Dead in a Flash Page 14

  “Huh,” Denny said. “Funny, he never mentioned anything about that to me.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe he thinks it’s common knowledge or not relevant.”

  “At this point everything is relevant,” Denny said. “That’s one problem, too much information and no context for any of it. Speaking of which . . .” He reached into the messenger bag he’d plopped onto the chair beside him. “I got the records on that fire. I had copies made for y’all, but let’s not go bandying that about. They’re mostly public, but there might be a few internal memos in there, purely by mistake, you understand.”

  “But we—” I started and Esme kicked me under the table with her size 10 shin-bruisers.

  “—appreciate it so much,” she finished, reaching over to rub Denny’s arm. “Thank you, Denton. We’ll be discreet.”

  * * *

  “. . . because he went to a lot of trouble getting those reports for us,” Esme said, continuing the scolding she’d started the moment the door closed behind Denny. “And I don’t want him to think we’re ungrateful.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You’re right. I wasn’t thinking. And Denny’s feelings aside, we promised Nancy we wouldn’t say anything to anybody about where we got the ones she shared with us.”

  “I think she’s hoping something we find will end the rumors and put the parents’ behavior in perspective,” Esme said. “And if we manage to accomplish that, she’ll want the senator and Lenora to know it came from her grandfather. It’s her way of making amends for what he did back then to sully the investigation.”

  “That was the impression I got, too,” I said, opening the folder Denny had brought. Many of the records were duplicates of what we had from Nancy, but some we hadn’t seen before. I stacked up all the materials we’d been perusing earlier and carefully distributed the ones Denny had given us down the length of the table, a blue sticky note affixed to each so we’d know the source. I matched them up with the items we’d printed out from Nancy’s set, which each got a yellow sticky note. When we had things sorted, I unspooled two yards of paper from a big roll I keep for making timelines for family histories. This is how I always begin making sense of the information we’ve gathered on each job.

  I drew a long line bisecting the paper down the length and measured out increments for weeks at the far ends and hours for the day of the fire.

  I looked over the first record, a written statement from the farmer who’d been the Sawyers’ closest neighbor. According to him, he’d “looked over east along about three o’clock and saw black smoke. I knew it weren’t no trash fire or nothing, but I reckoned it might be the barn. I took off over that way and afore I ever got up close I saw it was the house afire.”

  I put the first tick on the timeline at 3:00 p.m. with a fifteen-minute bracket on either side and labeled it House in flames/witness statement.

  “We’re in it now, Esme,” I said. “And we’re gonna take it wherever it leads. Wherever. Agreed?”

  We both stared down at the bright white paper inscribed with a thin black line that, we hoped, would eventually lead us to the answers.

  “That we will,” Esme said. “Tell the truth and shame the devil.”

  ten

  LILY ROSE WAS SITTING ON the terrace talking with Cyrus Hamilton when we came to visit the next morning. She looked better than I’d seen her since we’d first met months ago. She had color in her cheeks, and her wheelchair was nowhere in sight, though she had an intricately carved wooden cane hooked on the arm of her chair.

  “How good of you to come,” she said, stretching out one hand to Esme and the other to me. “It’s such a beautiful day and yet such a sad day. I’m glad for your company. But where are my manners, Cyrus, are you acquainted with these ladies?”

  “Sophreena and I have met,” Hamilton said, getting to his feet and giving a slight bow in my direction before extending his hand to Esme, “but I haven’t had the pleasure.”

  I saw a frown cross Esme’s face as she shook his hand. I’d need to remember to ask about that later. She doesn’t normally get any more of a read off living people than I do, but she’d given Cyrus a peculiar look.

  After the introduction he excused himself, but not before urging Lily Rose to summon him personally if she needed anything. “Any little thing at all,” he said, “do you promise?”

  “I’m perfectly content,” Lily Rose said. “But if a need arises I will let it be known.”

