“Well, you didn’t know anything about quarter horses, either, until you bought them.”
“This is true, but I don’t know. I just hate to say the horse is ours and then a year from now some family comes to our door and says she’s theirs, you know?”
She shrugged.
“We’ll see. Let me talk to your dad about it.”
Mary got into the front seat. She rode shotgun because she quite often got sick in the backseat. Rachel used to claim that Mary was just faking it to get to sit up front, until Mary threw up a few times; then Rachel conceded. I suppose a vomit-free ride was worth giving up the front seat for.
“I wanted to ask you if you’d be Santa Lucia this year?” I said.
“Who do you want for Santa Lucia?” Rachel asked from the backseat.
“Mary.”
“What about me? I never got to be Santa Lucia!” Rachel said.
“Not everything’s about you!” Mary shouted back.
“Whoa, wait, this is not intended to be a fight. I just want to know if you’ll do it.”
Mary shrugged.
“Well, I need to know, because otherwise I’m going to ask Charity’s niece.”
“Wendy?” she said, incredulous. “She doesn’t need a bigger head than she’s already got. I’ll do it.”
“Great,” I said. “It’s Saturday during the procession.”
“Okay,” she said.
I dropped all of them off at school, and for the first time in a while I felt as though I’d accomplished something, even if they were over an hour late. Since Geena Campbell was covering the Kendall House and my sister was covering the Gaheimer House, I decided to go to Fräulein Krista’s Speishaus for breakfast. It’s my favorite place to eat in New Kassel. I even have my own booth. Of course, I’ve never had to remove anybody from my booth; it just always seems to be empty when I go there. Thursday morning was no different.
I was about to tear into my waffle and hash browns, when Sheriff Mort and Colin stepped inside. It wasn’t unusual for them to be seen together. They were friends, after all. Colin was the one who’d endorsed Mort for sheriff, but when they turned and walked toward me, an uneasy feeling settled in my stomach. The sheriff and mayor appeared to have business on their minds.
“Hey, Torie,” Colin said. “Can we sit down?”
“Depends,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Your mom said you’ve discovered some old recordings of your grandpa’s?” Colin said.
“Well, I didn’t discover them. In fact, I’ve got a friend in Wisteria who’s supposed to be listening to them today to authenticate them for me. It’s going to take him awhile, I’m sure.”
“Who is it?” Colin asked.
“Leo King,” I said. “His band, the Granite County Fire Pickers, always plays at our music festivals. He told me if I ever needed anything to give him a call. So I did. Why?”
Colin shrugged. “Just curious. Just makin’ conversation.”
“Why are you two really here?” I asked. I took a bite of hash browns and swallowed.
“We found blood and a bullet where I thought we’d find them,” Mort said. “Up on the ridge, but farther south. The bullet matches the one that came out of the tree Eleanore was sitting in.”
“And the blood?”
“We’re still waiting on that. Ballistics happened to be free and clear when I sent off the bullets, so they got it done quickly. DNA lab is a bit more backed up. I should find out tomorrow or Saturday. But I’ll bet next month’s salary it’s a match to our victim.”
I sighed heavily. “So most likely it wasn’t hunters who shot at us.”
Mort shook his head in the negative. “Though it seems like you’ve gotten over being shot at fairly quickly,” he said.
“She’s been shot at before,” Colin chimed in.
“It’s not like I can identify the shooters,” I said. “They have to know that.”
“They are cold-blooded killers. They don’t have to know anything,” Mort said.
A chill danced down my spine. “Well, it was so far away. There’s no way they identified us, but I have a feeling this isn’t all you wanted to tell me.”
Both of them shifted in their seats and finally Colin spoke. “Well, I thought it would be a good idea if Mort brought you in on this one, officially.”
“Officially” meant that Mort would consult me. I was a special consultant to the sheriff’s office now. Mort had arranged that, not Colin. What I didn’t understand was why Colin had to be the one to make this call.
“What’s going on?” I asked, and shoved my perfectly good waffle to the side. It would get soggy now, so I figured I might as well just accept the fact that breakfast was ruined and that I’d just have to come back for lunch.
“Nothing,” Colin said. “Other than Clifton Weaver is from Progress, and you’ve got connections down there. So Mort would like you to go down to Progress and poke around.”
I looked at Mort. “Why didn’t you just ask me? Why bring him into it?”
“Because I want to send Colin with you,” Mort said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean this was a very brutal attack and murder on a Granite County resident, and as far as I can tell, there was no reason for it. So far, everybody I’ve interviewed had no reason to hurt Weaver, no beef with him … and all have alibis. I would just feel better if you had somebody with you when you go poking your nose around in Progress.”
“Then why don’t you go with me? Or send one of the deputies?”
“I’ve got one deputy out on sick leave and another on vacation, and there’s just too much for me to do here. I can’t leave,” Mort said.
“So, you came with Colin to smooth things over, thinking I would just agree to whatever you said.”
They exchanged nervous glances and then gave me sheepish grins. “Well, yeah,” Mort said. “But, Torie, I’m gonna say this in front of Colin. You call the shots. He’s just there as muscle.”
