Death in Living Gray

by John Clayton

  She walked slowly around the sofa, but didn’t sit down. “I don’t know if you did it, but the judge will be sympathetic dear. You’re one of us now. Not one of the foreigners like Pickerill. Although I don’t know what we’ll do for money if you go away. It’s so hard when you have a wayward husband. If only Uncle George Ebenton hadn’t been killed. He was our wellstone of responsibility. Before my husband, the men in this family were not philanderers.”

  That was more than she’d ever said about the elder Mr. Abernathy. I was surprised, but appreciated that she was in her quiet way baring a little of her soul to share my distress. More than my own mother would do.

  And I knew she was basically right about Jack Senior. He wouldn’t deliberately steal somebody else’s possessions—at least not for his own use—the two hundred dollar gift to my mother being only his facilitation of my duty to give her something.

  It was time to go over to Henry’s and thank him for last night and maybe thank Lucille too if I could do it without being too obvious. Plus I could smash some metal around. I got up and headed toward the van, looking briefly back at Victoria, who was staring vacantly across the field beside the barn.

  But my spinning brain almost ran me into the ditch as I turned out into the road. The Nordic godlet insurance guy was going to do me in, my postmodern art was neither postmodern nor art, my mother thought I was guilty, my mother-in-law was on my side but couldn’t do anything, and the last remaining logical possibility for the theft was my own husband against whose nature it was to blatantly steal anything—even though he was the one who got disbarred for a misplaced trust fund.

  Chapter 13

  Working in Henry Adams’s barn was a way to lose all consciousness—the mantra of look-rearrange-look-again calming my nerves. Besides, we were making progress. The proportions on the steeple were a little wrong for giving the impression of swirling up toward infinity—or at least to the heavenly clouds for the more traditional. So I cut off a few pieces and had Stuart hold them while I welded them back offset a few inches. It took us three times to get one of the pieces right. Of course, even though this model was close to half scale, the final steeple would be constructed from different parts, bigger and more difficult to hold. We’d probably have to hire a couple more people to do it. But this version had to give the right impression. Then we’d all have to trust to our judgment to make the full-sized one work as well.

  Lucille came out with a round of lemonade. And after looking a while suggested moving a piece—which didn’t make any difference to the overall structure—so I said we would when we started up again. She didn’t mention the events of the previous night and I didn’t have the courage to thank her. Letting her participate in the design was my way of evening things up a little.

  After she’d gone back to the house, I walked across to the little book table and looked over Stuart’s shoulder at the book of Gothic cathedrals. That’s when I noticed that he was tossing and catching a piece of flashing metal about a half inch long, ornately molded with a round link at each end. I grabbed it as it came down and laughed like it was a game. Flipping it over, I could snap the back and separate it into two pieces. It looked like the clasp to a necklace. An ornate late-nineteenth-century necklace.

  “It’s pretty. Where did you get it?” I asked, throwing it up so he could catch it and continue his game.

  “Pickerill’s,” he said.

  “Pickerill’s house?” I asked, wondering if Stuart had been lifting things from there all along. We’d never seen him use a cutting torch, but he’d certainly watched us enough to make a stab at it.

  “Ice hole,” he said

  Now that stumped me. “What ice hole?” I asked.

  “Out behind the old farmhouse that Pickerill rents to Sam Hill for his pigs,” Henry said.

  And then I remembered. Ice used to be kept in big covered holes from winter into the late spring, maybe into summer. But with the proliferation of commercial icehouses after the turn of the century, most farmers started to order ice as they needed it. Then by the thirties, most of the farms got electric refrigerators and the ice holes were filled up with refuse. In fact, while he was in high school, Jack Junior had found an entire set of Burma Shave signs in the very hole that Stuart was talking about. I had warned him about snakes, but he said he poked a long pole out in front of him to move things around. If a snake did strike, it would hit the pole. He still had the signs in his office—although I could have sold them for a bundle.

