Paging the Dead Read online

  She covered the mouthpiece, but not very well, and yelled, “Hank, phone, pick up.” She sounded like a quarterback getting ready to take the snap. I was half expecting her to add hut hut.

  After some confusion and rustling in the background a male voice announced, “Hank Spencer.” He sounded younger than I’d expected.

  Again I explained why I was calling. I may have misrepresented a tad, but only by omission. He apparently got the idea I was researching the Spencer family and I didn’t disabuse him of the notion.

  “Maybe we’re distant cousins or something,” he said, seemingly pleased at the prospect. “Yeah, I’d love to exchange info. When could we do that?”

  “No time like the present,” I said. “How does your afternoon look?”

  “Uh,” he said hesitantly, “let me think. Well, I can’t invite you here. My wife’s giving a baby shower and I’m going to have to vacate the premises in a few minutes. I could come to you if you live nearby.”

  While we’d been talking I’d been searching one of those meet-halfway websites and found a coffee shop just off I-40 that fit the bill. I threw out the suggestion and Spencer said he could be there in less than an hour.

  Esme wasn’t about to miss out on the sleuthing and we agreed, grudgingly, that we’d have to give up our planned supper out and work into the night to make up for lost time. I resisted the urge to say we had bigger fish to fry. I love a good pun, but Esme’s not a fan and I fear one of these days she’s going to take the eye roll too far and never be able to see straight again.

  I printed extra copies of the three photos we had of the Spencer family and put them into a folder along with the timeline I’d drawn up for Sarah Malone and we set out for our meeting with my long-lost cousin.

  • • •

  Esme and I both spotted Spencer straight away then looked at each other, gaping. We really need to work on our poker faces.

  The guy had blond hair of a hue usually seen only on fifties-era starlets and Scandinavian children. He was handsome and well dressed but his motions were hyperkinetic, his leg bouncing and his eyes flitting around the room. Too much caffeine maybe.

  We introduced ourselves and I could see confusion register on his face as he glanced from Esme to me then back again. No doubt he was wondering which of us he could possibly be related to since neither of us is anywhere near Anglo enough to be a Spencer.

  Esme went off to get us coffee and I sat down in the chair Spencer pulled out for me. “Okay, then,” he said, “tell me, how exactly are we related? I know I have lots of distant Spencer cousins but I haven’t been at this long enough to get them all straight.”

  “Is this a hobby?” I asked, avoiding the question. “Or is there some particular reason you’re researching the family tree?”

  “Hobby,” he said. “Well, sorta hobby, sorta work. I own a travel agency and we specialize in trips to different historical sites—Revolutionary and Civil War battlefields, birthplaces of presidents, monuments, stuff like that. So our clients are all history buffs. Most of them know their family trees back to Methuselah. I got tired of answering ‘I have no idea,’ when they asked me about mine. So I started it because I thought it would help my business, but then I got hooked. You know what I mean?” He pointed to my folder and laughed. “Well, course you do.”

  He opened a notebook and flipped through pages of scribbled notes until he came to a clean page. “Okay, tell me your name again and how we’re related.”

  Esme joined us with the coffee and raised an eyebrow at me. I’d been stalling until she got back so we could both see his reaction.

  “I’m not certain we are,” I said. “Actually the family line I’ve been tracing is the Pritchett family.”

  “Okay, yeah. That’s way distant. Wait, no, that’s not even a blood relation to me,” he said. “The Spencers and Pritchetts had some connection way back, but they aren’t related.”

  I glanced over at Esme. The mention of the name hadn’t unsettled him so I took a more direct approach. “Did you know Dorothy Pritchett Porter?”

  “Know her? Well, no, I can’t say I know her. I met her once, man, what a clusterf—” He caught himself before he uttered the expletive. “What a disaster that was. How is the grand dame?”

  “Dead,” Esme said flatly.

  Hank Spencer looked like a pole-axed steer, as my granddad used to say. His eyelids fluttered and he seemed uncomprehending. He worked his mouth for a couple of seconds then sputtered. “Geez, I’m sorry. It must have been sudden.”

