If It Is April

by Edward A. Stabler

  “Did you ever hear of a man named Franklin Blyth?”

  She shook her head.

  “I guess you wouldn’t remember even if you did. He had an investment company in Baltimore. Hired me a few years ago after I heard him talk at the county fair. I was eighteen and it was my first job.” Jake told her Blyth had started a company called Secured Automotive Investments, which provided short-term financing to automobile dealerships. “Thirty-day loans to dealers at five percent, and the loans were backed by cars that buyers had already put deposits on. The dealers needed the money to finance more cars. Otherwise they had to wait for a customer to pay in full. If they could turn their inventory faster, it was worth paying the five percent. And my company was independent from the car makers, so we didn’t put strings on the money. The dealers could use it to finance cars from different factories. That was the story anyway.”

  “How did you fit in?”

  “I was selling the rockfish. Easiest job in the world.” Jake explained that Blyth had hired him as the company’s reach expanded into towns west of Baltimore, like Frederick and Hagerstown. “My job was to knock on doors, starting with family and friends and branching out from there. Anyone who was trying to save and invest a little money. People could see there were more cars on the road every year, and new dealerships were popping up all the time, same as car makers. One goes under and two more come up. The market was growing fast, so it seemed like the kind of field where a sharp finance man like Blyth could figure a way to get rich.

  “I had a book with some tables and charts to point to when I was talking through how it all worked. Secured Automotive would make five percent a month, and that’s over sixty percent a year. So the company could take a fee and still pay their investors fifty percent a year, even if a few loans went bad and they had to seize the collateral.

  “Most folks didn’t dig too deep into the story, once they understood the notion. I was selling to farmers and doctors and boat captains, and they usually didn’t know much about finances. When I got to the part about the fifty percent, their eyes would lift up from the page and start shining. You could tell they were picturing something they couldn’t get their hands on any other way: maybe a new barn or a Kelvinator or a truck.

  “When I got to the end and asked if they had questions, sometimes they just wanted to know who else was investing, and that was when I knew I had ‘em hooked. If I was in Frederick, I’d mention Doc Simpson; everyone in town knew Doc. In Hagerstown I’d tell folks Ben Meredith got in early and already tripled his money. Most people knew Ben ran the savings and loan. In Rockville it would be Walter Peterson, who owned a big farm-supply store. People figured that if men like that were giving Blyth their money, it was a sharp move for them to do the same.

  “If I thought someone was on the fence about it, I’d tell them the latest fund was closing, so I couldn’t guarantee they could get in right away. Then I might stop by a couple days later and say Mr. Blyth signed up two new dealers and agreed to expand the fund. There was room for fifty-thousand more, but my allocation was only five, and I was sure it would sell out in a couple of days. Did they want to invest a thousand dollars?”

  Jake paused to make sure April was still with him.

  “I guess they did,” she said.

  “Enough of ‘em. I got started in ’20, the same year Ponzi went to federal prison, but that didn’t signify for my customers. Most of ‘em never put their money into anything more complicated than a savings account, and Ponzi was investing in postal coupons from Italy, something nobody ever heard of before. Our investments were backed by new cars that buyers already put money down on, and the car business was booming. Anyone who called Doc Simpson or Ben Meredith or Walt Peterson would hear the same thing: Frank Blyth was a genius and a straight shooter and they were earning fifty percent a year. They cashed out their principal after the first year and let the profits ride, so now they couldn’t lose. No one could beat Secured Automotive Investments, but you had to know somebody to get in.”

  “So Jake Reed was a somebody.”

  Through the kitchen window, morning sunlight was illuminating April’s wavy hair, pale cheekbone, and one of her hazel eyes, and Jake noticed for the first time how striking she looked. If he’d taken her to a party in Baltimore, costumed like Mildred and not in her simple dress, she would have turned heads throughout the room.

