Chapter TEN
Grady tried to flip up golf balls with his wedge the way Tiger Woods does, but it didn’t work too well. With one hand on my shoulder, he steered me away from the house. “Kate, surely you don’t think that skeleton could be hers . . .”
“You mean Rose’s? Yes, I do. I hate to say it, Grady, but do you know what happened to her? Does anybody? As far as I know, nobody’s laid eyes on the woman since she left here—and it was about the same time somebody dumped that body in the Remeth burying ground.”
My cousin thought about that for a minute. “You’re right,” he said finally, “but that doesn’t mean Uncle Ernest did it! Could’ve been somebody else, and it might not be Rose at all. Didn’t those two rafters disappear about the same time?”
“Dear God, I hope you’re right! This is Uncle Ernest we’re talking about! I can’t imagine him doing a thing like that, but this was long before we were even born, and who knows what a person might do in a fit of jealousy—or rage. And everybody says she was beautiful. Maybe she played around. Violet thinks Judge Kidd had a crush on her.”
Grady’s face grew almost stormy. He ran a hand through his dark hair and bent to collect his golf balls. “We can stand here and make suppositions all day, but it doesn’t prove a thing. Whatever happened to those hippie rafters? Were their bodies ever found? How come everybody’s so certain they drowned?”
“They found their overturned raft and some of their belongings snagged on debris downriver,” I said, “and both of them dropped out of sight—never came back.”
Grady smiled that familiar “older cousin know-it-all” smile that made me want to smack him. “Would you wave your arms and yell, ‘Look at me!’ if you were wanted for robbing a store?”
“But from what I’ve heard, they never went back to their families. Even if they stayed in hiding for however long it takes for the statute of limitations to run out, you’d think they would eventually surface, wouldn’t you? Or maybe you haven’t heard about the statue of limitations.” I slung my words hard enough to knock him cold.
He laughed instead. “Touché. Okay, so maybe they did drown. But there must’ve been something about it in the paper when it happened. Even a name would help. All I’ve ever heard were those kooky monikers.”
“Great, then why don’t we go down to The Bulletin and see what we can dig up, if you’ll excuse the expression? We ought to have just enough time before all the kin start pouring in.”
Grady glanced at his watch. “You forget I have to help set up grazing tables. It’s almost ten now. Burdette and Parker should be getting here any minute.”
And I had promised Josie I’d make homemade peach ice cream if Ma Maggie could round up her churn—which also meant I needed to stop by the store for ingredients. “I’ll be back by noon,” I told him, dashing into the house for my keys. “Get ready to help turn the crank!”
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The Bulletin was located in a mustard-colored brick building, built around the turn of the last century, that had housed the Bank of Bishop’s Bridge until they moved into an upscale stone-and-glass monstrosity a few blocks down the street. The receptionist didn’t look much older than Josie, and I must have interrupted her in an especially intriguing passage of the romance novel she was reading because she seemed reluctant to put it aside.
“I wanted to look up some old issues,” I said. “Do you have a morgue here?”
“A what?” She shifted her gum to the other side of her mouth. “Ma’am, this is a newspaper office. I think you must be looking for the funeral home or something.”
“No, I mean a newspaper morgue—a place where they keep old issues.” I tried to keep a straight face.
“Oh. Well, that’s all on microfilm now. You’ll have to go to the library for that.” She picked up the book again.
Fine. But I hadn’t the faintest idea of the year the rafters had disappeared.
“Is Mr. Hollingsworth still here?” I asked, referring to the editor who had been there when I was in high school.
“He’s semiretired now. Only comes in twice a week.”
“Then do you know when he’ll be in?” I asked, resisting the urge to look at my watch. The morning was already half-gone.
She looked at me as if I had my head on backwards. “Oh, he’s in—or I reckon he is; saw him getting coffee ’bout an hour ago.”
I followed the woman’s pointing finger to a small office in the back where I found Charles Hollingsworth reared back in his chair, eyes closed, with his hands across his chest. He looked a bit thinner, and a lot grayer than I remembered. The door was open, but I knocked anyway and he leapt to his feet and invited me in, seeming glad of the company.
“I know who you are,” he said when I started to introduce myself. “Look just like your old man . . . and how’s England? Any baby news yet?”
I smiled and shook my head. Sometimes I forget just how small Bishop’s Bridge is! “I’m hoping you can help me,” I said, and told him about Burdette unearthing the skeleton in Remeth churchyard. “My cousin and I were wondering if it might be one of the rafters who disappeared on the river sometime back in the sixties, but we aren’t sure of the year.”
