Blue Lake

by Elizabeth Buhmann

  He pointed. “There’s a hot dog stand over there.”

  “Okay.” The handkerchief was damp and wadded up. She fumbled with it, found a dry spot, and blew her nose again.

  “He came back when I was fourteen, Robert did,” Regina said when they were settled on a bench in the Square. “He got mad one time and told me I wasn’t his daughter. I thought he meant I was Mary’s but not his. He’s horrible. Oh, it’s a long story. But he said it like it was something shameful, that I shouldn’t talk about it. By then I was old enough to wonder if Mary had had me because of some affair or something. Then I figured out that they weren’t married until well after I was born, and I certainly knew better than to bring that up.”

  Al was working on his second hot dog. She was only halfway through her first, lost in memories flooded with new meaning.

  She turned on him, the fury rising in her once again. “Look, not everybody knows who their father is.”

  He nodded, mouth full, unconcerned by her sudden vehemence.

  She was struck afresh by a memory she had lost, of making up a war hero father who had died, leaving Mary tragically to marry Robert so she wouldn’t have a child without being married. She took a deep breath, then finished her hot dog, conscious of Al’s shoulder against hers. Then she remembered the night before. “Alice? She’s crazier than I thought.”

  “Napkin?”

  “No, I’m fine. Last night I was alone with her, and she—oh my God.” He slipped his arm around her shoulder. “The other night I mentioned, without meaning to, the man they thought… you know. The one they suspected.” She squirmed at the picture in her mind of Alice, totally disconnected from reality. “Last night she thought I was a policewoman!”

  The wonder, the horror, closed down on her. She almost forgot Al was there except for a gentle squeeze.

  “She didn’t know who you were?”

  She took a deep breath, shut her eyes, willed herself calmer. “She didn’t know where she was, didn’t know when. She thought there were roses in the garden. There haven’t been roses in twenty years or more. Not since—oh my God.” Restless now, she rose and tossed her trash in a nearby can. “Alice said her father went to his grave believing Eugenie was murdered. Her father died in 1933.” She started walking again, barely conscious of Al at her elbow. “It’s like she lives in a house full of ghosts. Oh, not real ghosts.” Alice’s dead parents. Her dead sister. Her dead child. “God knows she’s haunted.”

  She stopped, and he offered his hand. She took it with both of hers. “She lives in the past. I mean, we say that about people, but she really was living in the past last night. She thought it was 1925. Oh my God.”

  She barely heard Al saying, “What?”

  “The girl.” Regina sucked a sharp breath through her teeth.

  As if from a great distance, she heard Al asking, “What girl?”

  “The one who hanged herself. That’s who Maisie is.”

  18

  What Possible Harm

  Al was now quite lost. “Who is Maisie?”

  “A girl who killed herself a long time ago.” She waved it off. “Alice was confused, she was in and out of the past. But not when she said she saw him.”

  He was beginning to feel stupid, saying over and over, What? Who? So he just waited.

  “She said she saw Tiberius the day her daughter drowned. I’m sure that’s what she said.” She turned to face him. “His family said he was at home, but she saw him there. Before and after, she said.”

  “She told the police that?”

  “I think…” Regina looked away, frowning and biting her lip in concentration. “She said nobody believed her, so I guess so. But she saw him.”

  He couldn’t help thinking that if Alice Hannon was as disoriented as Regina described, they might very well not have believed her. But he didn’t say that.

  Regina continued, seemingly thinking aloud rather than talking to him. “Well. On second thought. She said she told Robert. And Sophie said that Robert was the one who accused him.” She stopped at the corner of Ninth and Broad. “I went to the library in Lynchburg yesterday and found the old newspaper reports about the investigation. The sheriff questioned him, but he had an alibi. If she says she saw him—was she just outnumbered? Their word against hers?”

  He shrugged and shook his head. “No way to know.”

  “I wish I knew how it went for real. What the police knew. Anyway, I thought I’d read the Richmond papers.”