“Wait. Don’t you have some sort of mayoral duties to do or something?” I asked Colin.
“Golf game at noon and a small business matter at four that I can postpone until tomorrow.”
“Is he going to carry a gun?” I asked. “Brawn doesn’t get you everywhere, you know.”
“Yes,” Colin said. “I have a permit. I’ll bring it as backup only. I’ll leave it in the car.”
Mort said nothing, just glanced at me to see if this would pass my approval.
“Because I’ve had to rescue him a few times even when he was armed,” I said.
“So I’ve heard,” Mort said.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s do it today, while I’ve got coverage on both museums.”
Mort gave me notes on his investigation, including the names and addresses of Clifton Weaver’s living relatives in Progress, Missouri. I paid for my breakfast and then Colin and I headed out of town.
Progress is one of those towns that—excuse me for saying so—progress has sort of passed by. It is about an hour due south of New Kassel. My dad grew up in the country surrounding Progress, but when he would talk of “going to town,” Progress was the town he was speaking of. It has a population of about twenty thousand now, but when my dad was a kid, it was probably about eight thousand. It boasts several fast-food restaurants, a school, a teeny tiny library, and—what else?—a Wal-Mart.
Several of my aunts and uncles still lived down there, including Uncle Ike and his daughter Phoebe.
Colin was unusually quiet as he sat next to me in the front seat. About ten minutes from Progress, he finally began to speak. “Do you ever look back and wonder what you should have done differently in your life?”
“Please tell me you’re not divorcing my mother,” I said.
“God no. Jalena is the greatest thing that ever happened to me. The only good thing that ever happened to me,” he said.
“You know, good things don’t just happen to people, Colin. You have to help them a
long sometimes. Which you did. If I remember correctly, you pursued my mother.”
“True,” he said.
“So what gives?” I asked, but I already had a pretty good idea what he was going to say.
“It’s this blasted job,” he said. “I hate it.”
“I know that. Everybody knows that. So when your term is up, do something else.”
I glanced over and saw him look off at the rolling countryside and farmland. “It’s not that simple,” he said. “The job I really want is taken.”
“Sheriff.”
“Yeah, and Mort’s good at what he does,” he said. “I don’t want to horn in on that.”
“Well, not to burst your bubble, but the townspeople like Mort, too. I’m not saying they didn’t like you as sheriff, because they did, but Mort has endeared himself to us.”
“I know that,” he said. “So, even if I ran for the job, you’re saying I might not win?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.
“Why did you do it? Why did you run for mayor if you loved your job as sheriff?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. I think part of it was that Bill was such a lousy mayor for such a long time that I wanted to make a difference. Part of it was, maybe I just wanted to try something new. And maybe I was getting a little bored.”
“Bored?” I asked. I put on my blinker and got in the turn lane as my exit came up.
“Not bored as in there was nothing to do, just bored with it being the same old stuff to do,” he said.
“Well, you’ve made your bed now.”
“I know. I know. That’s why I was asking the question about looking back on your life and doing things differently. Do you think this is normal? Do people second-guess their decisions all the time?”
“I think people second-guess their decisions some of the time. I think the people who second-guess themselves the most are either paranoid—”
“I’m not what you call paranoid,” he interjected.
I held my finger up. “Or they’re the ones who know they either compromised what they believe in or made a decision based on the path of least resistance. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because those rarely ever work out.”
“You think that’s what I did?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “In your case, I think you took a chance and it turned out poorly. So here’s the real question. What do you do about it now?”
“Yeah,” he said, watching the cows in the fields go by.
* * *
Our first stop was the high school. It was a newer building sitting in a big meadow just on the outskirts of town. Their school colors were red and blue, which were represented in the banners hanging on all the light poles in the parking lot. “What are we doing here?” Colin asked.
“Yearbooks.”
He gave me a questioning glance.
“I just want to see who his classmates were. You know, sometimes those relationships last a lifetime. In a small town like theirs and ours, it’s almost a given. I’ve spoken to a lot of people who haven’t talked to their former classmates in years. But in smaller towns, it’s more likely they will stay in touch and it’s more likely they’ll marry somebody from their school.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know that. And I didn’t, either. But unless somebody moves away and stays away from their small-town roots, the chances are more likely that they will keep their old acquaintances,” I said.
“You really do think of everything as one big genealogical chart, don’t you?” he said.
“Yup,” I replied.
As soon as we entered the school, I was overwhelmed with that school smell. It was a completely unique and completely indescribable smell. I think that’s because it was a combination of many things. “The thing with Clifton is that he didn’t graduate from Progress High. According to Mort, his parents moved to New Kassel when Mort was about seventeen. So what is that, his junior year? I just want to check out who was in his class before he moved.”
The school secretary gave us guest passes and sent us on our way to the library. The only problem was, I couldn’t remember what year Clifton Weaver was born. “Call Mort and ask him what year Clifton graduated from high school,” I said to Colin.
“My, aren’t we bossy.”
