Behind the Bonehouse

by Sally Wright

  The breadth and depth of the collection was astonishing. But also distinctly disturbing. The house could collapse, the grounds become jungle, the neighborhood a war zone, while Eloise Freeman wandered alone from one room to the next, hiding her injured hand in her scarf, caressing her obsessions.

  Jo said, “That’s amazing,” and “That’s really beautiful,” till she thought she sounded like a much-impaired parrot, while she studied Mrs. Freeman’s painted face for perceptible signs of Jack.

  Then—when the guided tour had gotten to what had started as a sun-room—Jack’s father walked through the door from the garage, carrying a worn black medical bag, smelling faintly of rubbing alcohol, mixed with glycol and soap.

  He looked slightly older than his wife, probably in his mid-to-late eighties—a small man with a serious face that examined Jo’s carefully, as his heels clacked across cold terrazzo, hurrying toward her.

  His hair and beard were gray and neat. His eyeglasses were rimless. A gold watch-chain hung across the vest of his three piece black suit. And though his eyes had faded to a soft gray-blue, Jo saw what looked to her like world-weathered astuteness there that brought any hint of easy softness into dispute.

  He asked if she’d been offered refreshment, and when Jo said no, he suggested they go through to his study where he’d make her a glass of Russian tea.

  Mrs. Freeman walked away, back toward the room that was filled with pianos, while her husband took Jo’s hand and held it for a second, before he led her through the opposite door.

  “I am so pleased to meet you, after all you have done for Jack. You know, the first Christmas after the war, when Jack had returned from Europe, one could see he had suffered emotional trauma. And yet, he spoke of your brother with such respect I was happy to have Jack leave us and visit him in Kentucky.”

  “I remember that visit. Tom really liked Jack.”

  “I had hoped Jack would agree to consult a colleague of mine at that time, who worked exclusively with returning soldiers, but, alas, it was not to be. Readiness and timing can be of great importance.”

  “He’s doing really well now.”

  Dr. Freeman nodded, and almost bowed in Jo’s direction, before he began making tea on a hot plate on a library table under one of the north windows. She wandered the perimeter of the room reading titles in the bookcases that covered the walls, unable to think of something useful to say. She finally asked if she remembered correctly that Mrs. Freeman had been a pianist.

  “A very fine pianist indeed. The injuries she suffered robbed her of that artistic outlet, as well as her career. Would you care for milk or sugar?”

  Jo shook her head, and he motioned her to a leather chair on the right side of the fireplace.

  He sat and sipped across from her, then set his glass, with its ornate silver handle, on the slate-topped table between them. “One would have hoped that Jack could have spoken to us, but he rarely did, of his inner life, even as a child.” Dr. Freeman raised his hands above his shoulders in one of the “what-can-you-do?” gestures understood around the world. “It can be terribly difficult to confide in one’s family in the best of circumstances. Though since Eloise and I did endure many dangers and difficulties in our escape after the Bolshevik Revolution, we would not have been crushed by hearing of the hardships Jack overcame as well. I have sometimes feared he chose not to speak to spare our feelings, rather than his.”

  “Jack was born in Paris?”

  “Where we first emigrated, yes. It was here I legally changed my name to David Freeman. Here I have been truly free for the first time in my life.”

  He sipped his tea, and stared at the empty hearth before he spoke again. “I cannot tell you how relieved I was, how joyous, for that I believe is the only suitable word, when Jack phoned two years ago, after you and your husband had been so kind to him.”

  “We didn’t do anything that—”

  “I sobbed, I assure you, like a very small child. For to hear his voice! To see him again, after seventeen years of not knowing whether he was alive or dead—I ask for nothing more as long as I shall live.” There were tears in his eyes, and he brushed them away with a folded white handkerchief he’d pulled from a vest pocket. “To have an opportunity to assist you now, is a very great pleasure indeed.”

  “We didn’t do anything anybody else wouldn’t have done for Jack. I think it was more a matter of timing, and him being ready to change.”

