Death in Living Gray

by John Clayton

  “Please, Mr. Overhouse, I really do have to run. Maybe you could type it yourself,” Benny Jane wailed.

  The sheriff turned red behind his ears. “You can spend ten minutes right now. And as soon as you’re through, I’m going to claim this office space for the Sheriff’s Department. The supervisors already said I can expand, and we’ll move Mr. Lattimore over to the new building where he can be close to his sister’s office and get his instructions faster.”

  A lump of jelly came flying across the desk as Justin went into a paroxysm of coughing, causing the sheriff to leap around behind it to thump him on the back. The truth was that Justin was always taking off to play golf. If he were over at the new office building where Prissy hung out, she would probably have caught him at it. And then there’d be hell to pay. Actually, his being away golfing didn’t mean much, since everybody always knew where to find him. In fact, it was sort of funny when he conducted the shotgun wedding for Jim Caldwell and Amy Lou Decker out on the fifteenth tee with both their fathers looking on from separate golf carts. But when she gave him this job, Prissy made him promise to do some work, and if she caught him playing hooky, she might dock his salary.

  As soon as he’d stopped wheezing, Justin drew a line through what he had written in his book, and the sheriff nodded to Benny Jane. “Five minutes, and shred the other charge,” he said.

  “Possessing stolen goods requires a five thousand dollar bond,” Justin said.

  Workable, I thought. I turned to Jack—but he was looking away. A couple of thousand in my business account. Victoria could go to the bank and get a loan against the property for the rest, but that might take several days and I’d rot in jail until then.

  Jack Senior looked back at the sheriff. “On her own recognizance?” He didn’t mention high school football this time.

  Sheriff Overhouse looked at Justin and then slowly shook his head.

  “Can I make that call now?” I asked

  The sheriff nodded, so I called Fanny—her house, her office, her cell phone—no reply. So I turned to the sheriff. “I can’t get Fanny Beecham. Can I try somebody else?”

  When he nodded, I called Henry Adams.

  “I don’t have that much cash,” came the response.

  Shit, I thought. Who next?

  “But let me try,” Henry said. “Sit down and relax. I’ll be there in about half an hour.”

  ***

  One dollar bills, tens, a few twenties, and a few quarters. No pennies. Henry, Jack Senior, and I were sitting in the squad room, counting it out. Pastor Beckett had only had about thirty-two hundred in the current bank account since the bulk of the church’s money was invested in derivatives. Henry had gotten three thousand from the bank in a neat stack of one hundred dollar bills. The good pastor had been too busy to deposit the cash part of last Sunday’s offering—and today he was too busy to count it himself, so here we were sorting it out into neat little piles. “You’re supposed to return anything over two thousand dollars,” said Henry. “And remember, after we get you out, you have to sign a receipt for the five thousand as an advance against parts for the steeple that we‘re going to build for the church.”

  Jack Senior winced, but kept on piling up groups of ten dollars. He wanted me out of jail, but he seemed annoyed that that it was Henry who had come through—even if the money was in small denominations. Making Justin recount it was almost worth the trouble. A small recompense. It didn’t really make up for the fact that I’d been wrongfully charged with a crime.

  ***

  Justin had his five thousand, and after signing a few papers guaranteeing not to leave the county without approval and so forth, I was almost free—you can’t be really free, but it was better than being in a cell.

  Sheriff Overhouse was apologetically escorting us to the door to get a ride back home with Henry. And since he couldn’t do anything else unpleasant to me right now, I decided to be pushy. “Did J. Augustus make you ask Mr. Yancy about carrying things out or did Mr. Yancy volunteer the information?”

  The sheriff slowed down, a serious look replacing the apologetic one. “I interviewed Mr. Yancy privately. He said you were pretty good friends and he didn’t think you did it. Therefore, he didn’t feel bad about setting the record straight. He said he was only over at the Pickerill place to make sure you were doing what Mr. Pickerill wanted.”

