Black River (Sean O'Brien Book 6)

by Tom Lowe

  She disconnected and O’Brien said, “Nick, you can turn up the sound.”

  “Good,” he grinned. “I’ve been tryin’ to read lips.”

  Dave reached for the remote control, turning up the audio. A news reporter stood under some oak trees, red and blue lights from stationary police cruisers flashing, yellow crime tape in the background. He said, “Detectives aren’t calling the shooting death of a Civil War re-enactor a homicide, but they’re not calling it an accident either. They’ve interviewed the re-enactors working on the set of the feature film, Black River, and according to one detective, of the forty-five re-enactors playing Union soldiers, none was aware a Minié ball was in his rifle when the first barrage of gun blasts were fired. All of the rifles were supposed to be shooting blanks. Since this was the first battle scene filmed for the movie, police theorize that the round might have been left over from target practice. However, they say the investigation will continue. To recap, authorities say the victim is a thirty-five-year-old Civil War buff…a man said to have loved re-enacting Civil War battles and collecting Civil War memorabilia. From the Ocala National Forest, Jack Greene, Channel Four News.”

  Nick pushed back in his chair, his dark eyebrows arched. “Those reenactors are a funky bunch. Sounds like one dude, the Union guy, forgot the damn Civil War is history. It’s gotta be old wounds, grudges that keep gettin’ handed down, father-to-son kinda thing.”

  Dave set his beer on a lime-green coaster that read: Bottoms Down - Key West. He grunted. “Maybe that’s the case, but it’s doubtful. Looks like a very unfortunate accident. Those guys are re-enactors because they love it, and for the most part, they all know each other and are friends whether they’re on the Union side or flying the Confederate flag. Maybe it was nothing more than a bad mistake and the shooter most likely didn’t know he had a round in the rifle.”

  Nick shook his head. “Wouldn’t it kick his shoulder harder if it shot a bullet rather than a blank? What the hell do I know? I’m just a fisherman. Looks like, if it was an accident, the guy who did it would step up to the plate and admit it.”

  Dave nodded. “That’s assuming he knew there was a Minié ball in the rifle. Those guys are probably using the old Springfield models, or replicas. They spend a lot of time at the shooting range and competitions. It was most likely a horrible accident. And think about this parallel: in some firing squads, only one of the shooters has a live round. So no one knows who is firing the bullet into the body of the condemned man. All of those re-enactors out there today can’t be sure if the rifle they were using was firing blanks…so it’s a shared potential culpability. What are your thoughts, Sean?”

  O’Brien lowered his eyes from the TV screen, fed Max an oyster cracker and said, “That’s assuming it wasn’t deliberate. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be the first time someone was accidently shot or killed on a movie set.”

  Dave folded his arms across his chest and settled back into his couch. “Perhaps a dear old friend of mine can shed some light on that, assuming he was actually on the film set at the time. You two may have heard me mention his name—Ike Kirby. Ike’s a history professor at the University of Florida and is recognized as one of the foremost experts on the Civil War. He’s been doing some consultant work for the producers of the movie, Black River. I’ve invited him to dine on my boat tomorrow. Please join us.”

  Nick said, “I’ll shuck a couple dozen fresh oysters for appetizers.”

  O’Brien glanced at the photograph he set on the bar, smiled and said, “Maybe your friend can tell me more about the lady in this picture. Now that would be impressive.”

  Dave chuckled. “Well, look at the irony in this. You have that old Civil War era picture there on the bar in front of you. The Confederate Museum can’t identify the woman in the picture, a photo that was originally found on the battlefield between two dead soldiers, one Confederate and one Union. Now, out there today on a mock battlefield, a Union soldier kills a Confederate in a scene for a movie—a motion picture—cameras all around and no one knows the ID of the person responsible. There’s no tangible relevance, a pure fluke really, but an interesting observation no less.”

  O’Brien slid the photograph back in the envelope. “Kim said she recalled an old painting, possibly resembling the woman in the picture.”

  Nick leaned forward in his chair. “Oh boy, it’s happening.”

