Blacktop turned into gravel road, and a few miles later, I pulled up at the old Hahn stone bridge. The CSU was present, along with the Progress police and sheriff, and a few Granite County squad cars. Honest to God, I had no idea why I’d actually come down to the bridge. It wasn’t as if I could do anything. But I wanted to be there when they brought her out of the ground.
I found Mort amid the crowd of people and the ever-increasing cold fog that had seemed to settle in the valley as Colin and I arrived. The dark, heavy clouds overhead made it feel as though evening were just around the corner, when, in fact, it was still hours away. “Hey,” I called out to Mort.
“Torie,” he said. He glanced at Colin and nodded his head.
“I, uh, brought Colin with me. For security reasons.”
Mort just raised his eyebrows and flipped open his notepad. “Well, I think you may have done it, Torie. It’s a human skeleton, small; they think it’s a female. Clothes have all rotted, but she’s wearing some jewelry that looks old. So they’re thinking whoever she is, she’s been there awhile.”
“Are they gonna—”
“They’ll do carbon testing to determine exactly how long she’s been there, and I’m going to request one of those fancy facial-reconstruction things.” He glanced over his shoulder and gestured to another sheriff. The man was about fifty and had a head full of white hair and belly the size of a watermelon. “But it’s really his call. This is his county, not mine.”
“Well, does he seem game or not?” I asked.
Mort cleared his throat. “Well, when I told him that I suspected the skeleton was the body of Belle Morgan, he sure as hell perked up. So I think he’ll spend the money for it.”
“If not, I will.”
“What?” Mort said.
“Well, I mean, I guess. How much does it cost? Tell him I’ll split it with his department,” I said. Seriously, I had money just sitting there doing nothing, thanks to Sylvia. The least I could do was find out if this was truly Belle Morgan.
“All right, I’ll tell him.”
“You know what this means, don’t you? If this turns out to be Belle?”
“What?”
“It means the song that was sent to me by Clifton Weaver really is a confession of murder. I mean, it goes from being just a song about a murder to a confession of Belle’s murder. Or it was written by somebody who witnessed her murder and wrote it down as a confession. One of the two.”
“Which makes Clifton Weaver’s murder take on a different slant, as well.”
“I think whoever killed Clifton Weaver was looking for ‘The Blood Ballad.’ That’s what got him killed. I know it.”
“But why?” Mort asked. “So it’s a song. Big deal.”
“Well, it would be the song of the century. It would solve the country music industry’s greatest mystery.”
“True,” he said and scratched his head with his pencil. “Or maybe it points the finger at a loved one and whoever killed Clifton Weaver doesn’t want his loved one revealed as a murderer.”
“That could be, too.”
I glanced over at Colin, who was standing away from the CSU at a respectful distance, but wanted to jump right in. I could tell by his body language. At one point, knelt down to watch as they started lifting bones from the unmarked grave. He was waiting to see what was lying beneath the remains. Classic Sheriff Brooke. I’d seen him do that a few times.
A hush crept over the scene as they lifted the first bone. I shook my head, still amazed after all these years that people could do really horrible things to one another. I blew warm air into my hands, as they were beginning to go numb. Then I turned to Sheriff Mort. “Look, my daughter pointed out a resemblance between Belle Morgan and a girl named Isabelle Mercer, who disappeared from New Kassel a few years before Belle showed up in Progress, married Eddie Morgan, and began singing with the family.”
“Your daughter?”
“Mary.”
“What, are you breeding historical sleuths? How did Mary just happen to see the resemblance?”
I explained how she’d been doing research to help Rachel. I shrugged. “Sorry, I don’t do it intentionally. I guess from living with me, they just look at things differently and have access to things that other teenagers don’t.”
“So, you think she’s right?”
“I’d almost bet on it. Sylvia thought so, too. She wrote a big long chapter about Isabelle Mercer in a book she wrote on unsolved mysteries. She went to call on Belle Morgan, who refused to see her.”
“You think that’s proof of guilt?” he asked.
“I think it means Belle had something to hide.”
“Or maybe she just didn’t want to talk to some crazed fan? You know, if she really wasn’t Isabelle Mercer, that’s how Belle Morgan could have taken Sylvia’s visit,” he said.
He had a point, and I admitted it to him. “Still, the photographs are uncanny. I really wish I could get my hands on some of Eddie Morgan’s personal family photographs to compare to the ones of Isabelle Mercer.”
“Well, becoming a famous musician would be a really stupid thing to do if you wanted to disappear,” Mort said.
“That’s just it, Mort. I’m not sure she was trying to disappear. I think she just wanted out of her life. She wanted away from New Kassel. I don’t think she especially cared if she was found. But then, when Sylvia showed up … I dunno, maybe she didn’t want to have to answer to those she’d left behind after all.”
“Well, we can speculate all we want, but first we need to find out if these remains are hers or not,” he said.
“They’re hers,” I told him.
“Hey!” Colin called out. “There’s something under the hipbone!”
Mort and I ran over and stood as close as we could get. Someone from the CSU called out, “This is a crime scene, not a circus!”