  That scum. My little success and semi-freedom made me a little bolder at attack. “And while you’ve been wasting time charging me, you haven’t bothered to find out what really happened. I’ll bet you haven’t even checked out Tom Craven, who’s working down on the deMorgan Farm right now. He was here that night.”

  “We checked him out last Saturday. He was working for that lady from Baltimore and stayed at the Bill o’ Rights Motel that night. His car never left the lot, according to the Duggetts.”

  I must have looked pretty miffed, because the sheriff quietly explained, “See, we don’t always tell the Tuttles everything. Except, of course, back when those out-of-state revenuers were interfering with our economy and we had to let ol’ Daddy Tuttle know to lay off for a while.”

  He walked slowly toward the door before turning to face me. “The Sheriff’s Department is quite capable of doing its job without you messing with Weevil. He’s good at what he does and he’s reliable, but he ain’t too bright. Oh, and here’s that name and address for the guy that ripped off the Tuttle sisters.” He took a folded piece of paper from his uniform pocket. “Name of Timothy Morrison in Arlington County, up there near Washington.” He handed me the paper, all neatly typed up. “Weevil got it all screwed up, so I straightened it out.”

  I put the paper in my pocket and thanked the sheriff. As I pointed out before, he really was a nice person. It was just that he wasn’t up to dealing with complicated crimes, especially one where I was innocent of the charges laid against me.

  Jack Senior took my elbow and steered me toward the door that Henry was holding open. After I’d gone through, Jack Senior reached behind to hold the door so that Henry could leave after me. But Henry just bowed Jack Senior through. I watched as Jack Senior insisted on holding the door for Henry. Neither would move until the sheriff took control of the door, shoveled them both out into the parking lot, and called out to me, “I think this is serious enough that you should hire a real lawyer.”

  Henry muttered his agreement, but I called back, “Jack Senior will do for now. Besides, you just got all of my steeple advance money for the bond. There’s nothing left.”

  The sheriff waved dismissal, appearing more relaxed than he had earlier—now that the hard part of his day was over. But Jack Senior looked really pissed.

  Chapter 7

  The first thing I did when I got home was to call and cancel my date with Old Oilhead. Damn him. I finally tracked down Fanny on her cell phone in north county and arranged to meet her around four at Jezebel’s. After I’d cooled down a bit, I decided that life had to go on. So I called Jack Junior at his office in northern Virginia. He was vice president and part owner of a little start-up computer company, working pretty long hours, or so it seemed, because he didn’t get down to Mason County very often and when he did, it was mostly to swap lies with Billy Adams. Normally I tried not to call during business hours, but this was getting messy and I needed to hear a familiar voice that wasn’t involved in the burglary, talking about something other than me going to jail.

  “The missing Confederate soldier?” he asked. “There must be thousands. The Internet wasn’t much help but I put a message on several sites asking if anybody has an unaccounted-for relative who was a lieutenant. Also, I’ll try the national archives later in the week. I’ll call you if I find anything. Got a big system presentation Friday at ten. Then the afternoon off before Billy and I do that rafting trip to Colorado we’ve been planning for six months. I’ll have to put off anything more until I get back. In the meantime, tell Grandma to call Uncle George home from beyond the grave. There are so many missing soldi
ers that that’s what it might take.”

  Jack Junior wasn’t very reverent, but Victoria seemed to like it coming from him. He could say the most outrageous thing and she just grinned—the only time I ever saw her adopt that particular facial expression.

  “And that street address in Arlington you asked about,” he continued. “It’s a semi-slum. A bunch of little old warehouses and auto-body repair shops waiting to be redeveloped. I don’t think there are any retail antique dealers there. You looking to open an outlet for second-life tractors in the big city?”

  I told him not right now, but that when I did, we could put it in the same showroom with his computers and staff it round the clock seven days a week with his girl friends, each on only one two-hour shift per week.

  He said, “Bye, Mom,” and was off the line before I was.