  “When did you find it?” I asked Stuart.

  “Yesterday,” he answered, tossing the clasp back in my direction, continuing the game.

  That’s where they hid the jewels, I thought. The loot that they didn’t hide in my chimney to throw suspicion on me. The ice hole was less than a mile from Pickerill’s big house, but generally there was nobody hanging around Sam Hill’s farm. The thieves could have easily left the jewels there unobserved. They were going to wait until I was in jail and then sell them off one by one. The question was: who were they? The thieves couldn’t have been real farmers because farmers would have known about the natural inquisitiveness of pigs. Suidae of any kind are pretty adept at pulling things apart—as anybody who has even seen a pig husk an ear of corn can tell you. Hell, the pigs probably nosed the jewelry away and ate any paper bag or cardboard box they were in.

  But it was in the same style as some of those in the picture that the sheriff had sent around, although the picture didn’t show all the detail really well.

  On the other hand, a farmer might have given it to his wife a long time ago and it got thrown out by descendants who didn’t care. But if it were a recent addition to the junk pile, the person who put it there probably didn’t worry, because most of the good old stuff had been gone from the ice hole by the time Jack Junior was in high school. Now nobody would have bothered to search there—except Stuart who liked to bicycle around the countryside looking for treasures. But, there was no time to explain all the ramifications to Henry and Stuart. I needed to search the ice hole over at Sam Hill’s farm.

  So I told Henry what had to be done for the steeple, including Lucille’s change, and explained that I had to get groceries for dinner—it served as an excuse to leave abruptly. Then I asked Stuart if I could keep his toy for a day because it was very important to the investigation.

  He shook his head yes—good enough from Stuart.

  ***

  I parked behind a clump of bushes across the road from the old farmhouse. The structure itself was standing intact even if a little rundown, a ghost from another era. It appeared to be locked up tight. Behind the house was a large enclosed area where Sam Hill kept his pigs. As I faced the house, the driveway was over to the right side, running behind the house around to a big gate in the hog lot fence. I went through a rough field following the line of privet hedges down the left side of the yard, opposite to the driveway, picking my way carefully through the brambles and late spring wildflowers.

  As I reached the fenced area, I could see a long, shallow concrete trough that was fed from a well in the backyard of the house. A couple of medium-sized pigs were wallowing in the clean water, seeking respite from the midday heat. In the center of the lot was a big shed where the feeder was located and where the pigs could find shelter from the weather. Old Sam Hill didn’t believe in modern hog parlors. Too confining, he said. Happy pigs make better bacon was his motto.

  I surveyed the area. Sows with their piglets, and medium-sized hogs that were being fattened for market. No boars. Sam Hill kept his one stud over at his main farm so he didn’t have to keep coming over here to settle domestic disputes and repair the fences.

  That was a relief since I would have to cut across part of the enclosed area at the back to get at the ice hole. Boars could be pretty ferocious if they didn’t like you. Sows weren’t nearly as belligerent, although they could still do a lot of damage, especially if they decided to lean up against your leg soliciting a back rub.

  I wor
ked my way around toward the trees that ran along the fence at the back of the lot. That’s where the ice hole was—just inside the fence in the shade of a couple of pretty large oak trees. I used a stick from back in the woods to wedge the two top strands of barbed wire apart. One last survey. No pigs close. And I was through.

  The ice hole was maybe ten feet across. It probably hadn’t been that big at first but the weather and continued going up and down by treasure hunters had worn it back. Until the area had been fenced, a lot of people threw junk in here rather than going all the way to the official dump in the southern part of the county. There was a television set only about thirty years old plopped on top. A couple of smashed cardboard box parts, strewn around the yard near the hole, indicated that some enterprising pig had pushed down into the hole to satisfy its curiosity and dragged then up to open at leisure.

  The junk in the center of the hole was only up to about two feet below the level of the surrounding ground, but there was a lower ring around the edge, sort of like a moat. Along the back side there was a pretty steep path going down. Steep enough that you had to select carefully where you put your foot.

