Daughter of Ashes

by Marcia Talley

  She slapped it into my open palm like a surgical assistant.

  I adjusted the wrench, tightened it around the connector and tugged it toward me. After two grunts and three swear words, it gave. I loosened the connector, separating the two pipes until there was a gentle whoosh and the distinctive smell of sulphur filled the air. ‘There,’ I said, standing up. ‘If we’re lucky, they won’t notice that the pipes aren’t quite connected.’

  We were heading back into the shelter to turn out the lights when my cell phone rang. Fran. The BioClean vans were on their way.

  ‘If we use both our cars we can probably block the driveway,’ I told Grace.

  Grace rubbed her hands together. ‘What fun! Do you think we’ll be arrested?’

  TWENTY-NINE

  ‘Except for this explosion, the interview was very successfully conducted.’

  Robert Louis Stevenson, The Master of Ballantrae, 1889

  Grace and I parked our cars nose-to-nose at the entrance to the parking lot. If BioClean wanted access to the delivery doors at the back of the shelter they’d have to pry the car keys out of our cold, dead fingers, push our cars aside or have the vehicles towed. Either way, our historical records would gain a few precious minutes of life.

  While we waited for their vans to arrive, we sat at a circular picnic table on the back lawn where, Grace explained, on pleasant days staff would gather to eat lunch and supervise the animals as they frisked and frolicked in the galvanized dog runs. As night gathered in around us, a full moon began its slow rise over the vineyard, casting long shadows and gilding the vines and the leaves on the nearby trees with silver.

  I tried Jack Ames’s cell phone again, but failed to reach a live human being. After that, Grace and I talked, killing time. I told her about my family – my husband, daughters and grandchildren – and she outlined the long path to recovery that Rusty’s team of doctors and therapists had designed for him.

  ‘Will he be able to return to work?’ I asked, selfishly thinking about the renovation at Our Song that had been falling further and further behind schedule. During his absence, out of stubbornness, or perhaps deep denial, Dwight had refused to replace Rusty with a temporary worker.

  ‘Because of his inability to concentrate, he may require a bit more supervision, but, yes, Rusty should be able to go back to work eventually.’

  I didn’t ask how long ‘eventually’ might be.

  ‘I’m praying for that boy,’ Grace told me. I thought she was referring to her own son until she added with a sigh, ‘It can’t have been Tad’s idea to hurt Rusty. Somebody must have put him up to it.’

  Jack Ames stood at the top of my suspect list – both for Rusty’s accident and Kendall’s murder – but I could always use a second opinion. ‘Who do you think it was, Grace?’

  ‘God may punish me for this, but on my bad days, I sometimes think it might have been his mother.’

  We sat in silence while I let the significance of what she’d said sink in. Grace was all ‘do unto others’ and ‘turn the other cheek.’ But what if she’d crossed over into Old Testament ‘eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth’ territory? Had Grace been angry enough at Kendall to kill her? I hadn’t seen her at the picnic, but thinking about the missing nametag, that didn’t mean she hadn’t been there.

  Grace was explaining how repetitive tasks, like installing drywall or painting the siding would help rewire her son’s brain, when something caught my eye. A pinpoint of orange, followed by a dark shape moving slowly along one of the rows of grapevines. ‘Who the …’ I started to whisper when the distinct odor of a Bonnie and Clyde cigarillo – burned coffee with overtones of ashtray – wafted our way. I grabbed Grace’s forearm and squeezed. ‘Shhhh.’

  As we watched, the figure emerged from the grapevines and headed in the direction of the shelter’s back door.

  ‘Does Clifton Ames have a key to the shelter?’ I whispered directly into Grace’s ear.

  ‘Somebody on his staff does,’ she whispered back. ‘They have a huge incinerator for dead birds at Clifton Farms but they use ours from time to time for overflow.’

  ‘Charming,’ I muttered.

  Suddenly, we were bathed in light. The BioClean vans had arrived, angled into the driveway, spotlighting our vehicles. The lead van began to honk its horn.

  We stayed put, hardly daring to move.