  ***

  So the nice young man named Timothy Morrison had only a small junky warehouse in Arlington. That meant that he was a picker—someone who goes around to auctions, estate sales, and unsuspecting old ladies, buying antiques cheap and then wholesaling them to retailers. Mostly they provide a useful service, supplying dealers who have to stay in their shops rather than get out and buy for themselves. But sometimes they go too far on the cheap side. Like this poor young farmer from Southside Virginia (his putative residence about 200 miles from his actual shop in Arlington). I was going to pay him back for his lies, with the old china cabinet that my refrigerator dolly and I had hoisted into the back of my van.

  About half a mile before the Tuttle place, I slowed down to let old Joshua Larkin hobble on his one crutch across the road from his farmhouse to his mailbox. That gave him enough time to come right up to the door of the van waving his crutch over his head.

  “We pay taxes and what do they do? They only give a man one crutch. Them geezers in Richmond just do what them bureaucrats in Washington tell them to do. Giving a sick man just one crutch after I went off and fit for ’em back in ’44. Just don’t seem right, do it?”

  I agreed that it didn’t seem right, but that was all I got out, because Joshua was already hobbling across the road again. But by the time I got the truck in gear, he’d pulled a bunch of fliers out of the box and turned to touch his fingers to the bill of his Caterpillar cap—a motion that separates the locals from the commuters, since it’s almost impossible for a foreigner to learn to do it right.

  ***

  Tattie helped me unload the china cabinet and trundle it on the dolly up onto the front porch, all the while under the watchful supervision of Double X, his tail coming uncomfortably close to being rolled over by a wheel. I’d brought my equipment along to make the fake right here. After our trip to the Sheriff’s Department, Jack Senior had gone back to working on something in my shop/barn and I didn’t want to deal with him right then.

  To pass time as we huffed and puffed, I said it was a shame about old Joshua across the street getting no help for his war wound.

  “Oh, that waren’t no war wound,” said Tillie, who was helping Double X supervise. “That was a logging accident mangled one foot about ten years ago. He’s been on disability ever since.”

  “But if he needs two crutches somebody should give him two,” I said.

  “He’s got two crutches,” Tattie said, as we eased the breakfront down in place.

  “Uses one, one day,” Tillie said.

  “And the other the next,” Tattie completed, before adding, “to save wear and tear.”

  “He just sees all that griping on TV and thinks he got to join in,” Tillie explained. “Got to get with the times and complain about everything, that’s what he says. Be a modern person.”

  “Good neighbor, though, gimpy leg and all,” Tattie said.

  “You should ‘a married him when Daddy died,” Tillie said, looking sidewise at Tattie.

  “What I want with a scrawny old man?”

  “Been sweet on him for 70 years.” Tillie now turned in my direction. “Cept’n Daddy needed us to keep the house after Momma died.”

  Tattie blushed. “If I’d of done that, you’d of already had to move to the Baptist home.”

  “You’d of just been across the street.”

  “If I was married, I wouldn’t have time to be looking after you.” Tattie’s tone was stern, but there was a faint little sparkle in her eye.

  I had taken out the wooden plugs that covered the screws holding the left bottom side rail in place and removed the screws. I wedged the two legs apart a little. Just enough for me to be able to take the original board out and fit another old piece of lumber in its place. It was too big in one area, so I took it out, planed it off, and tried again. Perfect.

  I took it out again and, using a burning iron, traced out the Gustav Stickley shopmark that I had copied from a book. Then I filled it in with red ink so that it almost looked authentic and carefully reinserted the board, screwing it in, and reinserting the plugs.

  By then, Tillie and Tattie had stopped bickering about Josh Larkin, and along with Double X, were watching what I was doing. So I explained, “I put a real-looking Gustav Stickley logo on the inside of the bottom board. Around 1900, Gustav Stickley was a famous manufacturer of mission-style furniture that is worth a lot today. I don’t think he made many china cabinets.” In which case, I thought, I would certainly be adding to the number of known examples.

