I was trying to figure out how any of this would have fit together. We had no way of knowing the Wilton family dynamics. Were they close? Did the accident make them rally together and take care of each other? Or did it drive them apart?
My money was on the latter, since Dawn Wilton became Dawn Thrasher. I wondered whether her mother was still alive, and where. Had she gone back to her maiden name? Petreski probably had some of the answers, but couldn’t tell us. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe Hastings was phenomenally bad at his job.
Don, though... Don had Google-Fu like nobody’s business.
“Don?”
“Hmm?” He didn’t look up from his laptop.
“Don, I think I know what the road opener candle is trying to tell you.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“I think you should be doing Hastings’s job. You know, information analyst stuff like Hastings is supposed to be doing. Look at what you’ve found just in the public records. Imagine what you could do if you had access to the private stuff.”
Don looked up at that, then off into the distance. He was thinking about it. “Maybe.”
“I could totally see you doing that.”
“Yeah. But first, let’s figure this out. Life plans can wait until tomorrow.”
“Do you think Amelia’s still alive?”
“I’m trying to figure that out. I’m looking for death records or obituaries, but I haven’t found anything yet for either name.”
“She could have gotten remarried, and have a completely different name now.”
“But then her marriage record should show up, and I’m not finding anything like that, either.”
“If she is alive, and the police know that Dawn Thrasher was born Dawn Wilton, then they should know about Amelia also, right? If she is still alive, they would have notified her of her daughter’s death.”
“Makes sense.”
I looked back at the screen, at the minimalist obituary for Roger Wilton, and wondered why it was so sparse. “I wish we knew more about the accident that killed Roger.”
“Why? You think there was something hinky about it?”
“I think... I think something’s hinky. It was a small town, and small towns put everything in the paper. There should be an article about the crash, right?”
“Yeah. But it looks like the paper isn’t all online. They probably have all the back issues in an archive.”
“Is the paper still in business?”
“It publishes weekly now, but yeah. We could call them, see what they have?”
“I was thinking road trip.”
“Road trip? But if we call they can just send us a copy of the pertinent article.”
“But what if something else is pertinent? What if there’s something else in the paper that can put it in perspective?”
“You’re just bored and want to take a road trip.”
“Are you working today?”
“No.” Don’s shoulders slumped.
“Road trip! And Bridger stays here – they won’t let him in the newspaper archive.”
“Fine.”
A Day in the Country
We pulled into Mesquite Springs in time for a late lunch at a diner on the main strip. All the locals turned to look at us as we sat at the counter. Don looked around while I charmed the waitress. Middle-aged ladies love me – I bring out their maternal instincts.
“Everybody’s staring at us, dude,” Don whispered after he placed his order.
“Well, yeah. We don’t live here, so they’re curious.”
“It feels weird.”
“Imagine how weird it would be if you were wearing a sling with a cat in it.”
“Point.”
“Whatchew two boys up to, then?” a deep voice asked from somewhere over my left shoulder.
I turned to see a table of three older men, two wearing VFW caps and the third, the one who had spoken, tilting his chair back on two legs to look up at me where I sat on the bar stool.
“Chuck Ferris!” the waitress fussed as she passed behind him. “How many times have I told you not to do that? You’re gonna bust another chair!”
The chair dropped to the floor, but the man never took his eyes off us.
“Well, sir. We’re in town to do a little research at the newspaper, but we’ve been on the road for a while and wanted a bite of lunch first.”
“Research? What kind of research?”
“Well, I understand Clarence Wilton grew up here. We’re working on a profile of him, how he got his career started, that kind of thing.”
“Clarence Wilton?” one of the VFW caps said. “Ain’t he the one got himself murdered down in Houston?”
“Yes, sir. That’s right.”
“Why’d you wanna do a profile about him?”
“Well, he was very successful. Built his business up from nothing. People could learn from that kind of entrepreneurship.”
One of the VFW caps snorted.
“You a reporter or somethin’?” Chuck asked.
“A student.”
“Ain’t you a little old to be a student?” the second VFW cap asked.
“Well, I admit it’s taking me longer than it should.”
Chuck stood and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. “I gotta get goin’. Bill, Gary, see y’all tomorrow.”
No one spoke as Chuck went to the register, paid his bill, and left.
Bill and Gary turned to look at us, and I realized we were alone in the diner with them, the waitress, and whoever was in the kitchen.
“Y’all from Houston, then?” one of them asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t know how much you’ll find out about Clarence Wilton, to be honest.” He shook his head. I wasn’t necessarily looking for information about Clarence, so that was okay.
“Well, we have to start somewhere, right? I don’t suppose either of y’all knew him or remember him from back then?”
They looked at each other, and shrugged. “A bit. He wasn’t such a nice boy. I don’t imagine he was all that nice grown up, neither.”
“That’s the impression I’m starting to get.”
“Left town, and that’s the last this town heard of him. Never came back, family never heard from him. Nothin’.”
“Is there any of his family still around?”
