by Joyce Harmon
“If it weren’t for Rose’s inconvenient memory,” I said, “Gene would have torn down that house and he would have gotten away with it. I wonder if anyone would ever have noticed?”
“Couldn’t he have torn the house down anyway?” Julia asked. “Maybe filed some additional paperwork, resubmitted his proposal to the board?”
“Maybe he could have,” Luther said. “I don’t know all the ins and outs of it. But once that registry became known, it would have added time to the process. Months if not years. And time is what Gene didn’t have.”
“So that was the motive?” Julia pressed. She sounded dissatisfied.
“To keep from going bankrupt?” I said. “To keep from being disgraced in the home where he’s been a big man his whole life? Murders have been committed for a lot less than that.”
“I suppose,” Julia said grudgingly.
“Remember,” I told her, “We’re come-heres. We’ve lived other places and though we’d like to stay here, we can imagine living somewhere else. But Queen Anne was Gene’s whole world.”
By that standard, the whole world showed up at Passatonnack Winery for our Harvest Open House, just ten days after Gene’s arrest. In addition to our usual wine crowd, most of the county managed to find time to visit us that day. They seemed to think “Where Gene Abernathy got arrested” ought to be a stop on the winery tour.
Amy was there, reveling in her new title of winery Sales Manager (which was a 20 hour a week job, manning the gift shop, filling orders, and giving tours and wine tastings). The remaining members of the Board were there. They were talking weightily about a special election to fill Gene’s seat; he’d submitted his resignation from the board about the time the blood was found in his car.
Everyone else was talking about the murder. I must have heard a hundred reenactments as I circulated through the tasting room with trays of munchies. People were disappointed that they didn’t get to meet Craig. He’d made himself scarce, and took Paco with him.
There was talk of hero awards, for both man and dog. (Later, when I mentioned the idea to Craig, he vetoed it in no uncertain terms. He had enough medals, he told me, and ‘medals don’t buy beans’.)
We sold more wine in that one day than in any day in the winery’s history.
The next day I got a phone call. Well, I got a lot of phone calls, from neighbors saying ‘great open house’, from the paper wanting an interview, but then there was this call. The woman identified herself as Pat Margrave from Virginia Chihuahua Rescue, and the news was that a foster home had become available for Paco.
Pat wanted to know when it would be convenient to pick him up. I took her contact information and told her I’d get back to her.
Then I wandered out to the barn, collecting Amy along the way. Jack was on top of a ladder doing something about the large fermentation tank, while Craig was running the fork lift, moving barrels.
Paco was on the floor, supervising.
“Hey, listen up, guys!” I called out. Paco trotted over and sat in front of me, listening attentively. Craig shut off the fork lift.
“I just got a call from Chihuahua Rescue, Virginia!” I told them enthusiastically. “They’ve got an opening at a foster home! Someone will be coming to pick up Paco tomorrow.” (Yes, that last part was a lie.)
There was a moment of stunned silence. Jack slowly backed down the ladder. Craig climbed off the forklift and picked up Paco.
“Well, you just call them right back and tell them no thanks!” Jack said that. Jack!
“A foster home,” Craig said slowly. “That’s not like a real home, right?”
“Right,” I told Craig. “But he’ll be with other chihuahuas and people who will work hard to find him a permanent home…”
“That dog is not going anywhere,” Jack said in his most decisive tones.
I played dumb. “But, Jack! You told me to find him a home! You said we weren’t going to keep him. I think your exact words were ‘HELL no!’”
Jack sighed. He couldn’t believe how dense I was. “That was before he saved my wife’s life.”
“Anyway,” Craig said. “He’s got a home. He can stay with me.”
Whew! And ta-da! “Craig, are you sure?” I asked.
“Course I’m sure. I’m used to the little guy and he’s used to me.”
“Well, if you’re sure, and if Jack is okay with it,” I said, giving in gracefully.
Jack pointed to the door. “You call those people back right now.”
“Yes, Jack,” I told him meekly.
