I glanced at my clock. Six hours was probably a nice long sleep for some people.
“What’s up? Everything okay?” I said with a scratchy throat.
“Yes, everything’s fine. I didn’t find out anything definite about that poor man’s murder, but…Well, I just have some stuff I need to talk to…someone, well, you, about. Miz told me to go away.”
I held back a smile. “Give me a minute or two.”
I rolled out of bed, padded to the kitchen, and started the coffee. I splashed my face with water and used my fingers to redo my ponytail. I guided a large mug under the dripper, filled it, replaced the pot, took a big sip, and returned to the bedroom, which Sally hadn’t left. A female ghost made it much easier to not worry about the tank top and skimpy shorts pajamas I wore, and I didn’t care at all about my messy hair or my pale non-makeup’ed skin and very visible freckles, the bane of my auburn-almost-red-headed existence.
I sat back into some pillows I propped up against the wrought iron headboard, and Sally sat at the foot of the bed, keeping the ax in between us.
“I think I’m ready now,” I said, three gulps in my system.
“The one named Cece, the one who kind of looks like me, you remember?” Sally said.
“I do.”
“I think she’s the most suspicious.”
“Why?”
“She’s not upset in the least about the missing people, her husband included, or the murder,” Sally began. “She was angry about the inconvenience of it all. She complained about having to stick around. When everyone else was upset or in shock, Cece was traipsing around with a devil-may-care attitude and looking for something to eat. I don’t understand her behavior.”
“You have a point, but from the short time I spent with her, it seems that’s just her personality. She’s all about herself, probably even in the face of things as terrible as kidnapping and murder. I’m not sure she was doing anything other than showing her true colors. That’s also how some people cope—denial. Either way, I’m sure the police will question her thoroughly.”
Sally nodded. “Denial, yes, there’s something about that. Denial.” She said the word like she was experimenting with its sound. She blinked. “The others were upset, very upset. They seemed genuine, but maybe if someone is guilty, maybe they are trying to hide it by acting as they’re supposed to. That actually makes more sense.” She seemed to think as I continued with my coffee. “Oh, oh, there is one other interesting fact. The police took extra notes when Georgina Carlisle, Greg Carlisle’s wife…widow now, told them she’d grown up in Broken Rope.”
“Oh? That is interesting actually.” Georgina hadn’t looked familiar, but even though Broken Rope was small, I didn’t know everyone. “What else did she say?”
“She asked to stay with some local family, a cousin. Stuart…oh darn, what was his last name? He owns a shoe repair shop or something like that.”
“Benson. Stuart Benson.”
“That’s it!”
Stuart Benson had been a nighttime student of Gram’s and mine for a long time. Our nighters weren’t serious for–a–profession cooks but just an ever-changing group of locals who wanted to learn some of how Gram did what she did. He loved learning the ins and outs of cooking down-home country food. I frequently wondered if that was true, though, or if it was just an excuse to do something other than work in his shoe shop and leather store. He wasn’t married, had never been as far as I knew, and didn’t have any children, again, as far as I knew. He was a sweet man, but quiet. I didn’t know one thing about him before he became “the guy who owns the shoe shop on the boardwalk.”
Though we hadn’t spent much time with the foodie group, I wondered if Gram knew about Mrs. Carlisle’s connection to Stuart. They might have had a conversation that I wasn’t in the vicinity to hear or that Gram didn’t think she needed to share with me. Georgina’s connection to Broken Rope was curious, but might also mean absolutely nothing at all.
“Stuart’s a good guy,” I said.
“I was there when they took Georgina to his house. He seemed surprised and pleased to see her. And then he was shocked when he heard the other news, the news about Mr. Carlisle.”
“I’m sure.”
Sally sighed and then looked out the window to the side of my bed. My bedroom wasn’t large. It was in the back corner of the house and had a window with a view of the neighbor’s well-kept and flourishing flower garden. I enjoyed my view, especially since I didn’t have to do one thing to keep it looking so lovely.
The rest of the room was taken up by the high full-sized bed, which was covered in a thick quilt and an old white bedspread I got from Gram. A circular pattern of tiny knots decorated the middle of the bedspread. I also had a white antique dresser drawer set and matching makeup table. I wasn’t much for primping, but I loved the older furniture.
“What are you thinking about, Sally?”
“I love the way you live,” Sally said.
“Uh, thank you,” I replied, surprised and unsure of what she meant.
“You have your own home. You have this beautiful bed and other nice furniture. You have such independence. I wish I would have had that.”
“I’m sorry.” A thread of pity stirred the coffee in my stomach. I’d felt something similar for Jerome at one point, but he told me that it was fine, that he wasn’t really feeling much of anything let alone regret; it was more a memory of feelings. But now I wondered if Sally’s experience was different. I wondered what she remembered about what she had felt when she was alive. “Did you feel…” I couldn’t think of the right word. Anything was the first one that came to mind, but that seemed somehow too casual. Murderous was the second word, but that just seemed impolite. I abandoned the question.
“I had no independence,” she said as she turned and looked at me. “I wasn’t in a position to live alone, have my own house. I’m remembering more and more, and I know I could never have had a life like yours.”