  “He would disagree. He has told me that without your—”

  The phone rang then, and Dr. Freeman rose stiffly from his chair, and stepped across to the desk. “Yes, operator. This is David Freeman speaking. … Yes, I shall wait. … Jack my son! Good. … You did! Thank God! … Yes, yes, I agree. Still, there is someone here who wishes to speak to you with the greatest urgency. I shall hand the phone to Mrs. Munro.”

  Jo was standing by him by that time, and she grabbed the old-fashioned metal receiver and told Jack as fast as she could what had happened to Alan. “Can you tell me more about Carl that morning, when you saw him standing in the parking lot? How near was he to Alan’s car, and was there anything else you noticed?”

  Jack told her, making blood rush hot to her face, making her grip the receiver even harder before she spoke again. “If I give you two telex numbers—one for the Sheriff’s Department and one for Equine—could you write out everything you saw and Telex it to Sheriff Peabody, and to Alan too? I know it’ll be expensive, but I’ll pay you back when you get home …” She gave him the numbers, and then asked when he’d be back.

  “Wednesday. Good. I can pick you up. You wouldn’t believe what Alan’s been through. … Thank you. Yes, I know you do. … I can go find your mother while you talk to your father, if you want to … Then I’ll give him the phone. I’ll see you Wednesday afternoon.”

  Excerpt from Jo Grant Munro’s Journal:

  Saturday, May 23rd, 1964

  I haven’t written in the journal in days. This last week has felt like we’re living in a pressure cooker. One minute we’d be picking our way across a minefield, the next we’d be thinking there was some chance we could prove Alan’s innocence—right before the rug would start moving, making us scramble to stand.

  Garner talked to Brad Harrison on Monday the 18th on Brad’s lunch hour, and asked what the heck he was doing in February down at Cumberland Falls State Park talking to Carl Seeger. I guess Brad looked totally shocked and flustered, which always makes Brad bluster, and then he backpedaled and refused to answer, accusing Garner of undue pressure and putting him under duress. Garner’s good, though. He got him calmed down and kept him from feeling threatened, without ever telling him who’d seen him, so that Brad eventually told him that Carl had called him earlier that week and asked if he could see him somewhere discreet that Saturday where they wouldn’t be observed.

  Brad was driving down to Williamsburg, Kentucky that Friday to be in a friend’s wedding, and if he wanted to meet on Saturday it would have to be there, or somewhere close by, in the morning. They chose the parking lot at the park. And he said Carl asked a lot of questions about how Equine was doing. What new products, if any, there were. How people in the lab were putting up with Alan. How the new production manager was getting along. Mostly, he wanted to complain about Alan and compare the “era under his rule” with the way it once had been.

  Garner had led him to whether Carl had asked for keys, or materials from the lab, and Brad denied it hotly. Garner ended up believing it was as accurate a report as he was likely to get, and none of us could see how it helped our case.

  Garner went to meet with the Circuit Court Judge on Wednesday and laid motions before asking him to have the case dismissed (and got the motion dismissed instead, pretty much the way he figured), then asked for a court date postponement till the court meets the third Wednesday in June, which the judge granted.

  I picked Jack up in Cincinnati that same Wednesday evening, and we started out talking about him seeing Carl by Alan’s car.
I told him Alan’s doors had been unlocked like always, and Jack said Carl had been standing by the car, and had then bent down beside the driver’s door. It could’ve been to keep from being seen. But it certainly made it possible that he’d dumped dirt on the floormat.

  I talked for a long time about what it’d been like going through the arrest and the rest of it, and Jack listened, and asked questions, and I felt better when we finished.

  Then we talked about what he’d done in France, and it was good to get lost in something else. To hear how he’d found Camille, and how well they’d talked, and how glad he’d been to be with her, and how he’d confronted the jerk who’d set him up, who actually stood right there in front of them and justified what he’d done. It was so good to see Jack happy, and then watch while he blushed bright red telling me Camille had said she’d come visit this fall.

  I said, “You know one thing you can count on, she’s bound to like your house. I mean who wouldn’t like a Cotswold Cottage on a piece of land like that?”

