Fatal Family Ties

by S. C. Perkins

  He took my other hand and laced his fingers through mine, rubbing his thumb over the back of my hand. “You’re right, I can’t tell you about the job, but I can tell you that what got me this cut was when a cocker spaniel I was playing with while tailing a suspect at the park jumped up to lick my face and inadvertently slammed my sunglasses into my forehead. The glass broke and caused the gash, which wasn’t very pretty at the time.”

  “Oh, ouch,” I said, though it was hard to keep from smiling, especially since Ben was already doing the same. “Did the suspect see you get conked by the cocker?”

  He shook his head. “Not at the time, thank goodness, but we were able to arrest the guy about an hour later. Turns out that dog did us a favor when he beaned me, too.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Yeah, evidently this seriously dangerous guy has a major aversion to open wounds. He saw my cut and started dry-heaving so violently that we were able to nab him with almost no resistance. If only it could always be that easy,” he added with a sigh, and I saw tiredness begin to creep into his smiling eyes—blue, with a bit of green around the pupils.

  Then, all of a sudden, they sharpened again as a two-beat thunk-thunk noise sounded out on my balcony, followed by a long, guttural sound. Ben’s hand tightened on mine and he made a move to shield me with his body.

  SIX

  I put a calming hand on his chest.

  “It’s okay, it’s just NPH,” I said. “Jumping down onto my balcony from the tree.”

  The guttural sound came again, a deep yowl, and we looked out the French doors to see a fluffy orange tabby cat who was bigger than most small dogs. His white chest practically glowed in the dark as he stretched up on his hind legs and pawed at the door handles.

  I got up and opened the door. NPH walked in lazily, fluffy tail aloft, like he was the king of the place. Which he sort of was, even though he actually reigned over Jackson Brickell, my condo manager, who was his official human.

  “Sometimes I feel like he expects to be formally announced when he walks in like this,” I said. When greenish-yellow eyes blinked up at me as if to concur, I stood at attention and said in clipped tones, “May I present the Honorable Neil Patrick Housecat of Travis Heights, SoCo, and untold acres of Little Stacy Park.”

  NPH erupted in a loud purr that sounded like a motorboat on idle and gave my legs a brief rub. He approved.

  “Hey, buddy, long time no see,” Ben said. He patted the space I’d just vacated and NPH leaped up, butting his head against Ben’s outstretched hand, clearly remembering him even though he hadn’t seen Ben in two months. Within seconds, NPH had curled up next to Ben and was enjoying a good scratch.

  Just like that, I was second fiddle—but it was so cute, I couldn’t do anything but melt. I copied NPH, but on the other side of Ben, and without the scratching.

  “So, tell me about this project you’re going to be doing,” Ben said. He winked, adding, “During the hours you’re not ravishing me, of course.”

  “Naturally,” I agreed, returning his wink, then told him about Camilla and how she’d interrupted my lunch at Flaco’s to beg me to look into her ancestor’s Civil War service. “Or ‘the Late Unpleasantness,’ as my maternal great-grandmother used to call the war.”

  “Not the ‘War of Northern Aggression’?” Ben asked.

  I let my Southern accent deepen and thicken. “Darlin’, my great-grandmother Peggy was one of the most celebrated Southern belles in Atlanta, Georgia, and she, like nearly all the belles she knew, preferred not to give any extra credence to the war at all if she could help it. It was the Late Unpleasantness, or she’d act like she didn’t know what in tarnation you were talkin’ about. I only met her a few times as a child, but that part I remember clear as day.”

  Ben, tired as he was, was staring at me with his mouth slightly open. “I’ve never heard you go all Southern belle. Wow …” He cleared his throat, then said, “Ow,” when NPH, who’d been getting lovely scratches from Ben’s hand, gave him a little nip for stopping momentarily. “So, ah, this Camilla. Did she and the other two … What were their names …?”

  “Roxie and Patrice,” I said.

  “Right. Did they mean-girl you or something?”

  “Yes and no,” I said. “They certainly made me feel like I would never fit into their group, but the term ‘mean-girl’ makes me feel like a victim, and I certainly wasn’t that, either, if that makes any sense.”

