by Anne Hagan
After dinner, while Hannah and I cleaned up, Mel had gone out and stacked the chairs on our deck and on her sisters. Kris was still at work, Lance was on the road into the weekend and the kids were out at the farm. I didn’t envy Kris having to close the station and then go home to an empty house if the storm hit us hard.
“Do you think we should call your sister and tell her to come down here after she closes up?” I asked Mel.
“She probably won’t. She’ll probably go out to the farm to be with, ah, Cole.”
“Let me guess,” Hannah said, “he’s afraid of storms too?”
Mel and I just laughed. We both knew the teenager was afraid of everything.
“I’m just glad you didn’t have class tonight,” I said to Hannah instead. “I’d be worried about you driving back here.”
“It would be better in a car than being stuck out in it in a buggy,” she said, referring to her Amish roots.
“Uggh! You’ve had to do that?”
She nodded as she said, “If we knew what was coming ahead of time we would plan to stay where we were going but sometimes it just came without warning when we were on our way to one place or back home.” She nestled the toddler a little closer as he lowered and the cup and closed his eyes.
“These are the days,” I told her as I watched them. “Enjoy them while they last.”
“Oh, I am, and really, it’s nice to be home tonight, storm or not. I’m glad for a little break before this next section.”
“What’s coming up next?” Mel asked.
“Cakes,” Hannah said flatly with a little tilt of her head.
Mel caught her tone. “I thought cakes were what you were most looking forward to?”
“Yes...I mean, I was.”
“And now?” I asked.
“It is what I really want to learn...the pretty, fancy cakes for birthdays and weddings and...It’s just, Chef told us Wednesday that we’ll have to do a big team project in this phase and it will be fifty percent of our grade. We have to work with someone else on a multi-tiered order to customer specs. The customers are businesses that are commissioning our cakes for a charity fundraiser for the Children’s Hospital in Akron.”
“Wow!” I said. “That’s a great cause and pretty high profile for you.”
“You’re great at cakes now,” Mel added. “You can only get better with a little design training. What are you worried about? This other person?”
She blew out a breath. “It’s just that there are some people in the class who are...bossy and some others who aren’t all that interested in the baking parts, I’ve noticed these last couple of weeks. Some of them are kids right out of high school too. They just don’t take the classes as seriously as...as I do.”
“So you don’t get to pick your partner?” I asked.
She shook her head no. “Chef said we’re going to draw names. We’re going in on Saturday to have the draw and a lab session where he’ll lay out all the lesson plans for the session.”
When Hannah went upstairs to put Jef down for the night, I decided it was time to pick Mel’s brain.
“Babe, did you know Sheriff Vincent Sweeney?”
“Who?”
“Sweeney. He was the county Sheriff back in the early seventies till...well, I don’t know for how long.”
“Oh. Yeah, I’ve heard of him. I’ve heard of all of my predecessors but I don’t know a lot about him other than, as I recall, he served out the last two years or so of a term for a guy that got re-elected then retired half way into his second term. He got re-elected himself for another four years but then lost for re-election the next time around. I don’t recall any remarkable cases that his name is associated with and he was gone way before my time.”
“Really? Hmm.”
“Why do you ask?”
“What about a Deputy Alex Ackerman? Maybe an older officer that was around when you joined the department?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Name doesn’t ring a bell.” She gave me a hard look and asked again, “Why? Is this about that book you’re working on?”
“Yeah. Sweeney was the Sheriff at the time of the murder of Tanner Mathis and Ackerman was the first officer on the scene, or so I’m told. The news accounts are pretty vague. I’ve been talking to people who were there but no one knows anything beyond that he was found and that lots of people were questioned. And, from what I hear, Sweeney did most of the questioning himself.”
“And he didn’t get far,” Mel put in, “since it was never solved.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” I said. “That might be why he didn’t get re-elected. An unsolved Thanksgiving Day murder in a tiny village with a group of people everyone knew. Someone there was the killer. Why couldn’t he figure it out?”
“I don’t even want to speculate,” Mel said. “I didn’t know the man and I refuse to speak ill of the dead.”
I bristled at that phrase popping up again but I let it slide. “Do you suppose the county still has the case file?”
Mel shook her head. “Of course we do but, if you’re suggesting I go fish it out of file storage and let you have a look at it, you know I can’t do that Babe.”
“No, of course not. But...maybe you could look at it and tell me if you find anything interesting in it? Anything unusual or out of the ordinary? Even just to see if there are statements by locals besides your relatives like Horace Bailey, Chuck Knox or Dale Walters and what they say.”
“For 1970 what? ‘72? Everything was done differently back then.” Mel sighed and then went on, “You know I’d love to help you if I could, right?” She didn’t wait for me to respond. “Even if it was half ways ethical, files from the seventies are stored in a completely different place, not downtown. It’s just been crazy busy and...”
The rain started to pelt the window behind her chair hard as thunder rolled closer. Within seconds, a crack of lightening that must have split the sky illuminated the room as if it were daylight outside.
“That was close,” I said.