  Jack looked kind of panicked then, and said, “I need to clean better than I’ve been. And I might paint the upstairs too. I also ought to get the lease renewed early. I don’t want to have to move.”

  He looked mightily embarrassed, and I laughed, and it felt really good. Normal. The way life used to. Before I’d started imagining Alan behind bars.

  Jack had a long talk with Earl Peabody on Thursday morning. And amazingly enough, Earl called that night. I answered the phone, and he sounded mighty awkward, but he told me he really did wish Alan well, and could he have a word with him. He told Alan he was glad to get Jack’s statement about seeing Carl by Alan’s car.

  Alan asked Earl what locksmiths and hardware stores they’d taken Carl’s picture to to find out if he’d gotten duplicate keys made, and Earl was willing to tell him. So that was kind of encouraging. That there was some sign that Earl was after the truth, and not completely set against us.

  That same day, of course, another escape route collapsed around us. The lab supplier who’d blamed Carl for him losing his business and had looked like a possible suspect, Garner tracked him down in Louisville, and there’s no doubt whatsoever that he was in the hospital when Carl died, having just had a hernia operation that kept him there for a week.

  Then yesterday, Friday, the 22nd, I finally got Carl’s doctor’s son, Winston, on the phone. It seems that after his dad retired and sold the practice, he bought a pickup truck and had it modified as a camper. His wife died last summer, and he had no intention of hanging around home. He’d read Steinbeck’s Travels With Charlie, and he’d decided to do what Steinbeck had done—travel the country in a compact camper, with only his dog for company, wherever he felt like going with nothing planned ahead.

  The son had just spent two weeks with him in the mountains of western Virginia, but he didn’t know where he’d gone from there. He’s on his way to Maine, but how far he’d gotten, Winston didn’t know. His dad did phone him from time to time, and when he called next, Winston said he’d tell his dad about us, and find out where we could meet him, or phone at the very least.

  So all we can do is wait to hear how Carl took the news of his cancer, and if anything he said seemed consistent with planning to kill himself, and blame Alan for his death.

  Emmy’s foot isn’t getting better and we’re changing antibiotics.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sunday, May 24th, 1964

  When they got home from church, Jo rode Maggie for the first time, having lunged her for two weeks and watched for any sign of lameness. She decided she was sound, but needed to be brought back slowly and carefully, even though finding the time to ride her wasn’t going to be easy.

  Jo and Alan spent the rest of the afternoon working away at the ultimate obstacle to proving Carl had set Alan up: How had Carl gotten the keys, and spent time in the lab unseen?

  It was Jo thinking about how sometime early in the fall she’d seen Carl having lunch with Jean Nagy, that got them headed in the first direction that seemed to have potential.

  Jean was a lab tech at Equine who’d worked for Carl, and who by then had a new key to the lab. Alan didn’t think Jean would’ve deliberately given it to Carl to copy, and she only had a key to the lab anyway, not the front door, or Alan’s office, which Carl would’ve needed to steal his pen.

  But what if she’d gone to the restroom, or spoken to someone else at the Wagon Wheel, and left her purse on the table? Carl could’ve pulled out her keys and made an impression that would’ve allowed him to get a copy made at any locksmith’s anywhere.

  And if he had just that one key? How could he manage the rest?

  Alan and Jo picked at it for an hour more, and the eventual scenario they worked out began to make some sense.

  Carl would’ve known the receptionist’s schedule, and he could’ve stood in the trees at the end of the front parking lot during the afternoon and used binoculars to see when she left her desk to go to the restroom, or stepped away on her coffee break.

  The way the building was laid out, if he’d come in the front door, between 3:15 and 3:30 or so, and he’d gotten past the receptionist’s desk when she was away, he could’ve taken a quick left down the short side hall where the lab’s side wall was on the right, and the janitor’s supply room was opposite the lab door on the left. There was an office storage room next door to the janitor’s, and Carl could have hidden in that storage room (where they kept brochures and labels and paper supplies) till he was sure the plant people were gone. They got off at 3:00, so if he’d gotten there sometime around 3:30, if he was very careful, between then and 4:00 (when Vincent, the janitor, came in), he could’ve gotten out to the plant and climbed up the metal stairs to the open mezzanine storage area where no one went for weeks on end. He could’ve hidden behind the old files and furniture and stayed there until after midnight, when Vincent would’ve gone home.

