Secrets Don't Sink, page 7
“I just feel terrible.” I released a weary sigh. “Speaking of terrible, has anyone talked to his wife?” The word dripped off my tongue with a hint of venom.
“Renee claims she was at home when it happened. Kimball said she appeared devastated when they delivered the news.”
“It doesn’t mean she didn’t do it, or she could’ve hired the parking jerk to do it.”
“You’re right; it doesn’t mean she didn’t do it, and they’ll keep her on the shortlist as they always do with spouses. Right now, she’s no more or less in the spotlight than anyone else…including you.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “You’re the ex.”
I scoffed. “From about a million years ago.”
“Regardless. The blow was made at an upward angle to the back of the head. Normally that would narrow the suspect list to people shorter than the victim, but since Marcus was so tall, it doesn’t eliminate very many people. That’s another reason the police don’t believe he accidentally hit his head and fell in, because he’d have to have been coming down toward whatever he hit his head on. Even though the spatter was in the boathouse, they’ve searched the edges of the boardwalk, every gangplank, and the bridge. The marina docks are splintery. Had he hit his head going in, there should be shards from the dock in his wound and blood on the dock’s edge. Neither were found, bolstering the idea the initial blow was intense enough to kill and send a six-foot-six guy into the drink.”
“I just can’t imagine who would want to murder that sweet, dopey guy. He was a gentle giant.”
“Well, yeah, but there were other sides to him than the guy you knew.” Holden leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “He had money troubles and not to speak ill of the dead, but the guy was a total flake. More than once, he borrowed money from me without paying it back. I wouldn’t hear from him for months, probably because he was avoiding me from guilt or embarrassment. I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t want to pay me back. What if he owed money to the wrong person? Trust me, it happens, and it can get ugly. Really ugly.” Holden grimaced and swigged his whisky.
“Since he owed you money, wouldn’t that make you a suspect?”
He shrugged his shoulders and took another sip. “I guess technically it does. I wasn’t mad at the guy about not paying me back, just disappointed he wasn’t man enough, didn’t value our friendship enough to talk through it. He was like my brother, ya know? We grew up together. I figured when I gave him the money, I probably wasn’t going to see it again. Hell, I’d have been more surprised if he had paid me back.”
“Holden, I need this to make sense. It has to be personal, because if it was a random attack, no one in Chattertowne is safe.”
From behind me, someone on a microphone called Vivienne to the stage. The crowd whooped their approval. I turned to get a better view of her performance, so I didn’t sense Holden leaning toward me until his breath warmed my neck.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Audrey. I promise you that.”
After Vivienne had finished her set, I approached to give her a hug while Holden hung back and gave a thumbs-up. Viv nodded at him but didn’t return his smile. She stared pointedly at me. I shrugged my shoulders, which was as honest a response I could give her.
Once out of the club, I clinched my jacket tight against my body to ward off the frigid wind. He removed his and wrapped it around my shoulders. Two acts of chivalry in one night were practically a record for me.
“Can I walk you to your car?”
Make that three.
“Sure. I’m this way.” I pointed down the street.
Our arms brushed against each other, the occasional contact seeming both accidental and intentional. “This is me.”
We’d arrived at my dark gray Volvo coupe.
I rubbed my hands together and blew on them. “Thanks for coming tonight.”
He grabbed my hands and rubbed them between his own. “Thank you for inviting me.”
He’d invited himself, but I decided it wasn’t the time for petty quibbling.
“Uh, well, good night, Holden.”
He drew me close to him. The hug was longer than I expected, the embrace tighter. He enveloped my entire upper body in warmth and his soothing scent. There was an unspoken message in his lingering, but I wasn’t sure what he was trying to communicate. I avoided his gaze, afraid my face would tell him more than I wanted to say.
“Audrey.”
