Death in Living Gray

by John Clayton

  Henry glanced back over his shoulder and shouted, “Thanks a lot. Just let me tack this one last piece in place and then you can let go.” Talk about obsessions.

  As I held Henry, I explained over my shoulder to Peter about building scaffolding for a twelve-foot-high model of the steeple in a sixteen-foot-high barn. And then, as Henry was getting down, I introduced Peter as a painter working as an insurance adjuster. Henry turned to hold out his hand, and his expression went funny. I followed his eyes to see Peter sitting on the floor, next to the door, snapping pictures of our earlier steeple, which was now standing over at the side of the barn. He waved and asked, “May I?”

  “He’s going to give some pictures of my work to his mother who runs a gallery in Washington,” I explained. “Maybe he can get me a show. With appropriate credit to Henry Adams, of course.”

  After finishing the shots from the floor, Peter climbed halfway up the ladder that Stuart had just vacated, to get some pictures from above.

  Stuart, Henry, and I stood in the open doorway with the rain blowing at our backs as Peter snapped away, putting the developing film on any handy ledge.

  “You know about Bottom’s Ford?” Henry asked.

  “No. What?” I asked.

  “Gonna flood,” Stuart said, as he turned away from watching Peter.

  “Sheriff Overhouse sent Weevil and all the boys from Jezebel’s out to fill burlap bags with sand in case the river starts up Main Street,” Henry added.

  “I thought the rain was going to stop tonight,” I said.

  “It’s supposed to,” Henry agreed, “but there may be enough water to overflow the banks there. Bottom’s Ford is the only populated place they’re worrying about. The deer have enough sense to go inland, I guess.”

  ***

  Peter bounded down from the ladder, shook hands with both Henry and Stuart, and looked back at the steeple. “Now that’s something!”

  “That’s what we pay her for,” Henry said. But he smiled. Even the local blacksmith was not immune to praise.

  “The misdirection,” Peter enthused. “The juxtaposition of discordant themes as the eye moves to a conclusion but ends instead in queasy acquiescence to some cosmic joke.”

  “It’s not a joke, it’s for the church,” Henry said, sweat and rain rolling down his forehead.

  “A neo-gothic Black African steeple to impress a bunch of commuter technocrats isn’t a cosmic joke?” Peter countered with his boyish grin. “Perhaps, then, it’s a reincarnation of the Earth Mother reaching toward the sky, yet insecure in her waning power, slowly being forgotten by the unbelieving masses.”

  Henry nodded in acquiescence though you could see he didn’t really agree. This Henry Adams didn’t see Earth Mothers in the Christian scheme of things, but he also didn’t offend guests.

  Stuart was more forthright in his response, as he looked through the door up at the heavens. “God killed the sinners with a flood,” he said. It was the longest sentence I’d ever heard from him.

  ***

  I left the replacement drive shaft with Henry and drove Peter Torgesen back to his Toyota. And we didn’t stop. I looked at the road down to the disused rock quarry where the kids used to make out, then thought about Old Oilhead’s house since I still had the key, and then about one of Fanny’s guest rooms, and then about Victoria’s bed since she was out playing bridge. And then, I couldn’t help it: I started giggling as we pulled in the yard next to the tenant house.

  Peter fortunately didn’t ask what was amusing me. As he got out of my car, he took my hand and gave me another one of his big smiles, saying he’d be back in a week or so to do more investigating.

  “You’re not going to stay for the Confederate Ball tomorrow night?” It just popped out before I could stop the reel of Peter images, but at least the giggling had subsided. Besides, it wasn’t really an invitation. It was more of a suggestion of an invitation—one that I only halfway wanted to get back, in spite of feeling, for the moment, like a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.

  Fortunately, my mixed emotions were overtaken by circumstances. Peter gave my hand a little squeeze and explained that he had already committed to other activities, but that he was looking forward to our next encounter. By that time, he would be able to tell me what his mother thought about a show.

