Fact or Fiction_A Sam Prichard Mystery

by David Archer

  “Guess who,” he said, and then he let out a yelp. Indie had reached up and grabbed both of his thumbs and twisted them backward.

  “Guess who’s going to get broken thumbs if he ever tries that again,” Indie hissed at him. “Sam, you know I don’t like to be startled like that.”

  Despite the mild pain in his thumbs, Sam was laughing. “Okay, okay,” he said, “I’ll make sure I never forget that again. I just wanted to surprise you all.” He spotted an empty chair nearby and dragged it over beside his wife. “So, this is how you spend your time while I’m out working?”

  “Working vacation, remember?” Indie said. “That means you work, and we take a vacation.”

  “You did say that, Samuel,” his mother said. “I heard you say it, so don’t try to back out of it now.”

  “I’m not backing out of anything. Actually, I’m glad you guys are having fun.” He saw Kenzie and two other little girls, all of them wearing what Indie called “floaties” as they played together in the shallow end. “Kenzie sure seems to be.”

  Indie nodded and smiled. “Those two little girls spotted her when we came out and came running over to ask her to play with them. She got so excited she almost forgot we were with her, but then she remembered. They’ve been having a blast, and we’ve been soaking up some sun.”

  “So I see. That’s fine—I really am glad you’re having fun. Meanwhile, I’ve been gathering up some information.”

  Kim leaned forward so that she could look closely at Sam. “Did you find out anything about Beauregard’s family? About where they might be now, I mean?”

  “Well, I got to speak with his great-great-great-granddaughter a bit ago,” Sam said. “Let me tell you something—that is one bitter old lady. She’s probably in her mid to late eighties, and she has hated her one and only sister for more than sixty years.”

  “Well, don’t stop there, give us details,” Grace said. “We’re women, Samuel, we need details.”

  “I’ll give you what I’ve got,” Sam said. “Apparently, Judith—that’s the one I met today—was engaged to be married back around 1937, but her fiancé apparently seduced her sister, Millicent. Millie got pregnant, so when it all came out Judith called off the engagement, Millie married the former fiancé, and the two of them moved off somewhere else. I haven’t been able to get any direct information about where they went, but it seems Millie never stopped trying to make peace with her sister. She sent a Christmas card every year until about eight years ago, when they stopped coming. The postmark on the last card was from a tiny little town called Thompsonville, Illinois. I googled it on the way back here—it’s got like six hundred people. I figure somebody there ought to remember Millie, and hopefully we can get a lead on where her kids might have gone.”

  Kim’s face brightened. “She had kids, then?”

  “At least two,” Sam said. “Judith knew of a boy and a girl, but she either couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me their names. I’ll be honest, I’ve seen people filled with hate and anger before, but Judith pretty well took the prize. Can you imagine hating someone in your family for more than six decades?”

  “It’s not that uncommon,” Kim said. “My mother hated her family so much that I don’t even know who my grandparents were. Every time I asked about them, she said we don’t have anything to do with them and she would tell me why when I was old enough to understand, but then she was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease when I was only nine. She was so far gone within a year that it was all I could do to take care of her, and she couldn’t even remember her own family. I never did learn the truth about that.”

  “Didn’t your father know?” Grace asked. “Seems to me he would probably have known who they were, anyway.”

  Kim gave her a sad grin. “He might have known,” she said, “but he never told me, and I don’t think I ever thought to ask him. He started drinking after Mom’s mind went, and he had a bad wreck when I was eleven. He was drunk at the time, so he was charged with vehicular manslaughter and sentenced to prison. When that happened, somebody from the state put my mother in a nursing home, and I was shuffled from one foster home to another and lost track of my dad after my mom died a year later.” She sighed and shook her head. “Of course, then I got pregnant at sixteen, so I was emancipated by the State of Kentucky, and that’s how Indie and I ended up on our own. I tried to find out about my dad a few years later, but he’d already been released by then, and I never found him. He had some health issues, so I assume he passed away.”