I allowed myself to look at him. He stared at me for a moment and leaned toward me. At the last moment, he turned just enough that his mouth landed on the corner of mine. We held the connection briefly, unmoving, caught in that space where we had to decide between right and wrong.
“Do, uh, do you want to get inside and warm up a bit before you walk back to your car?” I mumbled.
He sighed and pulled away with a reluctant chuckle. “I’d better not.”
I nodded and fumbled with my keys until I pressed the correct button to unlock the door. “Okay, well, good night. Again.”
“Good night, Audrey.”
His words were barely audible over the sound of rushing blood in my head, but his conflicted tone came through loud and clear.
Chapter Nine
That night while I slept, Jonathan Chatterton entered my subconscious. In my somnolent vision, he stood on a hilltop at the valley’s edge next to his horse, saddled with bags and gear.
On the other side of the valley, a white man dressed in a Halloween costume version of Native attire danced and chanted, taunting Jonathan. “Swobilak, Kupit. Swobilak, Kupit.”
I stood in the valley below, looking from one man to the other until my frustration grew so great, I screamed at the top of my lungs. “Would you both please x̌ʷubiləxʷ and tell me what I’m missing!”
The soothing jazz sounds of “Masquerade” brought me into a semi-conscious state. I flopped out of bed and shuffled into the kitchen where I fumbled through turning on the coffee maker before plopping myself onto a stool at the counter.
I pulled the book on Chattertowne and my laptop out of my bag. I flipped through the book until I reached page thirty.
Jonathan and Madeleine welcomed son Michael on the 20th of February 1862. It was a difficult birth and Madeleine did not survive. Jonathan’s journals were quite revealing about this time, particularly regarding the local Flathead woman to whom he familiarly referred as Nettie. Nettie, the midwife who’d attended the birth, stayed on at the Chatterton settlement to help Jonathan care for Michael after his mother’s death. It has long been rumored.
And that was it. That’s where it ended. When it picked up again on page thirty-five, it was 1924 and Robinson had made his ridiculous claims about the town’s original name.
Far from gaining the answers I’d been seeking, I’d instead been left with more questions. I needed to find out what those rumors were. Maybe that would explain why someone would go to the trouble of ripping pages out of a seventy-year-old book.
Forefront in my mind was how George Hart had gotten his hands on Jonathan’s journal and, more importantly, who had it now?
I decided my best course of action was to take the book back to Mildred to see if she could shed any light on the situation.
For the second day in a row, I made my way back down the library stairs and through the dusty corridor into Mildred’s dank domain.
“Good morning, Audrey!”
Today’s cardigan was lavender.
“Morning, Mildred. How’s it going?”
“Oh, fine, fine. Did you have any luck with the book last night?” She removed her glasses and let them drop until the chain caught them.
“Well, yes and no. Did you know some pages are missing?” I set it on the counter.
Mildred gasped. “What? No! Are you sure?” She flipped through the book, scowling in bewilderment. “Oh, dear. How could this have happened? I wonder if one of those darn fifth graders did this.”
“I suspect it wasn’t a child vandal but an adult with something to hide.”
“Why do you say that?”
After showing her where page thirty left off, Mildred agreed it was possible they’d been removed because of information they contained.
“Any thoughts on what someone might want to keep under wraps?”
She shrugged her frail shoulders. “I’ve never heard anything other than praise for Jonathan, nothing salacious at all. My parents might’ve heard something, but if they did, they never told me. Jonathan is an icon around here, and I’d imagine some might go to great lengths to prevent his image from being tarnished.” She tapped her cheek with her finger. “They were close with Eddie Chatterton, Jonathan’s grandson. Did I mention that?”
“Your parents?”