  “I was,” he said. “First for friends and family, and then for anyone they told about me. I took money from almost a hundred investors in my first two years. Blyth promoted me to the main office in Baltimore and made me a director of new accounts. I started to call on society types. I put Winton Avery in for ten thousand. He was young like me, so we got to be friends. We went sailing on his family yacht out of Annapolis and I met his sister Mildred. She was my girl for almost six months, until everything fell apart.”

  “You mean she found out your father was a locktender from Sharpsburg?”

  Jake waved her off. “None of that mattered as long as we were all getting rich. The money made us think about where we were going, not where anyone came from, and it was pouring in from every direction. Blyth kept sending out monthly statements showing fifty percent per year. We took investors out for dinner in Baltimore. I wore linen suits, ate oysters, drank champagne.”

  The hazel eyes were appraising him again. “What went wrong?”

  “A reporter for the Baltimore Sun came into the office to interview Blyth. Last year, the day after New Years. Said he wanted to write a story on the company and how it was planning to open new offices in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. He met with Blyth for most of the morning, and then Blyth skipped lunch and went home. Called the office the next morning and said his sister in South Carolina got pneumonia and he had to go visit her for a week. Then he just disappeared. The Sun published a story saying the company was a Ponzi scheme and that Blyth skipped town. Nobody seen him since.”

  “What happened to the company?”

  “Blyth was the osprey. He stole it.”

  April squinted and Jake read her skepticism. “Overnight? How much could he steal?”

  “Almost all of it,” he said. “And not overnight. Blyth was transferring money into his own accounts from the beginning. It was all a con game; there never were any loans to car dealers. In four years, Blyth took in a few million and paid out maybe a tenth of it. When the government seized all the bank accounts there was only a few thousand dollars left. Simon Mackie was our treasurer and he must have been in on it with Blyth, because he disappeared too. They found him dead a few days later. Hung himself in a hotel room.”

  “Were you in on it?”

  Jake scowled. “No. Those people who gave me their money trusted me, and I thought they were right to trust me. If I’d known Blyth was a fraud, then I would have been a thief.” He took a sip of coffee to let his resentment subside. “But the district attorney needed to hang a scalp or two on his wall, and with Mackie dead and no sign of Blyth, he came after me and Joe Connelly. To a lot of the folks that got wiped out, we were the face of the company. Blyth was the wizard on center stage, but Joe and I collected the money from the audience. I think the investors needed to see somebody go to jail, and they must have thought we were thick as thieves with Blyth.”

  Jake waited for the next question but April gave him a moment to catch his breath. She put her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her fists. To Jake she looked both innocent and complicit at the same time.

  “They put you on trial?” she said.

  “Joe and me together, last year, in early March. It only lasted a day. Might as well have been over before it started. They gave us both one year at the Maryland House of Correction. It’s a lot worse than it sounds, and I was lucky to get out of there in one piece.”

  “So now you’re free and clear. You can start over.”

  Jake sipped his coffee and gave a sour look. “Start doing what? For who? Everybody I ever met either lost all the money they gave me or know
s someone who did. Probably half of ‘em believe I’m as crooked as Blyth. The others think I was just too dumb to see what was going on under my nose.”

  “But you didn’t run off with the money like Blyth. Did you get rich?”

  “Not hardly,” Jake snorted. “Part of my sentence was a five thousand dollar fine, and all the money I saved didn’t cover half of it. I still owe the rest.”

  “So it sounds like you were just one more person he swindled,” April said. “If you take up another line of work, people will figure that out. The osprey stole your fish, so catch another.”

  Jake slouched in his chair and looked away, out the kitchen window. “To do that I got to forget everything I was,” he said, staring at the trees along the towpath. “I think you got an easier job. You just need to remember who you are.”

  “Maybe,” she said, leaning back in her chair to mirror his posture. “But what if my past is worse than yours?”

  Chapter 5

  Lunch

  Sunday, April 6, 1924

  Billy stabbed an egg yolk and watched it bleed yellow onto his plate. He tore off a hunk of biscuit and mopped up the remains, then brought the dripping combination to his mouth. As he chewed, his eyes circled the table, taking in the other men eating lunch in his grandfather’s simply-furnished dining room.

