Paging the Dead Page 9

  “Actually, he wasn’t rich back then,” I said. “In fact, he grew up in somewhat diminished circumstances.”

  “You’re kidding,” Ingrid said. “I thought the Pritchetts came from old line money. Like really old line, back to England or wherever.”

  “As near as we can tell, your immigrant ancestor, Edmund, arrived in this country with the proverbial shirt on his back just before the American Revolution,” I said. “He settled in the tidewater area of Virginia and through the next couple of generations the Pritchetts became small plantation owners and acquired some degree of comfort. But Harrison’s father, Lawton, was killed in the Civil War, leaving his wife with a baby to raise and a plantation to run on her own. In those reconstruction times it would have been a challenge even for the most experienced overseer and she couldn’t keep it afloat. She managed to keep the house, but had to take in boarders to make ends meet.”

  “I never knew,” Ingrid said. “So how did Grandpa Harry get his money?”

  “By his own ingenuity and hard work,” I said, making sure Cassidy was listening. “He had a dream and he worked hard. He came to this area and saw all it had to offer and brought his bride here to start a new life, though it surely wasn’t a life of luxury back then. He bought land on the highest point for the house he wanted to build for his wife one day. He also purchased a plot down by the river and built a sawmill and a modest little house for them to live in while he got his business going. That was the beginning of what grew into Pritchett International.”

  “Where did he get the money for the land?” Ingrid asked.

  “Good question,” Esme said. “Things were a whole lot different back then as far as reporting income so there doesn’t seem to be a paper trail. He bought the land for cash on the barrelhead.”

  “Wow, there’s a blank I’d like to have filled in,” Ingrid said, then whispered, “Maybe the Pritchett men weren’t stuffy old bores after all. Maybe he robbed a bank or something and there’s an outlaw in the clan.”

  “Well, however he got his start,” I said, “he really did build his fortune on his own and I can tell you in all our research we never found anything that assailed his character. He seems to have been a very principled and generous man.”

  “Guess things really do skip a generation,” Ingrid said, giving me a rueful smile. “My father looked nothing like him. I guess he got all Grandmother Sarah’s genes from the Malone side, though he surely didn’t get her temperament if what I remember about her is really how she was. I think of her as a gentle, kind person. My father was neither of those things.”

  I let that comment lie, since from everything we’d discovered it was true in spades. Ingrid and Dorothy’s father, William, did not leave shiny testimonials in his wake. By all accounts he’d been a disagreeable man and not one to be trusted in business dealings. We’d interviewed an older gentleman who’d known him who’d said, “Will Pritchett was so crooked when he died they didn’t need a coffin, they just corkscrewed him into the grave.”

  I showed Ingrid the pages we’d made for Sarah Malone from that time period. “Your grandmother was a beautiful woman. I think you look like her.”

  “Do you? Well, that’s a compliment. And I did know that she grew up in—how did you put it?—diminished circumstances. Actually, I think her family had always been poor so I guess there was nothing diminished about it. That’s sort of the family fairy tale, that Grandpa Harry took the poor little matchstick girl and made her queen of his castle.”

  “Well, now, hold on,” Esme said, holding a photo down while Cassidy concentrated on painting the back with a glue stick, “the Malones weren’t well-to-do, but I think that might be a bit of an exaggeration. Her parents owned a small mercantile store that did tolerably well, so your grandmother had all her needs met, though there probably wasn’t much left over for luxuries.”

  “And her family wanted her to have some advantages. Her parents sent her to live with relatives in Richmond for a while so she could experience the cultural activities the city offered.”

  Ingrid chuffed. “Did Dorothy tell you that?

  “Yes,” I said, puzzled by her reaction. “But we verified it through other records. She lived with the Spencer family for almost two years.”

  “But not as a guest,” Ingrid said. “She was a live-in babysitter. Practically an indentured servant.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “Everything we’ve found describes her as a guest in the Spencer household.”