  After he left, Lily Rose let out a sigh. “Ah, poor Cyrus. This is surely not the way he intended Stanton’s birthday celebration to go. I wish I could have gone to Lincoln’s funeral. Had I known I’d be feeling so well today, I would’ve ventured it, but yesterday wasn’t so good. That’s one of the things this condition steals from you. I’ve got no capacity to plan my daily life anymore.”

  “Isn’t Sarah here with you?” I asked, wondering if Lily Rose’s improved condition had convinced her she could leave her mother for a time.

  “Yes,” Lily Rose answered. “She’s up in our room working on thank-you notes, a job that should rightly fall to me. I don’t like her to hover and she tries to grant me what little freedom I can claim, especially on days when I can do for myself. I can’t tell you how annoyed I am that this old body has failed me. It’s confounding. But today I am rather feeling my oats. After all the physical therapy and injections and pills and what-all I’ve had, who would’ve thought lying in a vat of warm mud could give me such relief. But you didn’t come here to hear me complain about my ailments. Tell me, have you been able to spend any time on the report Stanton and Lenora asked you to prepare? I know they’re most eager to set up the foundation and they want the way absolutely clear to that.”

  “We’ve made a start,” Esme said. “As I recall, you didn’t know the senator back when the fire happened, is that right?”

  “That’s correct. I knew of the family, of course. It seemed everyone in Quinn County either knew, or knew of, everyone else. But I wasn’t personally acquainted with any of the Sawyers. Our families were of differing religions, schools, and most importantly, political affiliations. Politics was a blood sport back in those days and one did not consort with the enemy.”

  “Ah, the more things change, the more they stay the same,” Esme said. “So how did you two overcome those barriers?”

  “Love finds a way,” Lily Rose said with a smile. “As I believe I told you during our interviews, we met at a community dance; a friend of Stanton’s introduced us.”

  “Yes, that much we know,” I said. “But we never got any of the particulars of how you came together.”

  “Well,” Lily Rose said, “I came to find out later that Stanton had hectored his friend into introducing us because he’d had his eye on me all the while. And after talking to him for only a few moments over punch and pound cake, I, too, was smitten. Don’t misunderstand; I was no tender young thing. I was twenty-one when we met. I was getting ready to graduate from NC Teachers’ College and I had aspirations of my own. I’d dated a few promising fellows, but none of them had impressed me much. Stanton did.”

  “And how long before you married?” I asked.

  “Six months,” Lily Rose said. “And that engagement was several months too long in Stanton’s estimation, though my parents thought it unseemly haste.”

  “Did both sets of parents give you their blessings despite the differences?” I asked.

  “Eventually,” Lily Rose said. “Honestly, you would’ve thought it was the Paris Peace Conference. If it hadn’t been for our mothers, we’d never have gotten through it. They formed an alliance and worked at softening up the menfolk, who came around in the end.”

  “So did you have a good relationship with your in-laws after all that?” Esme asked.

  “I respected Stanton’s father, Alton, tremendously. But I can’t honestly say we were close. And I suspect if you ask Lenora, she’d say the same. It was hard for men of that generation to find their way in a relationship with a female afte
r they passed the daddy’s little princess stage and became young women.”

  “And your mother-in-law?” I asked.

  “Ah,” Lily Rose said with a sigh.

  She was silent for so long, I thought maybe she was trying to order her words carefully to avoid saying what she really felt, but when she spoke I saw that it was a welling of emotion that had made her pause.

  “I won’t dishonor my own wonderful mother by saying that Mother Meg was like a mother to me. But I believe Mother Meg understood me better and supported me more earnestly in the things that were important to me. Meg Sawyer was the very antithesis of the stereotypical mother-in-law. I loved her fiercely and I’ve missed her every single day since she passed on.”

  “And you didn’t find their refusal to accept the baby’s death . . .” Esme’s voice trailed off as she searched for the right word.