  To his right was his brother Tyler, and past Tyler at the end of the table sat their father John Emory. Like Billy, John Emory was thick-limbed, with a broad, fleshy face that reddened when he furrowed his brow in concentration.

  At the end of the table to Billy’s left sat his white-haired grandfather Abel Emory, the family patriarch for over two decades. Abel’s younger brother Jeremiah was the father of Kevin and Tom Emory, whose bodies Billy and Tyler had just brought home. Jeremiah had died five years ago, in his early fifties.

  Directly across from Billy was his uncle Hoyt Emory, the youngest of Abel’s three children. Hoyt’s russet-colored mustache resembled the one Kevin Emory had worn but he was otherwise almost bald, and that made him look older than his forty-some years.

  And diagonally across from Billy sat Delmond Cole, a man he had heard of but never met before. Cole looked to be a few years past thirty. He had slate blue eyes and black hair that fell halfway to his shoulders, with a prominent gray forelock on one side. A thick mustache drooped toward the streaked, close-trimmed beard on his chin. Before everyone sat down to lunch, Billy had noticed Cole was a smidgen taller than Tyler. Lean at the hips but broad-shouldered in a way that made Billy think he could probably throw a baseball across the river. When they shook hands, Cole’s were hard with calluses.

  Billy knew the discussion wouldn’t start until Grandpa Abel finished eating, and his grandfather pursued the food on his plate deliberately now, with spotted forearms and unsteady hands that revealed every vein. Billy took the opportunity to dig into a second portion of pork stew. He reached for the last biscuit but Tyler’s hand got there first, so he scowled until Tyler handed him half. As Billy used it to soak up the rest of his gravy, Abel Emory broke the silence.

  “Been five years since we had Sunday lunch at Jeremiah’s house,” he said, staring down the axis of the table. Billy’s eyes were drawn to the prominent cords beneath the sagging skin on his grandfather’s neck. “Since then I got used to seeing his boys at my table. I felt like Kevin and Tom was part of our family as much as John and Hoyt and Sarah, or any of the grandchildren running around this mountain. Now we lost ‘em when they was just getting started on their own families.”

  He frowned and shook his head in silence before turning to face Billy and Tyler. “I thank you two for bringing Jeremiah’s boys home,” he said. “I just never thought I’d live to see ‘em laid out in a box.”

  Billy’s sister Georgia and aunt Beth came into the room to clear plates, so the men shifted the conversation to their appreciation of the stew and anticipation of the forthcoming pies. When they left, Billy’s father spoke up.

  “Kevin was ten years younger than me, and Tom seven years behind that. Hoyt and me and Sarah, we watched them boys grow up. And when they wasn’t running up and down the mountain, they was fishing out on the river or paddling canoes on the canal. Or splashing around in the creeks. So I ain’t buying that they just fell into river and drownded. Flood or no flood.”

  Billy saw his uncle nod as his father spoke. “It don’t sound right,” Hoyt said. “Even if there wasn’t a mark on ‘em. What I can’t swallow is them taking a canoe out on the river without their hats. About the only time I saw Kevin or Tom bare-headed is when they was at the table or asleep.”

  “And did you ever see Tom without a knife on his belt?” Billy’s father said. To Billy he added “tell us about that family you said was minding Swains Lock.”

  Five faces turned toward Billy, but he felt one set of eyes bore into him as he thought about where to start. The long-haired stranger Cole.

  “The boat captain that drownded was staying at the lockhouse the week before the flood. Cy Elgin from Williamsport. Last fall his boat got stranded above Swains when the Canal Company drawed off the water, and he was fixing it up for the start of boating season. Jess Swain told us his sister and kid brother was along to help. The brother was only ten, just a mule driver. The sister Katie was eighteen or nineteen.”

  Billy paused to glance around the table and confirm that he still had everyone’s attention. Feeling the swell of conferred authority, he sat up straighter and placed his hands on the table. “He said the scow was tied up to the berm below the lock when the river come up. The kid Pete heared the mules braying in the middle of the night, so he got out of bed to check on ‘em. When he seen there wasn’t nobody in the lockhouse or onboard the scow, he took the mules up the road to high ground. Saved the mules and maybe saved hisself.”

