by Jean Rabe
“Just did. Told ‘em you had to break in.” She rattled off a code so Piper could turn off the shrill sound.
“Thanks. Call the coroner, please. Ask Dr. Neufeld to come here as soon as she’s able.”
The cat turned its head and looked up at her.
The old dog kept its position.
Piper sat at the desk, stared at the threesome, and sobbed as the alarm continued to keen.
25
Twenty-Five
It took Oren fifty-two minutes to reach Evansville, another ten to find The Treasured Past. Next to a shiny new pharmacy and across from some stripe of dollar store with a bright yellow facade, the two-story building looked like an antique, and out of place in the block. Interesting, eclectic, but not ugly. Definitely didn’t fit with its neighbors.
Weathered siding, old-time shutters, wagon wheels leaning under the front window, and an assortment of milk jugs, rocking chairs, and large crocks spread across the front. Everything had a little white price tag on a string that flipped in the breeze.
He looked at his watch. 9:30. The sign on the window listed the hours. Tues-Fri 10-6, Sat 10-2, Sun closed for God.
Oren peered through the window, seeing lights on and a woman dusting shelves. He rapped on the window, and after she finished with an aisle, she came to the door and opened it a crack.
“I open at ten.” Her voice was musical.
“I’d like to speak with you, Mrs. Huffman.”
Her eyes widened. “You caught the shoplifter! Come in! Come in, Sheriff.” She opened the door and gestured Oren inside.
Virginia Huffman was stunning.
Old, sure, older than Oren by more than ten years according to her grandson. But she was stunning. Nothing wrong with applying that word to someone elderly, he thought, especially when the word fit so well. Stunning shouldn’t be a word relegated to the young.
Her hair was a pale gray that shimmered like spun silver, short and swept around her head in lazy curls. She wore makeup, but not a lot, and likely had tinted contacts because her eyes were a vivid shade of blue that matched her sapphire drop earrings. Certainly she had wrinkles, but they were tiny, at the edges of her eyes and her lips, insignificant lines on her forehead. She wore navy pants with a slight crease down the front, a black blazer, and an off-white blouse with pearl buttons. She stood with shoulders square, no rounding to her back like a lot of old women exhibited. He picked up a hint of lilacs, probably her perfume.
“I’m not here about a shoplifter, though I hope the local department catches the thief. I’m Oren Rosenberg, chief deputy with the Spencer County Sheriff’s Department.
“Rockport,” she said. “I lived there back in the day. Miss it. But I like Evansville better. There’s a lot more to do. And I can gamble on the riverboat.”
He followed her to the counter. She stepped behind it and sat, rested her elbows on it and looked up at him.
Yep, stunning.
Oren recalled that on one Saturday library jaunt, his wife pointed to the cover of a fashion magazine—she always liked to ogle them, but never subscribed to any. Carmen Dell’Orefice’s face stared back, an eighty-four-year-old glamorous runway model.
He thought Virginia Huffman could give her that proverbial run for the money.
“So what brings the handsome chief deputy sheriff of Spencer County to my antique store?”
Oren told her about the bones on the bluff, that the age matched the three boys who drowned.
She closed her eyes and let out a long breath. In the silence Oren heard a ceiling fan slowly turn. He looked up. It was huge, polished brass with blades made out of wicker. He thought it could have been a prop in a movie like Casablanca.
“I was thirteen years old,” she said. “Rory Martin, he’s the one who built that raft, though that Killian boy said it was his. Rory was nine. They all were nine. I wasn’t about to bother with boys back then.” To Oren, the emphasis she put on the word meant nine-year-old boys like Rory Martin. “But Rory Martin and his friends, they were always following me and Julie around town.”
“Julie? Julian Joseph?”
She winked. “Julie was sixteen. He was someone to bother with.”
“They only recovered one boy’s body from the river.” Oren wished he’d have printed out the old news article and brought it with him to show her. But apparently he didn’t need it. Her memory was sharp.
“That Killian boy, Eddie. That was a sad day. When they found Eddie’s body, before they’d identified him, Julie wanted it to be his brother. Closure, you know. No closure for Neal and Rory and their families. The river kept them boys. I’d imagine it has kept a lot of souls down the decades.”
