Behind the Bonehouse

by Sally Wright

  So the question is who took it the night of March 18th and replaced it the night of the 19th so it’d be there on the 20th?

  Alan got her to write down her account of what happened, and it’s one of the pieces of evidence we’re both praying will help.

  Even so, I’m hardly sleeping, and I’m edgier with everyone, even when I try not to be, poor Ross included. Sometimes when he’s crying it’s almost more than I can stand.

  It hurts to see Alan protecting himself in public too. The way he looks to see if people on the street are going to stare at him with loathing, and whisper when he walks by.

  His lower back’s been miserable too since he got thrown off Maggie, but I’m hoping the DO got it back in place with the second adjustment this week.

  We try not to talk about reporters much. The junk they keep printing to whip up excitement and sell more papers, and get more viewers for the local news, shows only too clearly that they’ve condemned Alan already and don’t care about the truth.

  Sometimes when I walk up behind Alan when he’s thinking about something else (and when isn’t he thinking about something besides me, with everything else going on?)—when I slide my arms around him, just to stand there and hold him and settle my cheek against his back, I feel him startle and stiffen as though he’s preparing for a blow, before he realizes who it is and I feel him begin to relax.

  I know he’s so busy at work there’s pressure from that too, doing his job, and Carl’s, and training a new production manager. Though I think it’s probably a very good thing. Keeping his mind on work, where he knows he can accomplish something, has to be better than brooding.

  It has helped me to finally have something to do that might actually be useful—aside from praying, which has taken on a whole new intensity. Why is it we say, “All I can do is pray,” as though it’s nothing but a last resort, when it may actually be the most important thing? And yet, getting to talk to Jane Seeger, and working on tracking Jack down is almost a physical relief. I’m a hothead by nature. Waiting around with nothing to do makes me want to scream.

  I’ve never been comfortable with our new minister, who doesn’t seem to believe much of anything except we all should be “nice” to each other, and I called Reverend Will yesterday in Louisville where he went when he left here. I wanted to hear his voice again, and get his perspective on our situation, and get him praying too. His wife answered, and hesitated a minute before she told me he had a heart attack six months ago and died the next night. They were incredibly close for a whole lot of years, and I wish I could’ve thought of something useful to say.

  Emmy punctured her foot on something early last week and it’s isn’t healing the way it should. She still lets me squeeze it, and drain the wound twice a day, and she’ll keep her foot in a pan of Epsom salt water with the kind of patience I should have and don’t.

  Jane Seeger led Jo through a double wooden door from the History Reading Room in the UK library into a warren of back corridors to a low-ceilinged fluorescent lit room, packed with row after row of metal bookshelves crammed with cardboard boxes, to an old desk in a corner.

  Jane sat behind it, unbuttoning the jacket of her navy blue suit, as she gestured Jo to the other chair, and said, “I’m not sure how I can help.”

  “I’m not sure either, but there’re questions I think I ought to ask. First of all, has anyone told you about Carl’s autopsy.”

  “No. I haven’t heard a word.”

  “They discovered that Carl had lung cancer.”

  “Ah.” Jane didn’t say anything else for a minute, as she folded her hands on the desk. “I suppose that’s not surprising, after all the years he smoked.”

  “The odd thing is, there was no mention anywhere in Carl’s papers of who his doctor was. Our lawyer would like to consult him, but we—”

  “Dr. Frazier. Augustus Frazier in Midway. Right on Midway Road.”

  “Thank you. That helps a lot. There was no appointment calendar in Carl’s things either. Do you know if he had one?”

  “Yes. Definitely. He kept it in the top right drawer in his desk. It should’ve been right there.” Jane smoothed her pale brown hair from her forehead and looked at Jo with mildly puzzled eyes.

  “They also couldn’t find an address book.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. He kept it in that same drawer. Imitation red leather with phone numbers and addresses.”

  “Something else completely unrelated. Do you know anything about Carl’s dealings with a lab supply distributor named Cecil Thompson?”

  “Not from Carl, but I got a call from Mr. Thompson here at the library.”