  He nodded. “It does.”

  I gave him a quick kiss at seeing the understanding in his eyes. He got me. “Anyway, Camilla was the nicest of the three and was generally cool to me when we were alone, but I’m hardly expecting that we’ll become best buds through this project. All I’m hoping for is that we have a good working relationship and she doesn’t get too upset when I confirm the article’s findings.”

  “You think the article was right, then?”

  I got up, padded over to my kitchen island, and found the issue of Chronology in my tote, then went back to Ben’s warmth on my sofa.

  He took the magazine and flipped to the marked article. “Yeah, Chronology is unlikely to publish something they couldn’t verify, I give you that.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” I said. “I’m going to contact the reporter, though, just to be thorough. I’ll ask her for her source citations while I’m at it, too.”

  Ben was peering at the name on the article. “Savannah Lundstrom,” he read out, squinting a little since he wasn’t wearing his glasses. “I know her, actually.”

  “You do?”

  He shrugged. “A little, at least, assuming it’s the same person. Remember me telling you that, when I was in school, I once came to UT for a summer to take some master’s-level courses? Well, she was in a couple of my classes. We were on the same team for a project once, that sort of thing.”

  I reached for my phone on the coffee table. After Camilla left Big Flaco’s Tacos, I’d run a quick search on Savannah Lundstrom.

  “Is this she?” I asked, showing him the headshot of an attractive woman around my age with curly, dark blond hair and almond-shaped green eyes. She gazed into the camera with a closed-lip smile.

  “Yep, that’s Savannah,” he said as he scratched NPH under the chin. For his part, NPH couldn’t care less about Savannah Lundstrom, so long as he kept getting attention. “I want to say I’ve seen her name in the last year somewhere, though … Oof, ow. Dude, NPH, you’re not exactly a lightweight.”

  NPH, who was easily twenty pounds of healthy feline, had seemed to suddenly remember I was there, and stood directly on Ben’s stomach to get a few scratches from me. I complied with a grin.

  “Really?” Ben inquired of the cat, whose purr ramped up to that of a rumbling Harley-Davidson in response before curling back up at Ben’s side. When I giggled, Ben pulled me in for a kiss. Doing so smushed my phone between us and made the screen light up again with the reporter’s profile. Ben snapped his fingers.

  “Now I remember. Savannah came back to UT last fall and spoke at a luncheon about being a historical journalist. I didn’t attend, but I remember seeing her name and photo in the email.” His lips curved into a teasing grin. “You know, it was when I was filling in as a professor for Dr. Millerton.”

  “You mean when you went by Dr. Benjamin Anders and you wouldn’t help me in my research into Texas history? Until I wore you down with my charm and prowess as a genealogist, that is.”

  A measure of challenge met the humor in his eyes. When we’d finally made the leap and become a couple, I’d quickly discovered that grumpy, insufferable, by-the-book Special Agent Ben Turner turned out to have a melty marshmallow center underneath it all. It made me all kinds of giddy to know it—and that I brought it out in him—but I also loved our banter, and being able to tease him and having him tease me in return was something important for me to retain in our relationship. I wanted his sharp mind just as much as the sweetness underneath his admittedly well-muscled, hot exterior, and
now he didn’t disappoint, even though his day had been a long one and I could see he was rapidly veering toward exhaustion.

  He swiped open his phone, tapping around with his thumb, and pretended to read off his screen. “I don’t remember anything about charm, but … ah, yes, good. Merriam-Webster agreed to my request that the word ‘genealogist’ be redefined as ‘someone who completely disregards advice, is thoroughly stubborn, nearly outs an FBI agent in the course of his secondary job, and sasses said agent within an inch of his life.’ And look, they’ve added a visual.”

  He turned his phone around, and there was a photo of me from New Year’s Eve at the Hotel Sutton. I was in my sparkly dress with Ben’s tuxedo coat keeping me warm, and I was grinning like a fool because it had actually been snowing in Austin.