“I was thinking, maybe, that the bones we found buried on the bluff might be Neal’s or Rory’s. The age is right. Nine, according to the forensic anthropologist.”
“You mean maybe another body had washed up? Neal or Rory? And someone buried it in the park? That doesn’t make sense. That’s just cruel. Why not let the families know their boy had washed up? The Courier carried a story—Wednesday, I think—about those child’s bones turning up in Rockport, just like you say. Only two or three inches of type, the paper didn’t give it much. But it had a Rockport dateline, and so I read it. Sixty-five years ago. That’s when those boys drowned.” She shook her head, her eyes and the sapphire earrings sparkling under the fluorescent lights. “Someone might have meant well to bury the drowned boy up on the bluff. All the boys played on the bluff, but where’s the closure? My Julie died still wondering about his baby brother.”
“I’m just gathering information,” Oren said. He wanted to tell her that the boy buried on the bluff had been strangled, not drowned. “I talked to your grandson this morning.”
“James Harrison,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. He pointed me here, said you might remember the boys, what they were like.”
She smiled, her teeth white and even. The magazine cover of the elderly model came to mind again.
“Those boys were rascals, always shadowing us. Gave them something to do, I guess,” she said. Then she laughed. “Back in my young years, boys were always following me. And Julie was always jealous. There wasn’t a lot to do in Rockport, in the county. We made our own fun, fishing, swimming, running—things kids today don’t do enough of, I think. Sometimes we’d just sit and read comic books and talk about what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wanted to be a movie star.”
She could’ve been, Oren thought.
“But I liked Julie a little too much for my own good. Pregnant at sixteen. It would have been a scandal if our parents hadn’t covered it up. Momma put me in baggy clothes, and me and Julie got married on my seventeenth birthday. I never finished high school. Julie had just turned twenty, and we moved into an apartment above a laundromat—helluva place to live, hot and noisy. I think if the neighbors did the math, they’d’ve known we had to marry, that the baby came four months after the wedding, not nine. God, I loved Julie. He was an auto mechanic working days. I waitressed at night. We didn’t have the money for a babysitter.”
She chattered on for a long while, and Oren listened, not minding being tangled in her memories. When she came up for air, he jumped in.
“What do you recall about those boys, Neal and Rory?”
“You’re not asking about Eddie Killian because they found his body, right?”
Oren didn’t answer.
“Neal was a pistol, I remember that. Since he was baby of the Huffman family, he got away with everything. The other kids would get paddled, but never Neal. Rory Martin was the quiet one of their little gang. And it wasn’t just the three of them. There were a half-dozen. Otto Benson, Chuck Schleevogt, and Trigger Holms were in the mix. My memory is still crystal, Sheriff. Trigger, that wasn’t his real name, but everybody called him Trigger. Red hair, freckles, picked his nose and ate the boogers. I couldn’t tell you what his real name was. As I mentioned, I didn’t much bother with boys.”
“I
understand.”
Oren glanced around. The shop was well organized. Carnival glass and Rosewood pottery—ugly bowls and vases and such that his wife found “beautiful”—were against the far wall. Another aisle was devoted to vintage toys. A Mr. Magoo car caught his eye. He’d had one when he was a boy. One aisle was reserved for dolls, most looking like they had china faces. Tall glass cases in the center displayed pocket watches, jewelry, Meerschaum pipes, coins, stamps. He suspected the real valuable stuff was in the cases.
“Did the boys have trouble with anyone that you remember? You said they were rascals. Did they steal or do something that would make someone mad enough to,” he paused, “hurt them? Hurt one of them?”
Virginia’s face became unreadable. She sat back and dropped her hands to her lap. Oren noticed she wore large rings and had a few gold bangle bracelets.