  “When was that?” Jo was holding a pad and pen, staring straight at Jane.

  “I think it must’ve been sometime in March. Though how he knew where to find me I don’t know. He said he’d been trying to reach Carl at home, and was there anywhere else he could try to contact him. He’d gone to the house and left a note, but Carl didn’t come to the door, or get in touch later.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “Yes. I told him to try Rotary. Carl went to the Rotary meeting every Tuesday at 11:30 at the Italian restaurant in Versailles. Georgiano’s. On Lexington east of Maple. Whether Mr. Thompson went there to find him I don’t know. I suppose you could ask the insurance salesman from Midway. He’s in that large old firm that’s … Burroughs and Burroughs and something. I can’t think of his name. Martin something. Baumgartner. I think that’s right. He’s one of the Rotary officers, and attends every meeting.”

  “Thank you. I’ll give him a call today.”

  “Anything else?” Jane looked at her watch, then pulled down the cuffs of her pale blue blouse.

  “Brad Harrison. Bob’s son. What was his relationship with Carl?”

  “They talked on the phone from time to time. What I heard of Carl’s side of the conversation seemed to largely consist of Carl criticizing your husband. But, of course, whether anything changed after I left Carl, I don’t know.”

  “Did Brad ever come to the house?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Anyway, thank you for talking with me. I’d better let you get back to work.”

  “I don’t know your husband, but I can see you’re thoroughly convinced he’s innocent.”

  Jo actually felt tears gather behind her eyes, and she took a deep breath before she spoke. “Not just because he’s my husband either. Because of the kind of person he is.”

  “Then I hope what I’ve told you helps.”

  When Jo got to Dr. Frazier’s office in Midway, the waiting room was packed, and there were three people waiting at the receptionist’s desk. Jo stood behind them and watched the receptionist, who was probably in her late twenties, handle the brusque, the meek, and the confused with quiet, patient, practical concern.

  When it was her turn, she asked if she could speak to Dr. Frazier for a minute or two, once he was done with his patients, on a matter concerning Carl Seeger’s death.

  “Dr. Frazier retired.”

  “When?”

  “March 15th. He sold his practice to Dr. Patterson.”

  “So Dr. Patterson would have taken over Dr. Frazier’s patients and have their files?”

  “He would if the patient stayed on with him. Quite a few didn’t.”

  “Do you know where I could reach Dr. Frazier?”

  “He said he intended to travel, but where I don’t know.”

  “Does he have family I could speak with?”

  “He has a son in Louisville. His first name is Winston, and I expect you could find him in the phone book there.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I can tell you that Dr. Patterson doesn’t have Mr. Seeger’s file.”

  “Why is that?”

  “The last time Mr. Seeger was here to see Dr. Frazier, he took his file with him when he left.”

  “Did he?” Jo was staring at the receptionist without seeing much of anything, wondering what to do
next.

  “He did.” She considered Jo with obvious intelligence, and curiosity too.

  “When was this, do you know?”

  “If I had to guess I’d say January. Though it could’ve been early February. I can check the appointment book if you’d like me to.”

  “I would. Thank you.”

  The receptionist opened the large brown leather book that lay at one end of her desk and rifled back through the pages, in between phone calls, and newly arrived patients.

  Jo stood off to one side and waited, watching the lame, the frail, and the very sick who were filling the doctor’s day, beginning to think that there were worse things in life than being accused of murder.

  “Yep. Here it is. January twenty-third. It was the third appointment in two weeks. And when he left, he took his file.”

  “Thank you so much. You’ve been a great help.”

  “I know you, you know. I’m Missy Rhodes. Your mama taught my Sunday school class when I was in junior high. She was the only interesting teacher I had, and I was sorry to hear when she died.”

  “Thank you.” Jo’s throat had suddenly closed up, and she swallowed carefully before she said, “She had a brain tumor, and wasn’t herself for quite a while, and hearing you say that means a lot.”

  “I hope it all comes out okay.” Missy Rhodes looked uncomfortable when she said it, as though she were picking her words, not wanting to come out and say, “I hope your husband isn't sent away for life, or executed, either one.”