  He followed her eyes in the direction of the library. “Now?”

  She nodded. “I have to get back. I want to go to the hospital. But I’m going to do this first. Just maybe an hour.”

  “I wish I could help you, but I have to go back to work.”

  “Right, you go ahead.”

  Neither of them moved.

  Then she said, “Al, do you think, if I asked, that the police would tell me what happened?”

  “It was a long time ago, but they probably have some record. For a family member, they might.”

  “It was the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office that handled it. The Richmond police were involved too, because of the cases here, but it was the sheriff who was quoted in the paper. If I asked?” She looked at him inquiringly, as if he would know, and he shrugged again. She dropped her eyes. “I don’t have the nerve.”

  “I think my dad knows somebody in the sheriff’s office. He knows everybody. I could ask him.”

  “Would you do that for me?”

  He mimed sweeping off a hat and bowed like d’Artagnan, knowing he looked like an idiot on a busy avenue in the middle of Richmond. “I would do anything for you.”

  She rolled her eyes and laughed. Then her face clouded over again. “I just want to know. How can it hurt to ask? It bothers me that she says no one believed her. I know she’d be the worst possible witness, so confused. I wonder if she was that confused then?”

  “I’ll ask. Meanwhile, you can call me anytime.”

  He gave her his office and Richmond apartment numbers, and gave her his home number in Piedmont again. He couldn’t think of anything more to do, so he waved and watched her head for the library. On the way back to the office, he made up his mind that he would drive home that night. He figured he could leave at six the next morning and get to work on time. She had done that. So could he.

  He pulled into the driveway shortly after eight.

  From the kitchen, his mother said, “What brings you back so soon?”

  “Felt like getting out of town, driving. The heat’s a lot worse in Richmond.”

  From the living room, his father said, “What, did you get fired?”

  He laughed. “I wish. I’m not that crazy about the job or the town.” When the words came out, he realized it was the truth. “I mean, the work is interesting enough.” He shrugged, no longer sure how he felt about living in the city.

  “You got a job here any time you want. I’m selling tires now too, and jeez, that’s taking off like a son of a gun. Lotta money in it, Al. I could use the help.”

  His mother called from inside the refrigerator, “I made macaroni and cheese and those beans you like with the bacon.”

  She pulled out a saucepan and lit the stove. Al didn’t protest. He hadn’t stopped to eat, knowing there’d be plenty at home. Ray followed him into the kitchen and sat down.

  Once the meal was well under way and all three were sitting at the table, Ray with a beer, his mother with tea, Al with huge plate of food and a bowl of salad on the side, he said, “Hey, remember I said I ran into that Hannon girl?”

  “I thought her name was Medina.”

  “So did I, but that’s her sister’s name.”

  “Mary Medina. The girl’s her daughter, right?”

  “No, her sister.”

  His mother said, “I thought she was your age. The Mary Medina I know must be close to fifty.”

  “They’re sisters though.”

  “What’s your girl’s name?”
<
br />   “Ree. Regina, but we called her Ree in high school. She’s the youngest Hannon child.” He explained how Mary Hannon took her little sister Regina and raised her as her own child. “They didn’t even tell her. She grew up thinking Mary was her mother.”

  His mother sat straight back. “I can’t imagine doing that to my own child.”

  “Apparently her mother was so traumatized by that drowning that she couldn’t function.”

  His mother rose and started washing up. “I don’t know what I would do if I lost a child. It’s a terrible thing.”

  Ray grunted. “Them Hannons is nuts anyways. Careless. When you got two little girls that drown, you got to think somebody’s not watching too good.”

  Al was taken aback. “Two?”

  His mother took Al’s empty plate. “Oh, I’d forgotten about that.”

  His father shook a finger. “There was two little girls that drowned out there.”

  “When? At the same time?”