“You think someone drowned the boys? On purpose? Did something to that little raft to make it break up? It was such a small raft, really only one boy should’ve been on it. And it certainly shouldn’t have been taken out on the river. But Eddie was into Abe Lincoln, reciting the Gettysburg Address and all. He wanted to recreate young Abe casting off from the shore. I remember that. Folks in the neighborhood thought Eddie would grow up to be the president when he was old enough. Pity to not get that chance, don’t you think? I wasn’t around the bluff that awful day. It was a Saturday in October, Halloween, if I remember right. Later I heard Eddie had dressed up as Abe.”
She made humming sound and closed her eyes, and Oren suspected she was snarled in those long-past days. “They were hooligans, but all boys were then. I can’t think of anyone they wronged enough to do them harm. I just can’t. No, those boys drowning, that was an accident. We all knew it then, and I still know it now.” She stood. “I wish I could have been more help, Chief Deputy Rosenberg.”
He looked at the large clock hanging on the back wall behind her counter. Its yellowed face displayed Roman numerals, all of it framed in a dark wood that was pitted in places. It read 10:15. They’d been talking for roughly fifty-five minutes.
“That clock’s from a railway station that used to operate here in the city,” she said, catching his gaze. “I have to use an extender tool to wind it. Worth the effort.”
On either side of it were smatterings of old framed sepia and black and white photographs. The largest was an oval roughly two feet long by half that wide. The boy had hair that fell in curls to his jawline. He was scowling.
“1918,” she said, pointing to the oval. “That’s Alan Earl Mooney, one year old there. He grew up to be a military photographer. Had a college scholarship for football, was a big-armed quarterback and everyone figured he’d be drafted by the Green Bay Packers or the Chicago Bears. But he was drafted by the Army instead. Didn’t have a chance at the pros. Injured his knee on some reconnaissance mission.”
“Photographs.” Oren’s eyes popped wide. “Would you happen to have any photographs from Rockport, ones that might have those boys in them?”
“Oh! I just might! I should’ve thought of that right off. I have Julie’s keepsakes, most of them, anyway. They’re upstairs. There are a few old photo albums I’ve been telling myself I should give to James Harrison. His wife is into genealogy. I tried my hand at it, but found it too time consuming. I spend my free time down at the riverboat. Wait here, Sheriff. Mind my store if anyone comes in. Stall them, you understand. I don’t want to miss a sale.” She excused herself and disappeared into a back room. Oren heard the creak of stairs.
It was 10:30. He recalled what James Harrison said about his grandmother. “Oh, she’ll be happy to talk to you. Once you get her started, she won’t quit talking.”
The buffet opened at 11. He made a quick call to Millie, who said she could meet him at the restaurant in an hour.
He took a look at the Mr. Magoo car. Mustard-yellow tin, black cloth top, rubber Magoo in the driver seat. The tag read Vintage, 1961, with box, $422. Oren whistled. “Wish I would’ve kept mine.”
In the jewelry counter an old cameo pin caught his eye. He guessed it to be an inch and a half in diameter and circled with gold filigree. The centerpiece was a carved lady justice, the woman with a blindfold and in flowing robes, sword in one hand, scales in the other. He whistled again. He tried to read the price, but the little tag was flipped over. It would make a nice graduation gift for Millie, he thought. Wouldn’t take up any room, and she loved jewelry, and justice—Millie was all about justice. “Perfect,” he said.
He looked at the other pieces, but kept coming back to that cameo. Probably expensive. Probably why the price tags in this counter were all facedown, so as not to scare the customer.
Two women came in as he continued to study the jewelry. He guessed they were in their fifties, wearing baggy jeans, one in a long-sleeve polo, the other wearing a black t-shirt with a Boston terrier’s face on it. They went straight to the doll aisle.
A few minutes later, Virginia came back with two dingy-looking photo albums tucked under her arm. She set them on the counter, tended to the women searching through the dolls, and sold the Boston terrier woman a Madame Alexander doll that looked like a Disney princess.
“A good sale,” she told Oren after the women left. “That was the Jo doll from the Little Women collection. One hundred dollars. Used to go for twice that. Antiques are a funny thing, values always changing based on what people are fancying in any given year.”
Oren pointed to the cameo.
“Do you know much about cameos, Sheriff?”
“Nope.”