I glanced through some of the yearbooks and found photographs of my dad and Aunt Sissy before Colin finally told me what year we were looking for. “Class of ’52.” He hung up the phone and frowned. “Will they have the yearbooks back that far?”
“They should. The historical society has the yearbooks for all of the one-room schoolhouses, one of which my dad attended until eighth grade, and some of the smaller schools on the outskirts of the county. Around 1949, all the smaller schools within a twenty-mile radius consolidated into this one big school.”
“How do you know this stuff? I swear, you’re just like this walking encyclopedia of completely useless information,” Colin said.
“My dad’s family have lived in and around Progress for at least a hundred and fifty years. You get to know these things. Besides, I wouldn’t exactly say it’s useless information.”
I pulled out the yearbook for 1951, when Clifton would have been a junior. I made a photocopy of all the pages of Clifton’s fellow classmates, then made copies of all the freshmen, sophomores, and seniors, too. In 1951, that totaled fifteen pages. “If it comes in handy, it’s not useless knowledge.”
“Show-off,” he said.
Colin and I spent most of the remaining day in Progress, tracing down people who had died, moved, or were not at home. We got lucky on the second-to-last name on the list that Sheriff Mort had given us. A woman named Etta Chapin lived in a small white house, which I would almost have bet was built by the original owners, not by a construction company. It just had that handmade look to it—the same look that my grandparents’ house had. The largest mimosa tree I’d ever seen grew right next to the house. I could just imagine how pretty it must be in June or July, when it bloomed. Right now, it was bare, save for the small seed pods that the wind hadn’t jarred loose yet.
We knocked on the door and a woman around sixty years old answered. “Hi,” I said. “You don’t know me, but I’m an acquaintance of your…” I looked at the paper. “Cousin. Clifton Weaver.”
“Yes?” she said.
“Are you Etta Chapin?”
She glanced at Colin nervously and then back at me. “Why?” Which meant yes.
“Have you been contacted about his death?”
The expression on her face changed, softened, and then morphed into curiosity. “Yes, another cousin of ours just called to tell me yesterday.”
“Well, I live in the same town as he did,” I said. “And I’ve been asked by the sheriff’s department to ask his family some questions.” I reached in my purse and got out the formal letter from Mort saying that I was a consultant to his office.
“Questions about what?” she asked.
It was cold on her front porch. I stamped my feet together and said, “May we come in?”
“All right,” she said, although her eyes said no. “Can I get you something?”
“No, thank you, ma’am,” Colin said. “This will just take a few minutes of your time.”
“When was the last time you heard from Clifton?” I asked. Once we were standing inside, Colin flipped open a notebook and wrote down Etta’s answers.
“Oh, Uncle George’s funeral. Two years ago. That man lived to be ninety-seven. Oldest man in our family, Uncle George was,” she said.
“Two years ago,” I said, deflated. Chances were that anything Clifton had been involved in to get him killed had come about more recently. She most likely couldn’t help us.
“How exactly are you related?” I asked.
“His mother and my father were brother and sister,” she
said.
I asked a few more questions and really felt like I was wasting this lady’s time, so I asked my last question. “Can you think of any reason why anybody would want to hurt Clifton?”
“No,” she said. “I was just tellin’ that to my husband last night. How I couldn’t understand how this could happen to Clif, of all people.”
“All right,” I said. “We won’t bother you anymore.” But just as I turned to leave, I saw one of those embroidered samplers hanging on her wall—the type that give the names of both the husband and wife and the date they were married, and which are usually surrounded by lots of flowers and a set of wedding bells. The sampler read MARTIN CHAPIN AND ETTA MORGAN, 25 JANUARY 1963.
Etta Morgan? “Mrs. Chapin,” I said, “your maiden name was Morgan?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“Are you by chance related to Scott Morgan?”
Colin gave me a quizzical look, but I ignored him.
“Why, yes,” she said and smiled. Clearly, she was proud of her connection. “He was my grandpa.”
“So … Clifton Weaver was the grandson of Scott Morgan, as well?”
“Yes, he was Miriam’s son. Miriam married Clifton Adam Weaver.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said, a feeling of dread spreading throughout my chest. “Clifton Weaver was the son of Miriam Morgan, one of the fiddle players for the Morgan Family Players. Is that correct?”
She nodded her head. “Why, is there something wrong?”
“And which one was your father?”
“Cletis,” she said. “He never got into music much.”
“Ma’am, do you know a man named Glen Morgan?”
“Well, of course, he’s Uncle Roscoe’s son. Roscoe was on the young end. I think he was second to the youngest. At any rate, little Glen was born just a few years after I got married. Even though we’re first cousins, we’re a generation apart.”
The room spun. This had to mean something. This couldn’t just be a coincidence.
“He’s a talented one. Inherited all of our grandpa’s musical ability. I hear he’s writing a book on the family,” she said.
“Mrs. Chapin, do you know the name John Robert Keith?” I asked.
She glanced from me to Colin and back to me. She fiddled with her necklace and said, “Yes.”
The Blood Ballad Page 9