Revenge: A Clancy Evans Mystery (Clancy Evans PI Book 4)

by M. Glenn Graves

  “We don’t use divan in this cultural setting. Couch or sofa will do nicely.”

  “You see, that’s where you are wrong. You must correct your attitude about word usage. In this day of vast mobility and people on the move constantly, you have to be willing—”

  “Don’t chase that rabbit. Talk to me about Saunders?”

  “I’m doing some background checking on Marilyn Saunders. We did not investigate her very much during the last case because of the way things developed. Once she emerged as the lead suspect after Rowland died, there was no reason to do a background check, at least none that we knew of then. So, I did some digging.”

  “And?”

  “So far I have found only a little. She was born to Selma Cantrell in 1947. Single parent, no husband that I could find. Selma Cantrell died at the age of seventeen.”

  “Where did the Saunders name come from?”

  “The birth certificate. The full name on the certificate is Marilyn Cantrella Saunders.”

  “A father listed?”

  “Not in the blank where his name would go.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “In the margin, beside the blank, there is a penciled in name with a question mark after it. The name is Franklin Saunders.”

  “Birthplace?”

  “Lexington, Kentucky.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Selma Cantrell died giving birth to Marilyn. The records indicate that no one came forth to claim any kinship, so the baby was put up for adoption.”

  “And was she adopted?”

  “In time, she was. It did not occur immediately. She was placed in a children’s home near Charlottesville and remained there for about eight or nine months. Details were sketchy on that part.”

  “So, who finally adopted her?”

  “A Mr. Robert Lee Saunders and his lovely young wife Cybil Maloney Saunders came along to take the baby and raise her. Those names sound familiar to you?”

  “Well, Robert Lee is a common name in the south. Cybil Maloney has a familiar ring, but I can’t place it.”

  “This is precisely why you need me in your life. Cybil Maloney was the name of the young woman who married Robert Lee Rowland. She was from Kentucky. That was in my file I created when I did some background searching on the Reverend Rowland.”

  “So we have a mystery here. No way there could be two Robert Lees and two Cybil Maloneys and they both get married to each other. One being Rowland and the other being Saunders. Just ain’t gonna happen.”

  “You want the probability on that?” Rogers asked.

  “No, thank you. I can do the math myself. Anything else?”

  “That was as far as I could go in the short time you gave me to come up with another game plan. I think I should keep digging into the background of Saunders and see where it leads.”

  “I’ll wash dishes and you do research.”

  “Since you provided me with no hands but a marvelous brain, good division of labor, I’d say.”

  I finished the dishes, talked to Captain Wineski to update him on the recent developments in Clancyville, and was working on a late lunch when Rogers finally came through with more information on Marilyn Saunders.

  “I found a birth certificate for Cybil Maloney, the good wife of the supposedly two distinct men. She was in fact born Cybil Maloney, no middle name, in Corbin, Kentucky in 1930. Her great grandmother was a McCoy of the Hatfield and McCoy disagreement. On her mother’s side of the family.”

  “That’s an historical wow.”

  “Is that really noteworthy?”

  “I have found the gap in your abilities.”

  “There is no gap in my abilities.”

  “You have no subjective history or feelings, except as it relates to you personally.”

  “You are analyzing what you call artificial intelligence.”

  “I am analyzing you, Rogers. You know things, you know lots of things. But the data you add to your memory, unless it relates to you or to a case we are working or have discussed, is meaningless. There is no subjectivity.”

  “Which means I remain completely objective. I do not get all excited about some Hatfield versus McCoy story that happened a long time ago. And what could that possibly mean for jour case?”

  “It’s the way things happen in our culture. Two families, fighting each other over disagreements, and in some cases, those same two warring families intermarrying. It’s the classic struggle of being able to get along with those closest to us. Or, in their case, not being able to get along with those closest to us.”

  “Like Romeo and Juliet of Shakespeare fame,” she said.

  “Well connected, my brainy friend.”

  “And this matters to our present case with Marilyn Saunders how?”

  “Remains to be seen. Tell me more about Cybil Maloney,” I said.

  “I’m still digging around for info about her siblings. She married Robert Lee Saunders in 1945.”

  “That puts her at the tender age of fifteen at the time of the wedding.”

  “You have a point to be made?”

  “I’m back to the Hatfield-McCoy history. Could be a shotgun wedding.”

  “I have not as yet come across that concept.”

  “Family forces the wedding because the girl is pregnant and needs a husband. At that time in our culture, it was believed that any husband is better than no husband. Thus, the shotgun was on hand to ensure that the husband showed up, wedded, and walked away with his pregnant bride.”

  “Pregnancy was always the reason?” Rogers said.

  “No. I think some times it was an arranged wedding for various reasons. Generally it was done to ensure that there was security for the woman or the family. I suppose the shotgun could be held by either side of the husband/wife duo.”

  “Coercion.”

  “To say the least. Tell me more about Cybil.”

  “Dead end here. The trail gets cold, as they say in the old west, for any more data on Cybil Maloney Saunders.”

  “As they say. That means we need to find the trail and see where it leads.”