  “Real sudden,” Esme said. “She was murdered. You haven’t heard this? It’s been all over the news.”

  Spencer shook his head. “No, I’ve been out of town—a tour to Antietam. Didn’t get back until about four this morning. I slept in then did a couple of chores for my wife and then you called. Martians could have landed on the White House lawn and I wouldn’t have heard about it. Who killed her?”

  “That’s the big question right now,” I said. “When did you meet Dorothy?”

  “Earlier in the week,” Spencer said, still frowning. “I don’t remember which day it was. Let’s see, it wasn’t Monday, I had a meeting that night. Must have been Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon.”

  “And where was this?” I asked, trying to keep my voice casual.

  “At her house. I’d come across some info written in my, let’s see”—he shot his eyes upward and tapped the table with his finger to keep count—“my great-great-aunt’s diary while I was doing my family research and there was a wicked funny story I thought she’d find amusing. Boy, was I wrong about that.”

  His posture stiffened and he looked at each of us through narrowed eyes. “Wait a minute, when did you say was she killed? Are you cops or something?”

  “No,” I said, drawing out the word, “we really are genealogists researching the Pritchett family. But the police are going to want to talk to you. You may have been the last person to see Dorothy alive, other than the killer.”

  Esme started in on one of her low decibel mumbles and I knew she was already building a case against Spencer in her head. And on the face of it things did look pretty bad. But if he was acting, he was ready for the next Scorsese film.

  His hand shook as he took a sip of his coffee. “Man, oh man,” he said. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Could I ask about the story you told Dorothy?” I asked. “You say she wasn’t amused?”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” he said, looking around as if he’d lost something. “Do you think I should get a lawyer or something? That’s going to cost a bundle, isn’t it? My wife’s gonna kill me. She told me I shouldn’t go to see the woman, but I thought it would be good to connect. Most people like to talk about their ancestors, you know?”

  “Yes, I know. I’m a genealogist, remember?” I said with a smile. “I’m sure you’ll be able to get this all cleared up. I wouldn’t worry.”

  Esme grunted and I gave her a nudge under the table.

  “The truth will set you free,” she said with a tight smile. “So what was this story?”

  “Okay,” Spencer said, talking rapidly now. “So my folks were thrilled about me getting interested in this family history thing. For one thing it was their chance to get rid of the boxes of family crap that had accumulated in their attic. Some branches of the Spencer family are not what you’d call sentimental. As each generation died out they dumped the stuff on anybody who’d take it and my folks ended up with a ton of it. I drove to Virginia and loaded up as much as I could fit in my car. That’s another reason my wife’s not thrilled. I took over the spare bedroom to sort through it all.”

  “And there was something that would have interested Dorothy in this diary you’re talking about?” Esme asked, trying to steer Spencer back on track.

  “Yeah, sorry,” he said, tapping his pen nervously on his notebook. “I found a diary from my great-great-aunt Agnes, except she wasn’t related to me except by marriage, so whatever that makes her.”

/>   I opened my mouth to educate Spencer on the affinity of in-laws but it was Esme’s turn to silence me. “Yes, go on,” I said, rubbing the shin she’d kicked.

  “Okay,” Spencer said, squeezing his eyes shut. “Let me get this right. My great-great-uncle Raeford Spencer and his wife, Agnes, lived in Richmond sometime late in the 1800s. And Agnes, who just between you and me and the fencepost sounds like a primo shrew if ever there was one, wanted someone to help take care of her hellion kids. Two boys, some kind of old-fashioned names I can’t remember, but I’ve got them written down in here somewhere,” he said, placing his hand on the notebook as if he were swearing on a Bible. “Anyhow, Agnes remembered some distant cousins of hers out in the tidewater who had daughters. She got to thinking one of them might like to come live in the city a while so she reached out. She writes all about how happy she is when Sarah Malone accepts the invitation, yadda yadda, all is well.”