  After a minute, when no one had responded to his impatient summons, the driver gave up on the horn. He hopped out of the van, walked around to the front and, silhouetted against the headlights, inspected our cars. I recognized Owen. He swore, unzipped and reached inside the top of his white overalls, then put his right hand to his ear. ‘Looks like he’s calling someone,’ Grace whispered.

  After a moment, a nearby cell phone began to play, ‘Do The Funky Chicken.’

  My head snapped around.

  The song cut off. Clifton Ames had answered his phone. ‘What’s up?’ we heard him say. The tip of his cigarillo glowed red as he sucked on it, listening.

  Apparently, Owen had outlined a plan. The BioClean supervisor disappeared around the front of the building and, one by one, lights inside the shelter were turned on.

  When the light at the back door snapped on, Ames headed for it.

  I replay the scene often, sometimes in my dreams, sometimes while simply sitting on my back porch, but when the action begins, it’s always in slow motion.

  Ames heading for the door that Owen is holding open for him. He takes a drag on his cigar, withdraws it from his lips with thumb and forefinger then turns it toward him, considering the tip. He flips the cigar away, and it tumbles end over end over end …

  ‘No!’ I shouted, but it was too late. There was a flash of light and a deafening whoosh! as the lit end of Ames’s cigar ignited the invisible cloud of propane gas that had leaked out of the tank and settled over the grass. A wave of heat rolled our way. When we looked again, Clifton Ames lay on the ground, his clothes smoldering.

  Owen and I reached Ames at the same time. ‘Roll him over!’ I shouted. While Owen did as I asked, I used my phone to call 911.

  Grace disappeared into the shelter, returning with some wet towels which she draped carefully over the victim.

  I was kneeling beside Ames, feeling for a pulse, when the old man moaned. The explosion had torched his eyebrows and burned off his hair. In the ruined landscape of his face, one eyelid opened. ‘Wha …?’

  ‘Shhh,’ I told him. ‘An ambulance is on the way.’

  ‘What the fuck you doing here?’ Owen growled from behind me.

  I swiveled to face him. ‘Why don’t you send your crew home, Owen? Nobody’s going to burn anything more here tonight.’

  THIRTY

  ‘It is a wise father that knows his own child. Well, old man, I will tell you news of your son: give me your blessing: truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man’s son may, but at the length truth will out.’

  William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 2, Scene 2

  Yogi Berra once said, ‘It ain’t over till it’s over.’

  The county records sat in the BioClean vans while Caitlyn’s attorney, convinced that they contained evidence that would exculpate his client, managed to obtain a court order preventing their destruction until they could be thoroughly examined.

  By that time, two days had passed and BioClean was eager to comply with the order. They unloaded the records in the courthouse parking lot where the law firm of Fletcher and Warner LLP had erected a PVC party tent. If it weren’t for the summer interns roaming about in surgical masks and latex gloves like Ebola caregivers, one might think we were throwing a wedding.

  Caitlyn, happily, had been released on bail and was home with her family. Her father was footing the bill for the whole shebang, so I figured it was a win-win situation, especially for the Tilghman County Historical Society. Fran and I had been tapped to act as unpaid consultants, which consisted of sitting under the tent on folding metal chairs and dire
cting interns to labeled boxes where they could pack the materials once they had finished examining them. After we surrendered the index volumes we’d hidden in the basement in our effort to keep them out of enemy hands, we couldn’t help noticing that only a handful of the ledgers covering land transfers in the county were making it into the box we’d designated for them.

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ Fran said during a bathroom break, ‘is why Clifton Ames showed up at the humane society shelter on Friday night rather than his son, Jack. It was Jack who signed the work order. Jack who you threatened on the telephone.’

  ‘Voicemail,’ I corrected as I dried my hands on a paper towel. ‘I threatened the voice on the man’s answering service.’

  ‘Still …’ she began, but I made a timeout sign with my hands. ‘I have a radical idea,’ I said. ‘Let’s go ask him.’

  Fran’s face brightened. ‘Let’s!’

  The Tilghman County Council met in a modern, two-story administration building about two blocks east of the courthouse. I located the intern who seemed to be in charge – the one holding the largest clipboard – and told him that Fran and I had an errand to run but that we’d be right back.

