Death in Reel Time

by Brynn Bonner

  “It wasn’t bad,” he said. “Well, it was bad, but I’ve had worse. Your guy,” he said to Esme, “he’s okay, but that woman is a—” He stopped.

  “A buster of some tender part of your anatomy?” Esme said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, that,” Tony said with a tired smile.

  Esme, it seemed, had warmed not only to Tony, but to the video format as well. And from the snippets I’d seen so far it had warmed to her, too. She was great at voice-over, her voice warm and full of inflection and resonance. Mine, on the other hand, was small, like me, and came off sounding like a cartoon rodent. She was also good at scripting, where the cadence and rhythm were much different than the cut-and-dried parlance we use for our family history reports.

  I wasn’t yet absolutely sold on the idea of adding video scrapbooking to our list of services, but I was keeping an open mind. Tony set up his laptop on the coffee table in the living room and after some finagling of wires and remotes, managed to get the picture up on our TV screen. He started Olivia’s video scrapbook with some clips from the old Crawford movie.

  “The company is still in business,” he said. “They got swallowed up by a bigger company years ago, but I was able to get permission to use the clips.” He brushed his hair back off his face. “I was gonna use ’em anyway, but since this is a portfolio piece I wanted everything legal-eagled.”

  He’d cut in the footage he’d taken yesterday, positioning the camera at the same angles as the old shots. “We’ll have to do some voice-over here,” he said, turning to Esme, naturally, “and then here we slide into Olivia’s part.”

  Olivia came onscreen, telling what she knew of her family history, then there were interviews with Daniel and with Beth. Then came Esme’s narration of Olivia’s family history and those Ken Burns–style pans of the scrapbooks.

  Now I was sold.

  When I didn’t speak for a moment Tony interpreted my silence as disapproval.

  “You hate it,” he said.

  “No, Tony, I’m just speechless. This is better than I ever expected; no offense.”

  “None taken,” Tony said. “As long as you like it. We’ve got more work to do on it, but so far, so good.”

  “So far, real good,” Esme said.

  “I know you don’t have much time, but let me show you some clips from the interview with Charlie, too.” He ejected a disk from his computer and popped in another one.

  “Relax,” I said, telling him about our cancellation. “All we’ve got to do this afternoon is unpack the stuff we already packed.”

  “Okay, cool. Maybe after you see this you’ll buy into this project, too. Keep in mind this is all raw footage.”

  Charlie’s now-familiar face appeared on the screen. He was stiff, almost sullen, in the beginning, but slowly mellowed as I coaxed him along in the interview.

  When the screen went blank Esme sat back on the sofa. “Okay, well, now it’s my turn to say I’m convinced. You’ve got an interesting story there.”

  “Especially if my hunch is right,” I said.

  Tony gave me a quizzical look and I told him what I’d found while searching for information about Hershel Tillett. “And based on that, I’m thinking Charlie may have been one of Hershel’s underaged friends, or maybe even one of the cousins. I’ll keep digging. And if Charlie Martin, or whatever his real name is, was a boy soldier, don’t you think that makes his story even more compelling?”

  “Depends on how young he was, I suppose,” Tony said. “Lots of boys fresh off the farms fought that war. Or when you think about it, pretty much every war.”

  Esme groaned, and when I looked over there was the hand across her forehead again.

  “I know, it’s not right,” she murmured.

  Tony shrugged. “I know it’s not right, but that’s just the way it is.”

  twenty-two

  TONY CALLED EARLY THE NEXT morning. “Charlie’s agreed to another interview. Can you go this afternoon? We need to catch him before he backs out.”

  “He’s agreed to the project?”

  “Not yet. I figured, better to ease him into it. Get him used to talking to you. And maybe when Beth’s feeling better she could help wrangle him into it.”