  “We found a picture,” I said, pulling the copy of the cabinet card photo out and handing it to him. “I think this is Raeford and Agnes Spencer.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I’ve got that same one. Mine has names on the back. They’re in pencil and whoever wrote it had terrible handwriting, but you can make it out. That picture tells a lot, doesn’t it? Look at those boys. You can tell they were the spawn of the devil, can’t you? And Agnes, whew boy, a face that could stop a train, and not in a good way. And I think there was a little bait and switch going on with Sarah Malone. I’m not sure it was made clear she was coming to be a servant. From some of the entries in Agnes’ diary it sounds like they had some disputes about that. A couple of times Sarah threatened to pack up to go home, but something convinced her to stay.”

  “One thing that we’re interested in,” Esme says, “is this ring right here on Agnes Spencer’s finger.”

  “So she told you?” Spencer asked. “From the way she was acting I didn’t think she’d tell anybody.”

  “Who told us what?” I asked.

  “Mrs. Porter,” Spencer said. “She told you the story about the ring?”

  “No, she didn’t,” Esme said, using her running-out-of-patience voice. “As we told you, Mr. Spencer, you were probably the last person to see Mrs. Porter alive.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, running his hand through his thatch of blond hair.

  The late afternoon sun was bathing the western window in a golden light that gave the entire coffee shop a sepia hue as if nature was adjusting the lighting so we could picture the tale Spencer began to unfold.

  “According to Agnes Spencer’s diary this ring was made by some famous jeweler in England back in the mid-seventeen hundreds. It was like a big deal thing in the Spencer family. Anyhow it came down through the generations, always through the oldest son in the family, natch. It missed my line.”

  “So your great-great-granddaddy wasn’t in line for it,” Esme said, following the thread.

  “No, his older brother. Raeford was the last Spencer to have the ring, or rather his wife, the not-so-lovely Agnes, was,” he said, pointing to the photo. “They got married sometime in the 1870s. But apparently Raeford’s mother didn’t much take to her son’s intended. Instead of giving over the ring for the engagement like was the family custom she held on to it long after they got hitched. It made Agnes furious. She wrote pages and pages about that in her diary. She wanted that ring in the worst way.”

  “Apparently she got it eventually,” I said.

  “Yeah, Raeford’s mother took ill and on her deathbed she finally gave the ring to Agnes. But the universe had a little joke in store—the old broad surprised everybody, including herself, and made a full recovery.”

  “I don’t suppose Agnes offered to return the ring,” I said.

  “Nuh-uh,” Spencer said. “Wore it twenty-four-seven. Gloated about it constantly in her diary.”

  “But that still doesn’t tell us how it went from being the Spencer family ring to the Pritchett family ring,” Esme said.

  “I’m getting there,” Spencer said, holding up a hand. “So it seems old Raeford Spencer had what these days we’d call an addictive personality. He overate, you can see he’s a tubby guy. And he drank a lot, but I think one look at Agnes explains that. Anyhow, he also had himself a bit of a gambling problem—and a poker buddy by the name of Harrison Pritchett.”

  “Dorothy’s grandfather,” I said, starting to see where this was headed.

  “Yep,” Spencer said. “And here’s where the two families connect, and clash. Agnes wrote quite a bit in her journal about Sarah Malone. She’d come to loathe having her in her house. She didn’t like that Sarah got so much attention from the men. Well, duh. Look at her; she’s gorgeous.”

  “She caught Harrison Pritchett’s eye,” Esme said, picking up the photo and staring at it. “She was radiant and he was totally smitten,” she said, stating a fact rather than asking a question.

  “Oh yeah,” Spencer said. “Agnes thought it was ‘vulgar the way Harrison looks at her,’ ” he said, adopting a snooty voice as he recited lines from the diary. “ ‘She plays the shy kitten but that is all artifice.’ ”

  “Am I to take it gambling was involved with the ring passing hands?” I asked.

  “Yep,” Spencer said. “Raeford went all in on a game of five-card stud. He couldn’t cover his bet so he crept into the bedroom and took the ring right off the sleeping Agnes’ hand. Harrison Pritchett cleaned him out that night, taking not only the ring but the backstory about a family heirloom that went with it.”