  Ingrid shook her head. “I remember distinctly hearing that Grandmother looked after the two Spencer boys. I even remember their names, Lyle and Lawrence. She used to tell Dorothy stories about what horrid little boys they were and how mean Mrs. Spencer was to her. All very Jane Eyre, but without the Mr. Rochester romance.”

  Esme and I exchanged glances. If that was true, what else had Dorothy intentionally misled us about to buff luster onto the Pritchett family story?

  Ingrid’s account made more sense as I studied a photo of Sarah with the Spencer family. Families were usually posed in some kind of pecking order and in this photo Raeford Spencer stood beside his wife, Agnes, who was seated in an ornately carved chair. Sarah was perched on an upholstered bench off to the side with a young boy on either side of her. As was also common the subjects were not looking directly at the camera, but staring off as if viewing some oddity in the far distance—with the exception of Sarah Malone. She was looking straight into the lens and her expression could only be described as defiant.

  Agnes’ face indicated either deep unhappiness or severe indigestion and I could only take from Raeford’s expression that he really wished he were somewhere—anywhere—else at that moment.

  “Look, Cassidy, this is my grandmother, like I’m your grandmother,” Ingrid said.

  “You’re my Gigi,” Cassidy corrected, using her pet name for Ingrid.

  “You bet I am,” Ingrid said. “Come see if you think I look like my grandmother.”

  Cassidy puckered her lips and put on a thinking frown. “Um, maybe. Your eyes are like hers.” She studied the picture some more. “Why is that lady wearing Auntie Dot’s pretty new ring?”

  I looked again at where Cassidy was pointing and nearly yelped. There on Agnes Spencer’s chubby hand was a ring that looked remarkably like the Pritchett family heirloom.

  “Auntie Dot had a new ring?” Ingrid asked. “I doubt that. Or if she did it must have been costume jewelry. Dorothy quit buying real jewelry a long time ago when she realized the people she was trying so hard to impress couldn’t tell the difference between the real thing and cubic zirconium.”

  I was surprised the cops hadn’t questioned Ingrid about the ring already and I could tell Esme was thinking the same thing.

  “Auntie Dot did have a new ring, Gigi,” Cassidy insisted. “That one.” She pointed again to the ring on Agnes Spencer’s finger. “Miss Esme and Miss Sophreena gave it to her.”

  Ingrid frowned, looking from me to Esme.

  “Well, it did look a lot like that one,” I said.

  “A lot like that one,” Esme echoed.

  “The Pritchett family ring,” I said, by way of explanation. “We returned it to Dorothy on the day—that day. We found it in your grandmother’s belongings.”

  “You mean that thing is real?” Ingrid asked. “There really is a Pritchett family ring? I always thought that was just another of Dorothy’s tales to try to glam up the family. Where is it now?”

  “We’re not sure,” I said, letting my eyes come to rest on Cassidy.

  Ingrid got the message, her fingertips flying to her mouth to suppress a gasp.

  “I think we could use some coffee right about now,” Esme said. “And Cassidy, I’ll bet you could use a cup of hot chocolate. How about we go out to the kitchen and fix it?”

  “Okay,” Cassidy said. “But how do you use hot chocolate?”

  Esme laughed as she took her by the hand.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you about th
e ring,” I said once they were out of earshot. “I assumed the police filled you in.”

  “Not a word,” Ingrid said. “So I take it this ring is missing? Wait, does that mean Dorothy was killed for that? Oh God, yet another curse from the Pritchett family.”

  “I don’t know any more about that than you do, Ingrid,” I said. “All I know is we found it and gave it to Dorothy that afternoon.” I told her about the photo I’d taken and about giving a copy to the cops.

  “Do you still have a copy? Could I see it?”

  The way I figured it, the ring was from Ingrid’s family and she had more right than anyone else to know about the family heirlooms. I fetched the photo.

  “Wow, that’s big and ostentatious—a perfect symbol for the Pritchetts,” Ingrid said. “You know, I think I do have some vague memory of my grandmother wearing a ring like that on special occasions. Are the stones real?”

  “I didn’t have it appraised.” I shrugged. “When we found it we gave it to Dorothy straight away, but they sure looked real to me.”