  Hoyt whistled lightly. “That’s a damn strange situation. You got four people missing when the flood hit.”

  “And three of ‘em turned up dead,” John Emory said. “Kevin, Tom, and Cy Elgin. So that tells me we got to find the girl. Hats on the boat but no toolbox and no ledger, and she’s the only one that might know why.”

  Billy tried to reclaim the narrative, addressing his father and uncle in turn. “The sheriff at the ice-house told us a fourth man washed up above the falls, and he was our kin too. Lee Fisher from Seneca. Except he got bled to death in the water from a cut throat.”

  John and Hoyt Emory exchanged glances but said nothing. The name of Abel Emory’s nephew appeared not to have registered with the old man, who was watching the women enter the room bearing apple and pecan pies. As Georgia made pleasantries while cutting Abel the first piece, Billy’s father quietly sought confirmation.

  “Aunt Sarah and uncle Van’s boy? Only about twenty?”

  Billy nodded. “That’s what the sheriff said.”

  John and Hoyt Emory sighed and cursed under their breaths and slumped back in their chairs. The men waited for Georgia and Beth to finish serving and retreat from the room.

  “We met an older feller that’s been sleeping on the scow the last few days,” Billy continued. “Henry Zimmerman. Told us he sells heroin up and down the river.” Billy saw Cole lean forward attentively. “Zimmerman said Lee was minding Pennyfield Lock before the flood. He said Cy Elgin, the boat captain, told him Lee was courting his sister Katie, and Cy wasn’t too happy about it.”

  “This Katie Elgin is the one that disappeared?” Hoyt said.

  While the older men tucked into their pie, Tyler found an opportunity to contribute. “The sheriff said no one seen her and she might be dead too. Could of been caught in the flood and trapped under the falls. But if she’s alive we reckon she might have the toolbox, with the ledger inside it. And maybe she lifted Kevin’s keys and Tom’s knife.”

  “You think she got ‘em drunk and rolled ‘em into the river?” John asked.

  “Hard to figure how one girl could of done that,” Hoyt said.

  “Maybe Cy helped her before he got himself drownded,�
�� John offered.

  “Or maybe it was Katie that done Lee in,” Billy said darkly. “Could be they had an argument and she come at him with Tom’s knife. Dumped him in the canal and he got washed into the current when the flood come up.”

  “The particulars don’t matter too much now,” said Abel Emory. The other men stopped talking and swiveled toward the head of the table. “We got too much money in that toolbox and all our business tied up in that ledger. Orders and customers and what they owe. I never liked the way Kevin kept everything close, but that’s the way he done it, and the more people that knowed the names, the more people you got to worry about.”

  Billy had to restrain a smile; his grandfather had been the first at the table to think the situation through. Abel continued in his halting, nasal voice.

  “So now we got to find the ledger and the toolbox. And the boys are right – the one is probably locked up inside the other. Sounds like the only person still alive to tell what happened is that girl, so that’s where we need to start. Once we got her, we can peel her like an onion. Find out where the toolbox gone, how Kevin and Tom got drownded, who took a knife to Lee.”

  Billy noticed that his grandfather had addressed most of his statement to each side of the table in turn, but spoke the last two sentences directly to Cole, who had yet to utter a word about the matter.

  “From what I’ve seen, the hard part is digging the onion up,” Cole said, breaking his silence with a smile that revealed elongated canine teeth. His voice was warm and gravelly at the same time. “Once you done that, it’s easy enough to peel.”

  After lunch the men moved out to the porch for another hour of conversation. Then Abel pulled John, Hoyt, and Cole back into a private discussion in the sitting room, so Billy and Tyler headed over to the truck for the short drive down the hillside to their father’s house. Billy wasn’t surprised when Tyler spoke up as they rolled down Abel Emory’s driveway.