Search for the Shadowman

by Joan Lowery Nixon

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Now what?” Andy asked, after he and J.J. had said goodbye to Miz Minna and walked out to the front porch. “She told me to talk to Miss Winnie, but Miss Winnie said if I asked her any questions about Coley Joe she wouldn’t answer them.”

  “Leave him out of your report,” J.J. said. “We don’t have to write about all of our relatives. Mr. Hammergren said so. We’re supposed to collect stories about how the older people in our family lived, way back when. Coley Joe Bonner has nothing to do with what Mr. Hammergren wants.”

  “It’s weird. Miz Minna said if I asked questions I could cause trouble. That’s the same thing Miss Winnie told me.”

  “Then don’t ask questions. Forget about Coley Joe.”

  Andy looked up as he heard the exasperation in his best friend’s voice. “It’s just that to me Coley Joe is almost like a real person and …”

  “He was a real person,” J.J. said, “but no matter what he did or didn’t do, he died a long time ago, and his problems are over. We’ve got a big test in math tomorrow. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got to study for it.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” Andy said.

  He walked home double time and unlocked the back door. There, still on one end of the kitchen table, rested Miss Winnie’s box of family mementos. Andy dropped his backpack onto the nearest chair. He felt himself drawn to the box as surely as if someone were leading him toward it.

  He reached into the box for the Bonner family Bible, eager to see the list of names one more time, but he discovered that the Bible was missing.

  Grabbing the framed photograph, an old bankbook, and a fistful of papers, Andy shoved them onto the tabletop. He rummaged through the remaining items in the box with a terrible, scary feeling. Some of the papers his mom had put together were gone, too!

  Andy groaned and flopped into a chair. It was then he noticed the sheet of note paper held to the refrigerator door with a magnet. He walked across the room, pulled the paper off, and read:

  Andy,

  I took the Bible and a few of the more interesting papers we found. I’ll make copies of them and of the list of Bonner names for you to include with your report. I love you.

  Mom

  With a wave of relief Andy flopped back into his chair, but as he did so, his elbow struck the framed Bonner family photograph, knocking it from the table. He grabbed for it, but he was too late. With a thud, one corner of the frame hit the floor and split. Andy groaned as he heard the glass shatter.

  In an instant he was on his knees, cautiously avoiding the shards of glass. He gently held up the splintered frame. In his fingers the old wood slid apart, dropping to the floor with the remaining glass. The photograph and its cardboard backing sailed under the table.

  It wasn’t until after Andy had carefully picked up all the pieces of wood and glass and put them into the wastepaper basket that he dared to crawl under the table and examine the photo. He could use his allowance to get the photograph reframed.

  To Andy’s relief, the photo itself didn’t seem to be damaged. As he picked it up, however, he saw that one end of the photo had been curled back around the cardboard. He could see the shoulder of a man, a shoulder that had been covered by the frame.

  He carefully flattened and smoothed the photo against the tabletop, revealing the smiling face of a young man—a young man who looked strangely familiar. Even though that portion of the photograph was dark and the man seemed to be standing in shadow, Andy could see that the smile, the eyes, and the dark curly hair were a lot like his own.

  Andy gulped and sat up straight. “Who are you, shadowman?” Andy whispered.

  Slowly he turned the photo over. In pencil someone had written the date, 1876, and the names of the people in the photograph behind where they had been standing in front of the camera. Andy held his breath, hoping, knowing what he would find: Elizabeth Anne; Malcolm John, Jr.; Peter James; the parents in the middle: Malcolm John Bonner and Grace Elizabeth Bonner; and Margaret Jane. And on the other side of the crease the name he had been waiting to read: Coley Joe.

  “It’s you! It’s really you, Coley Joe!” Andy whispered, and he quickly turned the photo over to study the face that was so much like his own.

  Coley Joe didn’t look like a desperado of the Old West. He looked like a guy who was friendly and full of fun. The others in his family stared solemnly at the photographer, but the corners of Coley Joe’s lips turned up as though he couldn’t possibly hold back a smile.