  Chapter 10

  Things were looking up again. An exhibition in Washington would be nice, although I wasn’t sure what that would entail: shipping a few pieces to the gallery, or cheaper, driving them myself. At least Jack Senior would be respectable at an opening. That is, if I invited him. And Jack Junior could come. And Victoria and Fanny. And my mother from California to play the piano. And my father from Big Sur—why not—I could have included a postmodern statue of MEN using Peter for the model. Ha. Dreams, but the edge of the last few days was blunted a bit.

  Early, before the rain had subsided, Jack Senior had left—as quietly as one can leave on a tractor. I was sitting at the kitchen table, watching the sun begin to break through the clouds in the east. The local radio station had sandwiched between Loretta Lynn and Ernest Tubb the news that the Salt Lick wouldn’t overflow the banks. Bottom’s Ford had been saved without human intervention. The forecast was for continued clearing. Good for the Confederate Ball tonight. No sense in not going—after all, I wasn’t proven guilty, and from what Peter had said, there were still questions to be answered.

  And I’d never have broken into the safe the way it was done. I’d practiced enough to know that a few straight cuts were the fastest way. It looked like somebody had damaged it like that to warn Pickerill about something. Some of the gossip about his origins pointed to mob connections. I’d read in the newspapers that they did that sort of thing. The sheriff had been so busy thinking that I had done the job, that he hadn’t had time to give Pickerill a hard look. Which left it up to me. I refilled my coffee cup and sat down again to plan my next move.

  ***

  Which was to call Fanny and Henry for a get-together at Jezebel’s.

  As I was finishing the calls, I could see, through the screen door, Jack Senior coming up the driveway on the old tractor, waving at a couple of cars that were passing in the newly bouncing sunlight. I was about to start getting my clothes together for the ball when Victoria strode in, asking if I’d heard anything from Jack Junior about the dead soldier. I explained that last Wednesday he had promised to call if he found out anything at the archives in Washington, but he hadn’t—so he must not have found anything. I figured Jack Senior could deal with his mother, since he was almost to the kitchen and he always somehow managed.

  But she was so wound up that he wasn’t quite up to the back door, when she exclaimed. “I called the state archives people in Richmond and they said they had several thousand Confederate soldiers missing in this area. I declare, I just don’t know why we pay our tax money for a bunch of people there in Richmond who’ve lost thousands of people. And they don’t even seem to care that they’re missing. If Uncle George Ebenton were alive today, he’d not tolerate such behavior.”

  Jack Senior closed the door softly and took off his old army poncho.

  “Now, Mother,” he said patiently, “what do you think he would do? Secede from the state of Virginia?”

  “Well, we seceded once, Jack, and don’t you forget it. We can do it again if need be. I even tried Mary Beth Calhoun over at the Mason County Library, but all they had was stuff about Chancellorsville, like we never did anything here in Mason County. Why, Uncle George Ebenton got that wound in his leg right here, protecting Jackson’s flank. If he‘d been hurt worse, he wouldn’t have had to go back in time for Gettysburg and we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “He would have had his own kids and you wouldn’t have inherited the manor,” Jack explained for the umpteen-thousandth time.

  “Maybe I would have been his great-granddaughter anyway,” Victoria declared.

  Even Jack Senior couldn’t reason with logic like that. At the collapse of the
discussion (called an argument in some circles not directly connected with Southern chivalry), they both looked so at loose ends that I volunteered to try to get Jack Junior on the phone before he left for Colorado. Maybe he had made some small progress at the archives.

  ***

  We all gathered around our antique scratchy speakerphone as Jack Junior answered at his apartment. I hadn’t been planning to let Jack Senior hear about my possible foray into Washington, but I couldn’t help mentioning it.

  “I may be up there for a show of my tractor sofas soon,” I opened.

  Jack Junior has the kind of personality that makes even his mother want his approval. Maybe it was because he was so sure of his own capabilities that he never had any inclination to diminish others.

  “In Washington at Torgesen’s gallery,” I went on.

  “I know it. Used to go to the openings when I dated that little art major from GW University. Or was she the foreign relations expert from Georgetown? Anyway, congratulations!”