“They date back to ancient Rome, third century Greece. Fascinating, really. The old ones are made of agate, and other stones that have layered colors. They carve the stone right where the colors meet, cutting away all of a particular shade except for the raised part. Like lady justice there.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a ring of keys, used one to open the case. Taking out the piece, with her free hand she took Oren’s and placed it in his palm. “It feels a little warm, doesn’t it?”
He nodded.
“Stones have a natural warmth. How you can tell the difference between real things and clever plastic. Anyway, they carve all of a layer away except for the thing they want illustrated, and when they carve that part, it’s real intricate. Lots of cameos are of women’s faces, or maybe of Diana with a skinny hound, sometimes flowers. This is the only lady justice I’ve seen. Iustitia, the Roman goddess of justice. She got the blindfold sometime in the sixteenth century. This particular piece, turn it over, stamped by the jeweler, is one hundred and twenty to one hundred and twenty-five years old.”
Oren noticed the price when he’d moved it. $370.
“Ouch,” he said softly.
Virginia laughed. “You’re forgetting what I said about antiques. It’s been here quite a while. Make me an offer.”
It really would be perfect for Millie, Oren thought, and he knew his wife would more than approve. “I don’t want to insult you—” he started.
“Make me an offer,” she repeated.
“Two hundred and seventy.”
She shook her head. “Sorry. I can’t do that. But I can do two hundred.”
“Really?”
“Really. They’re not quite as popular now as a decade ago when I put that in the case. Besides, I’ve enjoyed talking to you. Two hundred.”
“Sold.” Oren grinned. “Do you have a box for it? A little box? I’m going to give it to my granddaughter for her college graduation.”
“Certainly.”
He followed her back to the counter and pulled out his wallet, handed over his credit card. Then he pointed to the photo albums. “I can look at these?”
“Certainly.” Virginia put the cameo in a little box with tissue in it. “She’ll love this. Antique jewelry is a more thoughtful gift than something you buy new in a shiny store.”
Oren opened one of the albums. The first few pages held black and white pictures, no names, nothing to indicate who the
adults and kids were.
Virginia loomed over it and pointed. “That picture there is all of the Huffies. That’s what the family was called back then. Seems everyone used nicknames. My maiden name was Oakley, and the kids called us the Okie-dokies. That’s Neal, Gary, Sandy, and my Julie. Wasn’t right, him getting a brain tumor. Awful thing, cancer. Here’s Julie and his dad working on an old Chevy. Julie and Ambrose Smith—they were the same age—and little Rory Martin in this one.”
Oren focused on that picture, as Rory fit with his “possibilities.”
“Here’s a color picture of Rory.” She turned a few more pages. “And here are all the scoundrels lined up at the Catholic Church picnic. Otto Benson, Rory Martin.” She pointed at each one with a manicured nail. “Chuck Schleevogt, Neal Robert, Eddie Killian—Killy Dilly they used to call him—and Trigger ‘boogie eater’ Holms.” She touched a photo on the opposite page, Julian with a beautiful young girl.
“That you?” Oren asked.
“I was thirteen then. I’d go back to thirteen again,” she said wistfully. “I was thirty-seven when Julie died. Buddy Dean, our boy, was twenty and away at college. I moved to Henderson and got a job at the racetrack. Bet the ponies on my days off and did pretty well. Never married again. Never found anyone I liked as much as my Julie. If there really is a God and heaven, I’ll be with Julie again.”
She reached under the counter and retrieved a small paper bag that had The Treasured Past printed on it. Oren noticed that the logo incorporated a horseshoe and flowers. She caught his stare.
“I bought this store with winnings from the track,” she said. “That’s why I picked a horseshoe. Flowers for the win. Buddy and his wife paid half, said they wanted an investment. I could’ve footed the whole bill, but I let them share. Maybe they’ll want to run it when they retire. Or maybe James Harrison will. My grandson can’t carry trees and rocks around forever. He and his family could live upstairs. There are three bedrooms.”
“Do you have a copier? Can I get a copy of this photograph?” Oren indicated the group shot of all the boys. He looked up at the clock again; he’d have to hurry to make lunch with Millie.