The next one, only seconds later, was even closer. A transformer somewhere nearby blew with a boom that shook the house and then plunged us into darkness. Boo yelped loudly at the sound and I jumped.
Mel levered her chair down and stood while I picked up the flashlight on the end table beside me and turned it on. She put Boo down on the floor. The terrier circled her legs, the hair on her back raised and then, when Mel moved toward the kitchen, she made a beeline for me.
I scooped her up, held her close, and followed my wife. She was bent over, one hand braced against the door out to the driveway while she pulled a boot on with the other.
“This makes me wish we’d have gone ahead and put that wired in generator in back in September like we talked about doing.”
Mel responded with a grunt. Once she’d tugged the other boot on she pulled her semi-waterproof windbreaker off a hook on the back of the door and then turned to face me. “Too late now. But really, this isn’t that bad to hook up and besides, why go to all that expense when we’re planning to move anyway?”
“We are?”
“Tennessee, at least part of the year, remember?”
I was taken aback that the subject was coming up now after thinking about it myself earlier. I just shook my head.
“No?”
“How could we?” I asked. There’s Hannah and Jef and...” Lightening cracked again.
“I better get out there,” she said instead of responding.
“Do you need me to help you?”
“No. I’ve got it staged at the front of the garage and full. I just need to wheel it out and run the line into the basement. I’ll go over and get Kris’s set up too so her fridge will run and stuff, so I might be a few minutes.” With that, she grabbed the key for the padlock on the door to our tiny basement that was only accessible from outside and she was gone.
###
Mel
As I stepped out, I looked out toward the road. Most of the othe
r homes around us were dark, but not all of them. Some, I knew, had generators hard wired in like Dana wanted for us. Others must not have been fed by the same transformer. I envied them all as I moved through the cold rain being driven by the wind.
I went into the garage through the side door and unlatched the door that operated manually on one side then heaved it upward.
Full, the generator was heavy and, even on thick tires, tough to push through the gravel of the driveway in the pouring rain. I concentrated completely on my task, head down, pushing hard to get it moved though the yard, over to the basement.
I parked it at the top of the stone steps and then worked my way down them carefully. Over the more than 100 years that my home had been a home, the steps had been worn smooth by rain and they were always plenty slick when they were wet.
When I got to the bottom, I took my flashlight out of my pocket, turned it on and put it under my arm and then fished out the key for the lock. That’s when I noticed the hasp was over the catch but the old U.S. lock we used to secure the door wasn’t even hanging there.
I grasped the flashlight again and swung it up to shine on the stone ledge along the top of the stairs where we often laid the lock when we were going in and out of the basement. It wasn’t there. Annoyed, and getting soaked, I released the hasp and went inside the tiny room that served as our basement.
Shining the light around the 10 x 9 foot room that was little more than a dugout, I saw nothing but the furnace, hot water tank, water softener equipment and a couple of dusty old shelves that housed even dustier canning from the former owners or perhaps people before them. I made myself a mental note then to divest of all of the old and likely unusable food in the spring.
The heavy old key lock laying on top of the salt bin for the water softening system. I hefted it up and put it in my pocket as I grumbled to myself that Cole must have left it there when I asked him to fill the salt the week before. I lifted the lid off the top of the bin and shone the light into it. It was more than 3/4s full. My light caught the empty salt bag laying on the floor as I replaced the lid.
I picked up the bag and laid it on top of the bin. I noticed a muddy, wet footprint on it but just didn’t think anything of it at the time. I
As I moved toward the switch above the electrical box, I could hear Dana in the Kitchen overhead, explaining to Hannah that all would be well soon. I hurried and threw the switch that took the box off of electrical power then grabbed the power cord for the generator that was hanging over a large hook on the side of one of the floor to ceiling shelves, connected it up to the outlet on the side of the box and then I ran it back outside to the generator where I hooked it up the other end.
Once the generator was fired and running, I returned down the steps to the door and pulled it closed as far as I could but, with the thick power cord in the way, I couldn’t get it closed enough to latch the hasp again, let alone employ the lock.
Frustrated, wet and cold, I trudged up the bank between the two driveways and set about repeating the process to get my sister’s power situation taken care of, or so I’d planned.
Cole pulled into the driveway, driving my dad’s pickup truck. He was alone and he only had a learner’s permit to drive. I stopped and waited while he pulled up his hood before he stepped out.
“What are you doing out here, in this?” I called out over the sound and fury going on around us.
“Papa’s not feeling good. Grandma said I should come in; you’d probably need help.”
“Does Grandpa know you’re driving his truck?”
Cole nodded. “He said it’d be safer in this rain. He wanted to come himself, but...” The boy shrugged a slim shoulder.
“Come on then. Let’s get this done.”
Moments later, as we pulled my sister’s generator out of her little storage shed, through the rain and darkness, I thought I saw someone move out of the barn in the backyard. I shook my head, squinted and looked again. There was someone there. I couldn’t make out who but the odd walk of Dale Walters sprang to mind. I shook my head to clear it. ‘I just have him on the brain because Dana mentioned his name,’ I thought.
“What are you looking at?” Cole asked.