“No woman did then, really, though, did they?”
Sally shook her head. “Not really. Mine was the only type of life I knew, but coming back here, visiting Missouri and now you, I realize I would have liked to live now.”
I sat up a little straighter, hoping to change the subject; I couldn’t do anything about her melancholy, but maybe we could use her time here more positively.
“Last night you said you found something that might be a clue to your diary. What was it?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, of course,” she said. Her mood suddenly improved. “Well, it wasn’t a clue to my diary as much as it was a clue to me. I searched for my old home, but it’s not there any longer. I didn’t think it would be. I think I’ve searched for it before. Some parts of the old barn we had in our backyard are still there, but not much is left. I used to love that barn, and it was while I was looking at its leftover pieces that something else occurred to me. I don’t think I’ve ever remembered this before. I used to hide in the barn when I wanted to be by myself.” She was silent a moment as her eyes looked blindly to the side, but she shook her head an instant later and resumed speaking. “I think for the first time since I’ve been coming back I also remembered something else, a place I used to hide if the barn wasn’t far enough away. I wonder if maybe I put the diary there.”
“Where?” She had my attention. Searching any place would be better than continuing to talk about exhuming her body.
“It’s pretty run-down and it looks like no one else is living there,” she said. I nodded to prompt her forward. “It has a sign next to the front door that says ‘Monroe House.’”
I hadn’t talked about the Monroe House in years, a decade maybe, and now it had been brought to my attention two days in a row. Jake had mentioned it as a landmark for the area where Sally’s house had been, and now she remembered hiding in it.
“The Monroe House, really? You hid in it? I don’t understand,” I said.
“Yes, I think I knew a woman who lived there. I don
’t remember it all yet, but I’m sure I’ve never remembered any of it before. Back then it didn’t have a sign in front of it that said who it belonged to—at least, I don’t think it did.” She seemed to fall into thought again but came out of it quickly. “Anyway, will you search it for me?”
“I, uh, well.” I wasn’t sure how to explain how the house had made me feel when I was younger. I had no desire to step into a place that now I might categorize as having been haunted. But how could I explain that to the ghost of a dead ax murderer who was sitting calmly at the end of my bed holding said ax? If Jake didn’t manage to save it, it would be torn down soon. If only Sally had arrived a week or two later.
“I thought you thought the diary was buried with your body,” I said. My perspective had changed quickly. Suddenly, exhuming her body sounded more appealing than searching the Monroe House.
“It might be. I think…well, I’m not sure, but I’ll let you know if I remember more about that. In the meantime, I think the Monroe House would be a good place to search anyway. Would the current owners let you?”
“It’s dilapidated. I know they don’t want people walking around inside it. It’s dangerous. No one lives there.”
“Oh good! Even better, we won’t be disturbing anyone. That’s good news. And it didn’t look all that dangerous to me. We could just look.”
“Why didn’t you just search it?” I said, my voice sounding much whinier than I wanted.
Sally’s mouth pinched and she looked away, back out at the flower garden.
“What, Sally?” I said.
“Well, I can’t move things in this form, open doors or drawers or things, but…well, I also couldn’t get in,” she said. “Something there wouldn’t let me in. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t get past the front threshold. I don’t know what the problem was.”
I would have laughed if she hadn’t just scared the coffee into a tsunami in my stomach.
“And you want me to go in for you?”
“Yes, please. Oh, would you?”
I set the mug on the bedside table as I thought about what she might do with the ax when I told her there was no way I was going to search a house that had not only scared me when I was younger but also seemed to have some no–trespassing policy for her ghostly self.
Fortunately, I had a diversion. “I have another idea,” I said. “Jake gave me a book you might find interesting. Let me grab it.” The few minutes I took to gather the book from my bag in the front room wouldn’t be enough to divert Sally’s attention from the Monroe House for long, but it might give me a little time to think of a more solid argument.
I was deeply curious about why she would be kept out of the place—who or what could do such a thing? Jerome hadn’t been able to get inside the jail and that hadn’t bothered me, but this felt different. Maybe I was just projecting my own fear, but I wasn’t about to try and find out. Something in my coffee gut told me that there were just things I didn’t need to understand completely. I already had ghosts in my life; maybe something worse or dangerous awaited me “out there,” and maybe it resided in the Monroe House. I wanted to ignore it and hope it went away.
I had to do something, anything to get her mind off the whole idea. The book that Jake had given me might help even if only temporarily.
“This is the journal, or maybe just the notes, of a newspaper reporter who covered your trial. Do you remember your trial?” I asked as I sat back on the bed.
“Not much of it. Bits and pieces. Flashes, but I feel like I’m remembering more this time here than I have previous times.”
I opened the book. “This guy’s name was Edgar O’Brien. He was quite the character apparently. Jake said that he’s a Broken Rope legend that never gets the credit he’s due. He was a good reporter, and since Broken Rope’s history is so…bizarre, especially during the years he was reporting, his stories and his notes have helped with the preservation of the history of the town and its people.”
“The name doesn’t sound familiar.”