  “We did okay, Mom,” Indie said. “For a single mom, I think you did really well. I mean, I turned out pretty good, right?”

  Kim smiled at her daughter. “Yes, you did. I’m just glad you were lucky enough to find a man like Sam so you didn’t have to raise Kenzie all alone. I’ll be honest and tell you there were times I didn’t know how I was going to make it, and if it hadn’t been for Beauregard… He kind of came along just when I needed him most.”

  Sam cocked his head to one side and looked at Kim. “You said the first time you ever heard him was after you moved into that old house in Hazard, Kentucky, right?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Kim said. “I heard this voice tell me to get Indie out of her playpen, and a couple minutes later a big piece of the ceiling fell down. If he hadn’t warned me, she could have been killed. Of course, at the time I thought it was God talking to me, so it took him a few minutes to convince me of who he was. He told me he had died in that house, and that he been waiting there for a long, long time, hoping that someday, somebody would be able to hear him.”

  “Okay, but I’m just curious,” Sam said, “why did he stay in that house all that time? Why didn’t he go out into the world and try to find someone who could hear him?”

  Kim shrugged, with a half smile on her face. “He always said it was because he couldn’t leave the house,” she said, “until he met me. I thought about that, too, wondering if maybe that makes more sense if we think about him as something I dreamed up.”

  Sam shook his head. “That’s not what I’m trying to say,” he said. “I was just curious, that’s all. I mean, I think everybody’s read stories about ghosts that haunted certain places, as if they could never leave them, right? I just wonder why he’s been able to stay with you ever since.”

  “I don’t know. He said that as soon as he knew I could hear him, he was able to stay with me all the time. He doesn’t follow me somewhere; he’s just always with me.”

  “And you tell everyone about him,” Grace said. “Now I understand why you never found a stepfather for Indie. It must be hard to keep a boyfriend when you got a ghost hanging over your shoulder all the time.”

  Kim scowled at her. “Boyfriends were easy to get, and they aren’t that hard to keep,” she said. “That is, assuming you want to keep one. I had several over the years, but you want to know who was the only guy who was always there for me? The only guy who was always keeping an eye on Indie, always helping me do my best to raise her properly? It was Beauregard. I’m not saying I’m in love with him, nothing like that, but he was more dependable than any other man I’ve ever known.” She turned and looked at Sam. “Up until now, anyway.”

  “I could’ve done without a few of your boyfriends,” Indie said. “Remember Mitch? Right after I came back from MIT? He made a pass at me, and you took his word over mine, kicked me and my daughter out. I’m over it, but I just wanted to get my little dig in there, you know?”

  Kim gave her a sly grin. “Actually, do you remember that I kicked him out the same day? Beauregard told me you were telling the truth, Indie, but Mitch could be pretty violent. All I really wanted to do was get you out of the house safely before I lit into him, but you’re the one who wouldn’t talk to me for almost a year after that, remember? And even when I tried to explain, you wouldn’t let me. All you would say was that you forgave me, and to let it go at that, so I did.”

  Indie looked at her for a moment, then bowed her head in acceptance.
“You’re right,” she said. “I never gave you the chance to explain. I’m sorry, Mom.” She raised her head and looked around in the air for a moment. “And, Beauregard, if you’re listening—thanks for the times you helped Mom figure out what to do while I was growing up.”

  Kim chuckled. “He says you’re welcome.”

  4

  When they went out for dinner that evening, Sam took them on a drive past the Chase House on East Main Street and then drove down to Smyrna and showed them the big old house that Judith Wingo occupied. Kim had assured them that Beauregard could see anything she could see, which made Sam start wondering again if the old soldier was some kind of mental construct. A ghost hovering near you shouldn’t be able to see through your eyes, should it? And yet that’s how things seemed to work with Kim and Beauregard.

  They got up the next morning and checked out of the motel, had some breakfast, and then headed for the highway. They passed through Nashville, where they picked up Interstate 24 and followed it up through Kentucky and into Illinois. The whole drive took about four and a half hours, and then they rolled into Thompsonville at just about lunchtime.