  In the hours I had until time for the interview, I dogged Charlie Martin’s trail, only to end up in a succession of frustrating dead ends. I was more convinced than ever that Charlie Martin was somebody else, somebody who’d gone to war young and grown up too fast. I suddenly recalled what Celestine had written about their tenants’ sons wanting to join up even though one was underaged. Was the name Tillett or was I getting my wires and my jobs crossed? We’d already taken everything back to Olivia, so I’d have to check the next time I was over there. Olivia might get a kick out of it if she found out that there was a link, however tangential, between her family and Charlie’s all those decades ago.

  I called Lacey Simmons and got her voice mail. I left a message asking if she’d had any luck locating the photos of her grandfather’s pals and told her—sincerely—that I’d really love to hear from her.

  I got out my calculator and tried out different age discrepancies. Charlie Martin was in remarkable vim and vigor for his age. Shave a few years and he’d be fit, but not extraordinary. And if that range was right, the enlistment age of the erstwhile Charlie would have been somewhere around fourteen or fifteen. That was sad to think about, but it made for a much more dramatic story.

  I looked through my notes from the last interview with Charlie and jotted down questions for the afternoon session today, some of them subtly contrived to help me prove my theory about Charlie’s actual age and identity.

  When Tony arrived we went over the questions, adjusted some, and added a couple of new ones. On the drive to Charlie’s place Tony seemed fidgety. “Are you nervous about this or something?” I asked. “Afraid I’ll scare him off?”

  “No, we’re ready,” he said. “And you’re fine. It’s something else. I feel like I ought to tell you about it, but I don’t know why I should feel that way. I mean it’s not like I owe you what’s in my head.”

  “You don’t owe me anything, Tony,” I said. “But if there’s something you want to talk about, I’m a pretty good listener and I know how to keep my lip zipped.”

  “I know, else Beth wouldn’t have told you about getting used as a punching bag by her creep of a husband,” he said, spitting each word.

  “She told you?” I asked.

  “No, I overheard her talking to Olivia and Daniel. They don’t realize how much sound travels through the heat ducts in that house. I wasn’t eavesdropping; you just hear whether you want to or not,” he said.

  “Did you suspect what was going on?” I asked. “Is that why you didn’t like Blaine?”

  “I didn’t know-know, if you get my drift, but something about him wasn’t right. He had this look in his eyes sometimes. It was stone cold with an afterburner of psycho. Foster kids got good radar about that look.”

  “You know Beth doesn’t want anyone to know about this, right? I think she’d be very distressed if it got out.”

  “I don’t get why,” Tony said. “She didn’t do anything wrong. But it’s her business and she should get to say what she wants. So I won’t say anything to anybody but you. I just didn’t like holding it in, you know? And I overheard Beth say she’d told you and Esme about it because she knew she could trust you. It made me feel bad she couldn’t trust me, too, but I don’t blame her.”

  “Don’t look at it that way, Tony,” I said. “Knowing is a burden, really. You just said so yourself. She probably wanted to spare you that.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Anyhow, I don’t want any of them to start acting different around me, or be mad at me for overhearing. So don’t say anything.”

  I pinched my thumb and finger together and drew them across my lips.

  * * *

  Charlie wasn’t at his place when we arrived and we had no way to reach him since he didn’t have a phone. Th
e only way Tony had been able to contact him was to come over or search for him around town, which was how he’d found him this morning.

  “He’s probably still over at the Methodist church,” Tony said. “The pastor’s wife hired him to construct some new beds and put in bulbs—tulips and some other flowers I can’t remember the names of—along the walkway that leads from the parking lot to the church. She’s hoping they’ll bloom at Easter time.”

  Esme could probably recite the names of all the flowers for him, I thought. She’d still been suffering under a barrage of blossoms this morning, though she had a feeling things were building toward something more comprehensible. She’d been in the midst of cooking a big dinner when I left with enough banging and clanging to rival Olivia’s big wind contraptions. That’s the way Esme works out her issues with her guests. Sometimes, when she’s feeling kindly disposed, she refers to them as PALS, which is her acronym for Previously Alive and Longing for Solace. When she’s feeling neutral they’re guests and when she’s ticked off they’re parasites. As much as Esme had come to admire Celestine, after last night she’d slipped from PALS status to guest and was teetering there.

