by Bobbi Holmes
“What do you mean?” Danielle asked.
“The Stewarts can easily afford to have someone come in and renovate that place. But they’re making it a DIY family project. That’s why they’ve rented a house here for the summer. They’re removing the old buildings themselves, not hiring anyone. And their son and daughter are both rolling up their sleeves and pitching right in.”
“Wow. They’re doing everything themselves?” Danielle said.
“Not everything. They’re hiring an architect and builder. But not until the family clears the land. Although, I got the impression the wife won’t be helping. I suspect she would prefer they hire someone to do the work. Not that she said that, mind you. But I have to give her husband and children credit; they all three seemed enthusiastic about the project.”
“Seems like a lot of work,” Danielle muttered.
“Yes, but think of the family bonding, a project they will remember for years. Beau Stewart and his wife have true family values. I think he will make an excellent senator for our state. I’m voting for him.”
Back home an hour later, Walt sat on the porch swing in front of the house, a pen and pad of paper in his hands. That was where Danielle found him after she got off the phone with Chief MacDonald.
“What are you doing?” Danielle asked when she took a seat next to Walt, looking down at the blank pad of paper in his hand.
“I’m trying to jot down some ideas for my book, but I can’t stop thinking of who locked you in the stairwell, and when they’ll be back.”
“So you’re sitting out here, standing guard?” she asked, leaning closer.
“Something like that.” Tossing the pen and paper to the ground, he draped one arm around Danielle’s shoulders, pulled her closer and leaned back, using one foot to start a gentle swinging motion.
“I just got off the phone with the chief. He checked on Earl’s daughters. Apparently, not long after they settled their father in the home, the two sisters went to Europe with their husbands. According to whoever he talked to, they had been planning the trip for a long time. Which might be why they were eager to get their father settled. They haven’t returned yet. So they couldn’t be the ones who broke in here,” Danielle told him.
“None of it makes any sense.”
“I keep thinking, if only Wilbur would come back so we could ask him more questions. But now that we know those remains aren’t his, he probably has absolutely nothing to do with this. Although, it is a bizarre coincidence, him showing up when all this is going on. If we didn’t know about his connection to the Porter family, I’d assume he has since moved on, and not given him another thought.”
“It could very well be nothing but a coincidence,” Walt said.
“And I thought of another reason you and Chris were probably right about my theory being far-fetched.”
“Why is that?” he asked.
“Whoever those remains belong to, I doubt they came from the Barr property,” Danielle said.
“Why do you say that?” Walt asked.
“Because if Wilbur has been following them, I have to assume he was there when they put them in the gunnysack. The Stewarts have been working on that property, and if they found the remains and threw them in the ocean, certainly Wilbur witnessed at least part of it.”
“I understand where you’re going with this,” Walt said. “Wilbur didn’t recognize the couple he overheard on the pier.”
“Exactly. And if it was one of the Stewarts, at the very least he would’ve told Marie they looked familiar. Or that they were the same ones who had the gunnysack he was following. It’s still possible, but like you and Chris said, far-fetched.”
“It was a good theory,” Walt said.
“But I’m still curious. Who do those remains belong to?”
“While learning the answer to that question probably won’t help us, I have to admit I’m also curious,” Walt confessed.
A vehicle pulled up in front of the house and parked, interrupting their conversation. Both Danielle and Walt watched to see who it was, since neither of them recognized the car. A minute later its driver got out. It was Raven King, and she was alone. After closing the car door behind her, Raven headed to the walk leading to the front door of Marlow House, a large purse in hand.
Twenty-Nine
Raven sat with Walt and Danielle in the parlor.
“My cousins don’t know I’m here,” she confessed. “Laken is convinced you have Walt Marlow’s diary but won’t let us see it because you don’t want people to discover most of Moon Runners came from the diary and not your own story. And he also suspects there are things about Walt Marlow that you would rather people not find out.”
“Even if Walt had a diary—which he doesn’t—there would be no reason to keep it from you. It’s not uncommon for a writer to use real-life events in their fiction,” Danielle said.
“I understand that. But you won’t convince Kiara and Laken. From the very beginning, I wanted to come and ask you what you had.”
Walt studied Raven for a minute, noting how she fidgeted nervously with the purse on her lap. Finally, he asked, “If your cousins didn’t want to just come and ask, what did they want to do?”
She looked up at Walt, shifting uneasily in the chair. “We did sort of snoop around when we were here the other day.”
“So why are you here now?” Danielle asked.
“I started thinking about what you said when you came over the other day. How that friend of yours told you stories her father told her. And I thought she might have told you other things, things you forgot, but might remember if something triggers your memory,” Raven explained.
“Like what?” Danielle asked.
Raven smiled and opened her purse. She pulled out a portable cassette tape player. “Before my grandmother passed away, I interviewed her. I wanted to preserve our family history. This is the tape where she discusses her aunt. I was wondering if you would listen to it. I’m hoping there might be something in this interview that triggers a memory—something your friend might have told you. It’s a long shot, but we’ve come this far. I don’t want to give up. I want to solve this family mystery.”