  Jo thanked her, and waved as she walked away, while Missy answered the phone.

  Jo called Martin Baumgartner from home, and found out that late in March, or possibly early April, a man had come to a Rotary meeting looking for Carl Seeger. Martin hadn’t talked to him himself, but he did hear Carl say his name, and it could’ve been Cecil. He remembered that the meeting had just broken up when he got there, and that he heard him ask Carl to go next door to the Woodford Café. Whether Carl did, he couldn’t say.

  Jo had picked Ross up at Becky’s before she called Baumgartner, but she didn’t want to wait to find out more, and she took Ross with her, and drove back to Versailles to question whoever might know something at the Woodford Café.

  One of the two waitresses who were working that afternoon, was a middle-aged woman named Louise Beck, who said she remembered Carl Seeger coming in with a guy that she didn’t know, and that they’d sat in a booth along the far wall, and had argued a good bit. She wouldn’t have remembered it herself, but now that Jo said the name, she thought Carl did call him Cecil. They got real hot under the collar, and the other guy ended up storming out.

  He’d stood by the door and turned around and yelled, “You ruined me! And you won’t get away with it!” Something real close to that, if not word for word.

  Seeger’d laughed at him, and everybody in the place had looked real uncomfortable. But Seeger’d sat there, waiting a good long while before he left. He refused to pay for the other fella’s coffee too, but the Woodford’s owner was working that shift, and he’d insisted Carl pay. So he paid up and left, saying that was the last time he’d darken their door if he lived to be a hundred.

  Jo wrote down everything Louise said and asked her to read it and sign it. And she did, even though she dithered a while, after Jo explained she was trying to help her husband who’d been wrongly accused of murder.

  The library in Versailles had copies of telephone books in other cities, and Jo stopped there, before she went home, and got the number for Winston Frazier, Carl’s doctor’s son, in Louisville. She then copied out every listing for a Freeman residence in Detroit, Michigan. Jack had told her he’d be calling his folks every Sunday, because once he’d gotten back in touch with them, he’d seen how frail and overworked his father was, and wanted to talk with him every week at least.

  Jo tried to remember what his dad’s first name was while she drove home, but didn’t come up with it. She fed Ross, and put a load of diapers in the washer, then called Winston Frazier in Louisville, without getting an answer.

  Excerpt from Jo Grant Munro’s Journal:

  Saturday, May 16th, 1964

  It’s 2:15, and I can’t sleep. I went in to check on Ross too, and discovered he was sopping wet, so I changed him, and watched him sleep for awhile, wondering what he’ll be like when he grows up. Who he’ll marry. What kind of trouble he’ll have to go through. What he’ll end up doing. Hoping he won’t be “the murderer’s son,” but a responsible kid from a regular family trying to make his way.

  It was Alan who woke me up. Alan, the way he is today. He was repairing the water heater tonight, just before dinner, replacing a metal rod of some kind, and he was struggling with the mechanics of it, the screws or the bolts or something, and he started swearing, which he almost never does, and he threw a screwdriver and wrench across the pantry, then slammed the pantry door. He grabbed his helmet, and the key to his Triumph, and rode off without saying a word.

  He didn’t come home till after 8:00, and he apologized then, and said he didn’t know what had come over him. And he fixed the water heater, and ate his dinner, and lifted weights before he went to bed.

  But when we were lying there about 11:00, Emmy snoring on her bed, my head on Alan’s shoulder, he said, “You know what bothers me, Jo? It’s that even if I end up being acquitted—and I’ve got no reason now to think that’s going to happen—there’ll always be people who think I’m guilty and got off because of somebody I know, or some kind of technicality. Think what that would be like. For you, and for Ross too. I don’t see how we’ll ever be done with it.”