  “Peculiar?” Lily Rose offered. “Crazy? Delusional? Don’t worry, Esme, we’ve heard it all through the years. All I can say is I’ve never known two more astute and sensible people.”

  “I don’t mean to put you on the spot, Lily Rose,” I said. “But are you saying it wasn’t irrational for them to hold out hope the baby was still alive?”

  Lily Rose frowned, staring down at the stone terrace. She held her silence a long while and when she turned back to us, she was clearly troubled.

  “Since Stanton and Lenora have asked you to take on this task, I feel I should speak about it openly. But I must ask you to hold what I tell you in confidence, even from my husband and Lenora, though I know they’re your clients and perhaps that would be a conflict for you.”

  Esme and I exchanged glances, and I could tell she was as perplexed as I was.

  “We can promise not to reveal the source of what you tell us,” I said, “but we may have no choice but to reveal the information if it turns out to be relevant to our task.”

  “That satisfies me,” Lily Rose said. “It’s not as if I have exclusive information. A number of people who you’ll likely talk with may tell you similar things. I just don’t want Stanton and Lenora to know it came from me. Please know, I do not withhold things from my husband, never have in all our married life.” A small smile creased her face. “Oh, maybe now and then the exact cost of a new dress or how much I spent on Christmas presents for the grandchildren, but nothing important. So you can appreciate how difficult this is. I do not like to go behind Stanton and Lenora’s backs to say things to you that I would not say to them, but this is an extremely painful subject for them. The loss of John David was like a malevolent fog that moved in and hovered over everything for their whole lives. Even in moments of what should have been utter joy it was always there in some dark corner. Not that Daddy Alton and Mother Meg were gloomy. They weren’t. They were warm, caring people who tried their best to carry on, but I think Stanton and Lenora sometimes felt neglected by their devotion to baby Johnny.”

  I was getting antsy with this preamble, but I made noises of encouragement to keep from interrupting.

  “Mother Meg was a meticulous woman. Her house was always neat as a pin and she was careful with things, very organized and observant. She told me about the day the fire took John David many times over the years, usually on a day when it was heavy on her heart—the anniversary of the fire or John David’s birthday or when a new call came in claiming to have information about him.”

  “I imagine those were hard days,” Esme said.

  Lily Rose nodded. “Very hard. I’ve never repeated any of this to a single soul. But here’s what I think you should know about Mother Meg’s account. That day she put baby Johnny down for his nap, his nursery was on the ground floor at the back of the house, as I’m sure you’ve learned. She took Lenora with her up to the sewing room on the second floor, where she set her to sorting buttons from a jar while she worked on a new dress Lenora was to wear to a birthday party. Mother Meg had one of those old pedal-type sewing machines and it made quite a racket. A couple of times when the machine was quiet she thought she heard something odd and stopped her work to listen, thinking it was baby Johnny waking up, but she only heard the noises of a summer afternoon, men in the fields shouting to one another and the far-off putter of a tractor. At one point she went to the doorway, certain she’d heard something, and was poised to go investigate, when Lenora spilled the buttons. They went everywhere and Lenora started to cry. Mother Meg went back into the room to soothe her and help pick them up. When she checked at the doorway again, everything was peaceful.”

  “She thought there was someone in the house?” I asked.

  “She didn’t think that then,” Lily Rose said. “If she had, she’d have descended those stairs like one of the Furies of ancient mythology. She was very protective of her children. And if that had been all of it, I’d say it was a tiny peg to hang such a big hope on, but there’s more. When the smoke started to curl up the stairs and Mother Meg realized there was a fire, her first thought was to get the children out. She grabbed Lenora’s hand and ran down to find the thick wooden door at the bottom of the staircase closed. She was certain she’d left it open so she could hear if the baby cried. When she pushed the door open the flames were already licking up the walls. She thrust Lenora toward the front door and told her to run as far as the woods and wait there and she’d come once she got the baby. Lenora was crying and didn’t want to go without her mother, but Meg shoved her and watched as Lenora pushed open the front screen door and ran outside. It struck Meg at that moment that she’d latched that screen door when she went upstairs and it shouldn’t have swung open without being unlatched. They had a scoundrel of a cat who’d learned to let himself into the house to hunt for food, so she’d formed the habit of setting the little hook and eye latch.”

