Daughter of Ashes

TWENTY-SIX

‘A female interviewer – a reporter in petticoats? I am very curious to see her,’ Ralph declared.

Henry James, Portrait of a Lady, 1917

After leaving Rusty, I headed home, stopping first at the grocery to pick up something for dinner.

When I plopped a couple of rib eyes and a bag of Caesar salad on the conveyor belt, Penny said, ‘Have you heard the news?’

‘What news?’ I asked as Penny dragged my steaks over the scanner.

‘Tad Chew has been arrested!’

I’d been rummaging in my handbag, searching for my credit card, but that got my attention. ‘What for?’ I asked, looking up, although I was pretty sure I knew the answer.

‘They say he’s the one who ran Rusty off the road. My boyfriend works for the towing company that took Tad’s car away to the police garage.’

It was wrong, I knew, to rejoice in anyone going to jail, but the news fit in perfectly with my plans.

After Penny bagged my items, I hurried back to Our Song where I stored my purchases in the fridge and went out looking for Paul. I found him at the end of the dock preparing to install the outboard – which he had finally agreed to consign to the care of a professional engine mechanic – on the runabout.

‘Quick,’ I said. ‘What was I wearing the day that reporter came calling?’

Paul considered my question while I admired the greasy black smear on his cheek. ‘You’re asking me?’

‘The reporter, Madison Powers, gave me her card. I tucked it into the pocket of whatever I was wearing, but I can’t remember what that was.’

Paul looked blank.

‘The day the water pump was delivered?’

An eyebrow lifted. ‘Ah! I think it might have been your black jeans. I remember admiring the way they stretched over your…’

I silenced him with a death ray. ‘The dirty clothes bag!’ I shouted in triumph, and hurried off to find and rummage through it.

Madison’s business card finally in hand, I made the call. It went to her voicemail, of course – doesn’t anyone answer their telephones these days? – but when she returned my call fifteen minutes later, she seemed pleased to hear from me. After some small talk – during which I learned it was her birthday – I gave her the scoop about Tad Chew, explained the situation and told her what I wanted.

When the article came out in the Maryland section of the Washington Post several days later, I was having a cappuccino with Kimberly at the High Spot.

A suspect has been arrested and charged with hit and run in the accident which nearly claimed the life of a Tilghman County building contractor, Dwight ‘Rusty’ Heberling. Heberling was on a job-related errand when his motorcycle was struck by a late-model Mustang allegedly being driven by Thaddeus Chew of Elizabethtown, who fled the scene. Chew is the grandson of poultry magnate, Clifton J Ames II and a nephew of Tilghman County Council president, Jack Ames, who is running for Congress in Maryland’s Ninth district this fall. A source close to the Ames family said, ‘Whatever the outcome, Tad has our full support.’

Heberling remains hospitalized but is expected to make a full recovery.

In a related story, it was Heberling and his father, contractor Dwight Heberling, who discovered the mummified body of an infant girl hidden in the chimney of a Tilghman County house they were renovating.

Responding to reports that state police were planning to exhume the body of a former resident of the house to determine if she was the mother of the dead child, a police spokesman said, ‘We continue to explore our options, but no decision has yet been made.’

‘I could kiss the woman,’ I told Kim. ‘This is a masterpiece.’

‘It’s true?’

‘Every word. Tad is cooling his heels in the local hoosegow, isn’t he, and as for the other…’ I flapped a hand. ‘The “police spokesman” could be anybody.’ I winked. ‘Or nobody.’

‘Tad was actually arrested?’

‘Yesterday, I understand. Everything she says in this article is true, including the unidentified police spokesman. Love it!’

‘What do you hope to accomplish?’ she asked, handing the newspaper back to me.

‘Honestly? I don’t know. But if Clifton Ames did murder his first wife, Nancy, and he thinks there’s a possibility that Nancy’s body will be exhumed…’

Kim nodded. ‘I see, but you have to admit it’s a long shot. The man didn’t get to be the Chicken King of the Western World by being stupid.’

‘True, but smart men aren’t always smart when it comes to using and maintaining their power. Consider Bill Clinton, Elliot Spitzer, or that South Carolina governor who spent so much time “hiking the Appalachian trail.”’ I made quote marks in the air with my fingers.

‘What I don’t understand,’ I said, changing the subject, ‘is how the two of them could have married so young without their parents’ consent.’