I nodded. “Anyway, the first thing Jake pointed out to me was a note about him sneaking into your house and finding a clean ax handle with no blade. Anything about that ring a bell?”
“Nothing more than the fact that an ax plays a big part in my life. Maybe it’s nothing.”
I set the book on the bed in between the two of us and translated the unusual and difficult writing. “Okay. It says that your trial began on June 1, 1893. Ah, but before that you pleaded not guilty. I didn’t know that. Do you remember that?”
“Yes, actually I do. I have no recollection of doing those awful things. Miz says I’ve never had any memory of killing anyone.”
I paused. “Wait. Were you potentially innocent?”
“I don’t think I’d be saddled with this”—she held up the ax—“in my death if I were innocent, do you?”
Though I wasn’t totally educated on all the historical details, the trial of Sally Swarthmore was a huge part of Broken Rope history. During the summer tourist season, we held a daily reenactment of the reading of the verdict, though I didn’t tell Sally I hadn’t seen the show since I was a kid. Our old courthouse was the same old courthouse where Sally’s trial had occurred. As with the jail and Jake’s sheriff’s office, this older, more interesting courthouse was across the street from the newer, more modern one.
The older building was a popular and dramatic stop for all tourists. They’d come in and sit in the gallery as men dressed as jurors from 1893 shared the horrible story with the audience. Then, an actress portraying Sally would come in and speak to the crowd a moment before the guilty verdict was read. She hadn’t testified on her own behalf at her trial, so she didn’t for the performance either. Instead, she just gave a brief overview of her family without many details, because no one had many details. Then she would faint just like she had in real life, and come to shortly. She was hauled out of the courtroom, all the while screaming and crying.
Then the main storyteller/juror would come back and share the rest of the story. Sally hadn’t lasted long behind bars. She died of what the coroner called “a failure of the heart brought on by severe taxation of the nerves.” There were conspiracy theorists, though, who claimed she’d either been killed or had escaped and left town only to roam southern Missouri—sightings were still being reported to this day. It was this last bit that the tourists seemed to love the most. One summer, we held a “Spot Sally” contest and gave prizes to the first ten people who could find the ten WANTED posters we hid throughout town. It turned out to be far too competitive and took attention away from the many other Broken Rope attractions, so we never held the contest again.
This year the part of Sally was being played by the biggest thorn in my side since childhood, Ophelia Buford, aka Opie. She was a poor little rich girl and the person who was allegedly (I still wasn’t ready to accept it, obviously) dating my younger brother.
“But do you think that maybe you didn’t kill your parents?” It was a leading question, and not a very good one at that. The truth was, I didn’t want the ghost sitting on the other end of my bed and holding an ax to be guilty, but still, I shouldn’t try to manipulate her already sketchy memories.
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that I don’t remember doing it. I was found guilty, and I’ve got this ax. I probably did it but just can’t or won’t remember.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s see if I can decipher some more of these notes.” I turned back to the book. “It says that the first witness was your family’s housekeeper, Betty Benson. Do you remember her?”
Sally’s eyes opened wider. “I do. Yes, I do remember Betty. She was a quiet thing, went about her work without complaint.”
“She claimed that it was your scream that pulled her from a nap. She came downstairs and your father’s…uh, body was in the parlor and you were there, too. Hang on, I think it says that she found you without even one drop of blood on your dress.” Though the notes weren’t written in
code or shorthand, some of the words were abbreviated and hurried. I wasn’t sure if no bld. on dress, no drops even meant “no blood on dress, no drops even” but it was my best guess.
Sally nodded. “Interesting.”
I thought it was more than a little interesting, both from a legal standpoint and as someone who’d never heard that detail before.
“Oh, ick,” I said as I read the next note. “No one found your mother’s body upstairs until later. The police found it. Betty claimed that when she’d seen your father alone downstairs earlier in the day, she thought she heard you laughing upstairs, but you said you weren’t in the house.”
“What do you suppose that means?”
“I dunno,” I said. “That’s just what she said, according to these notes. At least that’s my interpretation. We’d call that hearsay these days. I expect they did back then, too. It looks like Betty might not have been one hundred percent certain.”
“Maybe she heard my mother laughing?” Sally said.
“Maybe.” I thought about the significance of these long-dead reporter’s notes. Could there be something in them that could have helped clear Sally? I didn’t think her guilty verdict had ever been in question, but by reading only a few lines, I had begun to wonder if maybe, just maybe…I shook it off as the repressed attorney in me wanted to rear its head. “Did you like your parents?”
Sally laughed. “I don’t remember ever liking or loving or not liking or loving them or my sister. I don’t remember anything as strong as hatred though. I wasn’t happy some of the time, but I’m not sure exactly why.”
“Hang on, you had a sister?” The courthouse portrayal might have mentioned that but I had probably been too young to pay attention.
“Of course,” she said in the same tone Jake uses whenever I show my ignorance of Broken Rope history. “She’s the one who said she saw me burning a dress.” Sally sat up. “Oh, I just remembered that right this second. My sister saw me burning a blue dress a couple days after the murder, before I was arrested.” She looked down at herself. “Perhaps like this one.”
If Mashed Potatoes Could Dance Page 7
