Mining for Justice

by Kathleen Ernst

  This was good news for Tamsin and Adam as well. Chy Looan had been in the Pascoe family for … Chloe tried and failed to do the math in her head, and so grabbed a pencil and did it on the page. Seventy-six years. She felt inordinately pleased by that. If the property had been owned by a lengthy string of owners, it would be impossible to gain any sense of identity for the cottage and its occupants.

  She looked back at the list.

  Ann Trezona, June 1911–October 1930

  Another woman! Chloe tapped the name with a finger, wondering. Had Ann never married? Was she a widow?

  Before Chloe blew off her obligations and settled in for a full day of research, she reminded herself to focus. None of this shed any light on the poor soul who ended up buried in Adam’s root cellar with a bashed-in skull.

  Although, she thought, it did offer some interesting perspective. Perhaps Evelyn’s theory of a fight-gone-bad between hoboes during the Great Depression was spot-on. It seemed likely that the killer had been male. Striking the vicious blow, digging the grave, handling the body … had that been the work of Andrew Pascoe’s hands?

  Chloe pinched her lips together, stymied. Even if she had a lot of time—which she did not—it was doubtful that they’d ever know what had happened.

  Tamsin spoke in her memory. I shouldn’t have asked. I can’t bear the idea of being the subject of gossip, so I just hoped … well. I’ll think of something.

  “I won’t give up, Tamsin,” Chloe promised. She wanted something to show her new friend. Besides, now she was curious about the cottage’s early occupants.

  The remaining names scrawled on the page were familiar:

  John and Tamsin Bolitho, June 1936–May 1983

  Adam Bolitho, from May 1983

  Chloe glanced at the wall clock, grabbed the phone, and called the archives.

  “You almost missed me,” Midge said. “I was heading for the door.”

  “I won’t keep you, then. I just wanted to thank you for the list of property owners. What time do you open in the morning?”

  “Officially the archives aren’t open at all tomorrow morning. But if you want, I’ll meet you there before you need to be at Pendarvis.”

  “Really? That’s very kind of you.” As a night owl, Chloe gave extra credit to anyone who showed up bright and early if they didn’t have to.

  “I’ll be there at seven o’clock.”

  Chloe winced. “Perfect. I’ll see you then.”

  When she got back to Tamsin’s place, the older woman was on the phone. “Chloe just walked in,” she said, beckoning her guest over. “Hold on.” She held out the receiver. “It’s Adam.”

  Chloe slipped her totebag from her shoulder and pulled the old rocking chair close to the phone. “Hey, Adam.”

  “Hey. How are things going down there? I saw something on the news about that woman falling down the stairs at Pendarvis. I’m so sorry. You’re having a terrible week.”

  “Kind of,” Chloe agreed. She’d held everything together at the site, but Adam’s sympathy made her feel weepy. “Especially since I’m the one who found Dr. Miller’s body.”

  “Oh my God.”

  Chloe swiped at her eyes. “On a different note, thanks to Midge at the archives, I now have a list of people who owned Chy Looan.”

  “Really?”

  “Only three people owned it before your grandparents purchased it in 1936. Hold on.” She put the phone down and fished the list from her bag. “Andrew Pascoe owned it from 1836 to 1858, when it passed to Mary Pascoe. Then a woman named Ann Trezona owned it from 1911 until October 1930. Any of those names mean anything to you?”

  “Can’t say they do,” Adam said.

  Chloe stood and began to pace, tethered by the phone cord. “I could look in the phone book, and call anyone with the surnames Pascoe or Trezona, but I’m not sure how I’d broach the topic. ‘Hi, are you aware of your ancestor killing somebody and burying him in the root cellar?’”

  “That does not seem to be the best approach.”

  “I’ll see what I can learn about Andrew and Mary Pascoe, and Ann Trezona. But honestly, I feel like I’m letting your grandma down.”

  “You’re not letting Grandma down,” Adam said firmly. “How’s she doing?”

  Chloe glanced toward the kitchen, where Tamsin was busy with dinner. “Okay, I think.”

