Death in Living Gray

by John Clayton

  First thing in the morning, Henry had given us a ride out to get the vehicles: Old Oilhead’s car, my van, and Jack Senior’s tractor. Old Oilhead was taking Fanny to the noon Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I didn’t know he went to AA, but then it turned out he didn’t. For fifteen years he’d been going to Al-Anon, the group for relatives of alcoholics, on the strength of his father having had two Manhattans before dinner every night. My guess was that he really went to meet disgruntled wives and daughters. At least he knew the ropes and managed to get Fanny to go with him—which partially absolved him from blame on the other counts.

  Jack Senior was easing around gently, neither of us mentioning our little squabbles. In fact, I was pretty satisfied with the way he had clobbered Old Oilhead, even if he hadn’t known about our affair. But then maybe he had known. Sometimes it was hard to read Southern gentlemen.

  I was resting quietly on the sofa in the living room when there was a tentative knocking at the door. Victoria got there from upstairs before anyone else could move. Sheriff Overhouse, red-faced, hat in hand, was quietly asking if I was up—and then came in before Victoria could invite him.

  “I just wanted to make it clear for the record that you’re fully exonerated,” he said. “’Course we all knew that you didn’t do it. It was just a matter of time before the real culprit turned up.”

  Jack Senior answered for me. “We appreciate your kindness,” he said, and started to usher him back toward the door.

  But the sheriff held back “Don’t you even want to know what happened?”

  So, out of perverse concern that I didn’t really feel right then, I motioned him toward a chair.

  “They caught the Pickerills close to Nashville, on their way to Mexico. It’ll take a while to get them extradited but we can wait.” The sheriff grunted and wiggled in the chair. “Mr. Pickerill was broke. The funny thing is that all the stories about him were almost right. Only it was his daddy who had made his fortune selling sauerkraut in New York. The old man sent J. Augustus III to Yale. But the young man didn’t have his father’s business sense and managed to lose his inheritance playing the stock market. He borrowed some money from the mob and then had to sell the jewels to keep his health. He’d been selling them, piece by piece, for over two years, replacing the real ones with paste as they went. Then Cassie decided that they could also collect on the insurance by reporting the jewels as having been stolen. They threw the paste replacements in the bottom of the old ice hole, not knowing about the curiosity of the hogs. This morning, the state police found a few more pieces down in the bottom, somewhat trampled by pig feet.”

  “Which is what I had expected,” I said, neglecting to include that I had counted on finding the real jewels.

  Jack Senior interrupted my self-congratulation by asking from across the room, “Cassie was the brains?”

  Sheriff Overhouse turned slightly in that direction, “Cassie didn’t know he was incompetent in money matters when she married him, but when she found out she seems to have been the moving force behind the scam.”

  “And they tried to blame me,” I filled in.

  “Not right at first. They just faked the burglary, but the insurance company held up payment because they always balk at paying out that much money. The company insisted on trying to recover the jewels first. But, of course, by then there wasn’t much to recover. As there was one bracelet that hadn’t been sold, the Pickerills planted it in your secret compartment.”

  “How did they manage that?” Jack Senior asked.

  I answered before the sheriff could. “They were over here several times when we were negotiating the deal for the furniture in their rec room. If they had seen the book showing where the secret compartment was, it would have been easy. They probably did it before we rented to the Taylors. We never locked the house. If anyone had interrupted, they could have said they were just looking for me to ask about more furniture for the rec room.”

  “But that brings up another question,” I added. “How were they going to get anybody to look in the compartment? It was an accident that we found them.”

  “That’s where fate intervened. You remember the anonymous call about you stealing the jewels?”

  I was not really up for memories of my ordeal, but I sucked in my gut and nodded yes.

  “Well, about the same time, somebody left the book on Mason County houses at the police station along with a note explaining where to look. Now we assume it was the Pickerills. But then, we hadn’t told the deputies to look for a book. So Weevil just put them both in the drawer of the desk out by the front door and forgot about it. He found the book last week and gave it to Stuart to return to the library. I didn’t find the note until this morning when I had to get out the extra handcuffs for a fracas over at Jerry’s Jukebox between the bunch that had known all along that Mr. Pickerill had done it and the bunch that hadn’t.”