  Sam looked around and thought that he should really be able to hear a lonesome harmonica, and maybe see a couple of tumbleweeds blow by. The little town didn’t seem to have much in the way of commerce, though it was rather picturesque. There was a single gas station, a small eatery called Jim’s Fresh Stop, and a number of houses. They were all starting to get a little hungry, so Sam pulled into the Fresh Stop parking lot, and they all went inside.

  “Welcome to Jim’s,” a waitress called out. “Sit wherever you want—be right with you.”

  They sat down at a table, and Sam snagged another chair for Kenzie. The waitress, a girl who looked to be in her late teens or very early twenties, was there a moment later with a tray full of glasses of water. She set one in front of each of them, then passed out menus.

  “I’m Crystal, and I’ll be your waitress today. The special today is a sloppy joe with fries and coleslaw for five ninety-nine,” she said. “We are out of biscuits at the moment, so we can’t do the biscuits and gravy. I think we got everything else, though.”

  All three of the ladies decided the sloppy joe sounded good, but Kenzie and Sam weren’t the type to follow everybody else. Kenzie went for the chicken strips with mac and cheese, but Sam’s choice was the Philly cheesesteak sandwich. He said that if it tasted half as good as it looked in the photo on the menu, it was bound to be the best thing he’d eaten in years.

  “It’ll surprise you,” Crystal said. “It’s Marcy’s own special recipe, though, so I’ll warn you it’s a little spicy.”

  “Spicy is good,” Sam said. “Bring it on. By the way, is Jim here today?”

  “No, I’m afraid not,” Crystal said with a frown. “Jim owns the place, but Marcy runs it. Did you need to talk to him about something? I mean, Marcy is back in the kitchen. She can probably help you with just about anything you might need.”

  “Well, it’s not something I need to speak to Jim about directly,” Sam said. “I was wondering if you might know of a family that lived here for a while, a family named Cameron? Would have been an older couple, Donald and Millie Cameron, but I heard they had a couple of kids who might have grown up here. Ring any bells?”

  Crystal’s eyes went completely blank, and she stared at Sam. “What do you want to know about them for?”

  Sam was surprised at how dead her voice sounded, but he put on a reassuring smile. “Actually, I was hired to try to find them by a distant relative. Do they still live around here?”

  Crystal shrugged. “I’m really not sure,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “Let me see if Marcy knows.”

  She picked up their menus and walked stiffly toward the door that led into the kitchen, then went through it. They could hear some muffled voices coming through the door, and a moment later a short, stout woman walked out of the kitchen and came straight toward their table.

  “Okay,” she said sternly, “just who are you people? Ain’t that family been through enough already?” The obvious surprise on all of their faces seemed to register with Marcy, and the look on her own face softened a bit. “Good Lord,” she said, “you don’t even have a clue, do you?”

  “No, ma’am,” Sam said. “We literally just arrived in town, and our interest in this family is purely beneficial, I assure you.”

  Marcy reached behind her and grabbed another chair, pulled it over close, and sat down. “Just about everybody around here knew Donald and Millie Cameron,” she said, “and most of us knew their kids, those of us what’s over thirty years old, anyway. Ross and Debbie, that’s their names, if it matters. Donald died about ten years back, heart attack. You honestly don’t know what happened to Millie?”

  “Oh, my God,” Indie said, looking at her phone. “Sam, we should have googled before we came. Millie Cameron was murdered eight years ago, beaten to death in her own home. Her son, Ross, was arrested and convicted of it, even though this particular story says the evidence was only circumstantial. He was sentenced to life in prison. His sister, Debbie, has been trying to prove his innocence ever since.”

  Marcy had been watching Indie, but now she turned her eyes back to Sam. “So, what’s your deal? Are you another reporter, trying to make your name on this ugly story?”