  “Still, I’m glad you’re there this week. Thank you.”

  “My pleasure,” Chloe assured him.

  Tamsin carried a big bowl of salad from the kitchen just as Chloe hung up the phone. “Did you have a nice chat with Adam, dear?”

  “I did.” Chloe fetched silverware and began to set the table. “I also told him that I asked Midge at the archives to come up with a list of people who owned Chy Looan before you and your husband bought it, and—”

  “I think this is a good evening to make pasties,” Tamsin declared.

  Chloe blinked, bewildered by the abrupt change. “Make pasties?”

  “Make pasties.”

  “But … ”

  “We both need to take a break. Would you like to help in the kitchen?”

  Just the thought lifted Chloe’s spirits. The heck with all things gloomy and morbid for a few hours. “I would love to help.”

  As soon as they’d eaten and washed up, Tamsin set Chloe to chopping vegetables while she prepared the pastry. “I like to think I make traditional pasties with traditional ingredients,” she said in a conspiratorial tone. “But the truth is, poor women put anything they had into their pasties. Pasties could conceal tough or spoiled meat—whatever scraps of food they had. The old-timers used to say that the devil would never show himself in Cornwall for fear of ending up in a pasty.”

  Chloe put an arm around the other woman’s shoulders. “Thank you, Tamsin. Making pasties was just what I needed this evening.” Being here with Tamsin made her feel as if she was slipping into a continuum. For centuries, women had found solace and strength in their kitchens, among the company of other women. She imagined Mary Pascoe making pasties in the big open fireplace at Chy Looan. Cornish women in early Mineral Point may not have left helpful diaries behind, and they may not have had any belongings precious and sturdy enough to be saved through the generations. But their food traditions were passed down, and remained a living link to their time here.

  When everything was ready, Tamsin rolled out the pastry and cut out circles. Chloe carefully spooned filling onto each before folding the pastry over in a half-moon shape. “Now, crimping the edges together is the most important part,” Tamsin explained. “We’re having a pasty supper at church on Saturday, and I guarantee you, if I don’t keep a sharp eye on some of these young people in the kitchen, we’ll have filling oozing out through the edges.” She flapped a hand in disgust.

  “Oozing is bad?”

  “Men working deep mines couldn’t climb out for their dinner break, so they tucked pasties into their pockets. When it was mealtime, they had no way to wash their filthy hands, so they needed a pasty they could handle just by the crust. If their woman hadn’t crimped the edges with care, the crust would break off, or the filling would spill all over. Now, watch how I do it … ”

  It took some practice, but finally Chloe prepared what Tamsin declared was a proper crimp. “Maybe you have a bit of Cornish blood.”

  Chloe thought of her mother, all-things-Norwegian Marit Kallerud, and suppressed a smile. “I’m one hundred percent Norwegian-American. But I’m glad to think I know how to make a pasty that would satisfy a Cornish miner. As hard as they worked, they needed every morsel.”

  “True enough.” Tamsin nodded sagely. “But they relied on the pasties to keep them safe too. You know about the knackers, right?”

  Chloe slid a pasty onto the baking sheet. “I’m afraid not,” she admitted. There clearly was no end to her ignorance. />
  “Knackers are ugly little creatures that live in mines. Some say they are the spirits of miners who died in underground accidents, lingering to warn others of danger.”

  Chloe rubbed her arms.

  “Knackers could help a miner, or cause all kinds of mischief, so the men were sure to drop their pasty crusts on the ground when they were through eating. If the knackers were satisfied with the offerings, they would protect the miners by making a knocking or tapping sound in warning if a tunnel was about to collapse. But if the knackers felt slighted, they’d hammer away at support beams and cause a cave-in.”

  “Yikes.” Chloe was pretty sure that if she was working below ground and relying on the knackers’ goodwill, she’d have felt compelled to offer whole pasties. Chocolate cake too.

  “They say the timbers in a passage, and the earth itself, creak and groan before collapsing,” Tamsin said. “That’s probably where the whole notion came from.”