  “Can you print out that definition for me?” I said. “I’d like to frame it and hang it next to my diploma and accreditations.”

  Laughing, he pulled me to him, cupping my face with his free hand. “I’ve missed your mouth—both physically and verbally, Ms. Lancaster.” Then he kissed me soundly.

  Only NPH meowing at both of us like a disapproving chaperone made Ben and me split apart and get back on the subject of my research into Camilla’s ancestor.

  “I hope you’ll let me know what you find out on him,” Ben said, after riffling through the magazine and all its photos again.

  I beamed. Call me a geek, but the history-loving side of Ben made him even more attractive. “I’ll probably talk your ear off about it.”

  “I look forward to it,” he said.

  I told him about meeting Camilla on Monday, and how I’d be going to see one piece of the triptych that Charles Braithwaite, Camilla’s ancestor, had painted. Ben’s tired eyes briefly brightened. “That sounds cool,” he said, trying valiantly to stifle a yawn.

  I smiled, got up, and pulled him up with me. “Come on, Agent Turner. You’re so tired, you can hardly keep your eyes open. We can talk about this again at breakfast.”

  He whispered, “I like the sound of that,” and gave me another long, lovely kiss that spoke clearly of his desire to want to wake up again, but the exhaustion in him was taking over. I told him I was going to stay up to do a little preliminary research and clean up, but I’d join him soon. I pushed him toward my bedroom and he moved like a zombie, pulling his shirt over his head to expose some really nice back muscles.

  I heard him brushing his teeth; five minutes later, I peeked into my room and he was already in a deep sleep. NPH and I, however, stayed up another hour while I began my search into Charles Braithwaite.

  I knew there wouldn’t be any pension files for Charles either at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission or the Fort Worth, Texas, facility of the National Archives because he hadn’t needed to apply for one. Charles had flourished after the war, first as a worker in a lumber mill, then, later, as a sought-after public speaker. Plus, like most Southern states, Texas had little money to give to their Civil War veterans, so pensions were approved only for soldiers or their widows in cases of extreme poverty or disability. That meant the place I needed to start my research was Charles’s CMSR.

  Back at the beginning of the twentieth century, the War Department created CMSRs in order to help process claims for military pensions and benefits for those soldiers who fought in the Civil War. They created a file for each soldier and gave a history of that soldier’s service by copying word for word from the original muster and hospital rolls, as well as other documents such as regimental returns, which were a listing of soldiers, commanding officers, artillery, and other assets that helped to determine the “strength” of the regiment at a given time during the war. Because of the known accuracy of the War Department in creating these military service documents, I knew I could trust the CMSRs I would find online as being faithful to the original records.

  That is, if Charles Braithwaite’s CMSR had good information to begin with. If not, I would have to do a whole lot of cross-referencing and shifting of puzzle pieces to come to a good conclusion on him.

  Scratching NPH under the chin, I told him, “I’d love nothing more than to take a quick trip up to Fort Worth to get a look at his CMSR in person, but for now, seeing his records on one of my online databases will have to do.” NPH purred and I got to work.

  As I’d had many clients with ancestors in the Civil War, I already had bookmarked links that would take me straight to the microfilmed CMSR abstracts. Charles Braithwaite had been a member of the Fifth Texas Infantry Regiment, and I found him easily on the muster rolls for Company A. Their nickname was the Bayou City Guards because they came from Harris County—basically, the Houston area, which is called the Bayou City to this day. His enlistment date was recorded as August 2, 1861, and he was officially enlisted in Houston by Captain W. B. Botts. At the bottom of the record, Charles was recorded as being present at his enlistment.

  Earlier, when Ben had been on a work call, I’d done some quick research on Hood’s Texas Brigade and found that the Fifth Texas Infantry Regiment, along with the First and Fourth Texas regiments, made up the brigade and fought in almost every battle waged in Northern Virginia. They lost nearly half their regiment at Gettysburg in July 1863, and by the time they surrendered at the Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, the Fifth Texas Infantry had been whittled down to a mere twelve officers and a hundred and forty-nine enlisted men.

