Tail Gait

May 4, 2015

Mrs. Murphy and Tucker had been right about Harry’s silence. Provoked by the loss of an old family friend, surprised at the murder of a washed-up football player, she was convinced she could ferret out important facts.

Taking out the list of books Frank had read in the last year, she called on Trudy. But before knocking on the front door, she examined the dwarf crepe myrtles along the drive. Trudy evidenced no surprise to see Harry watering her new shrubs at noon.

When Trudy politely asked Harry inside for a cool drink, Harry and Tucker happily accepted. Trudy liked company.

“The crepe myrtles are doing great.” Harry smiled. “Next year they’ll bloom even more. Of course, I selected the ones with heavy plumage. The trick is to get them rooted, secure, before the frosts come.”

“Fortunately, there’s a long time before that.” Trudy sipped a sweetened iced tea.

“True, but time goes so much faster than when I was in high school. Surprises me.”

“Wait until you’re my age. Whoosh.” Trudy drew her hand over her head indicating a jet fighter. “Like a Blue Angel.”

“Mom said the same thing about time flying, but now it seems she died young.”

Trudy nodded. “Your mother had just turned fifty. Looked thirty.” She smiled. “A family trait. Your people never show their age.”

“Thank you.” Harry dropped her hand to pet Tucker. “Blue Angels reminds me, didn’t the government stop the flying during the financial crisis? I don’t know why I thought of that, the money, I mean.”

“Grandstanding.” Trudy grimaced. “I was shocked to hear about Frank Cresey, terrible though he was. But he was a kid spoiled by fame, I guess, and Olivia thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. He was handsome. But what a terrible end. Two murders. Why?”

“The sheriff’s department has made Ginger’s murder their top priority. Frank, well, it’s compelling, but…” Harry’s voice trailed off then she picked up the thread. “Would you mind terribly if I looked at Ginger’s office again? Would you go in with me? I’ll tell you why.” She reached into her jeans’ back pocket, retrieving the book list. “Look at this,” said Harry, explaining its significance.

Trudy’s blue eyes ran down the list. “There are some of Ginger’s books on this list. How odd. How very odd.”

Leading Harry down the hall, Tucker’s claws clicking behind them, Trudy opened the door, turned on the lights.

“May I?” Harry pointed to Ginger’s comfortable and expensive office chair.

“Of course.”

Harry noted the books on Ginger’s desk, the papers from Alexander Fraser, the British captain at Saratoga. She opened the long, flat drawer under the middle of the desk. Clean white papers, pencils, and a flat gray square rubber eraser.

“Where did Ginger keep most of his maps?”

“He was fussy about those.” She turned to an editor’s bin, long, thin rows of drawers. Most are metal, but Ginger bought a beautiful large, long cabinet in mahogany.

By her side, Harry asked, “The sheriff looked in here, I assume?”

“Did.” Trudy opened the top drawer. “Old maps are in this one, new ones are in lower drawers along the aerial photos. The second drawer contains old maps of the King’s Highway, which, still in use, runs from Charleston, South Carolina, to Boston. There’s one for the Fall Line Road, important to Virginia, as was the Great Valley Road. He’s also got the Pennsylvania Road and Braddock’s Road. The oldest one, used in 1651, was King’s Highway. The others were in use beginning in 1700, some mid-century. Travel was hard—punishing, really. The government used to take survey photos, oh, about every decade. Ginger liked to see the development over former battlefields, old homes. Now that people are more interested in preservation, it’s not so bad, but if you compare these maps, it’s disturbing. Here, I’ll show you.” Trudy bent down, opened a lower drawer to lift out a series of large maps, black-and-white photographs. “Look at this.”

The first aerial map of The Barracks and Barracks Farm Road was taken in 1920 by a private concern, not a government survey map.

“No Ivy Farms back then, no indoor arena at The Barracks. The brick house is there. Look how open things were. Then, just twenty years later.” Trudy laid out an aerial map of that. “Still pretty clean.”

“The country club is here on the right, across Garth Road,” said Harry. “Well, it was always there, but not as a country club, but now you can see the golf course. Wow, this is something.” She pulled the earlier map over this one again. “Even though it’s clean, you can’t see any remains of buildings or outlines on the fields.”

“They’d been cultivated for too long, I think.” Trudy returned those maps, moved up a drawer. “Now look at this. Nineteen eighty.”

“Well, I guess people need to live and they want to live grandly, but this is so sad. We’ve lost so much of our history. I mean, even the lovely old houses were torn down. Remember Rustling Oaks?” Harry inquired.