The old editor smiled. “Front-page news, that skeleton! Bishop’s Bridge hasn’t had a story like that since . . . well, probably since those two young rafters disappeared. Bo Crane was all over it yesterday—you probably don’t know our reporter, Bo; came here after you left.” He leaned back in his chair and laughed. “The man made enough pictures to paper a house! ’Course the police wouldn’t tell him much—probably because they don’t know much.”
“They didn’t tell us anything, either,” I said, “but Burdette said they think it must’ve been there close to forty years and that would’ve been about when the two rafters were supposed to have drowned.”
“By golly, you’re right! You just might have something there.” The man who had been dozing a few minutes before came to life as if somebody had plugged him in. “And I’m fairly sure of the date, too, because it was the year after I came here; happened around the time Christine and I married because I remember everybody talking about it at all the parties.” He frowned. “Never did find ’em, but we kept gnawing on the subject until the story—and the interest—finally fizzled. Can’t be sure of the exact date, but it was toward the end of July.”
The editor’s lean face took on a look that can only be described as cunning, and he lowered his voice a notch. “Mind if an old man comes along? I’d like to get a look at those back issues, too.”
I had a feeling young Bo Crane was about to be scooped.
A walk around the block and a few minutes later, we found the news item we were looking for.
Local authorities are puzzled by the discovery of an overturned, partially deflated raft on a branch of the Yakdin River this week. The raft matches the description of one reported stolen several days ago from a vacation cottage belonging to Stanley Hardin of Elkin.
A spokesperson for the Bishop’s Bridge Police, near where the raft was found, said it might have been taken by a young couple suspected of robbing a store near Dobson earlier this month.
Quincy Puckett, 19, calling himself Shamrock, and a young woman known by the aliases Vanessa Doyle, Valerie Dutton and Waning Crescent, are feared drowned while fleeing police.
We scrolled carefully through successive issues reading follow-up stories, many written by Charles Hollingsworth himself, but learned nothing further about the two except that they were believed to have come from somewhere in Ohio.
“So, do you think one or both of them might still be alive?” I said. Please let it be just one!
He nodded, watching the film rewind. “It’s possible. I hounded the police about that case for a couple of years after they found that raft. They dredged up some shoes they thought might’ve belonged to the boy, and several items of women’s clothing.”
“Anything else turn up?” I asked.
My companion held the door for me as we stepped out onto the sidewalk and I could feel the heat from the pavement through the flimsy soles of my sandals. “Not to my knowledge,” he answered. “Seemed to me as if they more or less abandoned the case. After all, these people were hippies—folks here didn’t think much of that sort then—and they were suspected of breaking the law. I got the feeling the police just figured it was good riddance!”
He waved to Roselyn Davis, who was arranging a sales rack in front of her dress shop across the street, and stopped to admire a display of fishing gear in the window of Woods ’n Water Sporting Goods, but I could tell something was on his mind.
“Those two were somebody’s children,” he went on. “Somebody’s brother, sister, niece, nephew. I can’t believe their families didn’t pursue it.”
“Maybe they did,” I said. We walked to where I had left my car in the semishade of a crape myrtle in front of the old yellow building. “How can we find out?”
Charles Hollingsworth shook my hand as we said good-bye. “Tell you what—give me an hour or so and let me see what I can come up with. Friend of mine has a son on the police force here—nice kid. Maybe he’ll help us out.”
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It was close to noon when I looked at the clock on my dashboard, so I drove straight to Marge’s, hoping to catch them before they left for Bramblewood.
I was in luck.
I found my cousin loading the family van with containers of marinated slaw, pimento cheese sandwiches and her wonderful blueberry pound cake.
“Hi!” she yelled, juggling a stack of shifting boxes. “You just missed her.”
“Missed who?” I rescued a relish tray and what looked like a week’s supply of peanut butter cookies.
“Ma Maggie. Said she was tired of waiting for you to come and get the ice-cream churn, so she’s taking it to Bramblewood with her.”
“Which means I’d better get my act together—and I haven’t even been to the store,” I said. “Josie can help me shop; actually, she’s better at it than I am.”
“I’ll holler for her,” Marge said. “She and the boys have made up some kind of silly game where you have to talk backward. Even Hartley has gotten into the act. Listen . . .”
Even from where I stood, I could hear the four of them laughing upstairs.
My cousin put a hand on my shoulder and practically shoved me inside. “But first, let’s grab a few minutes to talk while we can. You’ve got a cloud hanging over you as dark as the inside of a chimney. What’s going on, Kate McBride?”
