he would just walk away like nothing happened, go back to his life in Georgia with no one the wiser? That’s bizarre,” Nina asked.
Archer remarked, “I don’t know this for sure, but Dr. Graham’s retirement date was getting pretty close. He learned all about the knife while going through his family documents, of which there are more what Perri went through, and he figured once he had it he would be able to leave the country free and clear, do whatever he wanted. And he was right about that, most likely.”
Tom shook his head in disgust. “It makes me shudder to wonder what they might have been planning to do with Nina. Had Perri not found the information about the Graham property when she did, who knows?”
Archer puffed out a long breath. “I don’t know for sure, but I think it was another trivial detail Graham didn’t want to deal with since his objective would have been met already. Any plans for what to do with Nina afterward were not important to him.”
He continued, “Orcenith Graham, as vile as he is, isn’t adept in the practice of kidnapping. Like I said, he’s very ego-centric and self-absorbed. He had Nina kidnapped for one reason only, to get the knife, after his previous attempt didn’t work.”
“What attempt?”
“Evidently, within a very short time of leaving the station, Dr. Graham told Wilbur Giles all about the knife. He must have spoken about it in glowing terms to pique the Professor’s interest and build enthusiasm for a surprise ‘main attraction’ at the conference. I believe Graham heartily encouraged the Professor try to get it for display. There would be no suspicion placed directly on Dr. Graham if Professor Giles requested it and made the arrangements. It would have then been an easy thing to casually make off with the knife at some point during the day Friday and be gone before it was realized what had happened.”
“It didn’t work that way. He had to come up with something else, and kidnapping Nina was the decision he made. Once the knife was in his poss
ession, he just ignored everything else. Tom, it likely never occurred to him you’d be wondering why you didn’t get a call. I know it sounds absurd, but the mind of a person who would kidnap someone for an object isn’t rational.”
Nina added, “I never saw any of them, not until you guys had already arrived and I saw Valerie.”
“I don’t want to upset you, and you probably already figured it anyway, Nina, but Valerie didn’t worry about telling you to cover your eyes again because she came in there to kill you. Dr. Graham may not have planned anything for you, but she did. We would have found you, but she was hoping there would be no one’s eyewitness testimony to point fingers at them. We would have found the knife, we would have found traces of you in the house. They would have failed in the end, but she wasn’t thinking about all that. Adding another murder after having done one already must not have seemed like a big deal to her.”
Nina shivered. “I don’t ever want to go into another root cellar. Only in case of a cyclone big enough to lift the house!” She giggled a little, to relieve the tension, which it did.
Tom reached across to Nina and rubbed her back with his hand. “You gave her a little more trouble than she expected. Where did you find that thing you jabbed her with?”
Nina described searching the shelves and finding the long-abandoned items. “I have no idea what than knife/fork thing was, but it sure did the job.”
Perri piped up, “That, I can help you with. I looked it up on the internet. It took me a little while to find it because I didn’t know what to search for, what to call it. But eventually I came across a picture of one.”
“Well…what is it?”
“It is what is known as a Nelson knife.”
“A Nelson knife? It’s a pretty weird knife, isn’t it?” Nina looked questioningly at Perri. “But I can see you are about to tell me why.”
“I am. It’s named for Horatio Nelson, the British Admiral. In 1797, he was wounded in the right arm in an attack in the Canary Islands. The arm had to be amputated, and without anesthesia. The log of the surgeon who performed the amputation, Dr. Thomas Eshelby, states ‘Amputation after compound fracture just above elbow. Brachial artery divided.’”
Buried Roots Page 25