  I thought about this. As the soldiers from the Fifth Texas Infantry originally came from eleven counties from all over the eastern half of Texas, if each county had an equal number of men who survived the war, that meant that only thirteen men per county returned home to their wives and loved ones. Though I knew the numbers wouldn’t have been equal per county, it didn’t make that much of a difference in Charles’s case.

  “He was from Harris County, which is about seventeen hundred square miles,” I murmured to NPH, thinking out loud. “That’s a lot of territory. So if around thirteen men returned to Harris County and, let’s say that Charles Braithwaite had deserted his regiment, the chances that he could have gone unnoticed by any surviving soldiers are pretty darn high.”

  NPH responded to this by rolling over on his back and batting at my hand. I complied with his wishes for more under-chin scratching as I began scrolling through the lists of names comprising the Fifth Texas Infantry.

  As for CMSRs, the number of records per file varied fairly widely. Some soldiers had one document with simply their name, rank, and what company they were in within their regiment. Others might have a few records, most being muster rolls listing them present or absent within a particular two-month period. Still others had over twenty pages in their files, and a few had nearly forty.

  As many siblings fought together in the war, it wasn’t surprising to find more than one instance of the same surname in the Fifth Texas Infantry. Several of them had similar first names as well, especially if only their first and middle initials were given, which was a very common practice.

  For instance, at one point I saw a J. A. Hattendorf right before a K. A. Hattendorf. Several pages on, I noticed a P. B. Robertson followed by an S. B. Robertson. When I looked through their records, though, it turned out that the two Robertsons were the same man—the former file having only a reference envelope that informed the reader that all records for “P. B. Robertson” were filed under “S. B. Robertson.” The reason for this became clear in two documents, however, as it turned out that the capital letters “P” and “S” looked remarkably alike in the particular cursive script of the writer.

  When it came to the Hattendorfs, however, both had enlisted in the town of Columbus, Texas, within days of each other and, thus, were likely either brothers or cousins, or possibly father and son.

  As for Charles Braithwaite, there was only one of him. In fact, the next nearest soldiers with the name Braithwaite were found in Virginia, Georgia, and Arkansas.

  I emitted a small sigh. As much as I liked the hunt, I also wanted this job with Camilla to
be over as quickly as possible. Nevertheless, I settled back into my chair and started slowly going through the ten photographed pages of Charles’s CMSR.

  Per the notations, he was accidentally wounded in the thigh and spent a few days in a hospital in Richmond, Virginia, just after his regiment’s first engagement at Eltham’s Landing in early May 1862. He was absent, with leave, for ten days in mid-June, but was listed as present at the next muster roll. Two more muster records also listed him as present. He was then ill once again, and this time was transferred to a hospital, where he stayed for three weeks. This was not unusual. With the conditions and rampant illnesses of the time, the men seemed to be listed as sick with some ailment or another as often as they were recorded as present.

  “Here we go,” I muttered with the next abstract. Another muster roll listed him as absent, this time without leave. The date was just after the Second Battle of Bull Run. In a whisper, I tried making out the three words giving additional information. The first word looked like an abbreviation, starting with a lowercase “t.” The second word was “to,” and the third word was a proper noun and looked to begin with either an uppercase “T” or an “F.” There seemed to be an “h” in the word as well.

  I looked at NPH, who was blinking sleepily at me. “Dang it, I can’t read the words.”

  NPH was unmoved by this pronouncement and promptly closed his eyes.

  The website I was on had a handy tool for increasing or decreasing the contrast and brightness of the document, but neither helped. I could also invert the color scheme so the white page looked black and the black writing stood out as white. I tried that, but I still couldn’t make out the words.

  With the next muster roll, however, my breath caught. It was for September and October 1862, and Charles Braithwaite was listed as Deserted. A very readable notation underneath, which I knew was copied verbatim from the original document, read After Manassas.

  There was nothing else in Charles’s CMSR. I did notice there were three other men either named Charles or with the first initial “C” in the Fifth Texas Infantry, and I checked all their records on the off chance something was misfiled. After another half hour, by which time I was worn out, too, I gave up.