  Five minutes later, we stood outside Jack’s office door. Nobody was manning the reception desk, but we could tell by a voice drifting over the transom that we’d cornered the councilman.

  Eventually, the room grew quiet. Seconds later, Jack Ames erupted from his office, caught sight of us and slammed on the brakes. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, ladies, but I’m on my way to visit Dad in the hospital.’ He paused as recognition dawned. ‘It’s Hannah Ives, isn’t it?’ Jack said. ‘You’re the one who called nine-one-one.’

  ‘I was.’

  I asked the obvious question. It seemed only polite. ‘How is he doing?’

  ‘Let’s step into my office for a moment,’ he said, rubbing the stubble on his chin thoughtfully.

  ‘I called the hospital,’ I said as we followed the councilman through the door, ‘but they wouldn’t tell me anything without the secret password.’

  ‘Sit, sit,’ Jack said, indicating two chairs facing his desk. ‘The burns on his face and hands are painful but superficial. It’s his legs we’re worried about. Second and third degree burns. He’ll recover, they tell me, but he’ll need skin grafts followed by rehab to keep the skin supple as the wounds heal. It may be a while before the old man’s up and about.’

  ‘We’re here about the order to destroy the county records,’ I said, cutting to the chase.

  ‘It was your signature.’ Fran popped out of her chair waving a photocopy of the county purchase order under Jack Ames’s nose.

  Jack snatched the printout from her hands and scanned it impatiently. ‘It looks like my signature,’ he said after a moment, ‘but it isn’t.’

  Jack scrabbled around on his desk until he unearthed an executive order printed on vellum declaring September the First ‘Cat Fanciers Day’ in Tilghman County. ‘That’s my signature,’ Ames said, stabbing an index finger at the scrawl at the bottom of the document, next to an official gold seal. ‘My A’s look more like O’s. Check it out.’

  We leaned over the document. Fran and I had to agree.

  While we were contemplating the implications of that, a bell dinged and a voice called out, ‘Sorry I’m late!’

  Jack frowned. ‘Ginny, come in here for a minute, will you?’

  Ginny’s head popped around the door but her smile disappeared the minute she saw us. We weren’t smiling either.

  Jack handed Fran’s copy of the work order to his receptionist. ‘What can you tell me about this?’

  She glanced at the photocopy and handed it back. ‘You left it on my desk with a Post-it that said “Expedite.”’

  ‘I see. Would it surprise you to learn that I knew nothing about it?’

  Ginny’s face paled. ‘But … I don’t understand.’

  ‘Somebody obviously put it on your desk. Any idea who that might have been?’

  ‘I don’t know, Jack, honestly. It was there when I came back after lunch on Wednesday. You were away at that fundraiser in Salisbury, so I assumed you’d left it there on your way out. After we got the mold report, the order made a lot of sense.’ She shrugged. ‘So I expedited it.’

  ‘Was the office locked?’ I asked.

  Ginny bristled. ‘Of course!’

  ‘So the obvious question is who else has office keys.’

  Jack ran a hand through his hair. ‘Lord, just about the entire city council. My wife, Susan, of course.’

  ‘Your father,’ Ginny added helpfully.

  ‘Him, too. And Tad, my driver, until I fired him and took away his keys.’ He leaned forward. ‘And that was before the boy’s arrest, I should point out.’

  ‘Your nephew drove you out when you visited my house that day, didn’t he?’

  Jack frowned. ‘Yes, why?’

  ‘Then I think I know who hid Rusty’s helmet.’

  ‘Helmet? If there’s a point here, Mrs Ives, I wish you’d get to it.’ He made a Broadway production of checking his watch. ‘I’m already late for the hospital.’

  ‘OK. Here’s the timeline. Rusty rode his motorcycle to work that morning wearing his helmet. You paid us a call and while we were chatting, your driver, Tad, wandered off. You had to call out to him, remember? Later that day, Rusty had an errand to run in town and couldn’t find his helmet so he took off on his motorcycle without it. Shortly thereafter, he was run off the road by someone driving a late-model black Mustang registered to Tad Chew.’