  “This will be a real find,” I added. “You should be able to get a thousand dollars easy. (Since it would retail for over well over five thousand, but I didn’t see the point of confusing the sisters by explaining all that. Besides, they might try to get the entire five thousand dollars, and since it was really only worth about fifty dollars without the forged logo, complications could arise—like me being accused of selling fake antiques.)

  I then explained that after he had seen the piece, they’d have to delay his picking it up until the next day so that I could come back and replace the original piece.

  Tillie picked up the board I had just removed, “Why didn’t you just mark this one and put the new one in before he comes to get it? Would ‘a saved some time.”

  And it would have. I had to think a minute, while I was putting the screws and plugs back in. “Aesthetics,” I finally said. “He’s going to write on the sales slip that he bought a beat-up old china cabinet from you, and that’s what he’s going to get. But, my art demands that it be the original beat-up old china cabinet. Not a conglomeration of foolery. You need that to sell it, but by damn, he’s going to get what he puts on the receipt.”

  I guess I got a little carried away, because Tillie was bouncing on her toes, saying “Oh, goodie,” while Double X was yapping as he chased his tail.

  Tattie brought us back to no-nonsense earth by asking, “How do we get him to come?”

  “Call him up,” I said. “Tell the truth. That you wrote down his number because you were afraid that one of you might die before he got back up this way again and you didn’t want to let him miss getting the sofa. The surviving one couldn‘t carry it to the Baptist home.”

  I let that sink in before explaining more. “Then, tell him that a second cousin died and you inherited a whole bunch of stuff, so that there’s no room to walk in the house.”

  I ran down to the truck and pulled out a 1960s walnut veneer on fiberboard bookcase/cabinet combination. It was so flimsy that I could lift it over my head, as I carried it up and deposited it where the old milk paint cupboard had been. “Tell him you want to use this in the front hall because it takes less space but you’d like to sell the china cabinet along with the sofa.”

  “But what would we sit on if we sell the sofa?” Tillie asked.

  “Don’t worry, he won’t buy the sofa,” I assured her. “But when he tries to get the china cabinet, tell him you want two thousand dollars.

  “He’ll say no way, but when he sees the logo he’ll buy. Let him haggle down to one thousand dollars before you agree, but then tell him you have to call over to the Baptist Home to Cousin Doris who
inherited a third. You’ve got to see if the price is all right with her. Make a fake call from inside the house and then come back and tell him you can’t get her until later. Tell him to come back in the morning with the money. That’ll give me time to get here and switch the original board back.

  Tillie was again bouncing around again, redoing the, “Oh, goodie,” but Tattie once more brought us down to earth. “What if he’s not fooled?”

  “That’s possible,” I said, remembering that Gustav Stickley used real wooden pegs rather than screws covered with plugs. I reached in my tool kit and pulled out a jar of axle grease mixed with red Virginia clay. After I’d worked them over a bit, you could hardly see the plugs. “This dirt should keep him from checking too closely, especially after he’s seen the logo. Lots of people think those are an absolute guarantee.” But I didn’t want them to expect too much, especially since Gustav Stickley mostly used solid planks with external mortise and tenon construction, rather than panels with stiles and rails like this one. So I added, “On the other hand, don’t get your hopes up too high. Young Timothy is a professional. He might not bite.” The sisters looked a little downcast so I ameliorated, “But then he might—so let’s try.”

  I trundled the dolly back to my truck and scratched Double X behind the ears after he’d supervised the reloading. Waving goodbye to the Tuttle sisters, I hopped in behind the wheel and headed to meet Fanny at Jezebel’s.

  ***

  About half a mile from my destination, there was a traffic backup with cars moving forward at about fifteen miles per hour. I didn’t worry about it, since Fanny would undoubtedly be late, as usual, and the weather was still holding out bright and sunny—although they were predicting several days of rain starting that night. As I got closer, I could see that the jam was being caused by a tractor blocking part of one lane even though the right wheel was almost in the ditch. In fact, it was one of my tractors, which until today had been in my barn waiting to be reborn as furniture. I hadn’t thought it would run.