  I’d leave going into the hole for last. First, I started walking around the pit in a spiral, carefully searching the ground for anything that looked like a part of a piece of jewelry. I found nothing. The fragments of the cardboard boxes were muddy and empty. The trampling of pigs’ feet would have punched any small pieces deep into the muck.

  So I headed back to look more closely at the junk pile, surveying the area for interlopers as I went. You could hardly see the road from where I was, and I hoped that the same was true from the other direction. A couple of cars had gone by, but they hadn’t slowed down. I was feeling pretty safe, when I spotted what looked like a brown pickup with the stylized three-bulls-head logo pass on the road. Pickerill’s farm truck, I thought. Thankfully, it didn’t turn into the driveway.

  As I got back to the hole, I looked down at the mud, and then at my jeans. They were dirty already, so that didn’t matter. But there were several reasons to put off going down in the hole without getting help. One, I might need assistance in climbing out. Two, I might need somebody to keep any pigs from joining me while I was down there. Three, I might need a witness to any find that I might make. And lastly, I was chicken to try it alone. The logical person would be Sheriff Overhouse, but he hadn’t been too helpful on my other attempts to prove my innocence. I didn’t want to risk bothering him until I found more evidence. I couldn’t approach Jack Senior in his current state of mind. That left Fanny, assuming that she had recovered from last night.

  ***

  On the way home to call her, I kept my word to Henry and stopped by the grocery store to get groceries. I should have made Jack Senior do it since I was busy and he wasn’t, but in the kitchen he had two left hands, which were totally isolated from his left brain. God only knew what he intended to make on those rare occasions when he tried. That generally left the cooking to Victoria and myself. And Victoria was spending the afternoon playing bridge.

  The supermarket was in a little strip mall about halfway between Mason City and the highway—along with a drugstore, carry-out pizza shop, and two video rental places. I parked and edged toward the front door. Edged, because halfway between the grocery store and the drugstore was Lou Overhouse’s police cruiser. He probably couldn’t prove anything about last night, but I didn’t feel up to any questions.

  I slipped along with my cart, stopping at each corner to look for him in the next aisle. All was clear. Maybe he was in the drugstore after all. As I turned a corner into the produce area, I was confronted by Prissy Goodenough, sporting a linen pants suit with minuscule vertical stripes that did much to minimize her bulk, but not the determined look on her face. Fortunately, she didn’t see me, since the determined look was attendant to systematically bruising each peach on the stand. I suppose she thought the rest of the crime-free citizens of Mason County liked smushed Georgia freestones.

  I swung my cart toward the back of the store to come up a different aisle, only to find that the sheriff was at the cooler in the back corner picking up a six-pack of beer. I couldn’t make it to any of the other aisles before he was on his way to the front passing right next to me.

  As I backed up to the meat counter, ruffling my feathers for the expected confrontation, I was engulfed in a shadow. I’d accidentally hidden behind the giant frame of Spike Bender, today wearing his normal attire of cutoff jeans, open shirt, and sandals. Tied around his neck was a small red bandanna held in place with a silver and black onyx clasp. He smiled down, looked over at the sheriff, and didn’t move. As Lou headed toward the express line in the front, I edged around muttering, “Thanks.”

  He gave a half curtsey and a half bow. “Oh, I’m glad I ran into you. I’ve been meaning to ask, since you’re the closest thing to a resident artist that Mason County has, do you think it would be more appropriate for me to wear real silk stockings with my Confederate Ball outfit?”

  I jumped, trying to think up a funny answer. Spike just laughed and gave me a great big hug without saying anything else. I made it through the checkout line after the sheriff but before Prissy got there. In fact, as I headed out to the van I could see her through the window, still in the produce department. Only, by then, she was squeezing the bananas.