  “Probably,” Chloe agreed. It was folklore, plain and simple. Charming, in its own way. Still, just thinking about mine cave-ins gave her the willies.

  Roel­ke and Chloe had worked hard to fix up the old farmhouse, and despite the mismatched furniture, the place had a good feel. That didn’t keep Roel­ke from feeling lonely when Chloe was out of town, though. He missed her.

  “You too?” he asked as Chloe’s cat Olympia joined him on the sofa that evening. He was still getting used to living with a cat. Olympia had stopped trying to settle on his lap, but she seemed content to curl up on a plush towel beside him. To his surprise, he liked it when she did.

  He grabbed the phone when it rang at ten o’clock, putting his book aside. “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” Chloe said. “Boy, am I glad to hear your voice.”

  “Bad day?”

  “Somebody … a woman died at the site this morning.” The words tumbled out faster and faster. “It was an accident. At least I think it was an accident. She fell down a steep set of stairs. I was the one who found her. She was already dead. I don’t know what the cops think. The investigator is asking a lot of questions. But they always do that, right?”

  “They do, yeah.” Roel­ke became aware of aching fingers, and deliberately loosened his death grip on the receiver. Olympia abandoned her post, possibly because his knee was bouncing hard enough to vibrate the sofa. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m okay. It’s just sorta unnerving, you know? I wish … ”

  “Do you want me to come get you?”

  “No,” she said, in a stronger voice. “I want to see my week here through.”

  Roel­ke tried hard to figure out how to be in two places at once. “I’d come down anyway, if it weren’t for Libby—”

  “Did something else happen?”

  Roel­ke hesitated. “Well, things with her ex are not calming down.” He told her about Raymo taking Deirdre from preschool.

  “Libby must have been frantic.”

  “That’s one word for it.”

  “Listen,” Chloe said. “What happened at Pendarvis this morning was upsetting, but I can handle it. What’s most important right now is that you take care of Libby and the children.”

  “I love you,” he said, because there were no other words for what was brimming in his heart.

  After hanging up he sat unmoving for so long that Olympia deigned to return. She bumped her head against his arm, a move he deciphered as Pet me. “Your mom had a hard day,” he told her, absently stroking the thick fur. “I want to go down and be with her. But I can’t.”

  There was little that would keep him away from Chloe when she was upset, but Raymo stalking Libby made the list. Roel­ke was worried about his cousin. He’d never seen her frantic like that. During the divorce things had been plenty ugly, but just between Dan and Libby. Dan had fought her in the courts, and hurled verbal abuse at her. Libby had been grim, drained, hollowed out, exhausted by it all. But Roel­ke had never seen her cry. Never heard her shriek. Never seen the terror he’d seen in her eyes when Deirdre was missing.

  But then, Raymo had never done anything like he’d done today.

  Part of Roel­ke still longed to feel his fist meeting Raymo’s jaw. No doubt Raymo had been thinking the same thing. He hadn’t stood so close just for the fun of taunting Roel­ke. He’d done it in hopes of goading Roel­ke into making a final mistake. Thank God I held it together, Roel­ke thought. Punching Raymo would have been the end of his career.

  “Didn’t get your wish on that one, you SOB,” Roel­ke muttered. Hard as it was, he was playing this one by the book.

  Twenty

  On Thursday morning Chloe dragged herself out of bed at six sharp. Tamsin was already busy in the kitchen, and greeted Chloe with a plate of scrambled eggs and a bowl of grapes. “Sit,” Tamsin instructed. “The coffee’s almost done.”

  Two minutes later she set a steaming mug beside Chloe’s plate and slid into the opposite chair. “So-o,” she said in a tone so casual that if Chloe had been wide awake she would have sensed trouble. “You’re off to the archives?”

  “I am.”

  “I want you to stop looking for information about the people who once owned Chy Looan.”

  Chloe sat back in her chair. “You … what?”