The old man tilted his head back, looking at the ceiling, and it reminded me of Miss Nancy’s thinking face. “Not that I can think of. You, Bill?”
Bill shook his head. “Nope.”
“Nope,” Gary repeated. “Parents died years ago. Brother, too. Just the brother’s girl and her ma left, but they left town after the brother got killed and never came back.”
“You don’t happen to know where she – the brother’s wife, that is, went, do you?”
“Amelia, her name was. Heard she met a feller and moved off with him. Oklahoma or someplace Never heard nothin’ after that.”
I heard the waitress put our plates on the counter behind me, and Bill and Gary got up to leave. As Bill made his way to the register, Gary came over to stand next to us at the counter.
“So, Houston, huh?”
“Yes, sir.” I nodded.
“I hear y’all got a place there called Montrose. Where the queer folks can hang out and be queer without nobody givin’ a damn. Is that right?”
“Well, yes. Pretty much.”
“Hmm.” He looked over to where Bill was paying their check, and Bill rolled his eyes. “They got any bars there that cater to the, uh, older crowd? Like say, if a couple wanted to, uh, swing a bit? Or, uh, meet someone to, uh, spend some time with. Still as a couple, mind.”
“Uh... probably. I think that’s probably something that... uh... someone could find.”
Gary nodded and moved on to catch up with his, uh, fellow veteran.
“I think I’ve lost my appetite,” Don said, looking down at the BLT on his plate.
“I... uh...”
&nb
sp; The waitress chuckled as she passed by. “Better find it, boys, or you don’t get no pie!”
“You’re not my real mom!” I called out to her, and she laughed harder.
Don ate a potato chip and I choked down a bite of mashed potatoes. Gary and Bill were pretty spry, and not bad-looking for old guys, but I was trying to eat, here.
I was halfway through my chicken-fried steak when the waitress came back to refill my tea.
“You’re lucky you weren’t in here on your own,” she told me.
“Why’s that?”
“You’re just their type, honey. If you’d given ‘em half a chance they’d’ve had you hogtied and –”
“Oh. My. God. Please stop talking! This is, like, a small town! Aren’t you supposed to be lecturing me on the evil of my ways and damning Bill and Gary to hell or something?”
“Pfft. Gary was Chief of Police for over twenty years. Bill was president of the savings and loan. If you wanted to buy a house or stay out of jail, you learned to keep your mouth shut. Once folks saw how Gary and Bill took care of this town, and each other, most of ‘em just got on with their lives and didn’t give it any thought.”
“Wow,” Don breathed, and took a bite of his sandwich.
“Yeah, but I still don’t want to be... or think about being... you know. Ack.”
She chuckled. “Tell you what. You boys finish your lunches and you get pie on the house.”
❧
After lunch we walked the two blocks to the newspaper office. I was feeling uncomfortably full, but Don had gone with a lighter lunch and the lemon icebox pie, so he was doing fine. I, on the other hand, was determined to have pie and ate an entire twelve-ounce chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes with gravy, fried okra, and a biscuit. I topped this carbo-feast off with a slice of pecan pie, and now I was having regrets.
“We’ll have a light dinner,” Don said.
“I’m not eating again for at least two days.”
“You can go for a walk tomorrow.”
“Urg.”
“You have a food baby,” he said, poking my belly.
“Ow! Mean!”
“Unbutton your jeans if you’re that uncomfortable.”
“I couldn’t. That would be tacky!”
“And eating that entire steak, plus that monster slice of pie, wasn’t tacky?”
“I couldn’t insult the cook.”
Don shook his head. Obviously he couldn’t argue with my logic.
The Mesquite Springs Weekly (formerly the Mesquite Springs Daily) was housed in a red brick building just two blocks from the diner. Mesquite Springs wasn’t the county seat, so there was no courthouse square. There was a central business district, though, which included the diner, bank, library, town offices, a grocery store, a feed store, and various other businesses and shops. I had seen a couple of bed and breakfasts on side streets, and signs for wineries on the way into town. It looked like Mesquite Springs was gearing up to market itself as a wine-lover’s destination.
The newspaper office was quiet. I could hear someone tapping away at a keyboard somewhere, but the only person I could see was a middle-aged woman in jeans and a Garth Brooks concert t-shirt who stood and came to meet us at the tall front desk.
“You boys aren’t from around here,” she observed in a deep west-Texas twang.
“I guess that makes three of us, then,” I said and felt Don’s pointy elbow jabbing my ribs. “Ow!”
She studied us over the top of her glasses for few seconds before grinning. “Whadda y’all need? An ad or somethin’?”
“We were hoping to do some research in the archives?”
She reached under the counter and pulled out a key on a bright orange lanyard.
“Sure. Follow me.” She led us around the counter and down a hallway before stopping in front of a closed door with a plate reading “Archive” mounted at eye level.
“Okay, boys. House rules.”
We nodded.
“No food, no drink, no chewing gum, not even a breath mint. No scissors, no knives, no rippin’ or tearin’. Got it?”