  I talked to him about it for a good long while, with me telling him we’ve got to turn it loose, and not worry about what we can’t fix now or in the future. (Advice I ought to take myself and almost never do.) I don’t know that I said anything that helped. Except that Bob Harrison believes he’s innocent. He hasn’t vacillated at all. And he’s talked to practically everyone he knows telling them too. Alan said, “Yeah, that helps.” And wrapped his other arm around me before he finally got to sleep.

  At least I talked to Jack’s father. Finally. And Alan will watch Ross so I can leave in the morning. I figure I’ll make it to Toledo tonight, and leave for Detroit really early tomorrow. Jack will be six hours ahead, and he usually calls by 1:00, from what his father said.

  Emmy’s paw isn’t healing, and I can see the vet’s getting worried.

  Sunday, May 17th, 1964

  It was late morning when Jo finally found herself in a very nasty part of Detroit not too far from the bridge to Canada. She’d passed through block after block of urban horror—crumbling unpainted buildings, trash blown into every doorway, sad, grim, hopeless looking people shuffling past bars and pawn shops, where once there’d been well-kept houses and small family-owned businesses.

  The things of man run amok. They made Jo wince and feel sad and sick, since neither she, nor anyone else, had figured out what to do.

  When she turned into Jack Freeman’s parents’ side street, there were a few more livable houses and fewer commercial wrecks. And then, unexpectedly, two blocks ahead, she saw what looked like a tangled jungle—a green oasis in a concrete desert that turned out to be theirs.

  It got stranger as she got closer—a huge lot, there in the city, completely hidden by high trees and overgrown shrubs woven through a rusted chain-link fence that looked like it bound the whole property.

  An even taller iron gate had been left unlocked for her, and she shut it again behind her, then drove across an acre of weeds in scrubby grass on a cracked meandering concrete drive that ended in front of a huge Victorian shingle-sided house that had once been painted gray.

  Slates had fallen from the roof. Moss grew on the siding. Paint hung in strips from the window frames and the moldings around the front door.

  Decay on such a scale depressed her, and Jo told herself, as she stood and stretched beside her pick-up, not to let herself look too appalled in case someone insid
e was watching.

  The rain she’d been driving through since the Michigan line gusted around her, under overgrown trees half-blocking the sky, as she picked her way across weeds in the walk to the heavy mahogany door, and knocked twice, waiting uneasily, before it was opened by an elderly woman who was nearly six feet tall.

  She looked almost skeletal, which may have made her seem older than she was. The heavy caked makeup too, seeping into cracks and wrinkles, the nonexistent eyebrows painted into place, the turquoise eyelids, the magenta lips—turned her into a caricature of what she once must’ve been.

  She wore a sleeveless, flowered, diaphanous silk dress with a yellow silk scarf that hung to her knees. And she stared at Jo silently for entirely too long once Jo had introduced herself, before she said, “You may enter,” in a husky Russian accent. “Dr. Freeman is at the hospital finishing morning rounds. I shall show you my collections until he returns.”

  “You’re Mrs. Freeman?”

  She nodded as though Jo were feebleminded, before she turned, limping on her right leg, and crossed the front hall.

  It was a surrealistic experience, watching Eloise Freeman—listening too, to her ongoing monologue, as she led Jo from room to room—from library to morning room, from ballroom to withdrawing room, from guest rooms to nursery—showing her a priceless collection of antique musical instruments from every peak, and jungle, and back alley of the world.

  “The keyboard collection is the centerpiece of my life’s work. This pianoforte we know with certainty to have belonged to Amadeus Mozart from 1774 to 1777 when he was a child in Salzburg. The piano on your left was Frederic Chopin’s when he lived in France with the adventuress Amantine Dupin, known to the world as George Sand. Another equally important piano acquisition will be brought to fruition shortly. Early harpsichords we will see displayed in the next room.

  “The sackbut on the far wall, the serpent there, and the lizard, are early medieval horn instruments with substantial historical significance.”

  There were many Medieval and Renaissance stringed instruments Jo knew nothing about—the dulcian, the gamba, the rebec among them. There were violins owned by famous makers and performers, and ceremonial temple sitars from India and Nepal, along with seemingly unlimited varieties of drums from places Jo had never heard of.