‘It’s simple really,’ Kim explained. ‘Each county in Maryland sets their own rules for obtaining a marriage license. Back in the day, Elkton over in Cecil County was a regular Gretna Green for couples wanting a quick, quiet marriage, because until they changed the rules in 1938 there was no waiting period. Lots of famous people got married in Elkton, like Cornell Wilde, Debbie Reynolds, Willy Mays.

‘But you still had to meet their age requirements,’ she continued, ‘which was eighteen, I believe. In Tilghman County, however, you could get married without parental consent at seventeen, but they weren’t very picky about proof of age back then. How old are you? Eighteen? All right, then. And if the girl was over fifteen, and could produce a doctor’s certificate proving she was pregnant, granting a marriage license was pretty automatic.’

Kim broke her donut in half and dunked the torn end into her coffee. ‘What I don’t understand is how they managed to keep the marriage a secret. Tilghman County isn’t exactly New York City.’

I’d wondered about that, too, but based on what Cap had told me about his sister, I had developed a theory. ‘I think she loved him, but he convinced her to keep the marriage a secret, claiming that he needed time to break the news to his family about the baby, or else he’d be disinherited. So she trusted him. Dropped out of school, had the baby alone. When the baby died…’ I paused. ‘She’d lost her mother, her child and her only brother was fighting a war halfway around the world – a POW who might never come home. Perhaps she felt she had nothing more to lose. Perhaps she threatened to tell his parents, so he killed her.’

‘Once Nancy Hazlett was dead,’ Kim said, ‘there was very little chance anyone would find out about the marriage. The original marriage certificates from that time period are on file at the Maryland Hall of Records, but the indexes for 1941 through June of 1951 are conveniently missing.’

‘Couldn’t you just visit the Hall of Records in Annapolis and look them up?’ I asked.

‘You’d think, but the licenses are arranged chronologically by year, then by month, then alphabetically by jurisdiction – that would be Tilghman County – then by the groom’s last name.’

‘Jeesh. So without the index you’d have to know exactly what you were looking for and, even then, you’d have to go through the file of records pretty much one by one. Too bad the index is missing.’

‘Was missing,’ Kim said.

‘What?’

‘That red-bound volume you brought up the other day?’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Eh voila!’ she said. ‘It covers the missing period. And there’s something else Cap found and brought up to me. Finish up your coffee and I’ll show you.’

On Kim’s desk in her courthouse office sat a cardboard container about the size of a large shoebox. She pushed it across the desk toward me. ‘Cap found this box yesterday afternoon buried under a pile of continuous-feed computer paper. Look inside.’

The box contained about a hundred business envelopes with the return address of the Tilghman County Office of Property Tax Assessment printed in the upper left-hand corner. Each envelope contained a typewritten letter folded in thirds so that the address showed through the glassine window.

‘Open one up,’ Kim said.

I slipped the first envelope out of the box and lifted the flap. The letter was dated July, 1950 and was addressed to a Tilghman County resident who rejoiced in the name Ezekiel Hezekiah Agnew. ‘It’s a foreclosure notice.’

‘Exactly. What else do you notice?’

I scanned the rest of the letter, turned it over then took another look at the envelope. The tax assessors had stamped it with a real stamp, a dingy brown and white one honoring the Boy Scouts of America. ‘Three cents,’ I said a bit nostalgically. And then I noticed that there was no postmark. ‘They were never mailed!’

Kim grinned. ‘Thank you, Sherlock.’

My fingers flew quickly through the remaining envelopes, through the Andersons, Duncans, Fraziers and Gordons until I found what I knew would be there: an envelope addressed to Mary C. Hazlett at a house number and street that I knew as well, uh, as well as my own. ‘She never got it.’

‘No. None of them did,’ Kim said.

‘Rusty mentioned that Clifton Ames had a summer job at the courthouse. Do you suppose…?’

‘If so, it’ll be in the employment records. They’re somewhere down in the basement, too.’

I was about to suggest we go search for the employment records when the telephone on Kim’s desk rang. She picked up and listened. ‘But we’re not done,’ she said. Then, ‘I understand, but I don’t like it.’ She hung up without saying goodbye. Not a good sign.

‘That was Ginny over at the county council office,’ Kim told me. ‘The mold report has come in. I’m afraid it’s stachybotrys chartarum. We’ve been ordered to stand down.’

‘But…’

‘They tell me it’s the “dangerous kind.”’

‘All mold is dangerous in its way, but there are ways to abate…’ I began, but Kim cut me off.

‘Out of my hands, I’m afraid. Come on. I may need a bodyguard when we tell Fran. She’ll go ballistic.’