  His mother said, “Oh no, the first one was a long time ago, before our time. You can’t blame the Hannons for the first one, Ray, that was before the house was even there. I just remember somebody mentioned it when the second little girl died. This would have been not long after the turn of the century, Al.”

  For a moment, Al was nonplussed. “And they said that one was murdered too?”

  “Oh, no. There was no question about that one. The first little girl was one of Reverend Wilcox’s daughters. The second was a little Hannon girl.”

  “What’s the connection? The lake, I guess.” Rumors of the ill-fated lake flashed through his mind.

  “Well, that and Mrs. Hannon’s maiden name was Wilcox, right?”

  Al frowned into his teacup.

  Ray explained. “Old Lady Hannon’s family was the Wilcoxes. The first one, they said the nanny, or whatever she was, who was supposed to be watching the little girl was drunk.”

  “Fell asleep,” his wife interjected, and they looked at her. “That was how my mother heard it, and she knew somebody who used to go to Reverend Wilcox’s church back then. It was his daughter. The nanny killed herself over it.”

  Al rocked back in his seat. The suicide’s ghost. “Kids used to say a girl drowned herself and then pulled kids under the water to keep her company.”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake. You want dessert? I made Tollhouse cookies.” She gave him a clean plate and set the cookie jar in front of him. “It was a tragedy. I wouldn’t want you talking about it that way.”

  Al raised his hands. “I’m just telling you what kids that I knew said.” He ate a few cookies before making his next move. “So anyway, Ree says her mother saw that man around where it happened when her sister was drowned.”

  Ray grunted again. His mother resumed washing dishes.

  Al continued. “The papers at the time said the man claimed to be at home and his family backed him up. Ree’s not sure if the police knew her mother said she saw the man.”

  “She’s your age, isn’t she? She must have been a tiny little thing when it happened.”

  “Right, she doesn’t remember anything. She wants to know what happened.”

  Ray gestured. “I’m sure there’s records.”

  “Why would she want to stir all that up?” Al’s mother held up a pot. “Coffee?”

  “No thanks. It made a big difference to her. She feels like her sister’s death took her mother from her.”

  “I guess she could ask,” said Ray.

  “Don’t you know somebody in the sheriff’s office?”

  Silence. Then Ray lifted a shoulder and dropped it. “Heck, I know the sheriff. Oh hell yeah, sold him a truck. Him and Merkin and me, we used to go fishing down at Douthat Park. What’s she want to know? Why they didn’t arrest that guy for murder?”

  “She wants to know whether they knew her mother saw him there. Did they know that? Did they just not believe her or what? Just whatever, I guess. Wants to know what happened from their point of view. I’m sure they did what they could, she’s not questioning that.” At least he didn’t think so.

  “Well, hell, I can call him right now. I got his number somewhere. Can’t hurt to ask.” He was in genial-salesman mode now.

  Al’s mother said, “Oh, Ray.”

  “What?”

  It was more than Al had bargained for, that his father would call the sheriff that very night, but why not? What harm could it do? Al looked at his mother and shrugged. They both listened as his father shuffled through cards in the phone console in the hall and then dialed. His mother resumed cleaning up, but quietly.

  After a few minutes, they heard Ray’s bluff greeting and small talk about how they were doing and what was up, until he got around to his question. “Hey, Ollie, you remember when that Hannon girl drowned way back then?”

  A pause. Al and his mother exchanged a look.

  “Yeah, well, there’s one of the young ones asking what happened. There was that guy you picked up at the time. What was that all about?”

  Long pause.

  “Oh yeah? I know him.” Ray guffawed. “Oh boy. Yeah, you ask me, real asshole.”

  Al’s mother banged a cabinet door shut.

  More grunts and yeahs. “That right?”

  More silence. Then, “Yeah! We were just saying, it wasn’t the first time. That other little girl, long time ago, the one that the nanny killed herself… yeah, Old Lady Hannon, she says she saw him. There was that serial killer in Richmond, right?”