  Ingrid bent to study the Spencer family portrait again, looking at the portrait then back to the photo of the ring. “They do look the same. Maybe it was a popular design of the day or something? Some sort of fad?”

  “I’m not a jewelry specialist,” I said, “but I know a little. Certain types of pieces were in vogue in the Georgian period when the ring was probably made. Memorial brooches made from a lock of a deceased loved one’s hair, cameos, miniature portraits and lover’s eye lockets that featured a small painting of the eye of a beloved were all big, as were chokers and necklaces called rivieres made of multiple strands of gems. But most wealthy families wanted their signature pieces to be distinctive and I suspect this ring was.”

  I pulled a magnifying loupe out of the desk drawer. I studied the ring in the photo then handed the loupe over to Ingrid. “Like I say, I’m no expert, but that sure looks like the same ring to me.”

  “Me, too,” Ingrid said. “But why in the world would this Spencer woman have been wearing it and how did it make its way into my grandmother’s possession? From what I heard about their relationship Agnes Spencer surely didn’t give it to her. Maybe Grandma Sarah wasn’t as upstanding as everybody thought.”

  eleven

  HEAT AND FATIGUE MADE THE THOUGHT OF COOKING SUPPER repugnant so after Ingrid and Cassidy had left, Esme fixed us a salad with iced tea. We were in the process of some listless eating when Jack let himself in the front door.

  “You’re gonna need more fuel than that,” he said. “Have some toast or something. I’ll go get your bike out of the garage.”

  “And why do I need my bike?” I asked. “Did I miss a memo?”

  “You’ve been sitting all day, right? You need fresh air and exercise. It’s cooled down outside and we’ve got two hours of daylight. Let’s go ride around the lake. Come on, chop, chop!”

  I looked over at Esme, my eyes pleading with her to help me think of an excuse. She threw me under the bus.

  “You heard the man, chop, chop,” she said, getting up to put her dishes in the sink. “I, on the other hand, will be doing a little yoga, taking a nice long bath, watching a smidge of telly then turning in. You kids have fun.”

  “Okay, but before you go, let me tell you what I found out from Julie,” Jack said, turning a kitchen chair around to straddle it.

  I was immediately suspect of whatever information he had, considering the source, but Esme had no such reservations.

  “Whatcha got?” she asked.

  “According to Julie, the police are now leaning toward the theory that this was a robbery gone bad. Apparently Linda, Dorothy’s housekeeper, told the police she saw a man on the front porch when she pulled out of the driveway headed for the grocery store that afternoon.”

  “What did the guy look like? Did she recognize him?” I asked.

  “Nuh-uh. Too far away. But she thinks he had blond hair or maybe was wearing a yellow cap, she can’t be sure which. But anyhow, Julie says she’s heard there was valuable stuff missing and that adds up to a crime of opportunity.”

  “Stuff?” I said. “So the press hasn’t found out about the ring yet?”

  “Nope,” Jack said, “but it’s sure not from lack of trying. I’ve had doctor’s exams where I got less prodding and probing than I got from Julie.”

  • • •

  Because I was miffed at Jack I hated to admit the bike ride had been a good idea, but it was great to be in the fresh air and moving after being hunched over a layout table all day.

  Misty Lake is a manmade body of water formed when civil engineers dammed Potters Creek back during the 1930s. The eastern shore is lined with nice middle-class homes of differing sizes and architectural styles. A bike and hiking path snakes through the neighborhood along the waterfront.

  Across the way the west side lakefront is dotted with private piers and gazebos. No public access on the western shore. The land slopes up to the most expensive homes in Morningside perched along the ridge known as Crescent Hill. The Pritchett house, known as High Ground, is located on the highest point.

  Motorboats are forbidden on the lake, but rowboats, kayaks and canoes are encouraged. There’s even a reasonably priced pedal-boat rental on the southern end where the lake borders the golf course. I spotted a family of four in a rowboat. The dad and the daughter were fishing over the side while the mom lounged in the aft section with an e-reader and the son punched away on what looked like a handheld video game. Maybe not Norman Rockwell, but they looked happy.