Amy gave me a subtle high-five once we left the barn, but we made it to the gift shop before collapsing in giggles. Then Amy treated me to an impromptu rendition of Colonel Pickering’s “You Did It” number from My Fair Lady.
I called back Pat Margrave and told her thanks but no thanks, that we’d found a home for Paco.
The trial of Gene Abernathy took place months later. I had to do a lot of testifying, both about finding the body and then about identifying the killer, and what Gene said when he pulled the gun on me.
The Commonwealth’s Attorney was going for murder in the first degree, but when the jury came back, they found Gene guilty of second degree murder. What saved him from first degree? That concealed carry permit. The jury figured that if Gene had intended to kill Rose when he went to her house, he would have taken his gun with him.
I knew several of the jury members, and after the trial they told friends that they figured Gene ‘just snapped’. I think many long-time residents of Queen Anne understood how Rose Jackson could make someone ‘just snap’.
The sentence was twenty years.
But long before the sentence, long before the trial, came the disposition of Rose Jackson’s worldly possessions. Some pieces were taken by the brother (who listed them on eBuy!), but the bulk of it was sold at estate auction.
Julia and Amy rehashed that auction for weeks afterward.
But not me. I didn’t go.
EPILOGUE
Cissy Rayburn sat in the rocking chair, staring at the letter in her lap. She recognized the handwriting on the envelope, even after all these years. Yes, it was from Gene. She hadn’t spoken with Gene Abernathy since the day he was arrested in the back yard. She’d seen him at the trial, of course, but he hadn’t testified. (Rumor had it that Sam Willis had once had a few too many down at the Elks and stated loudly that no lawyer in his right mind would have put Gene Abernathy on the stand and opened him up to cross-examination.)
He’d served over half of his twenty year sentence already, and she hadn’t heard from him yet. Why was he writing to her now?
Well, she’d procrastinated enough. Squaring her shoulders, Cissy briskly opened the envelope, pulled out the enclosed letter, and began to read.
“Dear Cecelia,
I had always intended to visit you when I was released from here. I wanted to have a talk with you and let you know what had happened and how it all came about. But now it seems that when I finally leave here, it will be in a box. The doctors tell me that the last round of chemotherapy didn’t work and that there’s nothing more they can do. So there you are. And here I am.
Perhaps I should begin by apologizing for pulling a gun on you. I like to think that I would have thought better of actually using it, but who knows? Looking back, my thought processes and actions during that time period weren’t particularly rational. I’m not trying to claim insanity, but I was definitely overwrought.
It all started when I bought the Beaumont property, and I see now I shouldn’t have done it. I didn’t have the assets to cover the cost and pay my other obligations, but I was sure a quick approval of my development plan would see me clear. It had been so long since a property of that size had come available in Queen Anne, and I was frustrated with the ten and twenty acre parcels that I’d been developing up to then. At that point in my career, every gamble I’d taken had paid off. I’d been lucky and thought it meant I was smart.
I was feeling pretty
good about myself and my plans when I went to the Beaumont auction. I ran into Rose there and couldn’t help bragging about acquiring the property and how many luxury homes I planned to build. I’d known Rose since junior high and was in the habit of making her my audience. She often criticized my plans, but while I laughed at her criticisms, I often found that incorporating her objections benefited me in the long run.
But this time was different. When I described the development to her, she stated flatly, “You can’t tear down that house. It’s registered.”
I told her it most certainly was not, and she replied that she remembered the registration paperwork coming in to the county offices. I laughed off her objections like I’d always done and didn’t let her see that this time she’d really disturbed me.
I spent the following day wondering what to do. I didn’t bother considering the possibility that Rose was wrong. I’d known her too long, and she was always right. I went over my plans for the site, studying the elevations and soil composition. The perk tests I’d done were based on my original subdividing, minus the original house. The more I studied the site, the more sure I was that keeping the house made the project unworkable.
I had to tear down that house, there was no other option. While the registration would be on file in the National Registry headquarters, the likelihood that someone would check there when nothing was on file in the county records was small. But the family would have received a notification.