  Sam reached into his pocket and produced his business card and ID. “No, ma’am,” he said. “My name is Sam Prichard, and I’m a licensed private investigator from Denver, Colorado. This is my wife, Indie, my mother, Grace Prichard, Indie’s mother, Kim Perkins, and our daughter, Mackenzie. I was hired by a distant relative to try to locate the Camerons. My client only knew that he had some relations out there but didn’t know who they were, so I’ve had to go back and dig into history a bit. I was hired to find all the descendants of a man named Henry Thomas Beauregard, a Confederate soldier, and that led me to Mrs. Cameron. If she’s dead, then her children and theirs would be the relations he was looking for.”

  “Well, he’ll probably not want anything to do with them after you tell him this,” Marcy said. She had looked at each of them during the introductions, but Sam noticed that her eyes kept returning to his mother-in-law. “Or maybe he’d want to talk to Debbie and her kids. Nobody accused them of doing anything wrong.”

  Sam nodded. “Of course, of course. Would you happen to know where I can find them?”

  Marcy looked at his ID once more, then passed it back to Sam. “I haven’t talked to her in a couple of years,” she said, “but Debbie and me used to be best friends. When this happened, it got so ugly around here for a while that she had to move away, just to protect her own kids. See, Debbie came along late in life for her mother, when Millie was already past forty. Ross, he was already grown by then, but with his problems, he never moved out on his own. When Debbie came along, he was just the big brother she idolized, and she absolutely does not believe he’s guilty.”

  “You mentioned Ross’s problems,” Sam said. “Can I ask what kind of problems you’re referring to?”

  She looked at Sam for a long moment, then let out a sigh. “Ross Cameron is autistic,” she said. “He wasn’t quite like Rain Man—I mean, he could function fairly well around here. He worked for Gary Burgess at his auto shop, and Gary claims Ross was a pretty fair mechanic’s helper, especially in the easy, routine jobs. He had a knack for being able to take something apart and then put it back together perfectly.”

  Sam looked at his wife and his mother-in-law, then turned back to Marcy. “The article my wife found said the evidence against Ross was circumstantial. Do you know much about the case? What kind of evidence they had?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Marcy said. “That’s what made it all so ugly. See, somebody called the sheriff and said they heard Millie screaming, but when the deputies got there, they found Ross sitting in a chair right beside the one his mother’s body was in. Somebody had beat her brains in, and there was blood pretty much everywhere. Well, Ross told the d
eputies that he had been out for a walk and found his mother that way when he came home, but there was blood on his hands, so they arrested him. I don’t know what they did to him after that, but somewhere along the line they got him to confess. He tried to tell the judge the day he was sentenced that he didn’t do it, but the judge said the confession would stand, and that was that.” She shook her head. “They originally sentenced him to death, but then the governor signed a law that made the death penalty illegal, so it was changed to life in prison.”

  “Marcy, can you tell me how to find Debbie? It sounds to me like there may be more to this case, and maybe I can help.”

  Marcy looked at him from under lowered eyelids. “Debbie don’t have any money,” she said. “Why would you want to help?”

  “I’ve been known to take on pro bono work from time to time,” Sam said. “This sounds like it might be a case that would be worthwhile taking on that way.”

  Marcy continued to look at him that way for another moment. “Tell you what,” she said at last. “Let me think about this while you eat your lunch. Just promise me that if I tell you how to find her, you’re not going to make her life even worse than it already is. Can you promise me that?”

  “To be perfectly honest,” Sam said, “no, ma’am, I can’t promise you that. All I can promise you is that my client only wants to try to help her. I’m curious, though—you said Debbie doesn’t believe Ross is guilty, but what do you think?”

  Marcy glanced around, as if to reassure herself that there was no one else in the establishment who might be listening. “Debbie doesn’t believe he did it because—well, there’s rumors that there was some kind of curse on that family, and Debbie is the one who always insisted it wasn’t true. But since you asked me, I’ll tell you the truth. No, I don’t think he did it. I think he was set up to take the fall for it, but I don’t believe he would ever really have hurt his mama, no matter what anyone says.”