“Right,” Colin said and shoved his hands in his pockets. He was on the other side of the unmarked grave from us. He raised his hands in a motion that implied he was striking something with a hammer. Then he mouthed to us “murder weapon.”
The white-haired sheriff of Progress came over to us then and held out some jewelry in a transparent evidence bag. “Look familiar?”
Like I was supposed to know what Belle Morgan’s jewelry looked like, but I took the bag and examined it closely anyway. The first piece looked like a wedding ring. It was most likely white gold, since it wasn’t yellow gold, and silver was not normally a choice for a wedding ring—and besides, silver would have tarnished. This ring, other than being covered in dirt, wasn’t tarnished. It had four diamonds, about the size of a quarter karat each, lined up in a perfect row. “This should be easily identifiable by family photographs or even by her children, if they’re still alive.”
“I thought her kids were young when Belle disappeared,” Mort said.
“True,” I said. “Well, maybe there’s a photograph of her we could find that shows her wedding ring.”
Mort jotted it down in his notebook. Then he pointed at another ring with his pencil. This one was also white gold and had what looked like two small rubies and three diamonds all in a cluster. “Those real diamonds, you think?”
I shrugged. “Possibly.”
“You think even a successful music family would have bought diamond rings during the Depression?”
“I honestly don’t know. It looks older than that, though. Like from the early twenties.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” he said.
“Ask Colin; he owns an antique store.”
“Oh, right,” he said. Mort held up the evidence bag and pointed at it. Colin nodded and walked around the hole made by the CSU, careful to make a wide path around the crime-scene tape. There were no prints or fibers that he could disturb, not after this many years, but old habits die hard. “How old would you say this ring is?”
Colin took the bag and looked at it. “Um, I’d say early twenties.”
Mort made another note
in his notebook.
“Can we get pictures of the jewelry?” I asked.
Mort nodded. “I’ll ask. Sheriff Marceau is probably going to want to ask you a bunch of questions. Since you led him to a dead body.”
“Of course,” I said. I had sort of forgotten about that. Colin reached in his pocket and pulled out a pair of reading glasses. I assumed he was blushing considerably because he was embarrassed. I’d certainly never seen him wear them before. Then he held the jewelry bag closer. He rubbed the bag, as if that would make whatever he was looking at clearer.
“What is it, Colin?” I asked.
“This necklace … look here,” he said.
I leaned over and looked. The dainty chain was silver, or possibly white gold, and there was a locket hanging from it. There was no fancy inscribed initial on it, but, rather, a delicate filigree design.
“What’s inside?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Right now, I’m more interested in this.”
“What?”
Colin flipped the locket over to look at the back. Down at the very bottom was a tradesman’s mark, the mark of the jeweler who had made the piece. “Cunningham Brothers.”
“Famous jeweler?” I asked.
He snorted a laugh and then looked at me over the edge of his new glasses. “Only in Wisteria.”
“What?” I asked, confused.
“There are no jewelers in New Kassel. In fact, the only jeweler in Granite County, then or now, is Cunningham Brothers.”
“Are you telling me this necklace was made by a jeweler in Wisteria?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’d say anywhere from 1910 to 1925. I’ll know for sure when I go home and check my book.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
“So we know our dead body here bought at least one piece of jewelry five miles from New Kassel,” Mort said.
“Right,” I agreed.
“Our first connection to Isabelle Mercer?” Mort said.
“Possibly,” I replied.
One of the crime-scene investigators then bagged and tagged an ax that was found with the body.
“Oh my God, it’s the murder weapon.”
Sheriff Marceau was kind enough to bring it over for us to inspect. I flipped the ax over inside the bag and my blood ran cold. The air around me seemed to drop twenty degrees. I sucked my breath in hard.
“What is it?” Mort asked.
There, inscribed on the blade of the ax, were the initials J.R.K. John Robert Keith. “I think this was my grandfather’s ax.”
Sheriff Marceau clicked his teeth and said, “We need to be having our talk now, Mrs. O’Shea.”
Eighteen
Snow had begun to fall on the crime scene by the time Colin and I left. Sheriff Marceau didn’t really have anything earth-shattering to ask me. Just the usual questions somebody would ask a person who’d led them to a dead body. I stared at the bridge as the heavy wet snow began to accumulate on the edges of it. How many snows had those remains witnessed, how many scorching days? How many times had people passed right over her, none the wiser that she lay below?
It made me want to cry.
“So,” Colin said as we got in the car. “What have we got here, exactly?”
“Providing the body is Isabelle Mercer’s?” I put the car in drive.
“Yeah,” he said, and rolled his eyes. “I think it’s a pretty good bet.”
“What we have is a woman who disappeared from New Kassel, only to show up sometime after that in Progress. She married Eddie Morgan and joined the family band, which really came into its own about two or three years after that. Then one day, she packed her bags, but she left without them and was never seen again. Her husband said he thought she left to be with her lover. She turns up seventy-something years later, buried under a bridge.”
“And how did you know she was there?”
“I received a letter and a recording of a song. I call it ‘The Blood Ballad.’ In the song, a woman confesses to murdering Belle because Belle was having an affair with this woman’s husband or lover. ‘The beautiful Belle, well, she’s going straight to hell for doin’ to me what she did that day.…’”
Colin made some disgruntled noise and crossed his arms. “Are you okay to drive in this mess?”