  He listened some more. “Huh… oh yeah? Yeah, apparently she said so.” He didn’t speak for a minute. “Well, whatever you think. Hey, I got no dog in this hunt. It was just my son, Al, you know, he knows the young Hannon girl, and she’s all wantin’ to know what happened. I figured you’d be the one to ask.”

  After a long sign-off, with updates about Al and his brother and sister, proposals to go fishing, on and on, finally he came back into the kitchen and sat down. “He remembers it. It was that minister guy. Medina. He was there when it happened, and he was the one pointed the finger at Rawley. He stirred up some crap about how the guy was ‘lustful’ and ‘unnatural’—you believe that? Said he was doing immoral things with young girls. So they talked to him. Turned out Rawley, he’s half black, had an underage white girlfriend.”

  Ray got up and fetched a beer from the refrigerator, ignoring his wife’s glare. “He says he’s not sure if they knew the mother said she saw him. He’s going to have somebody pull the file. If they can even find it. It was a long time ago. He said they never were too happy about that alibi. It was just Rawley’s dad said he was at home on the tractor, mowing the hayfield. Said Old Lady Hannon was out of her mind. ‘Raving like a banshee,’ was his exact words.”

  “Well, that’s no way to talk. I would have been the same.”

  Ray popped the top of the beer. “The first one was way long ago. But Ollie, he knew about it. Lot of people around here thought that nanny let the little girl drown. Girl hanged herself.” He took a long pull on the beer. “So he’s gonna have somebody pull the file, see if they had that statement from the old lady about seeing the guy. They’ll let the Richmond cops know. But that Mrs. Hannon, she’s not much of a witness.”

  Al’s mother said, “I can understand being out of your mind with grief. Especially if I thought my child had been murdered.”

  19

  The Writing Box

  At the Library of Virginia, Regina read papers from June, 1945, hoping to get background on the Richmond murders. The headlines and front pages were dominated by the end of the war, but she quickly zeroed in on the Church Hill crimes. She read profiles of the victims, interviews with the parents, and editorials about the fear and horror distracting the community in the midst of general jubilation about victory in Europe.

  She steeled herself as she read on toward September but felt a physical shock at the first mention of a drowning in Piedmont that was being investigated as a possible fifth murder. The article was dated September 19th,
just days after Eugenie’s death, and Tiberius Rawley was identified as a suspect who spent the weekends in Piedmont, where he lived with his parents, and weekdays in Richmond, where he had a small business running a three-man yard crew in the neighborhoods of Shockoe Bottom and Church Hill. All of the girls had gone missing on weekdays, and his company had worked near the houses of three of the four girls. The Piedmont drowning had occurred on a weekend.

  Regina’s body registered a jolt each time she read Eugenie’s name or a mention of her family or Blue Lake. The dangerous lake. The child somehow slipping out of sight and then being found dead by her mother.

  An article that appeared three days later reported that according to Tiberius Rawley’s parents, Rawley had spent the day at home in Piedmont, mowing hayfields. A week later, the case seemed to have stalled, as the investigation failed to produce conclusive evidence either way. Rawley remained a suspect in all five murders. The articles trailed off as the Richmond cases remained unsolved.

  She reached the hospital at five that night. From the desk attendant, she learned that Mary and Alice had just left. She found her father in a twilight, eyes opening from time to time, and at those moments, she thought she saw his spirit in them. Since her visit with Sophie, the awkwardness and tension had fallen away. She held his hand and told him about the happy times she’d been remembering, of following him through his rose gardens. She recited the names of the roses and talked about the lake and the woods that she loved. She considered trying to talk about the good old days that the family always gravitated to and decided against it. She talked about her own best memories.

  When he drifted off, she sat quietly. The years of estrangement, her bitter complaints to Al just that afternoon, seemed distant and unimportant. The need to justify her resentment and absence melted away. When his eyes reopened and met hers, she smiled and smoothed the sheets across his chest.