  The sheriff lowered his eyes and voice. “You know how Weevil is.”

  Jack Senior lowered his own eyes in hospitable sympathy, and then bounced them up to looked straight at the sheriff, “But how did you find out all the rest of it? The Pickerills are in Tennessee.”

  “Maurice—actually he’s Morris Farbovich from Brooklyn—is spilling his guts. He’s pretty mad at Cassie for shooting him.”

  “All along I thought it was Maurice who had stolen the jewels and hidden them in the ice hole,” I said, not bothering to explain about all the other people I had suspected.

  “Maurice was just a faithful servant. The reason he knew about the fraud was that he had to help Mr. Pickerill with Daphne.”

  “Daphne?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” The sheriff grinned. “Funny, isn’t it? If you’d let the statue fall over the night of the Confederate Ball, it might have ended there. Pickerill hid all the paperwork about his losses and the sale of the jewelry in the bottom of Daphne. Maurice had to help him unscrew the statue from the base to get at it.” He was laughing, but I was a little uneasy that he knew who had almost knocked the statue over.

  “Then Maurice wasn’t having an affair with Cassie?” I said, more to change the subject rather than elicit information.

  “No, Maurice had been having an affair with Prissy Goodenough,” he explained.

  “What about Prissy and Old…er, I mean Clarence Yancy?”

  The sheriff was loosening up. At least he’d stopped twirling his hat. “Oh, I don’t think so. Why would any woman in Mason County even look a Clarence P. Yancy? He’s got absolutely no sex appeal.”

  But Old Oilhead more than made up for it with his diligence, I thought, though I refraining from commenting. If the men of Mason County wanted to remain oblivious to his activities, so be it. I sucked in deep to keep a straight face and asked, “Is Jeff Goodenough mad enough about his wife and Maurice to do anything?” I was thinking how much fun it would be to see Prissy’s fat figure in off-the-rack clothes.

  “Well, he was mad first thing this morning when she ran off to the hospital, but then they got together in the cafeteria and agreed to remain married for the sake of her political career, to say nothing of what the gossip would do to his business,” he said.

  “How could it possibly hurt his business?” I asked. “He’s an undertaker, not a politician.”

  The sheriff chuckled. “Would you trust the remains of a loved one to a mortician who can’t keep tabs on his own wife?” he asked.

  I glanced at Jack Senior and laughed. It was the first time in all the years I’d known Louis Overhouse that I had ever heard him make anything resembling a wisecrack. But then, considering Mason County morality, maybe it wasn’t a joke.

  Jack Senior just grinned back, as the sheriff continued, “Anyway, Prissy’s down at the hospital, holding Maurice’s hand under the sheet and everybody else is tippy-toeing around pretending they don’t notice.”

  “What about the reward?” Jack Senior asked, trying to take advantage of the sheriff’s good humor while at the same time appearing concerned fo
r me and justice.

  “There probably won’t be any reward,” the sheriff answered. “It was offered by Pickerill himself, and now it looks like any of his remaining funds will go to people with prior claims. The insurance company might have made a deal to get the jewels back, but they never offered a formal reward. You saved them a lot of money for nothing.” He laughed.

  “Except for my freedom and reputation.” I wasn’t as upset about not getting any money as Jack Senior, whose friendly grin had suddenly disappeared.

  “About that,” the sheriff was pushing an imaginary pebble with his toe, hat squnched up, “nobody thought you did it. It was the pressure.” He paused, and then looked at me.

  I didn’t let my face move a muscle.

  “From Mr. Pickerill and Prissy,” he continued, explaining as if I hadn’t been in the middle of it. It took all my energy to look blank rather than to scream.

  The sheriff was asking for some bit of forgiveness, but I couldn’t. The silence stretched…and stretched, but I didn’t look away. He was trapped looking down at the imaginary pebble. I didn’t want him to beg. I just didn’t want to think about it. And I wasn’t about to forgive him.