  “Should we wait for Charlie or come back later?” I asked.

  “I’d say wait unless you’ve got something better to do,” Tony said. “I don’t want to give him any excuse to put us off.”

  I realized only then that I was the one who was nervous. I had no idea why. Yes, Charlie Martin, aka whoever, was an irascible old cuss, but I’d surely seen a lot worse. And I was confident that with enough patience, he could be brought around.

  Just then Charlie rounded the corner of the building on his bike. He was pulling his cart full of tools behind him. The sight made me reassess my theory. Today he looked every year the age he claimed.

  He nodded a curt greeting as he unlocked his door and huffed as he started to take his tools from the cart and put them inside. “People will steal the fillings out of your teeth around here,” he grumbled.

  Tony and I each grabbed what we could carry. I noticed there were two short shovels. One matched the quality tools at Beth’s house and one was a lower grade and still had a sticker on it. So I guessed Beth would be getting hers back soon. When the cart was empty Charlie came back out and cobwebbed what appeared to be a logging chain around his bike and cart and secured it with an old-fashioned padlock the size of a softball.

  He left the door standing open and Tony and I looked at one another and shrugged, figuring that must be our invitation. We followed him into a narrow vestibule, where Charlie stopped to hang up his jacket.

  He slumped into a chair and motioned vaguely toward a threadbare sofa. I noted again how tidy the place was. The furnishings were spare, cheap and old, but everything was clean and orderly.

  “How’s Beth?” Charlie asked as we sat down. It was the first spark of interest he’d shown and I debated what to tell him.

  “Is she okay?” he pressed. “I mean, I know she’s not okay just yet, but will she be once this part’s over?”

  “I’m sure she will be,” I said, though I wasn’t clear on what this part was. “I expect she’ll come around to see you soon. She just needs some time.”

  Charlie nodded, then dealt with a coughing spasm. “That’s good then,” he said when he’d gotten his breath back. He glanced around toward the kitchen, then tapped his hands on the arms of his chair. “You know, I think this is enough of this foolishness. I’m tired and hungry and nobody cares what an old man has to say about anything anyhow. Let’s call this off.”

  Tony slumped, but I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel. “You know, I’m hungry, too,” I said. “Maybe Tony can go pick us up some lunch. What do you like?”

  I wasn’t remotely hungry, having had a big fat calzone and two tall glasses of tea just before I came over, but I tried to sell it, giving Tony’s arm a little slap. “This guy’s so into his filming he forgets a woman’s got to eat!”

  Charlie considered for a long moment. “Well,” he said finally, “I like the pizza from that place over on River Road. Y’all like that?”

  “I love it,” Tony said, and was instantly on his feet. I handed him my keys and after he took our topping orders he was out the door.

  I didn’t want to ask Charlie any questions that Tony would want to capture on camera, so I mustered all the charm I could and tried some light banter.

  Charlie was immune.

  Fine. I wasn’t really in a mood for small talk, either. What I really wanted to ask him about was his buddy Hershel Tillett and how he, much too coincidentally, happened to share the same name as Hershel’s deceased stepbrother. But he was already cranky enough. I figured if I brought up any of that and he realized I’d been snooping around in his background he’d throw us out for sure—and for good. I struggled on for another ten minutes or so, asking him about the various jobs he was doing around town. He was mending a screen door at Miss Etheleen Morganton’s, repairing a fence for Ingrid Garrison, and helping out with building a meditation labyrinth at St. Raphael’s.

  I latched on to the last job and asked a bunch of questions. I was genuinely interested since St. Raph’s is my parish. And, lax Catholic though I am, I loved the idea of the labyrinth and had even made a modest contribution. We talked easily for a while but when we’d exhausted that subject the awkwardness returned.

  He got up from his chair with some difficulty. “ ’Scuse me,” he said. “I’m gonna go wash up. Make yourself to home.”