  ***

  I tossed the groceries haphazardly into the refrigerator or onto the kitchen table, depending on the requisite temperature. It was almost six p.m. and would be probably seven by the time we got back to the ice hole. Not a lot of daylight left. After quickly calling Fanny and determining that she was available, I got binoculars, a rope, a little gardening trowel, and my Polaroid camera for the trip back to the ice hole. Pictures could be faked, but still, I’d have a record of where we found anything. That and Fanny’s gentrified presence might convince Sheriff Overhouse to visit the site to see the jewels in situ. Stuart could also explain what he found, but his testimony might be suspect. While he had never been known to tell a lie, he also had never said enough to give his truthfulness a statistically valid test.

  ***

  Fanny and I sped out to the farm in my van. As long as we parked across the road in the bushes, there was no need to use her less-obvious Geo. In the fading daylight I could see a truck in the driveway, pulled back toward the hog lot. Probably Sam Hill checking on his pigs before dark. Or maybe he was the one that had put the jewels in the ice hole in the first place and raising pigs was just a sideline—if there were any jewels in the ice hole. It didn’t matter. Now we’d have to wait until he left before finding out. No doubt he wouldn’t take long since he still had chores at his main farm.

  We skirted the side yard as I had done earlier, lugging the rope, trowel, and binoculars, all the while watching for a human movement among the pigs milling around at the feeder under the shed. If Sam Hill saw us, we could say we were just looking for junk in the ice hole, which we were. But if he were the thief, what would we do then? It became too complicated. We’d stayed back from the fence in the undergrowth so that we couldn’t be seen but that had its disadvantages. Fanny was sneezing from all the pollen. She took a quick nip from her flask and the sneezing instantly stopped. Good, I thought until she spewed out a stream of bourbon and pointed at the back of the house. We’d moved back far enough to see the truck, which was parked halfway into the backyard. I flipped the binoculars up and focused on the three-bulls-head Pickerill logo on the door. Damn.

  We hadn’t wanted undue attention before, but now it became absolutely imperative. So we hunkered down while I scanned the whole yard and pig lot. I found the figure over near the ice hole, leaning down as he searched the same ground that I had gone over before. Pickerill must have seen me from the truck that passed earlier in the afternoon and decided to find out what I was up to. Apparently satisfied with the surface search, the figure moved to the little path down into the hole, started to climb down, looked up at the setting sun, and decided against
it. He circled the pit, pulling an old iron harrow from the near side and dropped it roughly across the path down—not enough to deter a determined investigator but enough to discourage the casual interloper. He turned back toward the house, facing fully in our direction as he did. I pushed the binoculars in front of Fanny. We both oozed at the same time, “The butler did it.” It wasn’t J. Augustus. It was Maurice. Fanny kept the binoculars trained on the shambling figure, but even without them, I could see that he was heading back up toward the truck. We’d be able to pull the harrow away and investigate after he left.

  But he veered off around to the passenger side. Two lithe brown and black blobs appeared on leashes—the Dobermans. Maurice tied one to the back fence near the truck and one over on our side. Both were situated outside the lot so there wouldn’t be a hassle with the hogs, I supposed. A couple of the big sows could probably have made mincemeat of the Dobermans but the dogs would certainly be enough to scare most humans away. Maurice was undoubtedly going to leave them tied to the fence until he could come back the next morning and get the jewels in the daylight. But we were already between the Dobermans and the ice hole. Maybe we could beat him to it without the dogs raising a ruckus.

  But that was not to be. Maurice went up to the back door of the farmhouse, fiddled with a batch of keys, found one that worked, and entered the building. Damn. Double damn. With the dogs to make a noise outside, and him keeping an eye on things from inside, it would be nearly impossible to get to the hole unobserved.

  “After it’s really dark, we’ll come back,” I whispered as we crawled on all fours backward into the overgrown field and started to work our way to our parking place.

  “He’s been having an affair with Cassie and they hid the jewels here until they could make a run for Mexico. Or somewhere.” I hissed as we hopped onto the van.