Danielle glanced at Walt, who said, “I’d love to hear the tape.”
Raven smiled. “Thank you.” She stood up, set the tape player on the coffee table, and turned it on. They listened.
“Grandma, tell me about your aunt Charlene.”
“She was my mama’s little sister. They were a year apart. I never met her, but I saw pictures of her. She was beautiful, like my mama, and talented. She was an actress and appeared in several silent movies. But I’ve seen none of them. My mother had many regrets about the relationship with her sister. They had a falling-out a few years before my parents married. They never reconciled, and they never saw each other again.”
“Why did they have a falling-out?” Raven asked.
“As you know, my grandfather was white. Charlene took after her father—she easily passed. She didn’t want to spend her career playing housemaids, and there were no leading roles for black actresses back then. My mother didn’t approve. Daddy said Mama felt Charlene was turning her back on her people, taking the easy way out. But Mama once told me that the actual reason she was so upset with her sister, she was afraid for her.”
“Afraid why?” Raven asked.
“It was a dangerous game my aunt played. The Klan had a big presence in Oregon. Mama may have had a good reason to worry. Over the years, she came to believe someone murdered her sister.”
“She didn’t know for sure?”
“Not really. Charlene didn’t have many close friends in the business. It was too risky. If one of them found out the truth, they could expose her. And there was a lot of competition.”
“None of the actors she worked with knew she was black?”
“A few did. There was one, Eva Thorndike. She and Charlene were in a few plays together. And like my aunt, had been in silent movies. From what I un
derstand, Eva was rather famous, yet died young, a few years before Charlene went missing.”
“And she told no one?”
“I don’t think Eva ever did. I imagine she kept the secret, and as I said, she died a few years before Charlene ever went missing.”
“She just disappeared?”
“One of my aunt’s childhood friends worked for her as a personal maid. To the outside world, it looked like the white actress and her black servant. Her name was Rosie. One day Rosie came to see my mama, told her Charlene had gotten an offer in Hollywood, and that she had already left. Mama never heard from her sister again.”
“Why does she think Charlene was murdered?”
“A week or so after Rosie talked to Mama, they found her body in an alley. She had been murdered. Mama thinks someone killed her to keep her quiet.”
“That’s awful! They never found out who killed her?”
“I don’t imagine anyone ever looked that hard. But right after they discovered the body, Rosie’s brother, who worked as a dishwasher at a club, came to see Mama. He told her Rosie confided in him that Charlene had gotten involved with the wrong white man, and that Charlene’s life wasn’t the only one in danger. That was right before Charlene supposedly left for Hollywood.”
“Did he say who the white man was?” Raven asked.
“No, and this was right after they found poor Rosie’s body. It terrified the brother. According to Mama, the only reason Rosie’s brother came to her, he felt she needed to know the truth. He believed this white man was responsible for both Charlene’s and Rosie’s deaths. And he was afraid. He wanted to leave town. He had a wife and daughter to think of, and he believed it was too dangerous to stay. He felt Mama should leave too, because if the man responsible felt Charlene had confided in her sister, they might come after her too.”
“So who was the white man?” Raven asked.
“He wouldn’t say. Only that the night Rosie was murdered, the man showed up at the club he worked at. Started giving him a hard time, asking him where Rosie was. He knew Rosie was his sister and that she worked for Charlene. Walt Marlow, his grandfather founded Frederickport, was in the bar that night. From what Rosie’s brother said, Marlow got the man to calm down and sit with him. They talked for a long time and then left the bar together.”
“Do you think they killed poor Rosie?”
“That’s what her brother thought. But Mama had a hard time believing that. She had considered Walt Marlow a friend. She liked him. He used to come listen to her sing. But over the years, she wondered.”
“Why?” Raven asked.
“Eva Thorndike and Walt Marlow were close friends. Eva had introduced Charlene to Walt after one of their performances, and at the time he probably was not aware Charlene was the sister of his friend Desiree Davis, the jazz singer. I’m sure he initially assumed she was white. But later, when Eva accompanied Walt to one of my mother’s performances, and my aunt was there—well, it was no longer a secret. At least not from Walt Marlow. Mama assumed he had kept the secret as Eva had, but after the man was seen with Walt, and then later that night Rosie was murdered, she wondered if she had misjudged Walt Marlow all those years. Had he been responsible for telling her lover she was black?”
Walt and Danielle quietly listened to the rest of the tape. After it ended, Danielle said, “I don’t believe for a minute Walt Marlow was responsible for Rosie’s death or for your aunt’s.”
“You want to believe that. Which is why my cousins don’t have a lot of faith you’ll help us find the truth. But unless you have his diary, you don’t know what the man was really like, what he was capable of.”
Danielle glanced at Walt, who sat silently, looking off into the distance, his expression unreadable.
“For one thing,” Danielle began, “what Marie has told me about Walt, from what her father told her, Walt deplored the KKK. In fact, the Klan was not fond of Frederick Marlow, Walt’s grandfather, because he often hired people of color—all nationalities—and paid his employees according to their work, not the color of their skin. And when I did some research on Walt’s murder, a man who tried covering it up was active in the Klan. So no, I don’t see Walt being part of that group.”