  “Give me a starting point,” Rogers said.

  “I have to go find the trail.”

  “Road trip?”

  “Yep.”

  “Destination?”

  “Corbin, Kentucky.”

  “You and the dog.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of heading to Corbin without Sam.”

  “And a shotgun?”

  “457.”

  Chapter 32

  Norfolk to Corbin, Kentucky is about ten hours driving time without stops. Sam and I are the kind of beings that need to stop. With two meals and numerous nature calls, we made the trip in a little less than twelve hours the following day. Since Corbin is not one of my frequent stops along life’s way, I used one of the online directional sites and took I-64 to Staunton, Virginia and then I-81 South to Bristol, Virginia. Leaving the interstate system at Bristol, Sam and I traveled what is often referred to as the back roads of the country following Hwy. 23 to Hwy. 421/58 and then finally Hwy. 25 East on the final leg into Greater Corbin.

  We stopped at the first motel on Hwy. 25 that looked decent. I ordered a medium pizza from a hole-in-the-wall pizza parlor recommended by the clerk, fed the dog, and listened to the local news on the television while enjoying some great sausage and pepperoni. The clerk knew good pizza.

  Ever alert to a clue when it comes my way, I was listening closely to one of the human interest stories the news people do to sandwich the murders and fires we ingest daily from the local newscasts. The story involved a local psychic who had saved the lives of five people, two adults and three children to be specific, by calling 911 to report the fire. Ordinarily such a deed would be considered merely a Good Samaritan act or a neighborly response when someone sees something bad happening. In this case there were a couple of things which caught my attention about this event. First, according to the report, the 911 call came into the switchb
oard at 9:11 p.m. The caller gave the exact location of the fire and the Corbin fire department was on the scene in less than twenty minutes. The first indication that this was a significant event was that when the firemen arrived, there was no fire. No smoke. Nothing was happening at the location to which the firemen had been called. As the firemen were about to leave, one of the men noticed some smoke bellowing from a house two doors down. They quickly relocated their trucks and gear, alerted the family inside, got them out safely and saved a portion of their home simply because they were nearby.

  The caller had given her name and phone number so when she was contacted later by the fire chief, she apologized for the wrong address. She confessed that she has dyslexia and often metathasizes the numbers. In this case, she reported the house number as 363 Dewberry Lane, when actually the fire broke out at 633 Dewberry Lane. That was one issue. The other issue was that the fire was reported nearly thirty minutes before it happened.

  Since everyone suspected arson, the caller was invited to the police station, questioned for hours and finally freed when the fire marshal reported that it was an electrical fire that had begun in the bedroom because of a faulty space heater. Arson was out of the question since there was no connection between the caller and the space heater. After the caller was released, someone in the police department leaked the minor detail that the 85 year old caller was a psychic and that she had seen the fire in a vision and therefore alerted the proper authorities.

  Since I do not believe in psychics but have a lot of suspicions regarding visions and dreams, I was intrigued by the story. The second thing that caught my attention was the fact that the psychic’s name was Bella Cantrella Cantrell. I marvel at the names which parents create for their children without the slightest forethought to what they are doing to the poor child. The best part about this name was that it had a nice rhythm to it. I’m sure the children at her school had fun with that.

  It was the Cantrella Cantrell part which alerted my detective instincts. My sleuthing knows no bounds. It’s always good to find a clue when looking for clues, a truth not so obvious for those of us who do this type of work. I have actually gone for days without as much as a trace of a clue. And since I came to Corbin without knowing where to go and who to see and even what to look for, it was nice to have the news media provide my first direction.

  I found Bella Cantrella Cantrell with the address provided by the television station. I could have probably found her without that information since she had one of those large signs in her front yard with a hand showing the palm, her name in all caps across the palm, and a notation at the bottom inviting strangers like me to walk in and have a daily reading. I readily obliged.

  Her place was on a side street off of the main drag of downtown Corbin. At first glance it appeared that her signage in the front was larger than her house.

  An old woman with a 1950’s version of a do-rag greeted me after I entered the house. Her head scarf was multi-colored with a predominance of purple and red. The colors of the scarf were an inexact match for the many colors found in her long skirt. She wore a white blouse and was barefooted. Nothing quite like a slightly overweight octogenarian barefooted. Her face showed that the years had not necessarily been kind to her. Wrinkle city.

  “What kin I do fer you, child?”

  “Would you mind answering some questions?”

  “Ya’ here about that family rescued from the fire?”

  “Not really.”

  “I’ll answer yur questions if ya ‘low me ta do a’readin’,” she said and smiled showing me several gaps in her collection of the few remaining teeth she had after eighty odd years of life.

  “Fair exchange. Do I sit?”

  She pointed to a table and two chairs underneath a large circular lamp dangling from the ceiling. The lamp was multi-colored like her scarf and skirt. I sat down at the table. She sat across from me. I surveyed the small, but tightly packed room. Shelves and cabinets lined three walls except for where the sofa sat. The shelves and cabinets were lined with angels, dragons, and small figurines that appeared to be elves or trolls or some type of imaginary creature from another world. A large glass unicorn was prominent atop a full curio cabinet near our crowded little table.