  “Peter Torgesen, her son, says that my art is quintessential postmodern, a massive misdirection, a cosmic joke, a protracted detour through Hell,” I said.

  “Oh, that’s what they all say when nobody understands it but they got a fifty thousand price tag attached,” Jack Junior did his laugh, which meant he was telling you the truth as he saw it, but even if it was negative, it didn’t matter because all was well anyway.

  Jack Senior was appearing to ignore the conversation as he poured himself a cup of coffee over at the sink, but Victoria always had a word. “Now, you can just send your mother a nice computer so she can sell her junk over the Internet, just like Ruby Dixon’s cousin does with that soap she makes out in the barn behind her house over on the road to Bottom’s Ford.”

  “Next time I’m down, Grandma, and I’ll teach you how to use it, so you can show Mom.” You could feel the smile. “And no, I didn’t find anything definite about missing Confederates at the archives. It takes a while to get the hang of their system. I’ll go over there again when I get back. “

  “It’s such a shame, that poor soldier being locked up in the fireplace all these years,” Victoria lamented.

  “Yeah,” Jack Junior replied. “Dust him off a bit and take him to the Confederate Ball tonight. That should cheer him up.” He switched gears, “Did you check with all our other relatives yet?”

  At the question, Jack Senior came up to the phone and dropped his voice a couple of tones. “I was going to tell you about that, son. There’s a relative in Cleveland that I saw once before, an eighty-five-year-old curmudgeon named Richard Clarke, who won’t talk on the phone. Maybe I didn’t ask the right questions the first time, so I may go back and try again. You got any extra frequent flyer miles?”

  “Sorry, Dad, they’re all going toward this trip—which is scheduled to leave in forty-five minutes, and I can hear Billy’s car honking in the street right now. I’ll try again, Grandma, really I will. When I get home.”

  “Have fun. And behave yourself,” I called.

  “A contradiction in terms worthy of a budding postmodern artist,” Jack Junior closed out as the phone went dead.

  I wondered if Jack Senior had figured out a way to convert frequent flyer miles into spending money for a trip to Baltimore.

  “If you want to do some more research,” I asked, “how come you’re not down at Jezebel’s, finding out if one of the locals is missing a link?”

  He just shrugged, as he walked from the kitchen, “The River Bend Restaurant fell into the Salt Lick River last night. Its supports gave way and the whole thing, except for that little front alcove with the piano, is well on its way to the Chesapeake Bay by now.”

  ***

  Since Jezebel’s was now dead and gone, I called around my support group again, so that we could pick a new place to meet. We decided on Jerry’s Jukebox, over near the highway. Jerry Spitz had three places in mid-Virginia—I guess that makes a chain. All plastic reproduction Art Deco, which stuck out like a sore thumb in Mason County, because nobody in the 1920s, the real Art Deco period, had any money for such things—except for the movie theater over on Main Street, and that had been part of a Yankee chain. It had been closed for twenty years. They tried a flea market for a while, but that didn’t work so it was just sitting there with the concrete-patterned front crumbling off onto the equally ragged sidewalk.

  But Art Deco was back even where it wasn’t before, providing a 1990s excuse for Jerry’s. They served old-fashioned hamburgers and original sixties music, although what that has to do with Art Deco, I never could figure out. The restaurant got mostly kids and a few commuters. It wasn’t doing real well, so they put a shiny, stainless steel bar in the basement for the over-twenty-one crowd.

  As I pulled into the parking lot, I found it already crowded with trucks belonging to Jezebel’s regulars, Weevil Tuttle’s police pickup prominent among them. It was still loaded to about two feet over the back sides with already filled sandbags. Probably they’d have been there until the same time the next year unless they were needed for a flood in the meantime.

  Inside the Jukebox was Jezebel herself, sitting, for a change, on the customer side of the bar and surrounded by her regulars. They seemed to be intent on drowning their sorrows in forced laughter and camaraderie. Hank Cooper was trying to cheer them up with his usual shenanigans, but it didn’t seem to be working.