“I thought Walt Marlow and Desiree were friends. Did she honestly believe he had something to do with her sister’s death?” Walt asked.
Raven looked up to him. “Were they friends? When we first told you she was our great-grandmother, you said you didn’t know who she was?”
“We didn’t recognize the name,” Danielle lied. “But later, after we talked to you, I remembered Marie once telling us about one of Walt’s friends, a black jazz singer. We just assumed that was Desiree.”
“To answer your question,” Raven said, her tone guarded, “Desiree felt Walt was her friend. In one of the interview tapes, when my grandmother is talking about her mother, she tells of an incident that is oddly similar to one in Moon Runners. That’s one reason we thought you must have a diary or some letters of Walt Marlow. During that incident, Walt Marlow saves Desiree in the same way Hunter Rage saves the jazz singer in Moon Runners. Because of that, it was difficult for my great-grandmother to come to terms with the possibility Walt Marlow was involved in Charlene’s death. She had liked Walt, considered him a friend. He had once saved her life.”
“But she thought he killed her sister?” Walt asked angrily.
“Don’t take it personally,” Raven said. “It has nothing to do with you. And I don’t think Desiree was ever completely convinced of his involvement, but the possibility haunted her. She had sincerely liked Walt Marlow and considered him a friend.”
“And you don’t know who Charlene was involved with?” Danielle asked.
“No, and neither did my grandmother, and she didn’t think her mother did. Desiree didn’t approve of the men her sister saw. It wasn’t because they were white; their father was white. But Charlene…according to my grandmother’s mother…Charlene liked to live dangerously. It was about power for her. I’m not sure I can explain.”
“These white men Charlene dated, were any involved with the local Klan?” Danielle asked.
“Yes, Desiree couldn’t understand. And I certainly don’t,” Raven admitted. “According to my grandmother, Charlene had many proposals. The men, they adored her. And I believe she rather enjoyed breaking their hearts, turning them down.”
“Perhaps she liked the power,” Danielle suggested. “As it was, back then a woman had little power—a black woman even less. Rather a feeling of empowerment to get one of those men to fall hopelessly in love with you, considering the circumstances.”
“Exactly, which is why Desiree was so worried about her sister. But the thing was, about a month before she disappeared, Charlene told her sister she had finally fallen in love, and that he loved her. But she wouldn’t tell her who it was. Charlene claimed they had things to work out. And when Desiree found out her sister had moved to Hollywood, she assumed the affair had fallen apart, and that’s why Charlene moved to Hollywood so suddenly.”
Raven looked at Walt. “Your book. It had everything in it. Walt saving Desiree, Charlene falling in love with the wrong man, Charlene’s murder.”
Thirty
After Raven left Marlow House on Friday, Walt and Danielle went into the kitchen to make lunch. Danielle prepared chicken salad sandwiches while Walt filled two tall glasses with ice and freshly brewed tea. Fifteen minutes later, they took their lunch outside on the back porch and sat at the patio table to eat.
“Who was this belligerent man poor Rosie’s brother saw you talking to in the club?” Danielle asked as she picked up her sandwich to take a bite.
“It could have been anyone. While the incident with Beau Porter—the son, not the father—inspired what I wrote in Moon Runners, it wasn’t the first or last time something like that happened, where I ended up taking some drunk home.”
“You often played bouncer?” Danielle asked as she took a bite of her sandwich.
“A friend of mine owned that speakeasy. I was one of his suppliers.”
“My husband, the bootlegger,” Danielle said before taking a second bite of sandwich.
“And one thing we didn’t need were customers breaking up the place and getting out of hand. A speakeasy’s survival depended on—to borrow Chris’s reason for using another surname—flying under the radar. Not that the local cops didn’t know what was going on, but they would ignore it if we paid the right person and didn’t draw attention to ourselves. Brawls and out-of-hand drunks bring unwanted attention.”
Danielle set her partially eaten sandwich on her plate and looked across the table to Walt. “I was thinking of all this moonshine business. Didn’t you once tell me the Klan pushed prohibition?”
“Yes. It was a way to punish groups the Klan didn’t like. Catholics, for example. Which included the Italians, who enjoyed a glass of wine, and Irish, who often enjoyed the pubs. While some may have sincerely disapproved of alcohol, I don’t believe that was their primary motivation. And for people like old man Porter, they saw it as an opportunity to profit. He just wasn’t that good at it.”
“He must have improved after you died, considering the land he bought.”
“According to Adam, he bought that land while I was alive, which I still don’t understand how he afforded it.”
“Obviously he was better at it than you thought.”
Danielle’s cellphone rang. She picked it up from the table where she had placed it when she had come outside. Before answering it, she looked to see who was calling.
“It’s the chief,” Danielle said.
When Danielle got off the phone a few minutes later, she said, “The chief’s on his way over. There’s something he wants to tell us.”