  Dave asked, “What’s happening?”

  “Stuff. The kinda stuff that happens when my bud, Sean, gets involved. Lemme just say this, shit happens. Okay, tell us…where’d Kim see it?”

  “At an antique store in DeLand. I think I’ll visit that store.”

  Nick shook his head. “Told you.”

  Dave grinned. “So we can assume that you’re taking the job. And to carry the assumption a step further, we can infer that Sean O’Brien is now—record the date Nick—that Sean O’Brien today officially becomes a private investigator. Correct?”

  “I’m just going to an antique shop. Nothing more.”

  Nick sipped his beer and said, “But if you find the painting you solve the mystery. The old man salvages the family’s good name, and Sean, dude, you pocket some dough for just checking out an antique store. Maybe I ought to trade fishin’ for the private eye biz.”

  Dave snorted and lifted Max up to the couch. “But what if he doesn’t find the painting? It’s very doubtful that something Kim saw months ago is really the mysterious woman in the photo. However, Sean, and don’t take this wrong…the nature of private investigating is covert, clandestine work. Your investigations, especially the last one, involved a candidate for the White House. You don’t get any more public than that.”

  O’Brien smiled. “Yeah, but I didn’t ask for that. It was tossed in my face. Trying to help an old man locate a lost painting is something I’m stepping into, not something I get by chance.”

  Dave said, “Maybe. But what if the door to the antique shop opens a door to the past that has a dark history? What if the search for the painting takes you 160 years into the past, on the threshold of the bloodiest war in U.S. history and you discover something your new client might not like?”

  O’Brien got up to leave. “That’s possible, but not probable. If Max can hang here a couple of hours, I’m going antiquing. Maybe I’ll find the painting and some other old treasures I can get on that PBS program, Antiques Roadshow.”

  Nick tilted his head and raised his thick eyebrows. “Like Dave says, the old painting might be cursed.” He cracked open another beer. “If that picture was found in the mud and blood of a battlefield, it’s already got a creepy past, and with my man Sean’s luck, it might even get darker.”

  The store smelled of things remembered. O’Brien entered Crawford Antiques through a screened door that whined when he pulled it open. The inside was dimly lit, low wattage bulbs glowing under Tiffany lampshades. The still air was layered with a musky scent of old pennies, leather, sawdust and linseed oil. Antique furniture, grandfather clocks, phonographs, vinyl records, rusted wooden-shaft golf clubs, vases, pictures—framed and unframed, filled every nook and corner.

  O’Brien stepped across a wooden floor that creaked and groaned under his weight. He stood quietly and watched dust fall from cracks in the ceiling. Someone was upstairs, walking over a floor above him. A one-inch sized roach ran from the crevices in the rough-hewn ceiling and scampered the length of a wooden beam.

  Within a half minute, an elderly man came down the steps, like a crab trying to get its footing on sand. The man used both hands, gripping the banister for support. He wore bib overalls and a red flannel shirt that buttoned at the neck and wrists. “Can I help you?” he asked, stepping over to a counter with an old manual cash register sitting on it like a museum piece. He looked up at O’Brien through bifocals, smudged with dirt and fingerprints. His white hair was unkempt, beard the color of dirty cotton. His breathing labored, as if the air was pushed through a cracked billow.

  O’Brien smiled. “Hi, are yo
u the owner?”

  “Yep, Carl Crawford’s the name.”

  “Sean O’Brien…nice to meet you, Mr. Crawford. I feel like I stepped back in time. This is quite an assortment of Americana. Is most of it from Florida?”

  “From all over. You name the state, or the decade, and we probably got something in here from that period or place. Whatcha you lookin’ for?”

  “A painting.”

  “What kind of painting?”

  “Something from the Civil War.”

  “You mean painting of soldiers, maybe something of General Grant or Lee?”

  “No, I’m looking for a portrait of a woman.”

  “Those are rare. We may get one come a blue moon.”

  “Do you have one that looks like this?” O’Brien opened the folder and set the copy of the photograph on the counter.