  “Whatever they said you did, I don’t believe it,” Andy told Coley Joe.

  He dropped the photo onto the table and ran to the telephone, punching in J.J.’s number.

  Mrs. Martinez answered and said, “J.J.’s doing his homework, Andy. Can he call you back?”

  “I’ll only be a second,” Andy said. “I’ve got something I have to tell him right now.”

  “Oh, sure,” Mrs. Martinez teased. “Like you just this minute found out you won the lottery.”

  Andy laughed, his excitement growing. “Better than that. Please, can I speak to J.J.?”

  “Hang on,” she answered. “I’ll tell him.”

  In less than a minute J.J. was on the phone. “You won the lottery?” he yelled.

  “No, but it’s just as exciting,” Andy answered. “I found a photograph of Coley Joe.”

  “That’s your big news? You’ve got a one-track mind.” J.J. sounded disgusted.

  “It’s big news to me,” Andy said. “And you know what? Coley Joe looks kind of like me. Or I guess I should say that I look kind of like him. I know he couldn’t have been a bad guy.”

  “You can’t tell from the way he looks,” J.J. insisted. “It’s only on TV and in the movies that the bad guys look like bad guys.”

  Andy wasn’t the least bit discouraged by what J.J. had said. “I’m going to prove that Coley Joe was a good guy,” he declared.

  “Miz Winnie said she wouldn’t answer questions about him, and Miss Minna won’t either. So how are you going to prove anything about him?”

  “The same way Miz Minna did her research,” Andy answered. “I’m going to hunt up Coley Joe on my dad’s computer.”

  “If Coley Joe’s own family won’t talk about him, who else will?”

  “How did Miz Minna find out things about some of her relatives?”

  “Just like she said. She contacted libraries that had genealogy material. She researched old records, but she worked at it for years. And some of it was pure luck.”

  “I feel lucky,” Andy answered.

  J.J. waited a few seconds before he said, “Andy, that stuff Miz Minna was talking about—the clothes and carriages and all that—we can share it. You can use it for your report, too.”

  “Thanks,” Andy said. “And anything like that I get from Miss Winnie, I’ll share with you. I’m going over there now to ask her more questions.”

  “About Coley Joe?”

  “No,” Andy said, but he knew if he asked some of the questions the right way, Miss Winnie might give him some information about Coley Joe without realizing it.

  Andy took the photograph upstairs, propping it among the model planes that covered the top of his dresser. He smiled back at the photo of Coley Joe, who wore the hammered nail on a leather thong. Andy fingered the matching nail he wore, wondering which Bonner it had belonged to. He tucked the nail down inside his T-shirt. “Wish me luck, Coley Joe,” he said.

  Miss Winnie smiled as Andy opened his notebook across his lap and said, “Were you born here in Hermosa, Miss Winnie?”

  “Yes, indeed,” she said. “And my father before me.”

  “What year were you born?”

  Miss Winnie stared up at the ceiling. “Oh, now, I don’t think that’s important, do you?”

  “Sure I do,” Andy said. “Mr. Hammergren told us to get dates whenever we could. If I write about what life was like when you were young, it wouldn’t mean anything if I didn’t have a date.”

>   Miss Winnie sniffed. “This Mr. Hammerhead—he’s a real busybody, isn’t he?”

  “It’s Hammergren, and he’s teaching us to collect facts.”

  “How many people are going to read this report?”

  “Just Mr. Hammergren, far as I know.”

  Miss Winnie’s forehead and lips puckered, but she said, “Well, all right, as long as this information doesn’t get passed on to certain parties, like Minna Gasper, who might be under the impression I’m a year younger than I really am.” She paused and took a deep breath. “I was born May 6, 1910.”

  “Wow!” Andy exclaimed.

  “It’s hardly the Dark Ages!” she snapped.

  Andy tried to smile. “I just meant ‘wow,’ like in, ‘Wow, May’s a really terrific month to get born in.’ That’s all.”

  She fluttered a hand at him. “Hmmph! Who do you think you’re kidding? Get on with the questions, Andy boy.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Your father was born in Hermosa, but how about your grandfather, Malcolm John junior?”

