“Do you think Danny Kehoe did Ethan Campbell in and then stole his identity?”
“I don’t know what to think. All this tells us is that two people stayed in the same hotel in March of nineteen sixty-five.”
“C’mon, Pauline, sweet girl. Ethan Campbell from England inexplicably disappears thirty-four years ago. Ethan Campbell of Chicago dies thirty-four years later and turns out to be not Ethan Campbell after all, but rather a chap named Danny Kehoe. And the two stayed in the same hotel right around the same time the first Ethan disappeared. Seems more than a bit sinister to me.”
Sinister was a mild word, I thought. Creepy was the one that kept flaring up in my mind. Very creepy, I might add. Was there to be no end to Ethan’s ongoing melodrama? “I don’t know what to say, Terrance.”
“I suppose the next logical step would be to find out if a crime was committed.”
“And how might we do that, go to the phone book?”
“No. We ask the police.”
18
Another Unclaimed Body
For the second time in my life I found myself inside a police station, and for the first time, a prison. The small, brick building that housed the Morristown County Sheriff’s office housed the jail as well. It appeared the building had been built some time in the early part of the twentieth century, which made it the youngest thing around. That included the staff, from the crusty bleached blonde named Lou Anne who greeted us to Sheriff Walters himself, who we were lucky enough to catch on his lunch hour.
If the sheriff wasn’t retirement age then he was a few years past it. He was also enormous, his three chins and protruding belly putting him in stiff competition with Desmond Keifer, Ethan’s former building superintendent. But pound for pound, he was Southern hospitality, and he welcomed Terrance and me warmly into his office. The decorating theme was fish, and the walls were covered with pictures of him and other men dangling the cold-blooded creatures from lines alongside several stuffed ones mounted on wooden blocks. A large ashtray on the desk held the remains of a half dozen cheap cigars and the overhead fan circulated the air just enough to make sure all present could smell them.
Terrance explained we were there on behalf of the mother of an Englishman who had possibly disappeared around Morristown in March of sixty-five. Did he have any recollections, Terrance asked, of any odd occurrences around that time? Perhaps a car accident, or a lightning strike. The sheriff lit up cigar number seven and leaned back in his chair, pushing his heavy hat back on his forehead while he released a thoughtful stream of putrefied smoke.
“Sixty-five. Now, that’s a long time ago. A lot’s happened here since. Leave me think a spell. I was a brand new deputy back then…” He sat in ponderous silence. “This is a white man, you say.” I nodded. “No, weren’t any unidentified white men around then. Now if you was talkin’ about a black man, it might be different. I got plenty of nigra John Does there. But a white man in sixty-five? Don’t think so.”
I was strangely relieved there were no dead bodies lurking about. No body meant no crime. With nothing else to ask the sheriff, we stood, eager to beat a hasty retreat from the cheap cigar smoke. He took my hand in his and shook it so fiercely I thought it might come off at the wrist. Then he shook Terrance’s hand in much the same manner except that he didn’t release it.
“What’s that accent you got there anyway? You from England?”
“No, just across the river from it. Little country called Ireland.”
“Ireland, you don’t say. My grandmother came from Ireland. County Kerry.”
“Did she now? Beautiful country, Kerry.”
“She was a wonderful woman,” he mused. “She lived to be near a hundred years old.”
“She didn’t drink sausage grease by any chance?” I couldn’t resist.
He released Terrance’s hand and looked at me oddly. Then thinking he had misunderstood me, he said, “Nah, she drank straight whiskey. Tough old bird. Used to make me Irish soda bread and tell me bedtime stories. My favorite was about St. Patrick driving out the snakes. Ain’t no snakes in Ireland, right son?”
“Sure and that’s the truth, sir.”
“Wish I could say the same for us here. We got lots of swamps in this here Lowcountry and they’s full of snakes, all kinds of them, not to mention gators.” And then the sheriff stopped talking and a look of revelation came across his face. “Now wait a minute. Sixty-five you said? Shoot fire, there was a body found round here, but it wasn’t in sixty-five. Hold on.”