  Jack paled. ‘So you’re telling me it wasn’t an accidental hit and run?’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying. It was an attempt at deliberate murder.’ I studied him carefully.

  Jack stared at me for so long I felt like I was under a microscope. ‘Someone else could have been driving the Mustang,’ he said at last.

  ‘Always a possibility, I suppose, but since Tad is under arrest, it’s clear the sheriff doesn’t think so.’

  ‘Why?’ Jack flopped back in his chair, waved an arm dismissively. ‘Tad is an idiot! It can’t have been his idea.’

  ‘I don’t think it was,’ I said. ‘I think you put him up to it.’

  I watched his face carefully as his expression morphed from outrage to genuine puzzlement. ‘That’s bullshit! Why would I want to hurt Rusty?’

  ‘It’s because of Baby Ella,’ I told him. ‘It all started with the baby.’

  While I talked, Jack had picked up a pen and was idly twirling it between his fingers, first one way, then the other. ‘Andy Hubbard tells me the baby belonged to a black woman named Nancy Hazlett who committed suicide back in 1952.’

  I nodded.

  ‘It’s sad, but so what?’ Jack said. ‘If there’s a connection, I just don’t get it.’

  ‘Nancy was passing for white,’ I explained. ‘She went to high school with your father.’

  From the folder in my handbag, I extracted the photocopy I’d made of Nancy and Cliff performing in Oklahoma!. Jack stared at it for a long time. ‘She’s very pretty,’ he said at last. ‘Looks exotic, maybe Spanish.’

  ‘Her father was white,’ I told him.

  Still fingering the photograph, Jack nodded. ‘I see. But, what does that have to do with …’ Suddenly he threw his head back against the headrest of his leather chair, stared up, as if consulting the ceiling. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’

  Fran started to say something, but I silenced her with a frown and a subtle shake of my head.

  Jack leaned forward, his face grave. ‘Is there proof of this?’

  ‘From what we can tell, Nancy and your father were actually married.’ I pulled a copy of one of Rusty’s iPhone photos out of the folder and pushed it across his desk. ‘Rusty took this photograph, realized its significance and then, for reasons I don’t quite understand, forwarded it to his mother. To Kendall, not to Grace.’

  Jack snorted. ‘Doesn’t surprise me in the least. Sounds like Rusty
wanted to cut himself in on a piece of the action.’

  ‘Action?’ Fran looked confused.

  ‘Kendall had my father by the short hairs for years, but I thought it had to do with dodgy land deals back in the forties. This,’ he said, tapping the photo, ‘is something else altogether.’

  ‘How far do you think your father would go to keep this information from coming to light? Once this news became public knowledge, your father’s reputation would be toast.’

  Jack smirked. ‘Dad doesn’t have much of a reputation to protect.’

  ‘But what if,’ I began, choosing my words carefully. ‘What if it wasn’t his reputation he was worried about. What if it were yours?’

  ‘Mine? You must be kidding.’

  ‘In this climate of gotcha journalism, one could argue that it’d screw up your chances at the White House.’

  ‘White House!’ Jack hooted. ‘I haven’t even made it into the House of Representatives!’

  ‘Your father likes to think big, I hear.’

  ‘But he doesn’t think for me. Son of a bitch.’

  I leaned forward and spoke quietly so that Ginny wouldn’t hear. ‘I can think of only one reason why your father would authorize the wholesale destruction of the courthouse records. Only one reason why he showed up at the animal shelter last night. There is something in those records that he doesn’t want found, and once Fletcher and Warner finish up under the tent over there, we’re going to know what it is, too.’

  ‘It’s my fault Dad turned up that night,’ Jack said. ‘There was a message about hazmat on my machine. There’s always some kook calling to complain about pollution from his goddamn chickens. They asked for Mr Ames, so I assumed …’ His voice trailed off. ‘Dad was here when I played back my messages.’

  ‘That kook was me,’ I confessed. ‘You signed the destruction order, or so we thought.’

  ‘And since you didn’t,’ Fran said, rising from her chair, ‘Hannah and I better get back to the courthouse.’

  I stood, too. ‘And you’ll need to push on to the hospital.’