  “I can see why Dorothy didn’t care for that version,” Esme said.

  “Yes,” I said, remembering how grateful Dorothy had been that we’d found the ring that was the emblem of her illustrious family. “She would have been appalled to learn it was poker winnings.”

  “You got that right,” Spencer said. “She took the ring off and put it in her pocket after I told her the story. Then she just went berserk and threw me out. All I wanted was to share a good story. I tried to tell her that but she wasn’t in a listening mood.”

  “Did you see anyone else at Dorothy’s house?”

  “No, only her.”

  “Did she answer the door herself?”

  “Yes,” Spencer said. “This is starting to sound like a grilling.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But imagine how you’d feel if one of your clients got murdered on a trip. Dorothy was our client and we’d like to do everything we can to help find out who did this to her. Can we ask just a couple more questions?”

  I’ve got a pretty good pitiful look that I can deploy when I need it and I gave it to him now, looking at him over my glasses and letting my face go slack.

  He hesitated then threw up his hands. “Sure,” he said. “Go ahead.”

  I tried to pin him down about the timing of his visit, but he was vague about it. “I’m on an unbending schedule every day with my job,” he said, “so when I’m on my own time I refuse to wear a watch. I know I was supposed to be there at four and I think I was pretty much on time.”

  “And how long did you stay?” I asked.

  Spencer shrugged. “I’m not sure. Thirty minutes? Forty-five? It could have been longer, I suppose.”

  “Did you see a little girl, or the housekeeper or anyone else when you were there?”

  “Nobody,” Spencer said. “Not to speak to. When I was leaving I did catch a glimpse of a woman taking some bags out of the back of a dark-colored SUV. She was medium tall and medium build, I guess you’d say. Dark hair. That’s about all I could tell from a distance. I’d parked on the street and she was at the end of the driveway near the garage. I only saw her for a second or two.”

  “Must have been Linda coming back from the store,” Esme said and I nodded.

  “Well, there you go,” Spencer said. “She can tell you Dorothy Porter was alive and righteously POed when I left her house.”

  “Linda’s the one who found the body,” Esme said.

  Spencer slumped bac
k in his chair. “Man, oh man, this is not good.”

  • • •

  “Were you getting something in there?” I asked Esme as she bulleted up the entrance ramp back onto I-40. “When we were talking about Harrison Pritchett falling for Sarah, you seemed to go somewhere else for a bit.”

  “There was something incredibly intense about the relationship between those two,” Esme said. “And I do mean intense.”

  “They were madly in love, or they despised each other or what?”

  “Not sure,” Esme said. “Thin line between love and hate sometimes. I don’t know what, but it was something extraordinary. Complicated. All tangled up.”

  “There was quite a difference in their ages. Maybe she didn’t marry for love. But then again she didn’t marry for money, either. Harrison Pritchett hadn’t made his fortune by then. He was working as a blacksmith’s assistant back in those days—when he wasn’t gambling.”

  “Well, sounds like he was also a real card shark. Maybe he cleaned out other rich guys besides Raeford Spencer,” Esme said.

  My phone rang and an irate Marydale barely waited for a hello. “You will not believe this,” she said, spitting each word. “Vivian Evans is telling everyone in earshot it might have been Linda Burnette who robbed Dorothy, and maybe worse. I’ve known Linda my whole life. You have too, Sophreena. She was a friend of your mom’s. Linda would never do anything like that, and anyway she actually liked Dorothy Porter, despite the demands that woman made on her.”

  “Why would Vivian say that?” I asked, feeling guilty about my own fleeting suspicion when Spencer told us he’d seen Linda. But that only lingered a nano-second before my left brain gave my right brain a dope slap.

  “I have no earthly idea,” Marydale said. “She’s been spouting off about what dire straits Linda and her family are in with two kids in college at the same time. Of course that’s a struggle. Been there, done that. But Linda and Ben are managing fine, thank you very much.” Marydale’s ire passed and now she sounded simply sad. “I know Vivian is hurting. I know she and Dorothy were close, but, really, this kind of nonsense doesn’t help anything.”