  The small space was getting to me. I headed for the front doorway to get a breath of air. I bumped Charlie’s jacket as I went by and it nearly fell from the hook. I reached up to catch it. It was heavy and lopsided and I saw why. There was a gun that looked as old as Charlie in one of the pockets. So much for Denny’s warnings. I’d definitely be informing on Charlie on that one. I opened the door and took in a few gulps of air, then returned to my place on the sofa. I pulled my phone from my bag and started to check messages and email. What did people ever do with snatches of downtime before smartphones came along?

  I was excited to see a message from Lacey Simmons. I tapped it open and skimmed through her apologies about not getting back to me, then came to the meat of the message. She had a total of twenty-seven photographs of Hershel posing with gangs of friends, but she’d only attached scans of the five that had names written on the backs and the boot camp one that had no names. I clicked to bring up the first one and read the names, none of which sounded familiar. I dutifully pulled out my notebook and scratched them down. I spread my fingers on the screen to enlarge each of the four faces and studied each carefully, making a star by the names of the two who looked baby-faced. I went through the other photos in a similar fashion. When I got to the final one fireworks started going off in my brain and the planet seemed to tilt.

  Charlie came out of the bathroom, his thin hair wet and slicked back over his balding pate. He pulled his watch from his pocket and swung it by its fob, twirling it in a loop into the palm of his hand. The whole business seemed to happen in super-slow motion. He hit the latch button just as it reached his hand, studied the face for a long moment, then latched it and put it back in his pocket. Only then did he look in my direction.

  The turmoil in my head must have been visible and as our eyes met he went ghostly pale.

  “Hello, Johnny Hargett,” I said. “Where’ve you been all these years?”

  His eyes widened and he glanced toward his coat. Only then did it occur to me that maybe I’d just made a very large mistake.

  Just then Tony came through the door. “Hope everybody’s hungry,” he said cheerfully, lofting the pizza boxes. He looked from me to Charlie, then back to me again. “What’s going on? Please don’t tell me the interview’s off.”

  “Depends on who it is you wanted to interview,” I said.

  twenty-three

  “I RECKON YOU’RE GONNA RUN right over and tell Olivia and the kids about this,” the erstwhile Charlie said, his voice at
once relieved and resentful.

  “I’m not sure what I’ll do,” I said. “But sooner or later they’re going to know. Don’t you think it would be better all around if it came from you?”

  “Tell who what?” Tony said, still holding the pizza boxes. “Could somebody please tell me what’s going on?”

  I held up a hand to quiet him. “Just give us a minute, Tony,” I said, still focused on Charlie/Johnny.

  He continued to stare at the scarred linoleum floor, then shook his head emphatically. “I can’t do it. I know what you’re saying is true; they’ll find out sooner or later,” he said, his voice little more than a warble. “And I would like them to know my side of it, but I can’t face them. I can’t look any of them in the eye. I can’t do it.”

  “Tony,” I said, keeping my voice level. “Go get your camera.”

  He started to protest, but I gave him a sharp look and he set the pizza boxes down and scurried out.

  My cell phone, still in my hand, rang and I saw that it was Esme. I let it go to voice mail.

  “You can tell your story to the camera,” I said to Johnny, trying for a sympathetic tone, though I wasn’t sure I felt much sympathy for him. “That’ll make it easier. We’ll show the footage to Olivia, Daniel, and Beth, then they can decide whether they want to see you. I suspect they will because I’m sure they’ll have questions. I know I sure do.” I hardened my tone. “Either we do it that way, or yeah, I’ll head over there now and tell them myself.”

  Again my cell phone rang, the insistent ring filling the small room. It was Esme again. She knew we were doing this interview, so for her to interrupt—twice—it had to be important. When I answered she blurted out. “She didn’t mean it wasn’t right morally,” she said. “She meant it was inaccurate. She meant it really didn’t happen the way they thought for all those years. She meant what she wrote wasn’t right. Sophreena, I’m not sure Johnny Hargett died when he went off that railroad trestle.”

  “He didn’t,” I said.

  “How do you know?” she asked.