  Carl Crawford’s white eyebrows rose. He squinted through the bifocals, holding the picture to study it in the dim light, the brown age spots on the back of his weathered hands the size of pennies. He grunted, shuffled down the counter, reached under a lampshade and pulled a chain, holding the image under the soft light. “Where’d you get this?”

  “You recognize it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have it in the store?”

  “I did. But it’s long gone. Didn’t have it for more than a couple of days before it sold. And that was months ago.”

  “Do you remember who bought it?”

  Crawford lifted his eyes from the photo to O’Brien. “You sound more like a detective than a buyer of antiques. You mind telling my why it’s so important you find it?”

  O’Brien told him that the unidentified photograph was donated to the Confederate Museum. He added, “That painting you had was probably painted from the original photo. It was a photo found on a Civil War battle-field between two dead soldiers, one Confederate, the other Union. A man about your age believes the woman in the photo is a relative of his. But he can only prove it if he finds the painting.”

  “How’s that?”

  “There’s an inscription on the back of the painting. Do you remember seeing it?”

  Crawford closed his eyes for a moment, searching his memory. “I don’t recall ever looking at the back of the painting. The front, the woman’s face, was mesmerizing. It was in a frame, signed, I think.” He glanced down at the picture. “Why’s this man trying to locate the painting now?”

  “Only because the photo recently turned up. If he can match the two it’ll proved his great, great grandfather died a war hero not a deserter.”

  He nodded. “I see. Honor is something that gets little attention until it’s lost. Sometimes the genie never goes back in that bottle. That’s why disgraceful people are often more remembered than honorable folks. Go figure. So this friend of yours has been toting the stain on the family name, huh?”

  “You might be able to help him put the genie back in the bottle. Do you remember who bought it, or do you have a record of its sale?”

  Crawford looked to his left where a steel gray cat jumped from a rocking chair and sauntered from across the floor. “I remember it was man and a woman—a husband and wife. Never saw them before or since. I do recall they paid me cash, the full price, two hundred dollars. He bought the painting and she bought a bunch of old magazines, Saturday Evening Post. Maybe a dozen or more. The magazines and the painting came from the same place.”

  “Where was that?”

  “An estate sale near Jacksonville. The woman who sold the stuff to me said the painting and box of magazines had been in her grandmother’s attic for a lot of years.”

  “Do you recall the name of the woman who had the estate sale?”

  “No, hell at my age sometimes I can’t remember what I had for breakfast. But I might have their address.” He opened a scratched and dented black file cabinet behind him, thumbed through tattered file folders, breathing through his open mouth. “Here it is. I bought the painting, magazines and a French end table inspired by Louis Fourteenth.” He wrote down the address on a small piece of paper and handed it and the photo to O’Brien. “Wish I could be of more help. If I see the folks that bought the painting, I’ll call you.” He nodded, his face filling with a look of unease. “I do recall something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A couple of days before the couple bought the painting, a man came in the store looking for Civil War collectables. He saw the painting and wanted it on the spot. But he didn’t have enough to cover it. I offered to put it in layaway for a few dollars down. But he said he always paid in full. Said he’d be back later. It was a few days after that when couple came in and bought the painting. It must have been two weeks later before the man returned. And when I told him the painting had been sold…he…”

  “What’d he do?”

  “It was the way he looked at me. It was like he wanted to kill me. He left in a huff and said I ought to be careful because an old building like mine was a firetrap. But that’s been months ago so I’m hoping he was all hot air.”

  O’Brien gave the man a business card. “Maybe he came to his senses. Thank you, Mr. Crawford.”

  He looked at the card through his bifocals. “This says you’re a fishing guide…Sean O’Brien, full and half day fishing trips. Are you good at catching fish?”

  “Not really.”

  “Maybe your luck will change at finding people…and the painting.”

  Laura Jordan finished eating a lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with her four-year-old daughter, Paula. She lifted Paula up and onto a stool next to the counter in their kitchen. “Mommy, can I help make the cookies?”