  “Oh, my, no!” Miss Winnie exclaimed. “The Bonners came out of Virginia to settle in Corpus Christi when my grandfather was in his teens. Corpus Christi was a trading port, and Malcolm John senior hoped to find opportunity there.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yes, he was successful, but you know the rest. Grace Elizabeth’s health declined in the high humidity, and they had to move.”

  “What year was that?”

  “It was 1879.”

  Andy thought a moment: That was three years after the photograph had been taken. In 1879, Coley Joe would have been twenty-three years old.

  “The whole family came?”

  Miss Winnie’s lips tightened, and she looked at him warily, but Andy smiled and held his pencil up, ready to write.

  “Yes. Malcolm John and his wife, Grace Elizabeth, with their two boys and two girls.”

  That leaves out Coley Joe, Andy thought. He made a note, then asked, “What kind of a house did they live in?”

  “You understand that Hermosa was not much of a town at that time, don’t you?” Miss Winnie asked.

  When Andy nodded, she continued. “At first the Bonners marked the boundaries of their land. Then they stretched tarpaulins out, like tents, and built an enclosed shed to protect their two horses.”

  “They built a shed to house their horses before they built a house for themselves?”

  “Of course. Besides the fact that the welfare of the horses was their responsibility, the horses were also their only means of transportation. There would have been no way to travel back and forth from their jobs in town without the horses.”

  Andy asked questions about the first house built on the Bonner property and about the house Miss Winnie had been born in. He made notes about the country store, with its pickles in one barrel, its crackers in another, and its peppermint sticks for the children who could afford them. He wrote about oil lamps and dust storms and mosquitoes, high-buttoned shoes and poke bonnets and petticoats. He made a face as he scratched out the word petticoats. There was no way he was going to write about underwear.

  Although he got lots of information from Miss Winnie, he continued to wonder about Coley Joe, who had disappeared from the Bonner family sometime during the three years between the date the photograph was taken in 1876 and the family’s move to Hermosa in 1879.

  He just couldn’t push away the idea that it was during this same period the Bonners’ money had been stolen.

  Just as Miss Winnie had finished describing the church socials that were popular when she was young, Andy could no longer control his curiosity. “Did the Bonners know who stole their money?”

  Startled, Miss Winnie clutched the arms of her chair. She demanded, “Whatever are you talking about?”

  “You told me yesterday that Malcolm Bonner’s family’s money had been stolen. Did this have anything to do with crossing Coley Joe’s name out of the family’s Bible?”

  “Andrew Thomas, I made it very plain to you that I have no intention of answering a single question about Coley Joe Bonner. Coley Joe and the theft … This is private information that is not to be bandied about. Our interview is over.”

  Andy suddenly understood Miss Winnie’s negative attitude. So they thought Coley Joe stole his family’s money!

  Andy pictured Coley Joe’s easy smile among his family; then he thought about how he—Andy—even looked like Coley Joe. “Did you ever think that he didn’t do it?” Andy asked Miss Winnie.

  “Enough!” An angry flush stained Miss Winnie’s cheeks and nose.

  Andy realized he’d gone too far. “I’m sorry for upsetting you, Miss Winnie,” he said. “Thanks for the interview.” He hurried out of the house and, in a few minutes, entered his own.

  The phone rang. As Andy reached for it, his mother called to him from the living room, “Someone’s been phoning and hanging up. Ask what number they’re trying to reach.”

  “Hello?” Andy said into the phone.

  An odd voice whispered, “Write your report the way you were told. Forget your snooping. You can take this as a warning.”

  “Hey!” Andy shouted into the phone. “Who is this?”

  But the caller had hung up.

  Andy replaced the receiver with trembling fingers and leaned against the kitchen cabinet. That weird, whispery voice had scared him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Who was it?” Andy’s mother called.

  “I dunno,” Andy answered. He thought about the whisper, trying hard to identify the voice, but he shook his head in frustration. The voice could have belonged to a man or a woman … or a kid.