  Finally, Victoria, with her good Southern breeding, intervened. “What about the body in the chimney?” she asked, changing the subject and the mood.

  “There’s no evidence that the Pickerills knew anything about it. The body was hidden under the shelf when he put the bracelet in. So the identity of the body is still an open case, but we can be pretty certain you weren’t involved since it happened before you were born.”

  Victoria laughed with the sheriff at his second joke of the day.

  Jack Senior rose to usher him out the door. I got up and went along, too. It seemed the right thing to do—to close out the affair by politely escorting from my home the man who had so recently been tormenting me. But I was still having hot flashes of anger.

  ***

  Sheriff Overhouse was just about to leave in his Mason County police cruiser, when another car turned into the driveway, cutting around wide to leave room for the sheriff to exit. Pastor Beckett was driving, with Henry Adams in the front passenger seat and Lucille in the back. As the car came to a stop up close to the porch, Henry jumped out and opened the far side back door to help his mother climb out. Miz Estelle, as she was called by everyone in Mason County, was one of the oldest active members of Ebenezer Baptist Church and had become the arbiter of many of the church’s opinions and tastes. They wouldn’t have brought her unless there was trouble with the steeple.

  They don’t like it, I thought. They think it’s sacrilegious. They want to cancel and get their money back. Well, I was due a refund on the bond, but we could really use it to live for the next few months while the manor house got fixed and re-rented. As they all headed toward the front porch, and I was trying to think of all the reasons why an abstract postmodernish steeple was appropriate for a Baptist church in Mason County, another car pulled in the driveway. It was Reverend Goodenough, the minister from the Episcopal church—the one that Jack Senior and I attended, when we went to church at all.

  Then it hit. Jack Junior and Billy. There’d been an accident on the river. I waved wildly at Sheriff Overhouse to stop. I’d need fast transportation to the airport and he’d probably volunteer. I was spinning out all the right questions, “How bad is it? Are they alive?” when Henry took my hand and said, “We came to see your mother-in-law.”

  I tried to wave the sheriff off, but he had left his cruiser and was already on the porch, trooping behind everybody into the living room.

  As Victoria rose from her chair to greet the visitors, she ask asked me to make tea. So I ran to the kitchen and put the water on. By the time I returned everybody had gotten settled, apart from Reverend Goodenough, who remained standing. Quietly he addressed my mother-in-law. “Miz Estelle has a letter I think you should read.”

  Victoria waited on the edge of a 1950s Hepplewhite reproduction chair as Miz Estelle, sitting on the sofa and sniffling a little, pulled a rumpled old envelope out of her Sunday-go-to-meeting handbag. “This was in the old chest with all the deeds to our farm,” she said. “I found it back in 1974 when I was looking for information on the property lines for that forty acres we bought from you.”

  Henry interrupted, “But she didn’t show it to anyone.”

  Miz Estelle looked at her son with a mixture of affection and exasperation. “It wasn’t anyone’s business then. But now it is.” She handed the envelope to Victoria before continuing, “There’s only one copy and that’s all there ever will be, but we can’t let it be destroyed. It’s from Henry’s great-grandpa, William Rufus Adams, who bought that first little piece of our farm from your own granddaddy. He’s the one Billy was named for. I figure he was about ten years old when these events in this letter happened.”

  Victoria pulled two sheets from the envelope, adjusted her glasses, and read. She looked around at Jack Senior and, with a barely perceptible flinch, handed the sheets to him.

  Since he was standing right behind my chair, he held it down so I could read, while the sheriff read from the other side.

  September 29, 1924

  To Whom it may Concern,

  Now that the doctor has given me but a few weeks to remain on this earth, I must rest this burden and make my peace with the Lord. Mister George Ebenton was reported missing in action during a battle at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863. We all grieved mightily, but his wife, Mistress Victoria, told us that it was God’s will and we must carry on.