What I had to say would take longer than a few minutes, but I explained as quickly as I could that the distance between Ned and me amounted to more than miles. “He won’t admit it, but I think he blames me for losing the baby, Marge.”
My cousin stood across the kitchen table from me and brushed the hair from her face the way she usually does when she’s thinking. Finally she shook her head. “Ned has more sense than that. Have you two seen a counselor?”
“I talked to someone, but he wasn’t interested. I tried to get him to go with me, but Ned said he didn’t need it. Frankly, I don’t think he wanted me to go, either. He doesn’t even seem to care.” I felt hot, tattletale tears getting ready to start their run. “And so why should I?” I said.
“Don’t give up on him, Kate.” Marge reached out and took my hand. “What you have is too good to throw away, but it sounds like you might need somebody to help you through this. Burdette can probably recommend a—”
Just then Hartley came in crying that the others wouldn’t let him play, so I didn’t get a chance to tell her about Uncle Ernest’s midnight digging. That would have to wait.
On our way to Bramblewood, Josie and I stopped at J & G Groceries for whipping cream, peaches and ice cream salt and, on impulse, I also grabbed a couple of cartons of eggs. I haven’t been to a family picnic yet where they didn’t serve deviled eggs, and Josie even agreed to help me boil them.
“Are you having a good time with Darby and Jon?” I asked as we wound back up the mountain.
“Yeah! They have this old board game where you have to figure out the murderer and the weapon and everything, ’cept Cudin’ Bird always wins. I wish we did stuff like that at our house.”
Clue . . . I wished it would be that easy to find out who was responsible for the skeleton next door. “But we play games,” I reminded her, naming a few. My husband’s favorite was crazy eights.
“When?” She looked up at me.
“Why, almost every night at the beach. Don’t you remember? We played—”
“But Dad wasn’t there.”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
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A police car was leaving as we turned into the drive at Bramblewood and I wondered if they had learned any more about the skeleton. Uncle Ernest stood on the front steps with an unlit pipe in his teeth and I could tell by the look of him he wasn’t in the mood for questions. Josie and I went in the back way.
We found Ma Maggie, Cousin Violet and Aunt Leona congregated in the kitchen, and from the pitch of their voices, it sounded as if all three wanted to be in charge.
“I’m telling you, we don’t need any more sugar in that tea!” Cousin Violet was saying. “Why do you have to be so dad-blasted stubborn?” This was directed at my grandmother.
Ma Maggie turned her back and checked something in the oven. It smelled like baked beans. “I’m just telling you what I think . . . and what you should think, too!” she said.
“Some people prefer unsweetened tea.” Aunt Leona didn’t look up as she sliced cantaloupe into a large blue bowl. “In fact, I think we have entirely—”
“Has anybody heard about Ella?” I asked, finding space for my purchases on the counter.
“Some better, I believe,” Leona said, “but still in intensive care. Uncle Ernest says she seems to be coming out of it, but she’s still not coherent.”
“We passed a police car when we turned in the driveway,” I said, looking for a pot for the eggs. “Any news about . . .” I glanced at Josie. “. . . about what they found yesterday?”
“Oh, I know all about the skeleton, Mom.” My daughter filled the pan with water at the sink and carefully put the eggs in one by one.
“They just wanted to talk to Ernest,” my grandmother said. “Don’t know what they expected him to tell them.”
“Must’ve told them something because they spoke for a good while.” Violet searched for just the right cookie on the platter she’d brought and ate a chocolate one. “I saw them talking with that man Casey, too, although I don’t know why they’d bother with him. Been here less than a year.”
Ma Maggie frowned. “What on earth’s he doing around Rose’s old garden? Looks like he’s been digging out there.”
“Kate asked him to get rid of some of the weeds—thank goodness!” Leona said. “Looks like a jungle out there! Breeding place for chiggers, and probably snakes, too. He said a lot of those old roses needed fertilizer, too, and a couple of them had black spot real bad, but he thought he might be able to save them.”
My grandmother’s face went stiff. “And what did you say?”
Leona shrugged. “I said, ‘Go to it,’ of course. I know he tries, but Uncle Ernest is getting too old to take care of that plot like he used to, and besides, why hire a caretaker if you’re not going to let him take care of things?”
“Ernest won’t like it,” Ma Maggie said. And she was right. Later, when I took my turn with the ice-cream churn out on the back porch, I heard Uncle Ernest telling Casey he wasn’t to bother with that part of the yard anymore. He didn’t yell or sound mean or anything, but my uncle spoke with a tightness in his voice that signaled red.
I wondered what was out there in that old garden he didn’t want anybody to find.