He opened the office door and shouted for his assistant. The same woman who had greeted us scurried into the room. “Lou Anne, these nice people are looking for somebody from England who might have gone and died around here in sixty-five. What year was it that body turned up in Little Scapoose swamp?”
“Why that was 1972, Sheriff. Summer of ’72, if I recall right. Only there wasn’t much left of it, what I remember. Animals had cleaned it up slicker than a whistle. Wasn’t much more than a skeleton.”
“That’s it, all comes back to me now. Them boys from Scapoose County came over here to see if we had any missing persons, but we didn’t have none. Don’t think they ever did find out who it was. If you got a minute, I’ll call over there for you.”
Of course we had a minute and more. We waited while Sheriff Walters speed-dialed a crony in Scapoose. “Yeah, Griff, Bob Walters here. You remember the stiff your daddy found in the swamp near thirty years ago, the one he tried so hard to I.D.?” There was a pause. “Yeah, that’s the one. Did you ever get anything on him? Uh-huh. Well, how’d he die? Wha? Oh, yeah, I got some people here who might have been kin. You did, huh? Yeah, I’ll tell ’em. Sure. Say hey to Maggie for me.” He hung up and looked at us.
“Well, they did find a body but they never did I.D. it. White male about five-six. Forensics never could pinpoint a cause of death; there wasn’t much left. No clear signs of violence like bullet holes or knife scrapes. They labeled the body a John Doe and cremated it.”
“Sheriff, do you think that body could have been in that swamp for seven years without anyone finding it?” I asked.
“Little Scapoose? Sure thing. There’re probably a few more bodies in there we ain’t found yet.”
“I see. I want to thank you once again for all your help, Sheriff.”
“Wasn’t nothin’. Let me know if I can do anything else.”
I wonder if they kept the teeth?” Terrance said as we stepped back into the now sticky South Carolina day.
“Whatever for? Certainly you wouldn’t think of sending them to his mother saying, ‘this is what’s left of your son.’”
“Ah, so you’re thinking that unlucky fellow might have been Ethan Campbell, too?”
“I didn’t say that,” I replied, trying to shake a feeling of gloom that was growing faster than a cancer. “I honestly don’t know what I’m thinking.”
“I’ve got an idea,” he said. He put on a thick Southern accent and swayed his back so that his stomach stuck out. “What say we drahve over to Scapoose and have a talk with Sheriff Griff ourselves? Ma’am?” He opened the car door and held it for me, his stomach still thrust out the entire time. It was difficult not to laugh at his ridiculous posturing. My eyes darted back to the closed doors of the sheriff’s office to assure myself neither the sheriff nor Lou Anne were watching his parody.
“Stop it,” I insisted, unaccustomed to this sort of spontaneous behavior.
“But ah know how to talk to them now,” he said, plucking a long blade of grass from the lawn and sticking it between his teeth.
He swaggered into the car and soon we were back on the road, the wind blowing my hair to pieces again, the ever warming sun searing down upon us. The town of Scapoose was microscopic compared to Morrisville, making its sheriff that much easier to find. The office was on the first block of town, which was also the only block. There wasn’t even a second person in this station, just one uniformed man about twenty years younger than Sheriff Walters an
d about seventy pounds lighter.
“Can I help you folks?”
“Sheriff Griff,” said Terrance, to my horror continuing to speak with his absurd accent. He sounded more like John Wayne than a Southerner. “We was just over in Morristown with Sheriff Walters and we was wonderin’ if we cud ask you a few questions.”
“Where you from, mister?”
“Terrance, stop it,” I upbraided him, turning to the second small-town sheriff we had seen that day. “I believe Sheriff Walters spoke with you a little while ago about a body you found in 1972. We were the people making the inquiry.”
“Well, I tole’ Bob ’bout ever’thing I knew about the case. It was a long time ago. People don’t fret over that stuff much more ’n five or ten years ’round here. After that it’s ancient history.”