  I waved in their general direction as I slid into a corner booth to wait for Fanny and Henry, and to observe a few moments of silent mourning for the loss of my thresher swings to the random forces of nature—a surprisingly primitive ending for what I now understood to be a postmodern masterpiece.

  Fanny arrived about ten minutes later, just in time to witness Jezebel hop off her bar stool, spin Hank Cooper around, and kick him in the balls. He dropped to his knees, hand cupped to alleviate the pain, but from the look on his face it didn’t do much good. Jezebel drew back her right foot again and kicked him so hard in the stomach that he fell over on his side, looking totally dazed as Jezebel calmly climbed back up on her stool. Whether it was venting her own frustration or just doing what she always wanted to do but couldn’t because at The River Bend she was the proprietress, I couldn’t tell. Apparently, everybody else thought it was an appropriate finale to an overlong ballet. So nobody bothered to do anything about the recumbent Hank, except to put his beer over behind the bar for when he wanted it again.

  Fanny stepped around the body and came over to my booth, followed by a youngish woman in a black bow tie and one of those old-fashioned white soda fountain hats with maroon piping. After Fanny had explained three times that a double bourbon had twice as much whiskey as a single, the young woman went off in the direction of the bar.

  Fanny sighed and asked, “So you think the mob really stole the jewels?”

  “Well, Peter Torgesen said that the box really was all smashed up. If I did it, I certainly wouldn’t have cut it so badly.”

  “Why would the burglar?”

  “As a warning. J. Augustus cheated them and they were making an example of his jewelry box.”

  “Sort of like putting a horse’s head in his bed,” offered Henry, who’d arrived carrying a beer, followed by Stuart, who was carrying a hot chocolate that he must have obtained upstairs.

  I looked to see where the waitress was with Fanny’s drink and found my line of vision blocked by Jack Senior, who was bearing a brandy for himself and Fanny’s double bourbon. As he deposited the drinks on the table, I looked beyond him to the bar. Our waitress was pulling a draft beer while the regular barmaid was hanging onto the swinging kitchen door, with tears running down her cheeks. Jezebel needed to kick a few more of the meatheads. I might have helped her, except that I had some planning to do.

  So I got right on to answering Henry. “They couldn’t put a horse’s head on his pillow, because he doesn’t own any horses and last year he didn’t have the Dobermans.”

  “All he has are those pigs over at his farm
,” Fanny said, “and they really don’t belong to him. It wouldn’t be the same.”

  “You really want to take on the mob?” Henry asked calmly, to emphasize the gravity of the situation.

  “No, but if we can show a mob connection, it’ll get the sheriff off my back,” I said.

  “And why would the mob hide the bracelet in your secret compartment?” Henry asked, this time a little louder.

  “They just wanted to warn J. Augustus that they could do anything they wanted any time they wanted.”

  “Sounds weak,” Fanny said.

  “A little,” I agreed, “but what else makes any sense?” I looked around the table and saw only blank faces.

  “So, I’m going to use the ball tonight as a cover to look through Pickerill’s office,” I said. “Maybe I’ll find something that’ll give the mob connection away.”

  I paused and scanned the faces again, seeing that they were a little less blank so I went on, “I’ll need some help. Fanny can pretend to be waiting at that toilet they give over to the ladies—the one outside the office. That’ll look pretty legitimate, since it’s always busy.”

  “No one’s likely to go to the office during the ball, but if anyone comes down the hall she can warn me to stop searching and we can pretend to be in conversation until they’ve gone. That is, anyone but the Pickerills or Maurice. That will be your job, Henry. If you see them coming, you have to move into the hall before they do and wave at Fanny, so Fanny can give me time to get out of the office.”

  Henry and Fanny both agreed to their parts in the plot, so I turned to Jack Senior. “Would you help look through the files? You understand all that financial mumbo jumbo.”

  He refused, shaking his head firmly. “It’s illegal, immoral, and you probably won’t find anything anyway.” Publicly blandishing his code of ethics—even though he was the one who got disbarred.