  “Give me yur hand,” she said with a kind tone.

  I lifted my right hand in front of me and extended it out over the middle of the table as if I was offering something not attached to my body.

  “I prefer the left,” she said.

  I changed hands and she took my left hand in both of her hands, gently guiding it to the table top. My hand was now resting inside of her right hand. She began tracing the lines of my palm with the index finger of her left hand. Her touch was soothing.

  “This line sezs that you gonna have a long life,” she began.

  “Good. There are plenty of people who would love to shorten it.”

  “Really. I do see some crossin’ lines indicating trouble ahead.”

  “My work.”

  “Oh, but here,” she pointed to a specific spot in my palm, “I see that love is definitely in yur life.”

  “Must be Sam,” I said.

  “Then Sam is yur lover.”

  “Doubtful. I don’t do kinky.”

  “Beg yur parden,” she said.

  “Sam’s my dog. I love him, but I do draw the line.”

  “Yur a real wit, young’un.”

  “Thanks for appreciating. Anything else in the palm?”

  “Yes, there is somethin’ else.”

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  “Perhaps we should stop now and let you ask questions.”

  “You have an unusual name,” I said.

  “Means beautiful. At least that’s whut my mama tol’ me.”

  “Bella does mean that. I was referring to Cantrella.”

  “Rhymes with Bella.”

  “Lots of people named Cantrella around here.”

  “Not so many. I think I’m it,” she said.

  She was still holding my left hand in her right hand now. I hadn’t noticed the shift. It was comfortable enough, so I left it there.

  “I once heard of another person with that name.”

  “From around here?”

  “I think she was born around here. Her name was Marilyn Cantrella Saunders.”

  There was a slight tension in her right hand at the mention of that name. She stared into my eyes and almost smiled at me.

  “Ain’t herd that name in many a year. Wondered ‘bout her. You know her?”

  “A little. That’s why I’m here. I was hoping that you might know her and could give me some information regarding her early life.”

  “Ya ‘ritin’ a book or somethin’?”

  “No.”

  “She in trouble?”

  “Yeah, you could say that.”

  Bella looked down at my palm, studied it for a minute or so, and then looked back into my eyes.

  “She’s tryin’ to kill ya, ain’t she?”

  “Perhaps that’s her end game, but for the moment she’s simply trying to make my life miserable.”

  “What ya need to know ‘bout her?”

  “Whatever you are willing to share,” I said.

  “You payin’ for this readin’, right?”

  “Absolutely. Plus any expenses you incur.”

  “What’es that mean?”

  “It means that I will pay you well for valid information.”

  She smiled at me revealing her missing teeth once again. I must remember not to say things that cause her to smile. It was not a pretty sight.

  “My sister Selma wuz raped by a no-good scoundrel Franklin Saunders. He wuz kin to those damned, hateful Hatfields. Anyhow, he raped her and that baby wuz born nine months later. Cursed, she wuz.”

  “The baby was cursed or Selma?”

  “That baby, a’course. Selma got off easy. She up and died. We had to look after that child for a spell. It wuz awful, as I recall.”

>   “Hard on the family to raise a baby, I expect.”

  “Naw. Raisin’ kids wuz easy for our clan. We had kids all over the place. This baby wuz different. I always had the gift, ya know. I cud tell that she wuz different.”

  “Different,” I repeated.

  “Evul.”

  “Evil.”

  “Yeah, that evul eye, I call it. She cud look at’ya’ and cause yur blood to curdle. We only had her a few days, but it wuz long enough to know that we had to do somethin’. She wuz affectin’ all of us like some evul spell cast on our whole house. Like a presence, ya know.”

  “What did you do?”

  “We herd tell of a home over in Charlottesville, Virginia. Took her over there and left her. Figured they’d take care of her. Should’a killed her, I suppose. But couldn’t do that. Couldn’t kill no baby, even if she wuz evul and all.”

  “Why do you think caused her to be evil?”

  “Mixin’ the bloods. Those damn Hatfields mixin’ their blood with us McCoys. Nothing good gonna come from such a mix. God never intended fur McCoys and Hatfields to get married and have children. Ain’t right. Never should’a happened.”

  “Do you know what happened to her after you folks placed her in that children’s home in Virginia?”

  “Yeah, my youngest sister, Cybil, got married and her goody-too-shoes husband had the bright idea that they would adopt that child and raise her as their own. Stupid mistake. But that wuz Cybil. She wudda done anything that man asked her to do. It wuz a disgrace, him being a Hatfield and all, Cybil being a pure-blood McCoy. It wuz just wrong. Seemed like our family wuz cursed to always be linked with those damned Hatfields.”

  “Do you know why Cybil and her husband left the area?”

  “Two reasons. If they stayed, somebody wudda shot Robert Lee just like they did his no account brother, Franklin. And, Robert Lee was supposed to have had that high callin’ to ministry. I hurd tell he left ‘cause he wuz goin’ to school somewhere, but I know’d the truth.”

  “And that is?”

  “He didn’t wanna die in Kentucky.”

  Chapter 33