So, foolishly, on Monday I went out to try to recover the family’s copy of the registration. I saw that your friends Julia and Amy had purchased the most of the small items that Rose hadn’t bought, and hoped I would find the papers at one of their houses. I couldn’t find the papers at either house, and was increasingly desperate by the time I got to Rose’s.
She was out, so I jimmied the lock and searched for the papers. But all along, I was beginning to realize that getting the local copy of the papers didn’t matter. First, I went through the frustration of ‘what if’. What if Rose hadn’t remembered the registration? What if I’d gone ahead and torn down the house and then learned that it had been registered? Why, I expect I would have merely paid a fine. It would have been an honest error and the lack of any indication of registration in the local records would have proved that.
But now I couldn’t claim honest error. Now I’d been told and Rose knew I’d been told.
{Here was a space, and the ink changed from blue to black as the letter continued.}
Me again. You know, Cecilia, when I started this letter, I intended to tell you that I lost my temper with Rose and didn’t mean to kill her. I know that’s what everyone believes. But I guess the truth can’t hurt me now, and the truth is that the sudden loss of temper story just isn’t true.
By the time Rose came home that day and found me in her house, I’d already come to the conclusion that the real threat to me wasn’t the paper. It was Rose herself.
Rose was angry, of course, about the damage to her door. I promised to pay for fixing it. I had decided by then to try to persuade her to keep quiet about the registration of the Beaumont house. I explained to her how delaying the development process was going to bankrupt me, but did she care? No, she just kept insisting that it ‘wasn’t right’. Wasn’t right to tear down a house that nobody still alive cared a thing about! When not tearing it down was going to ruin me?
But that was Rose, that’s the way she’d always been. Rules are rules and you obeyed the rules or you got ratted out.
So by the time I picked up the sad iron and hit Rose in the head with it (and I hit her more than once), it was because I had decided to kill her. The Commonwealth’s Attorney was right, in fact. It was first degree murder.
Feel free to do whatever you wish with this information. Keep it to yourself or tell the world. It will no longer matter to me. And despite the verdict and the sentence, I have in fact wound up with a life sentence.
Hoping all is well with you ---
Eugene Abernathy”
Cissy stared at the letter for a long moment, then folded it and returned it to its envelope. She sat in the rocker, looking down the driveway, planning to get up any second now and return to the house.
The cellphone in her walker basket played Fur Elise, signaling an unknown caller. Cissy fished the phone out and answered it.
“Mrs. Rayburn?”
“Yes?”
“This is Libby Wallace. From the Queen Anne Chronicle. I’m calling to see if you have any comments on Gene Abernathy?”
Cissy stared at the letter in her lap. How had they known?
“Comments?”
“Yes, ma’am. Were you aware that Mister Abernathy died yesterday?”
“Oh. No, I wasn’t aware of that.”
“Seems he’d been hoarding his pain pills. Had you heard that he had cancer?”
“Yes,” Cissy said slowly. “I heard about that – just recently.”
“We just got the news here at the Chronicle, and my editor wants a big retrospective. I’m pulling back issues of the paper, and I see you played a big role in identifying Mister Abernathy as the killer of Rose Jackson. I wondered if you’d like to comment for the newspaper about the case and about Mister Abernathy?”
There was a long pause. Finally Cissy said, “No, dear. Thank you, but I don’t think I care to comment. It was all a very long time ago.”
THE END
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About The Author
Joyce Harmon is a retired Navy officer with degrees in Psychology and Information Systems. Since retiring from the Navy, she has worked as a winery tour guide, a journalist for a local newspaper, selling collectibles on eBay, and making candles. Bidding On Death is her second book, and second in the Passatonnack Winery series. Her first Passatonnack Winery mystery is Died On The Vine, also available at Amazon.
Joyce blogs at http://joyceharmon.wordpress.com/
Joyce’s author page at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Joyce-Harmon/e/B007OYQZ2W/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