  “Maybe she just forgot that day or maybe the fire had already damaged it,” Esme said.

  “Maybe,” Lily Rose allowed. “But then there was the chair. They had a wing chair in their front room that had been her grandfather’s and she kept it in a certain spot, away from the window so the sun wouldn’t fade the upholstery. It was directly in front of the window.”

  “Well,” Esme said, “I understand it was a hot day. Maybe someone raised the window for a breeze and moved the chair over to take advantage of it.”

  “Could be,” Lily Rose said. “I understand these all sound like trifling things. But if you’d known Mother Meg, you’d give them more weight. As I say, she was a fastidious woman and these things all came to her, little by little, in retrospect. At that point she had only one thing on her mind and that was getting to baby Johnny. She made it into his room, but by then the floor was already aflame and she caught her skirt on fire and had to beat it out and move back, but she got far enough to see into the crib and she swore Johnny wasn’t there. And the other thing is the window was up. She never put the window up in that room because there was a hole in the screen and she didn’t want the flies to get into the baby’s room. She looked around desperately for him, but by then the smoke was so thick she couldn’t breathe and she was forced out. Once she got her breath, she tried to go back in, but the men who’d come running when they saw the smoke held her back. And then the whole house caved in and it was over.”

  “During all this did she ever hear the baby cry?” I asked.

  “No, not a peep. And there was one more thing, and this is the one that has always given me the chills. After everything was over with and she’d had time to turn everything over in her mind, Mother Meg became certain that she’d recognized the sound she heard just before Lenora knocked over that button jar. It was the sound of a cigarette lighter, a Zippo. Do you know what that is?”

  “Yes,” I said. “In fact, I was just having a conversation with Cyrus about those lighters the other day. I have my grandfather’s.”

  “Then you know they make a very distinctive sound, a click when you open the lid, a sort of hiss when the flint hits the strike wheel, then a clack when the lighter closes. Each sound in the sequence fits tog
ether like the percussion to a familiar song, and Mother Meg knew it well since her father was an avid smoker. She was convinced that’s what she heard.”

  “Lily Rose, let me ask you straight out, are you persuaded the baby was kidnapped?”

  “No,” she said softly. “I’m not trying to make a case for that. Stanton and Lenora were there, they surely know better than me what happened that day. I’m telling you all this because I want you to understand that Meg Sawyer was not off her rocker like some folks have tried to make her out to be. She told all these things to the authorities and they either ignored her or condescended to her, but they never really considered anything she had to say as worthy of investigation. Nobody listened to her but Alton. I admired the way he stood by her. He never gave her one speck of an indication that he doubted her. Not even when she did that foolish thing a few months after the baby died.”

  “Foolish thing?” I asked.

  “They got a ransom demand, a note slipped under the door at their house in town,” Lily Rose said. “She didn’t tell anyone, not even Alton at first, and she delivered the money herself. She took it from a small inheritance her parents had left her. Five thousand dollars. That doesn’t sound like much now, but it was a good sum in those days. She left it under a fallen tree in the woods near the burnt ruins of the house where she was told to leave it. The money was gone the next day and that was the end of it. Some terrible person took advantage of her state of mind and robbed her as surely as if they’d held a gun on her. But even then Alton didn’t scold or blame. She had her reasons for believing as she did, and they were plausible, sensible reasons, even if they didn’t quite stretch to her conclusions. Still, her holding on to that hope, she and Alton both, it took a lot of things away from Stanton and Lenora over the years. Every time they went by that billboard it was like opening up a wound.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder if we’re doing the same thing,” Esme said.