  He telephoned J.J., trying to see if his pal could help figure out why such a thing would happen.

  “Maybe it was somebody trying to be funny,” JJ. suggested.

  “It wasn’t meant to be funny. Help me think. Only you and me, Miz Minna and Miss Winnie know that I’m trying to find out about Coley Joe.”

  “And Mr. Hammergren and everybody in our history class!” J.J. said. “You blabbed about your mystery man to everybody.”

  Embarrassed, Andy said, “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t say his name.” He thought a moment. “I don’t think it matters. None of them would care anything about Coley Joe.”

  “You said your relative was a mystery man,” J.J. said. “Somebody in our class is going along with the gag.”

  “You’re probably right.” Andy began to relax. “At least I found out why the Bonners were so mad at Coley Joe. They thought he stole their money.”

  “You found that out. Now forget about him.”

  “Wait a minute, J.J. You knew all along, didn’t you?”

  “Sure. Miz Minna’s talked about it, but it’s no big deal.”

  “You didn’t tell me. That’s a big deal to me.”

  “Andy, we’re best friends. Why should I tell you about one of your relatives, especially if it’s a story that might make you feel bad. I hoped you wouldn’t find out.”

  “If I’m going to hunt down Coley Joe, I need all the help I can get.”

  “What are you going to do next?”

  “I’ve got kind of an idea, but I don’t know yet if it will work,” Andy said. “I’ll tell you if it does.”

  “Okay. Want to go with me to the cemetery?” J.J. asked.

  “What!”

  “I liked Mr. Hammergren’s idea about looking at the tombstones to see what’s written on them. There are lots of Gaspers buried there and Bonner and Thomas relatives, too.” As Andy hesitated, J.J. said, “Come on. It will get your mind off Coley Joe.”

  Visiting the cemetery was not Andy’s idea of how to spend an afternoon. But J.J. was his best friend. “When do you want to go?” Andy asked.

  “How about tomorrow, right after school? Ride your bike to school, and we can go from there.”

  “Okay,” Andy said. “See you.”

  As Andy hung up the phone, his mother came into the kitchen. He menti
oned their plan to her. “J.J. and I are going to ride our bikes to the cemetery tomorrow after school.” Her eyebrows rose, so he quickly explained, “It’s part of our history project, getting information from the old tombstones.”

  “Maybe I should go with you,” she said. “That old part of the cemetery is off by itself, and I don’t think it’s very well patrolled.”

  “Mom!” Andy said. “I’m in the seventh grade, and I do not need my mother to follow me around, like I was a baby.”

  “Last year they picked up some out-of-towners selling drugs back behind the tombstones.”

  “The police chased them off. Okay? They haven’t come back. Okay?”

  When she didn’t answer immediately, Andy said, “Mom, what’s J.J. gonna think if you come with me?”

  “We’ll talk it over with your father after dinner,” she said.

  After dinner was a good time, Andy agreed. His dad came home hungry from his job as a pharmacist at the drugstore, and he was much more likely to agree to something—anything—when his stomach was full.

  During dinner Andy fidgeted and squirmed, unable to enjoy the pot roast with potatoes and carrots that his mom had made. Impatiently waiting until he could bring up the trip to the cemetery, Andy studied his father’s face. It was a nice face, with a squared jaw and crinkly smile lines at the outside corners of his eyes … like Grandpa Zeke’s. And if Dad had a long, dark mustache, like the first Malcolm John Bonner’s …

  Mr. Thomas wiped his mouth with his napkin and said, “Okay, Andy, you can stop squinting at me now and tell me the problem. Have I got gravy on my chin? A fly on my nose?”

  “Nothing like that, Dad,” Andy said. “I was just figuring out that you could look a lot like Malcolm John Bonner if you had a long, droopy mustache with the ends turned up.”

  “Hmmm. Maybe I’ll grow one,” Mr. Thomas said.

  “No, you won’t,” Mrs. Thomas said.

  “Dad,” Andy quickly told him, “I want to go to the cemetery with J.J. It’s for homework.” He briefly explained about the history assignment.