“I’ve driven in snow before.”
“Yes, but maybe not quite so distractedly,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“Okay,” he said and held up his hands in surrender. “So, who did the recording come from?”
“It came from a dead man. Clifton Weaver. Who just happened to be the nephew of Eddie Morgan, Belle’s husband.”
“So, Clifton came upon this recording and, like you, thought it solved the long-lost mystery of what happened to his aunt Belle.”
I nodded. “I’m hungry.”
“Me, too,” he said. Like I thought he would argue. One thing is for certain, Colin has a healthy appetite. “But right after he gets the recording to you, he ends up dead.”
“Right.”
“So somebody else knew about the recording. And they either didn’t like what it implied or … what?”
“Or he or she wanted to be the one to unveil it to the world.”
“Right, they wanted credit for it. They wanted to blow the lid off of the mysterious disappearance of Belle Morgan. Who would want that?”
“Right now, the only person I can think of would be Glen Morgan.”
“Maybe we should go see him,” Colin said.
I glanced over at him. He thought he’d slipped that “we” in there much more casually than he actually had. I smiled. “No, I’m going to see Johnny Morgan.”
“Who is that?”
“Belle’s son. He lives in Imperial.”
“He’s still alive?”
I shrugged. “He’d be about seventy-five. It’s a chance I’m willing to take. His address is right there on that sticky note. If he doesn’t live there anymore, all it will have cost me is a trip in the snow.”
* * *
Colin and I got off of Highway 55 at the Imperial exit and made a left back across the highway. Imperial is just south of Arnold, which is just south of St. Louis County. It’s one of those places that has really built up in recent years, but when I was a kid, it was just a main street with a few houses and businesses scattered along it. It butted up to Barnhart. Both were home to some pretty rolling hills and brand-new subdivisions. Johnny Morgan did not live in one of the new subdivisions. Instead, he lived in an older ranch-style home, sitting on a slight hill. Behind the house were lots of empty trellises, which would have been covered with flowers were it not for the fact that it was December.
“So, you got your Christmas shopping done?” Colin asked.
I rolled my eyes. “No. I’ve got two Bionicles for Matthew and a padlock for Rachel.”
“Padlock?”
“Something to keep Mary out of her room. Believe me, she’ll be thrilled with it. Otherwise, I’ve gotten nothing done. What’s on your list?” I asked.
“What I want for Christmas, nobody can buy,” he said.
Melancholy is not a word I would usually associate with Colin, but he did seem to be a bit more … introspective than usual. He really was very unhappy as mayor. “Well, I’ve got ideas for everybody else,” I said as I pulled into Johnny Morgan’s driveway. “Just haven’t been able to go out and actually get any of it. My sister’s, I’m going to have to make.”
He chuckled.
“What?”
“You? Make something?”
“Hey, you know, I’m not as useless as you think,” I said. “I can make stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Well, like, things,” I said. I turned off the car. “Let me do the talking.”
“Right,” he said. We got out of the car and I took a deep breath, drinking in the smell of snow. I really wished I could bottle that smell to save for hot humid days. Looking out at the big flakes fallin
g lazily on the house and trees in front of me, a hot humid day was a faded memory. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn those days would never come again. But they would.
I knocked on the door, and an elderly woman answered. “Hello, I hate to bother you,” I said. “My name is Torie O’Shea, and I’m a historian. I live just down in New Kassel. I was wondering if I could speak with Johnny Morgan.”
She gave me a quizzical look. “Why?”
I gave a heavy sigh and glanced at Colin. “I’d like to ask him some questions about his mother.”
“He doesn’t really remember her,” the woman said.
She’d started to shut the door, but I thought to play my only trick that might actually get me in the door. I had a feeling that Johnny Morgan had been named after my grandfather, John Robert Keith. Quickly, I said, “I’m the granddaughter of Johnny Keith.”
Then I heard a voice from somewhere in the house say, “Let her in.”
The old woman fixed a serious stare on me. “He’s not well. Do not upset him.”
“I’ll try not to,” I said. “This is Colin Brooke. He’s the former sheriff of Granite County and now he’s the mayor of New Kassel.”
“How do you do,” Colin said, and nodded his head at her. At one time, he would have tipped his sheriff’s hat, and unless I was imagining things, it seemed as though he almost reached up to tip it now. Colin was giving me room to lead without any fuss, though. Guess he was just happy to ride along.
Johnny Morgan, I must admit, looked a lot like his grandfather Scott Morgan and held himself with a certain authority. He might not have been well, but you wouldn’t have known it by looking at him. His shoulders were wide and straight, no humps anywhere, and he didn’t shuffle when he walked. He was tan and blue-eyed, and he looked as if he’d just come in off the golf course.
As we entered his living room, Johnny Morgan gave a winning smile and gestured toward his wife. “You have to excuse my wife,” he said as she walked into the other room to leave us alone. “She’s a bit protective. What can I do for you? You’re Johnny Keith’s granddaughter?”
The Blood Ballad Page 15