“Yes. When I was young, my parents joined a card club. I must have been about….” Her face scrunched as she attempted to remember. “Nine. No, eight. No, it was the fall, and my birthday was in June, so nine.” She huffed in frustration at her failing cognition. “Anyway, the men would play poker while the women played gin. They’d meet at a different couple’s house every week, so we hosted every few months. They’d set two tables, one in our living room for the men and one in the kitchen next to the nook for the women, and there were five people at each table. I loved when it was our turn to host because my mother would go all out with the snacks.” Her face turned wistful, giving a glimpse of the young girl she used to be. “My father and Eddie were always laughing and making jokes. They were probably completely inappropriate, but most of them went over my head. I loved seeing my dad in such a jovial mood.”
“Did you ever see Eddie other than when your parents were hosting the card parties?”
“Oh yes, Eddie came over at least once a month with his wife for dinner. Those nights I didn’t enjoy as much because I’d have to hang out with their two boys, Jimmy and Dickie. Jimmy played pranks on me.”
“Jimmy? Do you mean James Chatterton, the one who committed suicide in the river?”
Her expression darkened at the mention of his untimely end. “Yes. However, Dickie…” She brightened again, smiling shyly at his name. She pronounced it with the whispered reverence reserved for a crush. “Richard was his proper name, but we all called him Dickie. He was quite the ladies’ man. So handsome. All the girls wanted him to notice them.”
Mildred looked to be playing a nostalgic scene in her mind. Lost in her reverie, her expressions ranged from coy to blissful. The reminiscence must have had a gloomy conclusion because a frown supplanted her smile.
“Dickie ran off at seventeen and joined the army. Everyone tried to talk him out of it, but that boy was stubborn as a mule. He wanted to get as far away as possible from this town and the people in it. He said he wanted nothing to do with the burden of carrying on the Chatterton legacy.” She paused, and sadness washed over her. “He died in the Battle of Bloody Ridge, Korea.”
“Oh, Mildred, I’m so sorry.”
“It was a tragedy. He wasn’t even a man yet, with his entire life ahead of him. All that lost potential.” Her face contorted into a scowl. “Jimmy, on the other hand, wasn’t a nice boy. He wasn’t a nice man, either. Dickie was sweet and kind. Jimmy was cruel. Still, I know Jimmy’s death broke Eddie’s heart. There’s only so much grief a father can bear in one lifetime.”
“When was the last time you saw Eddie?”
“Oh, I’d run into him around town occasionally before he died, late eighties, if I’m not mistaken. Never again at my parents’ home, though. He’d had a falling out with my father not too long before Dickie ran off and joined the service. If I recall, it had something to do with another young man in the group. Eddie and the man had a disagreement, and my father took the other man’s side. At least, that was Eddie’s perception.”
“Do you remember what the disagreement was about?”
“I’m not sure I ever knew. What was his wife’s name?” Mildred tapped her finger against her cheek again. “She was beautiful. Sarah or Sadie.” She mentally sorted through eight decades of friends and acquaintances. “No, that’s not it, it was more glamorous, like that famous sexy Italian actress.” Her frail hands mimicked the shape of an hourglass.
I smiled at her description and hand gestures. “Sophia Loren?”
“Yes! No! Not Sophia, Sophie. That’s right. George and Sophie. George and Sophie Hart.”
I glanced down at the book’s cover. “Mildred?”
“Yes, dear.”
I held up the book.
Mildred scanned the cover until her eyes lit up. “Well, I’ll be! That’s right. He did write a book about Chattertowne. He had it printed at the newspaper, about ten copies and gave them to friends and family for Christmas that year. My parents had one. I don’t think I ever read it, though. Well, isn’t that a coincidence? Too funny!”
“So, Eddie Chatterton fell out with your father because your father didn’t take his side in an argument with George Hart? The George Hart, who wrote a book seventy-plus years ago in which he’d discussed Eddie’s ancestor Jonathan Chatterton. This book,” I tapped on the book for emphasis, “which has missing pages from the portion in which potentially explosive rumors about Jonathan were discussed.”
“Do you think that’s what they were fighting about? This book?”
“What could George have possibly written which was damaging enough to end two friendships?”