“We just wondered if you kept anything from the body, clothes or a ring or,” I grimaced as I said it, “teeth.”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid not. Teeth burned with him, wasn’t wearing any jewelry, and far as we can figure, he wasn’t wearing any clothes. None left on him, anyhow.”
“Are you saying he was naked when he went into the swamp?” I asked, digesting his words.
“Can’t say for sure, but looks like it. If they was wearing clothes there’s usually some rags or something left around. Clothes last longer than tissue.”
The shadow of foreboding grew stronger. If the body did belong to British Ethan Campbell and he had met with foul play, why would he have been naked? I thought about my Ethan’s letter to me and his reference to a bad deed. I didn’t want to think about it any further.
There was a small General Store at the end of the block and Terrance pulled the car over in front of it. “Be back in a minute,” he said. He ran inside and reemerged a couple of minutes later carrying a brown paper bag.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A surprise,” he said.
We left the little town and were soon crossing some of the most picturesque countryside we had seen so far. It was wide open and rolling green and there wasn’t a house or another car anywhere in sight. Terrance pulled to the side of the road, beneath the shade of a huge willow tree on a creek. He reached into the back seat and retrieved the brown paper bag.
“Now what are you doing?”
“We’re having a picnic,” he said. He went into the trunk and pulled out a blanket he must have taken from the hotel in Charleston. He walked to the field and waved to me. “C’mon. What’re you waiting for?”
“This has to be someone’s property,” I said, easing nervously out of the car.
“Well, if they catch us on it, we’ll pay rent.”
There was a low wooden fence which Terrance climbed easily. He stood in the open field waving me on. The breeze blew the long tufts of green field grasses, parting them before him in waves like the sea. Standing in the afternoon sunlight, his red hair looked as if it were aglow. In the distance I could see cows grazing.
“Are you coming, Pauline?”
“What about all those cows?”
“They won’t bother you. I promise.”
I walked to the fence and gingerly climbed the rails the same way he had, altogether too aware that my ecru Armani pants and crisp white blouse were not exactly what one would call picnic clothes. Terrance grabbed my hand and began pulling me across the field, following the creek toward a stand of trees. My low heels sunk in the soft dirt of the meadow the entire way. I was laughing and out of breath by the time we reached the trees. He was laughing, too, as he spread the blanket and both of us sank to the ground.
“Pauline, do you know when you laugh you look ten years younger?” he said.
I didn’t know whether to be complimented or insulted, but his comment did serve to do one thing. It wiped the smile right off my face. But he didn’t seem to notice the effect of his words, he was so busy spreading out the contents of the brown paper bag on the blanket. When he had finished I was looking at a jar of peanut butter, a loaf of presliced white bread, some Oscar Meyer bologna, a jar of mustard, two apples, a bunch of green grapes, some Hostess Twinkies, a package of napkins and some plastic silverware. Lastly, he pulled out a six-pack of beer.
“It seems that whenever we are sleuthing around together, we never take the time for lunch. Well, I’m famished.”
He opened the flip-top of a can of beer and offered it to me. Reminded of the beer I had pretended to share with Emily McMahon in Boston, and with my head still aching from the night before, I started to shake my head. Then a wave of spontaneity came upon me, and I accepted the beer from his outstretched hand. I took a sip. It was cold and refreshing and delicious.
We each ate a bologna and a peanut butter sandwich, and I don’t think I have ever enjoyed a meal more. I even enjoyed the beer. That day it tasted better than the liters upon liters of chateau wines I had consumed thus far in my life. If it’s true that a meal tastes better in a small Roman trattoria or a casual Parisian bistro because of the ambience, I can say that the ambience of that field surpassed the best of them. Had someone put a sign and a table in the middle of that meadow, I would have become one of its greatest devotees.
When we finished eating, we lay down on the blanket and stared at the sky through the gaps in the tree branches. The beer had taken the last of my headache away and the earth beneath me was eider-down, enveloping me in its softness. I felt ageless, like all my parts were a part of the earth beneath me. I felt important and vital. We were like children, lying there in the field. He told me about his youth in Ireland, how his father made a living as a sheep shearer and his mother took in laundry, that he had ten siblings and, though, for all intents and purposes, they had been poor, he had never even known it until he grew up and went to the city.