“I remember all of Berta Jones’s properties and those of her children. Everyone dead now, and most of the land chopped up. The sorrowful thing about the people that inherited most of the old estates is that they couldn’t run them. They cherished the country, but they didn’t know how to make money. Their forebears generated the money. My father always said, ‘The first generation makes the money. The second tries to keep it, and the third loses it.’ Simplistic, but there’s a lot of truth to it.”

“Yes.” Harry studied the 1980 aerial photo. “I suppose that’s a form of revitalization.”

“It is, but Ginger decried the loss of historical places. Then again, the new people had some money, but not enough. To run a place like the old Jones property or even The Barracks before it became what it is now takes a fortune and labor costs rose, always do. The price of everything shot up. The wars intervened, World War One and Two.”

“Don’t forget the big one before that.” Harry’s mouth turned up slightly, a wry smile.

“Oh, Ginger could be quite wicked about the Yankees coming down after 1865. He used to say, ‘Before we condemn, we have to remember that carpetbaggers saved Keswick.’ ” Trudy cited a gorgeous part of Albemarle County that had held fast to the large estates better than the western part of the county.

“Trudy, I think those now living in Keswick would have a fit if they heard the Yankees getting credit.” Harry burst out laughing, as did Trudy.

Trudy put the aerial photos away, opened another drawer. “Here’s an interesting view.”

Harry laid the aerial map on the desk, peering intently at it. “I don’t remember this.”

“Camp Security, York, Pennsylvania. It was under threat of development and a wonderful woman, Carol Tanzola, fought hard to save it. Took her twelve years with the help of others who understood her reasons for preservation.”

“I’ve never been to York,” Harry confessed. “I know a little bit about Hanover.”

“You would. All those horses. Oh, Harry, you must go. Old York, the square, the homes on those old colonial streets. It’s beautiful, and the York Historical Society is quite good. Ginger was impressed, and I know I am bragging, but he just fell in love with Carol. Quite a beauty, I might add, and he did what he could to help, would hector historians at the University of Pennsylvania, Penn State, Villanova, oh, so many schools.”

“What was his interest? I mean, what motivated him?”

“Apart from Carol?” She winked. “Like The Barracks, it was another prisoner-of-war camp. In fact, when the four-thousand-plus wound up at The Barracks, many had to move, a thousand or so, went up to York. But at that time, you see, the campaign in South Carolina was moving up into Virginia. What a dramatic and frightening time.”

“Trudy, you could teach classes.” Harry put her arm around her shoulders.

“Ginger loved it so. You can’t spend all those decades with a man without eventually learning something.”

“And he learned from you.”

A peal of laughter shook Trudy for a moment. “What he learned was, after you shave, wash the whiskers down the bowl! Harry, it took me the first year of our marriage to get that through his head.”

“With Fair, it was dropping his clothes on the floor as he took them off.”

“My mother said you had to housebreak a man, and, boy, was she right.” Trudy laughed again, then her eyes misted over. “I’d do it all over again. Every second. Every minute. I had the best husband ever.”

Harry hugged her again. “I think you did. You were a matched pair.”

—

As she drove home with Tucker’s head on her thigh, tears silently spilled over Harry’s cheeks. A good marriage teaches everyone around the couple. Trudy could say that Ginger fell in love with the York lady, and she meant that he was enthusiastic about the woman, had a crush, and Trudy trusted him. Loved him and wanted him to have those experiences. And Ginger, in turn, supported her interests, embraced her friends even if he didn’t always like a few.

A wave of rage supplanted the sorrow. How dare someone kill Ginger McConnell? She focused on the road.

“Tucker.”

The sweet dog raised her head. “Yes, Mom.”

“I am going to find who killed Ginger, so help me God! And why was he fascinated with prisoner-of-war camps at the end of his life, camps connected by the prisoners themselves? Was there some kind of illicit trade between Virginia and Pennsylvania?” She thought about that, and decided no.

Although it would be possible to haul the best-quality Virginia moonshine up there, people in the Keystone State were perfectly capable of making hard liquor. They evidenced a real knack for beer, with all those German immigrants. What could tie those two together, and why was Ginger gathering photographs, old maps, reading and rereading battle reports that he already knew so well? She remembered once that he mentioned to her, if you truly wanted to know about a period of history, any period of history, get your hands on diaries and letters. Well, he had read those all his life.

She spoke aloud again to Tucker. “Buddybud, I don’t know why, but all this has to do with The Barracks.”