  “I want you to stop looking for information about the people who once owned Chy Looan.” The elderly woman rewarded Chloe’s scrutiny with a bland smile before digging into her own eggs.

  Geez, it was way too early for this. “Why do you want me to stop?” Chloe asked. “I understand if you don’t want to dwell on the body, but to not even search for information? You were the one who asked me to look into it.”

  “I shouldn’t have,” Tamsin said.

  “But … but I don’t mind, truly.”

  “No, thank you,” Tamsin said politely.

  Chloe was stymied. It was one thing to take a break, as they’d done the evening before; it was quite another to quit altogether. She tried to tell herself that with all the turmoil at Pendarvis, deleting one major item on the week’s to-do list was a good thing. But here she was, up and at ’em in the dark, bleary-eyed but poised to go do research. She could hardly cancel on Midge now.

  Besides … she was curious, especially after reading the list of property owners. She wanted to learn whatever she could about the Pascoe family. “Um, okay,” Chloe mumbled. “Since I’m up, though, I’ll take advantage of Midge’s kindness. I’ll do some research for Pendarvis.”

  Tamsin beamed. “More coffee, dear?”

  Chloe did her best to make coherent conversation over the remainder of breakfast. Two cups of coffee later, she headed out.

  Midge was looking particularly colorful in a flowing purple top, reading glasses with orange rims, and a turquoise headband. “At this point you’re searching for information about previous cottage owners, right?”

  “Right,” Chloe said, ignoring the memory of Tamsin taking her off the chase. “I don’t expect to find a confession of murder, but I would like to learn as much as I can. I admit, I’m especially curious about Mary Pascoe. It’s intriguing to know the name of a woman who lived in Adam’s cottage for so long.”

  “At one time, she was well-known,” Midge said.

  “She was?”

  “I don’t know a lot about her,” Midge said apologetically, “but the name is familiar. A pillar-of-the-community type, active in church and civic affairs. I encountered her while doing research about the cholera epidemics in 1849 and 1851. She helped nurse her neighbors, and evidently saved many lives.”

  Chloe tried to reject the wretched images of cholera epidemics conjured in her imagination. “That must have taken courage.” She felt a growing need to go back to Chy Looan and think about a strong woman named Mary Pascoe.

  Midge perched her reading glasses on her nose. “How about I work on the census records, and you scan
early newspapers? We’ve got some 1837 issues of The Miners’ Free Press.”

  “Seriously?” That was only a year after Andrew Pascoe had purchased the lot and had the stone cottage known as Chy Looan built. “That’s amazing.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Midge asked happily. “I’ll get the reel.”

  Chloe worked at the microfilm reader as long as she dared, but didn’t get far. The print was difficult to read, and she kept getting sidetracked by irrelevant but intriguing tidbits. At eight fifteen she reluctantly rewound the reel and switched off the light. “I haven’t found any references to Andrew or Mary Pascoe,” she told Midge. “But it’s fascinating. Everything from articles about Napoleon Bonaparte to notices for runaway oxen.”

  “I found Andrew Pascoe in the 1836 territorial census, listed as head of household,” Midge said. “But that only confirms what we already knew.”

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Chloe said. “Lunchtime today, I hope. Thanks very much for coming in so early.”

  When she dashed to Pendarvis, Evelyn was alone in the curator’s office. “Claudia’s not coming in today,” she reported. “She has a migraine.”

  Chloe frowned. “Oh.” Was Claudia truly ill, or had yesterday’s events left her too upset to come in? Roel­ke often said that when investigating a crime, cops looked for changes in a suspect’s routine. Guilt made people act in ways they normally would not …

  Stop that! Chloe ordered herself. This was Claudia she was thinking about. Claudia, who would never harm a soul.

  Claudia, who had already lied to the police. Claudia, a mother who would do anything to protect her child—

  “Chloe?” Evelyn asked. “Are you alright?”

  “Sorry.” Chloe was grateful for the interruption. “And I’m sorry to hear about Claudia’s migraine. I’d better check in with Loren.” She grabbed her totebag before heading to the next office.