“I have no idea. We should ask him.” Mildred blinked at me expectantly.
“Ask who?”
“Why, George Hart, of course.” Her thin laughter tinkled.
“George Hart…junior?”
“No, George Hart. The one and only.” Mildred pointed at the book in my hand.
“He’s still alive?”
“Why yes, unless you’ve heard otherwise.”
“I haven’t heard anything, Mildred. I only read his name for the first time when I found this book yesterday!”
“Oh, phew. You had me worried there for a minute.” She patted her chest. “He’s gotta be nearing the big triple digits, and I’m certain I’d have heard if he’d died. He lives at that nursing home over on Hughes Street. Although he’s pretty much a recluse now, he was once quite the man about town and somewhat of a local celebrity. Now that I think about it, he authored several travel books. He was the Rick Steves of his day.”
“Is there anything else you can recall about the Chattertons or rumors regarding Jonathan?”
She paused to consider. “No, dear, I’m sorry. Nothing comes to mind.”
“I’m going right now to pay George a visit. If you remember anything, please call my cell.” I wrote my number on the notepad, ripped it off, and handed it to her.
“I’ll keep stewing on it. Something in this old brain is sure to break loose. When it does, I’ll text you.” She picked up a flip phone and waved it in the air.
Once back in my car, I found I’d missed two calls and a text from Darren.
Call Me.
He answered on the first ring. “I was worried about you.”
“Worried? Why?” I flipped down the shade visor and opened the mirror to scan my teeth for anything that didn’t belong.
“Why didn’t you call me back?”
“I left my phone in the car while I was in the library. I’m calling you now.”
If he heard the irritation in my voice, he didn’t let on. “How’s the research going?”
“Fine. I’m headed to the nursing home to interview someone.”
Silence.
“Hello? Darren?”
“Who are you going to see?”
“Some old dude who’s been in Chattertowne his whole life. I figure he might be able to tell me some stories about back in the day. Hey, I’ve gotta run. I’ll see you back at the office.” I hung up before he could get in another word.
I didn’t feel like talking to Anderson, so I called his receptionist, Laurie, and asked her to let him know I was working on the Kupit story so I wouldn’t be in the office until later in the afternoon.
“I’m not going in there until he’s finished his nasty knockwurst sandwich,” she said. “The smell is wafting into the hallway and making me queasy.”
I crinkled my nose. “Didn’t that go out of culinary style with aspic and tuna noodle casserole? I didn’t know anyone still ate knockwurst.”
“No one should.”
I drove up Sixth Street and took a left onto Parker Avenue. The nursing home was situated at the intersection of Hughes and Parker, which had always sounded to me like the name of a law firm or a mortuary. The latter wasn’t far from reality.
As I stepped into the lobby, a mélange of Pine Sol and aging bodies assaulted my nostrils. Behind the reception desk, a stern-looking middle-aged woman had her face buried in a Regency romance paperback. The cover featured an ethereal nymph-like female in a white empire-waisted gown and a gentleman preening behind her wearing a ruffled blouse. Two impatient eyes glared at me over the top of the book.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m, uh, I’m here to see George Hart.” My heart thumped rapidly, and my cheeks flushed.
“Is he expecting you?”
“No, not exactly. I’m…his niece. His great, great…great niece. I recently moved back into the area, so I thought I’d come see how Uncle George is doing. Good old great, great….” I paused. “Great Uncle George.”
I attempted a convincing smile, but judging by the woman’s wary expression, it fell short. On more than one occasion, I’d been told I had a terrible poker face.
“Mr. Hart’s never had a family visitor in my twenty years here.”
“Even more reason to let me see him.”
Despite having clear reservations about my veracity, the woman blew out a long-suffering sigh. The nymph’s romp with Lord Ruffleton on the fainting couch would have to wait.
“He’s due for lunch in about forty-five minutes. It’ll have to be a short reunion.”