I told him my upbringing was the exact opposite. I had always thought we were rich. I was brought up to wear beautiful clothes, ride horses, and attend the finest schools, and I didn’t learn we were poor until my father wasn’t able to pay my tuition at Foxcroft anymore. I told him how stingy Grandmother had been with Mother and me after Father left because of her disapproval of him. And how Grandmother had actually gained satisfaction when my father drank himself to death during his third marriage, a secret I had never shared with anyone other than Ethan.
“I’ll never forget Father’s funeral. I was fifteen years old and I had to sneak out of the house to attend it because Grandmother forbade it. I sat in the back of the church all alone, and no one knew who I was. I thought I was going to be terribly sad, but when I saw how few people were there and the sort of people, well, in a way it was good for me. It woke me up to who my father had been. He had put himself first and not cared for his wife and daughter and look how he ended up. I walked out of that church and didn’t even cry.”
We talked of kinder things, of sports such as skiing where the Earth’s gravity is the challenger, or the peace of sailing when the boat slips silently through the waves. I was so comfortable that before I knew it my eyes were closing and I fell asleep. In the cool shade of the tree, I dreamed he was lying atop me, pressing himself into me, and I was opening myself up to him. I awakened with a start and realized I was alone. The afternoon was waning and the sun had turned into an orange bulb in the sky, its rays slanting in great gold and red streaks across the field. I looked around and saw Terrance sitting at the edge of the creek, tossing pebbles into it. He had cleaned off the blanket and packed the remains of our picnic lunch back into our brown paper picnic basket.
“Hello,” I called out.
“Sleeping Beauty awakes.” He dropped a handful of pebbles into the water and returned to me where I lay unmoving on the blanket.
“How long did I sleep?” I asked him.
“A couple of hours. You looked so peaceful, I didn’t want to disturb you.”
I stared up at him with eyes that I know communicated everything I was feeling. I would have let him take me there in the middle of that field, mosquitoes and the world be damned. He
smiled his heartbreaking smile and held out his hand.
“C’mon, we best be getting back.”
I left my hat off for the ride back to Charleston. The cool evening air felt damp and sensual and I wondered, yet again, whether I would be spending the night with Terrance. When we got back to the hotel, he asked me if I would like some dinner. We ate at a small Italian restaurant down the block, sharing two different pastas and a bottle of Brunello. Afterward, we took a leisurely walk. My senses were so sharpened that the smell of the spring flowers was almost overwhelming. He put his arm around me, and I rested my head on his shoulder. It felt good to disappear into the security of his body. Nestled beneath his arm, I felt insulated against the outside world.
My blood was aboil as we reached the hotel, every fiber of my body straining toward his physical presence next to me. I longed to bury my head in his chest, to discover if he was nearly as masculine as I wanted him to be. But once again I was to be disappointed. He walked me to my room and keeping his body at a distance from mine, bent to kiss my cheek.
“I had a wonderful day, Pauline,” he said.
While he was still standing there, I unlocked my door and pushed it open. I wanted to grab hold of him and drag him into my room. A rose waiting to be plucked, I stared him down with heavy lidded eyes, a sorry caricature of Marlene Dietrich. “Don’t you want to come in?” I invited.
There was a battle in his face. I could see his body reaching toward me, could feel his face drawing closer, could feel his warm breath on my cheek. I was willing him to come with me, wanting him like I’ve never wanted anything in my life. And then, just when I thought my battle may have been won, the tide turned and he pulled away. My face burned red hot with shame as he shook his head no. “I’ll have to take a rain check. My flight’s impossibly early in the morning. In fact I’ll say good-bye here, because I’ll be gone before you get up.”
My ears couldn’t believe what they were hearing. An early morning flight was his excuse to pass on a night of passion? Having already humiliated myself enough, I let it go. I had made my overture and it had been turned down. I had no intention of further losing face by pleading my case. “Of course,” I muttered. “Good-night then, and good-bye.”
Well Bred and Dead Page 19