  “Of course, sweetheart. We’ll mix up the dough, add the eggs and chocolate, and blend it all up. Then we’ll roll it on a cookie sheet, press the dough into fun shapes, and put the cookies in the oven to bake. When Daddy comes home our house will smell soooo yummy.”

  “Yippee!” Paula Jordan’s cherub face lit up. She clapped her tiny hands, her blue eyes wide, blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. “Can I put the eggs in, too?”

  “You can help me crack them. We’ll pull open the shells, and you can let the eggs plop into the mix, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Laura draped a small apron over her daughter’s neck and tied the strings behind her back. She glanced up at the clock, calculating the time she anticipated her husband would be home. She wore her light brown hair in a ponytail; her emerald green eyes captured the afternoon light streaming through the kitchen window. Her face was almost heart shaped, skin tanned and flawless with no make-up.

  “How long do we bake the cookies, Mommy?”

  Laura smiled. “The instructions say ten minutes.”

  “Will Daddy be home in ten minutes?”

  “He might, but I expect him maybe in a half hour or so.”

  “How many minutes is a half hour?”

  “Thirty minutes.”

  “Is that long?”

  “No, it’s just a blink and it’s gone. I love you, sweetie. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, because you tell me lots of times.” Paula smiled.

  “Okay, let’s get baking.”

  The doorbell rang.

  Laura looked up at the kitchen clock again. “Stay right here, Paula. I’ll see who’s at the door.” She lifted up a clean, white towel and wiped her hands walking to the front door. She looked through the peephole.

  Two police officers. Standing on my front porch.

  Laura touched her throat with two fingers, hesitated a second, then opened the door. “May I help you?”

  The taller of the two men nodded. “Good afternoon, ma’am. Are you Laura Jordan?”

  “Yes…why? Is something wrong?”

  The taller officer blew air out of both cheeks. The shorter officer with rounded shoulders glanced down at the tops of his polished black boots. He lifted his eyes up, meeting Laura. “Mrs. Jordan, is your husband Jack Jordan?”

  “Yes
. What is it? Has something happened to Jack? Is he hurt or in some kind of trouble?”

  “Ma’am, we’re so sorry to have to tell you this…but there’s been an accident. Your husband was killed.”

  Laura dropped the hand towel. Her heart hammered in her chest. She couldn’t breathe. She stood there, holding onto the doorframe. Knees weak. Nauseous. She couldn’t walk. Couldn’t move. Paralyzed from the words that hit her with the force of a sledgehammer in her stomach.

  The taller officer reached for her. “Please, Mrs. Jordan, sit down.”

  She pushed his hand away, breathing fast through her nostrils. She turned, almost stumbled in the foyer, running to the hall bathroom. She jerked the door open, dropped to her knees, vomiting an undigested peanut butter and jelly sandwich into the toilet.

  Sean O’Brien followed the GPS directions to a rural neighborhood of older homes in south Jacksonville. He read the addresses on the brick mailboxes, turning into a concert driveway that wound through a large, fresh-cut lawn and around stately oaks up to a 1920’s Greek revival style house with columns shading a wrap-around front porch. Baskets of white and red impatiens hung between each of the round pillars, a half dozen wicker rocking chairs sat motionless on the porch.

  O’Brien climbed the four brick steps up to the porch as a breeze tickled two wind chimes, their jingling compositions drifting across lush grass and into the deep shade of blooming azaleas and camellias. He stood at the front door a moment, the sound of a horse whinny in the adjacent pasture. O’Brien pressed the doorbell and could hear the soft cascade of bells followed a few seconds later by the canter of heels on hardwood floors.

  A forty-something woman opened the door, partially. Her raven-black hair framed an attractive face filled with suspicion. She wore pearls around her long, slender neck, her blouse exposing full cleavage. Her dark eyebrows were pencil-drawn and arched above ice-blue eyes. “Can I help you?” Her voice was southern, laced with mistrust. “We don’t need a new roof, driveway paved, or the lawn cut at this time.”