  We pedaled along at a leisurely pace and chatted about our day as we rode side by side. I wanted to ask him more about Julie, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead he told me about the landscaping jobs he had yet to finish before the Honeysuckle Festival and I filled him in on what Cassidy had noticed about the ring in the Spencer family photo.

  “So, are you thinking Dorothy’s grandmother stole it from her employer?” he asked. “Is that it?”

  “I don’t even know for sure it’s the same ring. But I’ll be trying to find out more about that bit of bling and about the Spencer family, too.”

  “You think it’s strange the police never asked Ingrid about the ring?”

  “Yeah, I do. And maybe we weren’t supposed to say anything, but the detectives never told us to keep quiet about it.”

  “And you’re sure she really didn’t know about it ’til today?”

  “If she was acting she missed her calling. But the thing I don’t understand, if this was robbery why didn’t they take it all? Dorothy was wearing a diamond ring and a tennis bracelet worth thousands. Why not grab it all while they were at it?”

  “Wait, you were talking about her pearls before, didn’t you say those were heirlooms, too? So they only took the family jewelry?”

  “Appears that way,” I said.

  We’d gotten about halfway around the loop when Jack frowned, looking toward the lake. “Hey, isn’t that Joe Porter over there?” he asked, dipping his head toward a bench near the water’s edge.

  “Do you know him?” I asked, squinting to get better focus.

  “Yeah, I did some landscaping work up at High Ground a while back. Dealt mostly with him, except for times when Mrs. Porter would come out and make me plant or uproot things on some whim or another. He looks lonesome. Let’s go over and say hello.”

  “Maybe he’d rather be alone,” I said, thinking of the unease I’d felt as Porter and his mechanic had watched me as I was leaving his service station.

  Jack frowned. “What’s up with you? You don’t seem like yourself.”

  “You mean other than one of my clients being murdered and my name being bandied about as a suspect all over town?”

  “Yeah, other than that,” Jack said with a smile. He pulled out ahead of me and cut across the grass heading for Joe Porter. I had little choice but to follow.

  “Mr. Porter,” Jack said as he came to a stop and dismounted. “Hope we’re not intruding
, I just wanted to say I’m really sorry about Mrs. Porter.”

  “Jack? It is Jack, am I remembering that right?”

  “Yes sir, Jack Ford. And I think you know Sophreena Mc-Clure.”

  I was out of breath so I gave a little wave.

  “Sure do,” Porter said, nodding. “Thank you for your condolences, Jack. This is hard on everybody.”

  “I see you’ve got some friends there,” Jack said, pointing to the raft of ducks bumping into one another as they crowded close to the water’s edge. There were so many it looked like a carnival game.

  “They’re waiting for me to throw out some more cracked corn,” he said, holding up a paper bag. “I come down here about once a week to bring them a treat. They know me on sight now.”

  “My dad and I used to bring stale bread to feed them,” I said. “It was my reward for getting my homework done.”

  “Here, come give it a whirl,” Porter said, patting the bench beside him. “I used to bring bread, too, until I read somewhere that’s bad for ’em, kind of like fast food. Fact, I guess it’s bad to feed them at all. Makes them lazy about finding their own food and they get aggressive toward one another. Sort of like people who never have to work for a living, I suppose. But surely a little cracked corn once in a while can’t hurt.”

  I took a handful of the proffered corn and threw the pieces into the water one by one. The ducks paddled and bobbed turning their tails skyward as their heads went below the surface.

  “How’re you coming on Dorothy’s scrapbooks?” he asked as we watched the ducks’ antics.

  “We’ll have them all done as promised by the day of Dorothy’s memorial. I don’t think I ever said thank you for giving us the go-ahead with them.”

  “And you’re wondering why I’d bother with it, aren’t you?” Porter asked. “Given that Dorothy and I were having our troubles.”

  “It was a nice gesture,” I demurred, giving Jack the evil eye as he settled onto the grass a few feet away. He’d gotten me into this sticky wicket and he was making no effort to get me out of it.