“Yes, ma’am.” We both answered.
“If you want somethin’ copied, mark it with one of the paper slips in the box on the table, and we’ll copy everything at one time before you leave. Copies are fifty cents each. Don’t put the books back on the shelves yourselves. Leave ‘em on the table and we’ll shelve them later.” She paused and we nodded.
“Your hands clean?”
We nodded again.
“You need a bathroom break, it’s at the end of this hallway on the left. Books are in chronological order, starting to the right of the door when you get inside. You got any questions, come back out front and one of us can help you. If you do run across anything that’s missing or torn or messed up, I’d appreciate it if you’d mark it and let us know. Okay?
“Yes, we will,” I nodded and she unlocked the door.
I’d never used a newspaper archive before, but I’d seen a few episodes of History Detectives, and given her list of rules I was surprised she hadn’t handed us gloves before letting us in. The archive room was larger than I expected, and I discovered why when I looked at the date for the first bound volume: July 23, 1900. That was almost one hundred years of daily papers, and weekly since 1999.
“That is a lot of papers.” Don turned around in a circle, his eyes scanning the shelves.
“Yeah,” I said. “Good thing we have a date.”
I put my backpack on the long table in the middle of the room and took out my laptop. While I waited for it to boot up I found the volume containing the date of Roger’s death in 1979. Don took the volume after it, and we started searching for any mention of the accident specifically, or the Wiltons or Thrashers in general.
“Have you ever looked at really old newspapers?” Don asked after a few minutes.
“How old are we talking about?”
“I remember looking at a small town paper from, like, the 1920s or something like that. Anyway, they printed everything. A stranger couldn’t come to town without it being in the paper. If someone’s cousin came to visit, or someone took a trip or, well, just about anything, it was in the announcements in the paper.”
“Too bad they weren’t still doing that in 1979.”
“Yeah.”
I found the obituary right away, and started working backwards to see if I could find out more about the accident, or about Roger, Clarence, or anyone or anything related. I had no idea what I was looking for – anything that would give me some clue about the families and why Dawn Wilton became Dawn Thrasher.
❧
We had each finished the volumes we started with and moved on to the next when I decided I needed a break. I found the bathroom down the hall, then wandered back out to the front office.
“Need anything, hon?” the lady in the Garth shirt asked.
“No, ma’am, just wanted to stretch my legs a little.”
She nodded and turned her attention back to the monitor in front of her. I moved to stand at the door and looked out the window at the quiet street in front of me.
“What’re y’all lookin’ for in there?”
I turned to see an older man, about the same age as Bill and Gary back at the diner, leaning on the counter. I guessed he was probably the one I had heard typing when we came in.
“Just doing some research for school. On Clarence Wilton.” I stuck with the story I’d used at the diner.
“Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. Until last week, of course. Bad business, that. You a journalism student, then? Writing a story about him?”
“No. Business, actually. Entrepreneurship. We’re doing a profile on his business, how he built it up from scratch and became so successful. That kind of thing. He started out here, so...” I shrugged.
“Sure, sure.” The man nodded. “Makes sense.”
“I don’t suppose you knew him back then?”
“A little. Knew his brother
better. Roger.” The man shook his head. “Sad business.”
Now, this sounded promising.
“I think I saw something in the paper. He was killed, right? A car accident?”
“Well... that’s what they finally decided.”
“But you didn’t think so?”
“No one really thought so, but nobody could ever prove anything different. The police – well, I don’t think they tried very hard. Didn’t want the mess. Back then – before Gary came back and cleaned up the department – certain folks could get away with things.”
I nodded.
“But I shouldn’t be filling your head with old rumors and gossip.”
“Well, anything that could help me build a picture of the man would be a help. I don’t suppose there’s any family left?”
“Oh, long gone. The parents died a while back. After Roger died, his widow tried to make a go of it here, but with no money and Roger’s family not helping any, she finally left. Headed off to Oklahoma, I heard.”
“No money? Wasn’t there any insurance or anything?”
“Now, that’s what had everybody talking. Roger, bless his soul, loved his wife and daughter to pieces, but he was a procrastinator and a bit absentminded. Seems he never got around to changing the beneficiary on his life insurance.”
I had a feeling I knew where this was going.
“So when he got killed, all that money – half-a-million dollars – went to his baby brother.”
“And that’s where Clarence really got the money to get his business off the ground,” I said.
“Yep. Caused a real scandal. Folks tried to reason with him, but he had big plans for himself and that money. The local clergy even went to see him, tried to appeal to his Christian nature. Fat lot of good that did.”
“And his parents?”
“Let’s just say the apple that was Clarence didn’t fall far from the tree. Those two never cared about anyone but themselves. It wasn’t a surprise to anyone when Clarence left town and never looked back. Every man for himself in that family. That the kind of thing you’re lookin’ to find out?”
“In a way,” I said, remembering my cover story. “I don’t think running off with half-a-mil in insurance money at the expense of widows and children really qualifies as entrepreneurship.”
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