I looked at him and then back the other way. If Dale or whoever it was had been back there, he’d moved out of view behind the barn and headed away. Not wanting to alarm the boy, who scared so easily, I ignored his question and instead prodded him, “Shake a leg! I’m already soaked to the bone. I want to get back to where it’s warm.”
“You have a raincoat thingy on,” he pointed out.
“Just get a move on!”
Chapter 12
Dana
Saturday Morning, November 7th
I took a shift at the bakery the next morning while Faye watched Jef at our house. The storm had passed in the night but there was a lot of debris laying around on the sidewalks and the streets. As I walked the two blocks to the shop, I saw a lot of the locals out attempting to clean up. Our own yard had suffered a little blown in damage but, because most of our trees were toward the back of the lot, we were among the luckier ones.
The store and the bakery both had generators so they had power. Hannah couldn’t run her big convection ovens but she was making due with stock she had on hand and what her gas powered ovens could produce. When I walked in, she was serving free coffee and donuts with a smile on her face to people, not worried about their own power situations, who’d been out helping the township guys with the cleanup.
I grinned at her and sketched a wave as I moved past her around behind the counter. “This is one of those times when growing up Amish was an advantage, eh?” I ribbed her.
She laughed and so did a few of her customers. “Probably the only one!”
I set about filling the front cases with whatever I could find in the kitchen, all the while marveling at Hannah’s ability to improvise. I didn’t know if it was her upbringing or her schooling, but she’d managed to pull off the production of enough stock to get us through what was probably going to be a busy day.
Around 9:30, when the morning crowd had cleared out, Lucy Sharpe came in for her usual tea and Danish. I knew she’d been around the village forever. I decided to try and pick her brain and see if she could tell me more than she and her friends had been able to spill before Faye had walked into the room on her previous visit to the shop.
“That was some storm last night, wasn’t it?” I began.
“Oh honey, you haven’t seen anything. Why, we’ve had storms ‘round here that have sheered roofs off and left people scrambling. This is nothing!”
“Huh. Well then,” I smiled. “Have you been over to your shop? Is everything okay over there?”
“I have a generator there so I can run the lights and the outlets but, when it’s bad, I’m never busy anyway since people have other things to tend to so I usually just hang the closed sign and lets things be. Why, I’m surprised to find you open here today.”
Hannah tipped her head. “People have been happy that we were.”
“True,” I said. “Hannah’s been doing her part to keep the cleanup crew fueled up on caffeine and sugar.”
Lucy smiled broadly at that.
“No charge for them and there’s no charge for good customers today either,” Hannah added. “Did you want this for here or to go?”
“For here dear and I don’t expect anything free. I’ve done nothing to deserve it.”
“Oh, but you have,” I said.
“Pardon?”
“You most certainly have Mrs. Sharpe,” I told her as I led her over to a table carrying her tea for her. “On the suggestion of your little group earlier this week, I’ve been looking into the death of Tanner Mathis.”
“You have?” Her tone was both curious and excited as she took her seat and peered up at me. She pushed her glasses up on her nose and said, “I’m all ears!”
“I’ve talked with both Faye and Brian about that day. I also tried to talk to Euni
ce but that didn’t go very well.”
Lucy shook her head sadly. “Such a shame...her condition. I really do need to get up and see her again before she forgets everything and everyone.”
“You may be too late for that. She really struggles,” Hannah said as she came up beside me.
“Both of you sit,” Lucy directed. “Take a load off for a few minutes and tell me all about it.”
We did as we were told while I picked up where I left off. “I had a long talk with Horace Bailey and a somewhat shorter one with Dingy Dale. Between all of those people, I learned the general overview of that day, quite a bit more than I ever wanted to know about drilling for oil around here back in the day and a little about their card games. The hole in all of it, for me, is that no one knows anything that they’re willing to say about the possible suspects...whether the police even narrowed it down to a few...men.” I spread my hands out. “I can’t even get a handle on who all they talked to that day. I’ve his something of a wall there.”
I sat back and folded my arms, hugging them to me, trying to look a little lost. “I was hoping you might be able to tell me something that could give me a little more to work with.”
“Me? I don’t know much of anything, dear. I wasn’t actually there that day.”
“You seemed to know more about it than some of the other ladies that were here before. Anything you can remember about back then, surrounding that day or on that day might be of help to me.” I looked over at Hannah. She nodded encouragement toward Lucy. “What do you remember about that Thanksgiving Day, for starters?”
That little bit of prodding seemed to be all Lucy needed. As we sat and listened, her eyes grew distant and she began to speak from long dormant memories.
“I wasn’t at the Lafferty home that day. None of my family was. Oh, we were friendly with them but not close; you know what I mean?”
I just nodded.
“We had our own Thanksgiving celebration going on at our house. Mother and Father were there, of course, and Mama’s father because my Grandmother had passed. There was me and Lottie, my younger sister, my fiance...and,” she leaned forward and said excitedly, “And there was a handsome young Sheriff’s Deputy who was trying to court Lottie there too! I’d forgotten about that! He was called away in the middle of dinner to go to the Laffertys.”