  He could’ve gotten into the lab with his copy of Jean’s key and taken everything he needed—the syringes, the font ball, the paper, the Dylox, the vinyl gloves too—except for Alan’s pen. Then, if he’d gone back to the storage room, across from the door to the lab, he would’ve heard Alan come in at 5:00 or a few minutes after, and been able to stay there and listen till he heard Alan go out to the plant between 6:30 and 7:00 to discuss the day’s batches with the new production manager.

  The plant people couldn’t have seen him leave the storage room, and at that hour of the morning, no one would’ve been in the lab, or in the reception area. Bob Harrison came in early most days, but his office was down the long hall from reception at the far end of the building. The week the Selectric ball was switched, he’d been out of town too, which Carl could’ve learned from Jean the lab tech, or from Brad Harrison.

  So if he’d waited in the storage room till Alan went out to the plant, he could’ve snuck in the lab and into Alan’s unlocked office, and taken impressions of the keys to his office, his desk and the front door, which Alan would have left in the pocket of his sport jacket hanging on the back of his door. While Alan was in the plant, Carl could’ve snuck out the fire door, halfway up the long hall toward Bob’s office from the receptionist’s desk, which was always unlocked from the inside. The plant people, who started at 7:00, came in the plant door, and no one would’ve unlocked the front door until shortly before 8:00, when the receptionist went to her desk.

  That same night, using the keys he would’ve had made that day, Carl could’ve come back after midnight, when Vincent had finished cleaning, and put the ball back on the Selectric, and taken Alan’s pen.

  Of course, he could’ve sat down and typed something there in the lab the first night instead of stealing the ball and having to bring it back. But maybe he hadn’t wanted to risk more time in the lab than he could help. Because what if Vincent forgot something and came back? Or Alan came in even earlier? And he did sometimes, by 3:00 or 4:00.

  Alan and Jo thrashed it out, with “what ifs?” and “that wouldn�
�t work,” till they wrote this version down, thinking that if anyone could’ve seen Carl, it would’ve been the receptionist—seeing him, in the trees in front, watching her desk. Or Vincent, making his rounds, maybe even hearing someone in the storage room next to his supply room.

  Vincent had just spent three weeks with his parents in Virginia, and his first day back would be Tuesday, the 26th. Alan told Jo he’d talk to Vincent as soon as he came in and see what he could find out. Hearing about Carl’s death would’ve been traumatic for Vincent, before he went on vacation. And then learning that Alan had been charged, once he got back, must’ve upset him too. So figuring out how to talk to Vincent would be even harder than normal.

  Jo said she’d tackle Jean Nagy after work on Monday, since she’d been the one who’d seen her at the Wagon Wheel with Carl in the fall. If Alan talked to her she might feel pressured and decide to take offense. Jean was touchy. A chronic complainer in sensible shoes who seemed to resent most of what she faced in life, and criticized whoever wasn’t standing in front of her.

  Excerpt from Jo Grant Munro’s Journal:

  Friday, May 29th, 1964

  It’s been another week of living on nerves and caffeine. It’s 1:00 in the morning now, and Alan hasn’t come home from the office. He came home for dinner, and played with Ross for awhile, but then said he had to go back and get some more work done.

  Monday I talked to Jean Nagy. It wasn’t easy to get her talking, but she did admit that she’d had lunch with Carl more than once, the last time probably in January, or maybe early February. She was incensed at what she took as an implication that she might’ve given her key to Carl to make a duplicate, but she did acknowledge that she’d left her purse on the table in the booth on more than one occasion when she went up to the counter to chat with the waitress she’s known since high school. Whether he did make an imprint of her key she had no way of knowing.