  Then on July 9 of the same year, I was on the backstairs, taking the dinner plates from the dining room down to the kitchen, when Mister George appeared in his uniform, put his rifle down on the dining room table, grabbed Mistress Victoria up and kissed her. She was laughing like a little girl and asked him how he had managed to survive. He said that he’d been sent on a special mission over toward Harper’s Ferry and had missed the battle. When he had gotten back, it was all over. Mistress Victoria asked if the mission was close to Antiedam and Mister George said that, yes, that was right. Then she asked if it was the same lady as when he had been there the year before. He turned away, saying that he would have been killed if he had followed orders. That the whole war was absolutely stupid. Mistress Victoria did not say anything more. She picked up the rifle and loaded it while Mister George watched quietly. She deliberately put the gun to her shoulder and shot him right through the heart.

  When Mistress Victoria saw me standing there, she told me to help her hide him in the secret compartment next to the fireplace. So we put him in there and nailed in that shelf halfway up from the bottom. Then I scrubbed the blood off the floor, all the while crying because everybody loved Mister George. I learnt my letters sitting with him under the oak tree in the side yard. We were out there just after the war started and he told me he did not really want to go but he reckoned he would because it was his duty. Now I know that the other side was fighting for my freedom, but it pained me that he had not done what he ought, especially since they elected him lieutenant.

  After I had finished cleaning, Mistress Victoria made me promise on a Bible that I would not tell anybody that her husband was a deserter. She made her penance by never marrying again although she was a powerful good-looking woman. I took a wife and raised a family but I could never forgive myself for not giving Mister George a Christian burial. Even long after the war had ended and everybody had forgotten, I could not say in public that I knew he was in the compartment without saying why Mistress Victoria had put him there. And that I promised not to do. I kept quiet all these years and will die quiet, leaving only this letter as my prayer to God for forgiveness. May He have mercy on my soul.—Wm. Rufus Adams

  When he was finished, Jack Senior gave the letter back to Victoria who folded it carefully, put it back in the envelope, and handed it to Miz Estelle. “Thank you for your consideration,” she said as she stood and retreated toward the doorway to the hall. The Reverend Goodenough a
dvanced with a quiet, “Mrs. Abernathy.”

  But she strode right past him only to meet Sheriff Overhouse who by now had his hat in a tight roll. “I think we can close the file on the Confederate soldier without making any of this public,” he said.

  Victoria ignored the voice, and transmigrated rather than walked across the rest of the room, slowly panning her eyes across the assembly—daring anyone to show pity. Pulling her back up a tad straighter than usual, she turned on her heels and went up the stairs toward her bedroom.

  The two preachers got up to leave, murmuring apologies to Jack Senior, including me, perhaps by marital association. Henry Adams was over helping Lucille help Miz Estelle to her feet. The sheriff’s hat was unrolled, now being turned around and around by the rim.

  Jack Senior moved between the departing group and the front door. “We appreciate your coming. How about a drop for the road?” he said, twisting Reverend Goodenough around so he was headed toward the old 1939 floor-standing Philco Radio that had belonged to Jack Senior’s granddaddy and had never worked since I’d lived here although Jack Junior kept saying he was going to fix it. But I guess it’s just as well he didn’t try, because Jack Senior pushed in on the tuning dial and the lower front section swung open revealing not a speaker, but three bottles of brandy and several other kinds of whisky—for company like this, I supposed.

  Dr. Goodenough was mumbling yes as Jack dropped his hand on Pastor Beckett’s shoulder. “And I’m sure you can make an exception today,” he said.

  The pastor was making a gurgling sound, trying to say yes and no at the same time. Miz Estelle lowered herself back down into her chair, waving Henry and Lucille away, and said, “Why not just this once, Pastor, while I have some tea? If you don’t mind?” She looked expectantly at me, while Lucille looked suspiciously at Henry. But the latter was already taking a glass from Jack Senior, grinning and slapping him on the back. The lady of the house being indisposed, because of the nature of Uncle George Ebenton’s demise, I headed toward the kitchen to make the tea and then to fix snacks.